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
