Table of Contents
- NEW BOOK> Women and Buddhist Philosophy: Engaging Zen Master Kim Iryŏp, by Jin Y. Park
- Re: QUERY> Siddham Font and Text Input
- Re: QUERY> Seeking email contact for Yasunori Sugawara
NEW BOOK> Women and Buddhist Philosophy: Engaging Zen Master Kim Iryŏp, by Jin Y. Park
by Charles Muller
New from University of Hawai'i PressWomen and Buddhist Philosophy: Engaging Zen Master Kim Iryŏp
Cloth - Price: $65.00
296pp. February 2017
Cloth - Price: $65.00ISBN: 978-0-8248-5878-0
Why and how do women engage with Buddhism and philosophy?
The present volume aims to answer these questions by examining the life and
philosophy of a Korean Zen Buddhist nun, Kim Iryŏp (1896–1971). The daughter of
a pastor, Iryŏp began questioning Christian doctrine as a teenager. In a few
years, she became increasingly involved in women’s movements in Korea, speaking
against society’s control of female sexuality and demanding sexual freedom and
free divorce for women. While in her late twenties, an existential turn in her
thinking led Iryŏp to Buddhism; she eventually joined a monastery and went on
to become a leading figure in the female monastic community until her death.
After taking the tonsure, Iryŏp followed the advice of her teacher and
stopped publishing for more than two decades. She returned to the world of
letters in her sixties, using her strong, distinctive voice to address
fundamental questions on the scope of identity, the meaning of being human, and
the value of existence. In her writing, she frequently adopted an
autobiographical style that combined her experiences with Buddhist teachings.
Through a close analysis of Iryŏp’s story, Buddhist philosophy and practice in
connection with East Asian new women’s movements, and continental philosophy,
this volume offers a creative interpretation of Buddhism as both a philosophy
and a religion actively engaged with lives as they are lived. It presents a
fascinating narrative on how women connect with the world—whether through
social issues such as gender inequality, a Buddhist worldview, or existential
debates on human existence and provides readers with a new way of
philosophizing that is transformative and deeply connected with everyday life.Women and Buddhist Philosophy: Engaging Zen Master Kim Iryŏp will be of primary interest to scholars and students of Buddhism, Buddhist and comparative philosophy, and gender and Korean studies.
See http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/p-9751-9780824858780.aspx
Re: QUERY> Siddham Font and Text Input
by Joseph P.
Elacqua
Andrey,There are ways around it, but from my experience as a fellow Mac user, they are not particularly fun. Mostly because—at least to my understanding—there is currently no way to simply "type Siddham."
To be perfectly clear, if one wanted to type in Japanese or Chinese (or even Sanskrit), one could just install the proper IME, begin typing, and eventually convert one's text to the proper language. This ability to type text (even in Sanskrit) and then convert to Siddham is the technology that does not yet seem to exist.
One can get around this by using a font, which can achieve what you're looking to do, albeit with some difficulty. There are a few fonts floating around that I am aware of, each with their own issues:
(1) One of them is bundled with the Japanese font project called Konjaku Mojikyō. I haven't looked into this project in some time, but my understanding was that the fonts were freely distributable, but the software to search for the necessary character was available only via purchase. At the time I looked into it (admittedly several years ago), it was also PC-only. All of the fonts seem to still be available for download via http://www.mojikyo.org/. I don't recall off-hand which fonts contain Siddham characters, but I want to say that there were two individual font files, both located in the M118-122 range.
(2) Another font was used for the CBETA project (siddham.ttf), but seemed to have some difficulty working with a Mac interface for some reason. More than a decade ago, Iyanaga Nobumi was able to get a friend to fix the font so that it would work on a Mac. I'm pretty sure I have this "fixed" version archived somewhere if necessary. I also seem to recall this font being distributed with an MS Excel spreadsheet that listed the characters from the font beside their romanized equivalents to facilitate searching. I should have the requisite Excel file available too.
(3) I happened to have found a third font called "Muktamsiddham" just via a Google search, but haven't had much chance to experiment with it. There might be even more of them out there, but these are the main three Siddham fonts I'm aware of.
If you are running OSX Yosemite or later, once you have any of these fonts installed on your Mac, you're supposed to be able to go to the OSX Font Book (under "Applications") and load the font there. If you go to View --> Repertoire, it should ideally show you all of the characters available in your Siddham font. You can then hopefully select the character of your choice, copy it, and insert it into your preferred text.
As somewhat of a disclaimer, I haven't needed to insert Siddham text since I upgraded to Yosemite last year. Previous versions of OSX allowed you to access fonts directly via the Character Viewer and insert whichever characters you wanted from there. Even though that process is unavailable in newer versions of OSX, that is the process with which I am most familiar.
Depending on the Siddham font that you choose and your familiarity with the script itself, searching for the proper character can be difficult and time-consuming. If I recall correctly, Muktamsiddham is the only font to display its characters in some kind of logical progression or order, facilitating the selection of an individual character. If memory serves, both the CBETA font and the Mojikyo font place characters at random throughout the font, so there isn't much of a workaround unless you have Mojikyo's PC-only Japanese-only searching software, or the Excel file distributed with the CBETA font.
At present, however, I am aware of no other way for Mac users to input Siddham. If anyone else has a better method than the ones I've detailed here, I would also love to hear about them.
Best,
Joseph P. Elacqua
Ph.D candidate, Leiden University
Re: QUERY> Seeking email contact for Yasunori Sugawara
by Kazunobu
Matsuda
Dear Karen, Please try this address: otanusan[a]hotmail.com
Last time I contacted Yasunori Sugawara by this address, but it was 5 years ago.
Yours, Prof. Kazunobu Matsuda, Bukkyo Univ., Kyoto
