China Studies Research Centre, La Trobe University
2:30-4:00pm, 12 April 2018
Room 318, Education 2 (ED2), La Trobe University
This presentation is an introduction to Chan or what in the West is better known as Zen. In China, Chan, Confucianism and Taoism are three core traditions of Chinese traditional philosophy. Generally speaking, Chan is the mainstream of Chinese Buddhism. Chan ideology is a product of the popularization of Taoist philosophy. Chan enriched traditional Chinese culture, and helped to cultivate the aesthetic sensibilities of Chinese intellectuals. Chan thought also elevated the everyday into the sublime, as encapsulated in the doctrine that the everyday mind is the Way. It is a realm of meaning that seeks to throw off constraints on thinking in order to transcend and simultaneously subsume the relative, and to pursue the self-mastery of meaning. The main content of Chan consists of: being free of mentally constructed characteristics and conceptualizations, and ‘perceiving the nature of one’s mind and so become a budda’.
About the Speaker
Tianxiang Ma is Professor of Philosophy at Wuhan University, a Luojia Distinguished Scholar, and also a Distinguished Professor at Zhengzhou University. He is a leading authority on the study of Chinese religions and has published 69 books and over 250 academic papers. He is also the Head of the Institute of Religious Studies at Wuhan University, Director of the Centre for Buddhism and Buddhist Arts Studies, Chairman of the Academic Committee for the Christian and Western Religious Culture Studies Centre. He was awarded the title of ‘the distinguished scholar’ by the State Government in 1999.
This seminar will be presented in Chinese