The present write up is juxtapose to the vast treasure of Buddhist teachings spread all over the world in various languages with the simplest possible manner and in shortest possible manner. To know its historicity, it is an abridged version of what is known as lam Rim Chen Mo, the best write-up by the founder of Gelug Sect, Tsong Kha Pa to his followers. Precisely Renunciation, Bodhicitta and Right view are the three steps which will be the discourse to be deliberated upon in details.

 

Speaker
Prof. Vijay Kumar Singh Lam
Professor of Tibetan and Buddhist Studies, Panjab University
Professor Vijay Jumar Singh is the Professor of Tibetan and Buddhist Studies as well as the Head and Chairperson of Chinese and Tibetan Languages in Panjab University. He also serves as In-charge of Arts Block-5 in Panjab University and Academic in charge of the Department of Russian in Panjab University. He is now performing as ICCR Professor of India Studies, for the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies in The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He received his doctoral degree in Languages from Panjab University and his master’s degree in Tibetan from University of Delhi. His specialization is in the area of Buddhist Studies, Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan and Religious Studies

講座將通過對佛教梵唄的歷史、梵唄的文體，以及梵唄音樂特色等角度，解析梵唄的歷史，以及所含的藝術內涵與音樂特色。講座中將用實例講解漢傳佛教梵唄的各種腔系，以及梵唄的同曲變體特徵等內容。
 

講者
狄其安教授
上海大學音樂學院教授
狄其安教授，上海大學音樂學院教授，佛光山人間佛教研究院研究員、江蘇鹽城佛教梵唄研究會顧問。從事漢傳佛教梵唄、作曲理論的教學與研究，尤其是對佛教梵唄的研究頗具成績。出版《江浙滬梵唄》、《中國漢傳佛教常用梵唄》、《中國漢傳佛「瑜伽焰口」法會唱本》、《東渡寺梵唄》、《寶華山隆昌寺律腔梵唄》等著作。主持上海教委創新重點專案「江、浙、滬地區佛教音樂（梵唄）收集與研究」； 2016年度教育部人文社會科學研究專案「中國漢傳佛教『瑜伽焰口』法會音樂的記譜與研究」；2019年度上海市教委員冷門絕學專案「漢傳佛教禪腔、律腔、上江腔三大腔系梵唄的收集記譜與研究」；2020年度國家社會科學基金專案「漢傳佛教『水陸法會』梵唄集成的記錄與研究」。

講座無須報名，ZOOM ID: 910 6024 1050（無須密碼）

The talk will be started with a dialogue with the “significant others,” Charles Taylor and Jürgen Habermas. In 2007, Charles Taylor published A Secular Age. In 2010, Jürgen Habermas published An Awareness of What is Missing: Faith and Reason in a Post-Secular Age. As hindsight, it is not an incident for them to address the same concern on the issue of the secular in the beginning of new millennium. Although the philosophical stances of Taylor and Habermas are different, they nevertheless meditated on the similar cultural and political situation they have faced in Europe and North America, that is, the loss of some sort of religious significance and its cultural effect. Among other implications, their thinking would be properly understood without referring to the resurgence of religions in past decades, including the religious/nonreligious conflict or violence around the whole world. Turning to East Asia, should we be bothered by the same issue of secularity with which Charles Taylor and Jürgen Habermas are deeply concerned? Isn’t it a common sense nowadays to say that the dichotomy between the sacred and the secular can only be found in the Judeo-Christian world? If the dichotomy as such is absent in East Asian traditions, should we take it seriously?

Speaker
Prof. Lin Chen-kuo (林鎮國教授)
Professor Emeritus of the Department of Philosophy, National Chengchi University (國立政治大學哲學系榮譽教授)
 

Speaker 
Professor Cristina Dondi
Cristina Dondi is Professor of Early European Book Heritage, and Oakeshott Senior Research Fellow in the Humanities at Lincoln College, University of Oxford. She is also the Secretary of the Consortium of European Research Libraries. During the period 2014-2019 she was the Principal Investigator of the 15cBOOKTRADE Project, funded by the European Research Council. 
Her research focuses on the history of printing and the booktrade in 15th century Europe, using surviving books as primary historical sources to understand the economic and social impact of the printing revolution on European society. Also, on the reconstruction of dispersed book collections and the transmission of texts in print.https://www.lincoln.ox.ac.uk/Fellows/CristinaDondi

Join us for this 90-minute session, during which Prof. James St. Andre of the Department of Translation and Prof. Tongle Sun of the Department of English will share their strategies for giving effective virtual and in-person research talks and poster presentations. The session will consist of a 60 minute presentation by Profs. St. Andre and Sun, followed by a 30 minute Q & A. All are welcome!

Carthage was one of the great imperial republics of the ancient Mediterranean, its constitution favorably cited by Aristotle for its balance of monarchic, aristocratic and democratic aspects. The city engaged in frequent warfare that secured domains in both North Africa and beyond in Sardinia, Sicily and Spain. This paper considers how a relatively modest but unusual aspect of Carthage’s constitution impacted its war making capacity: the effective separation of powers between the civil executives (shofetim, “judges”) and military commanders (rabbim, “generals”), each elected separately by the popular assemblies in the city. The men elected as rabbim seldom subsequently served as shofet, so that military and civil careers effectively diverged. This arrangement produced several institutional pathologies. Carthaginian rabbim existed as liminal figures, who often engaged in exogamous marriages that facilitated diplomatic relations and the recruitment of foreign troops. Anxieties about the political loyalty and military competence of extramural rabbim led to an unusually brutal accountability regime, so that defeated generals risked crucifixion. The overall result was an incentive structure which discouraged aggression and initiative and may have made Carthage somewhat less bellicose and militarily competitive relative to its primary peer rival: Rome.

Speaker
Prof. Michael TAYLOR
Department of History 
University at Albany, State University of New York

ZOOM Meeting ID: 990 8868 4183
Meeting link: https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/99088684183

Medieval Europe is traditionally imagined as a land of castles, populated by knights and princesses. This image is largely fantasy, but to the extent that it holds a basis in reality, it is focused on medieval England and France as the normative ideas of what was truly medieval. Even for scholars, the middle ages has been built around a western European model and those polities and institutions which do not conform to that model are “other” or sometimes even “backward.” 

This talk will focus on the kingdom of Rus as one kingdom among many in medieval Europe; demonstrating that England as a normative example of what is medieval is in fact wrong, and there were many ways to be a medieval European kingdom.

Speaker
Prof. Christian RAFFENSPERGER
Department of History, Wittenberg University

ZOOM Meeting ID: 990 8868 4183
Meeting link: https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/99088684183

In this talk I present the concept “biological geo-body” to offer a new way to understand how military, cultural, and scientific forces in Southeast Asia strategically map a population’s identity in relation to colonial and post-colonial histories. It builds on Thai historian Thongchai Winichakul’s concept “geo-body” (1997), which refers to the mapping of territory with bounded sovereignty and discourses of national identity as the “We-self” versus the other. Drawing on my research on national genome projects, I show how the mapping of geo-body has evolved into the biological forces of population genomics. I compare two cases, the Vietnamese Genome Project, which is funded by a Vietnamese private conglomerate, and the Peranakan Genome Project in Singapore, to elucidate how the results from population genomic projects in Vietnam and Singapore reflect existing political and cultural narratives, in particular the varying notions of ‘Chinese-ness’. The cases illustrate the different ways in which the actors strategically differentiate and negotiate the ‘bio geo-body’ of the Vietnamese and the Peranakan (more particularly, descendants of Southern Chinese settlers intermixed with local Malays) in relation to Chinese identity and nationalism, thereby revealing how genomics is intertwined with local and regional histories, culture and politics.

 

Speaker 
Miss Tien-Dung HA (PhD Candidate in Anthropology, Stanford University)
Tien-Dung HA is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at Stanford University whose research interests include anthropology of science and nation building in the context of Southeast Asia. She has also been awarded the Dissertation Fieldwork Grant by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellowship by the Canadian government. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals of BioSocieties and Big Data & Society. Prior to arriving at Stanford, she received a MA in Science & Technology Studies at Cornell University.

Suffering is the status of the mind when it feels uncomfortable, unwanted, and unfavorable. Lord Buddha commenced his teaching with the teaching and realization of suffering. Why Buddha took suffering as his core concern and why not happiness? The two extremes are to be avoided according to the Buddha are self-mortification and self-enjoyment. In Buddhism, following must be preceded by understanding and not faith. Buddha ordered his monks that not two of them should go in same direction. Buddha was not talking about the benefit of his Dhamma that it will give you a better life after death, rather it will start giving you its fruit now and here and thereafter.

 

Speaker
Prof. Vijay Kumar Singh 
Professor of Tibetan and Buddhist Studies, Panjab University
Professor Vijay Jumar Singh is the Professor of Tibetan and Buddhist Studies as well as the Head and Chairperson of Chinese and Tibetan Languages in Panjab University. He also serves as In-charge of Arts Block-5 in Panjab University and Academic in charge of the Department of Russian in Panjab University. He is now performing as ICCR Professor of India Studies, for the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies in The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He received his doctoral degree in Languages from Panjab University and his master’s degree in Tibetan from University of Delhi. His specialization is in the area of Buddhist Studies, Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan and Religious Studies

Distinct from transgender and intersex populations, hijras, a "third" gender community, occupy a unique and contradictory place in India. Hindu mythology deifies them, and British colonists demonised them. Caught between precarious webs of cultural stereotyping, historical enslavement, colonial criminalisation, and postcolonial projects of biopolitical ordering, the hijras typically live by seeking voluntary donations in exchange for their blessings, performing at weddings, begging, and engaging in sex work. Existing within hierarchical kinship networks, governed by internal councils requiring patronage of senior gurus, hijras undergo mandatory apprenticeship to a commune life through a discipleship-lineage system. My talk examines the hijra identity as a wounded identity by researching hijra kinship in New Delhi and its border states in north India. In understanding the category of hijra as a kinship system, I argue that despite its gender non-conformity, the hijras have an economically exploitative slavery-like system that reinscribes the hierarchies of patriarchy and caste.
 

Speaker
Ina Goel (Department of Anthropology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong)
Ina Goel works with hijras, a "third" gender community in India, and is the founder of The Hijra Project.. She has a B.A. in journalism and an M.A. in social work from the University of Delhi in India. She completed her M.Phil. in social medicine and community health from Jawaharlal Nehru University. Ina has worked with All India Radio and Al Jazeera English. She was a recipient of a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) scholarship at the department of epidemiology and international public health at Bielefeld University and an INLAKS scholar at the department of gender and sexuality studies at University College London. Ina has also worked with FHI 360 (a nonprofit human development organization), UNICEF, the National AIDS Control Organization in India, the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, and the humanitarian organization Plan International. She is currently a Hong Kong Ph.D. Fellowship Scheme awardee based in the anthropology department at The Chinese University of Hong Kong and a UNFPA Laadli Media Fellow.

Join Zoom Meeting: https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/98784209867
Meeting ID: 987 8420 9867
Passcode: 951231

All interested are welcome.