lunes, 10 de junio de 2013

Charles Muller at Tel-Aviv University

Next week the Confucian Institute and the department of East Asian Studies
at Tel-Aviv University will be hosting Prof. Charles A. Muller from
the  University
of Tokyo.

During his visit to Tel-Aviv University Prof. Muller will present the
following papers [the abstracts presented below]:

1 - Right View and Correct Faith: Distinction, and Re-Merging in Mahāyāna
Buddhism [Tuesday June 11th 12:15, Gilman Building, 281]

2 - Digital Humanities: Developments in Digital Tools for the Study of East
Asian Texts [Monday June 10th 14:00, Gilman Building 496]

Abstracts:

*Right View (/samyak-dṛṣṭi/) and Correct Faith (/śraddhā/): Distinction,
and Re-Merging in Mahāyāna Buddhism*
As a religious tradition, Buddhism is distinctively epistemological in its
articulation of the causes of human suffering and in the solutions it
offers. The most fundamental problem in Buddhism is that of nescience
(/avidyā/), manifested in such forms as the clinging to a constructed self,
along with numberless derivative problems. Therefore the matter of mentally
constructed frameworks (/dṛṣṭi/) is central to Buddhist soteriological
discourse. At the same time, the notion of faith (/śraddhā/), which in
other religions tends strongly in the emotional/devotional direction, is in
Mahāyāna philosophy of mind, a category intimately related to right view.
Mahāyāna Buddhism furthermore contains two distinct levels of discourse
regarding right views and correct faith: that which occurs at the
conventional (/laukika///saṃvṛti/) level and that which is seen at the
transcendent (/lokôttara///paramârtha/) level of discussion. This paper
starts out with the discussion of views and belief in the context of
secular academic disciplines such as psychology and epistemology, and ends
up with the most rarefied view in Zen, a distinctive Buddhist tradition
wherein, I argue, right view and correct faith become largely
indistinguishable.

*Digital Humanities: Developments in Digital Tools for the Study of East
Asian Texts*
This will be a two-hour long workshop covering a number of topics,
including: (1) A brief overview of the history and trajectory of the
emerging field of Digital Humanities. (2) History and development of the
DDB and CJKV-E Dictionaries and the digitized Taisho canon. (3) A thorough
explanation of the options and functions offered by each of these tools
(search options, the latest SAT version tools), strategies for encouraging
user input. (4) Demonstration of the application of the tools with online
Chinese texts. (5) Demonstration of the local system for adding new data.

--
Erez, Hekigan, Joskovich
PhD Candidate, Lecturer
Department of East Asian Studies
Tel Aviv University
Israel