Atman in Advaita Vedanta: Variations on a theme from the Principal Upanishads”
CUNEO, Daniele (Leiden University, The Netherlands)
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- CURLEY, Melissa Anne-Marie (The Ohio State University) “Voluntary Captive: Hanayama Shinshō’s Prison Pure Land”
- DAI, Yuanfang, Dongping ZHENG, Yang LIU (University of Hawai’i) “The “Place” of Identity Construction”
- DALLMAYR Fred (University of Notre Dame) “Thomas Merton and Asian Thought” XXXXX D’AMBROSIO, Paul J. (East China Normal University, China)
- DARWELL, Stephen (Yale University) “Presence: Place and Second-Personal Space”
- DAVIDSON, Lake (Colorado State University) “ Yibing: Human Nature’s Impact on the Confucian Model of Righteous War”
- DAVIS, Gordon F. (Carleton University, Canada) “The Ethics of Hierophany and Theophany: Buddhist vs. Modern Liberal Perspectives on the Geography of the Sacred”
- DAVIS, Jake H. (Brown University) “The Scope for Wisdom’: Early Buddhism on Reasons and Persons”
- DEAN-HAIDET, Kate (Ohio Health Hospice/Ohio University) “ Thanatopoiesis : Zen and the Art of Hospice Care”
- DEFOORT, Carine (University of Leuven, Belgium) “The Non-Place of ‘Chinese Philosophy’ at European Universities”
- DIPPMANN, Jeffery W. (Central Washington University) “Residing in De : Contentment, Home Finding One’s Place in the Liezi and Zhuangzi
- DIXON, Mark H. (Ohio Northern University) “Place and Emplacement in the Cinema”
- Places of Knowing in Nyāya and Buddhist Philosophy: What ‘Philosophy’ Cannot Mean if It is Global”
- DORSEY, Donna (MacEwan University, Canada) “A Buddhist View of Rebirth: Place or Not-place”
CUNEO, Daniele (Leiden University, The Netherlands) “An Unheeded Locus of the Aesthetic Experience (rasa): The Performer Diderot’s Paradoxe sur le comédien across Indian Philosophical Sources” The figure, role and personal experience of the performer have been the object of practical and theoretical scrutiny across latitudes and cultures since the very beginning of the various dramaturgical traditions of the globe and the ensuing aesthetic reflections on the phenomenon of artistic performance in particular as well as art in general. Famously enough, with regard to the actor’s emotional involvement within the enactment of the play, the positions at the two extremes are represented by Diderot’s absolute refusal of any affective relation of the actor to the character he is portraying and by Stanislavsky’s relentless focus on the complete emotional engrossment within the fictional, emotional scenery being performed. Similar extreme positions as well as bold intermediate stances can be found in numerous Sanskrit dramaturgical-cum-philosophical sources. In these works, the various opinions are defended and refuted according to both more narrowly aesthetic and more largely philosophical arguments concerning, for instance, the phenomenology of the aesthetic experience, the emotional make-up of the human mind, and their relation with the underlining configuration of reality—often viewed as a playful manifestation of an absolute consciousness- principle. In the most commonly accepted theory, the spectator of the dramatic performance is understandably considered to be the recognized locus of the aesthetic experience, an experience of blissful savouring (rasa, ‘taste’), which foreshadows the mystical experience of oneness with the absolute. However, the existence of a previous, identical experience in the author of the play and its indispensable transmission through the medium of the performer —be it an active or a passive recipient of that— are also recognized as vital aspects of the aesthetic process. In this presentation I’ll try to sketch some of the arguments put forward by Indian authors with regard to the actor’s aesthetic role and the implicit rationale behind them, starting with the seminal dramaturgical treatise by Bharata, the Nāṭyaśāstra, up to the second-millennium theories of Bengali Vaishnavism, where aesthetics and theology merge in the intentionally paradoxical figure of the actor-devotee. The major protagonist in our excursus will be Abhinavagupta (10th-11th century, Kaśmīr), a tantric master and philosopher who fashioned a masterful synthesis of earlier aesthetic theories, in which the role of the actor is scrutinized from both a practical and a theoretical perspective, in order to situate its function within a renovated understanding of the aesthetic process itself. In such a re-positioning of the actor’s role, fictional detachment and emotional involvement are integrated in the figure of the performer and in its liminal nature of both creator and recipient of the blissful elixir of aesthetic experience. CURLEY, Melissa Anne-Marie (The Ohio State University) “Voluntary Captive: Hanayama Shinshō’s Prison Pure Land” In the autumn of 1945, the United States Army took possession of Tokyo’s Sugamo Prison, outfitting it for use as a detention facility to house those charged with war crimes. Upon discovering that most of their prisoners professed to be Buddhist, the army invited Hanayama Shinshō—Shinshū priest and scholar of Buddhist Studies—to serve as a volunteer chaplain. My presentation examines how Hanayama improvised an interpretation of the space of the prison as a pure land, both ritually and narratively. Taking up Keta Masako’s discussion of the two visions of the world offered by Pure Land Buddhism—the world of death and the world of salvation—I explore how Hanayama understood his role as chaplain in terms of constructing the prison as a site of liberation, even for those prisoners who had been sentenced to death. I conclude with a tentative comparison between the forgotten place of Sugamo and the national memorial site, Yasukuni Shrine. DAI, Yuanfang, Dongping ZHENG, Yang LIU (University of Hawai’i) “The “Place” of Identity Construction” In this paper we to address learning experiences via mobile technology that take place where social space and school space meet. Using a different dataset sampled from the same project as in the third paper, Guardian of Mo‘o, we argue that this meeting place is also a place of identity construction that can accommodate the multiplicity of identity. We draw on the idea of “genuine pluralist categorization”(Marilyn Frye 1996, 2005) to interpret language learners’ identity and agency shifts as they move between game space and built environments such as the Japanese garden and Korean center on UH campus. According to Frye, a category is constructed by working differences into structure, rather than sorting things according to a list of properties and attributes. The structure requires that the elements that it arranges be in a significant variety of relations with each other and that they have internal complexity, thus difference of any specific kind is preserved and organized. For instance, the category of “women” should be demonstrated by images such as an individual woman located in “a correlational density in a multidimensional quality space” (2005). In a similar vein, the category of “language learners” should be constructed through multilayered correlations, which involve surprise, satisfaction, confusion, struggles, and conflicts. In a sense, this is a matter of overlapping clusters of similarities and differences among language learners. An identity of a language learner is constructed in the multidimensional space where the past self meets the present self, the Western culture meets the Eastern culture, and the social space meets the school space. DALLMAYR Fred (University of Notre Dame) “Thomas Merton and Asian Thought” XXXXX D’AMBROSIO, Paul J. (East China Normal University, China) “A Wider Space for One’s Place: Contemporary Challenges to Confucianism and a Communitarian Response” Chinese conceptions of the self, as discussed by Roger Ames, Henry Rosemont, Li Zehou, Yang Gourong and others, largely rely on the place a person occupies in social roles and interpersonal relationships. Moral appropriateness is then achieved through productively excelling in one’s place. Accordingly, one learns how to properly cultivate themselves in relationships beginning with immediate role models in the family, which provide the guidelines for how one should behave in broader social contexts. The self, in turn, is also broadened. This perspective does, however, contain certain limitations, which contemporary Chinese society now faces. For instance: 1) What happens if one has bad role models? 2) How can one flourish in stifling roles? 3) How should strangers be treated? At least in modern times Chinese society seems to have difficulties in these areas, although there are certainly traditional resources for dealing with these challenges. For example, the Analects records Confucius as saying "Within the four oceans [i.e. in the entire world] all men are brothers (四海之内皆兄弟).” By extending the person's ties beyond established relationships (推己及人), this idea provides a way to deal with the first and third challenge by expanding one’s field. In other words, it sets up a sense of community where one's allegiances are not limited to static (individuated) relationships. The person's concerns and involvement (关) with others is no longer narrowly fixed (系) in individuated relationships. Unfortunately, however, these arguments have not been emphasized in recent Chinese philosophy or society. Michael Sandel’s communitarian approach offers a way to bolster Confucian philosophy. In general, communitarianism focuses on the importance of communal ties in developing one’s sense of self and moral reasoning. Although Sandel himself does not deal directly with the Chinese Confucian tradition, his ideas can be used to address challenges outlined above in a way that compliments Confucianism. Sandel’s approach is more or less in line with the social orientation of Confucian ethics and perspectives on the self, but emphasizes aspects not stressed in the Confucian tradition. In this way communitarian philosophy can be used to address some of China’s most pressing moral crises. This type of dialogue is more promising than others, such as injecting “human rights” and other notions based on individualism into Chinese society, since communitarian approaches are much more compatible with traditional Confucianism. DARWELL, Stephen (Yale University) “Presence: Place and Second-Personal Space” What is presence or to be in someone's presence? And how does it relate to the familiar and our sense of place? I will investigate these issues and how presence as a second-personal space of potential interpersonal interaction informs the emotional apprehension of place. DAVIDSON, Lake (Colorado State University) “Yibing: Human Nature’s Impact on the Confucian Model of Righteous War” Warfare has pervaded humanity across cultures and through time. Because war is ubiquitous, many philosophers from around the globe have theorized on how best to deal with it. However, it seems that in order to properly develop an account of military ethics, philosophers need to establish a substantial view on the nature of humans. Many moral thinkers on the topic of war have failed to do this; however the early Confucian philosophers, Mengzi and Xunzi, give very clear accounts of human nature. While both thinkers hail from the tradition of Confucianism, their debate on human nature remains a major point of inquiry for many scholars, yet the differences between their ideas of yibing (義兵), “righteous war”, are much more subtle. Several questions may arise here. What are their views of human nature? How do these views help to ground their accounts of what constitutes “righteous war”? What impact does the self-cultivation/reformation of the ruler’s nature have on their thoughts of yibing? This paper serves to answer these questions by highlighting that both Ru stressed the importance of benevolence, propriety, and righteousness from the peasant to the sage-king. One key feature of Confucian political philosophy is the consideration of proper governance through a supreme ruler, who oversaw the conducting of martial affairs. The ruler’s retention of these virtues was seen as fundamentally important to maintaining an ordered and noble realm, and to their overall doctrines on righteous warfare. DAVIS, Gordon F. (Carleton University, Canada) “The Ethics of Hierophany and Theophany: Buddhist vs. Modern Liberal Perspectives on the Geography of the Sacred” One feature of Buddhism that has intrigued many Western philosophers is its apparently atheist character (at least as ‘atheism’ has been understood in mainstream Western theology). On a strictly atheist interpretation, Buddhism would seem to hold that theophanies are illusory. Some religious scholars, such as Mircea Eliade, have tried to rescue the phenomenology of religious experience, even for those who consider themselves atheists, by analyzing what they call hierophany. Epistemologists will remain sceptical of the significance of both ‘theophany’ and ‘hierophany’; and meanwhile many liberal and cosmopolitan ethicists may express concerns about the geographical implications of hierophany narratives – in particular, their potential for divisiveness among various religious communities, some of whom may seek special protection for, or special access to, the sites where sages or prophets claimed to have profound religious experiences. Many ethical perspectives would take a different view, but there is also one normally thought of as modern and Western that would approach this in a more relaxed spirit, namely consequentialism. In fact, consequentialists keep an open mind not only about the significance of the experience of hierophany, but even about reports of theophany – and the same goes for consequentialists who happen to be atheist. The Mahayana Buddhist context provides an interesting point of comparison. On the one hand, there are many tantric traditions in the Mahayana tradition that speak of a kind of theophany; on the other hand, they are embedded in scriptural traditions that include texts whose ethical message is more or less consequentialist (either entirely, e.g. according to Charles Goodman’s interpretation, or partially, as seen in piecemeal appeals to upaya (‘skillful-means’)). A case in point is the usage of Santideva’s texts within Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism. I consider what this kind of consequentialism would imply about the geography of the sacred, and how the Mahayana’s ‘two-truths’ conception can inform a philosophical account of the interplay between ethics, religious experience and spiritual orientation to particular places in the extended landscape of a religious tradition. DAVIS, Jake H. (Brown University) “The Scope for Wisdom’: Early Buddhism on Reasons and Persons” The denial that persons exist, in some ultimate sense, is widely understood to be a central Buddhist doctrine. In Consequences of Compassion, Charles Goodman (2009) suggests that in a range of classical Buddhist sources some version of this metaphysical thesis about persons helps to underwrite an ethical thesis, that we ought to minimize the total amount of suffering there is in the world. There is a compelling connection between these two ideas: since we all agree that our own suffering is to be avoided, if there are ultimately no distinctions between persons, then perhaps one ought to act or live in whatever way will most effectively reduce all of the suffering there is in the world, regardless of whose it is. Nonetheless, as a characterization of early Buddhist thought this proposal is doubly mistaken. The Buddha, as he is portrayed in the early Buddhist discourses, endorses neither the metaphysical claim, that persons on some ultimate level do not exist, nor the ethical claim, that we ought to live in whatever way will minimize the total amount of suffering there is in the world. Instead, early Buddhism has a different, and more novel, contribution to make to contemporary ethical thought. DEAN-HAIDET, Kate (Ohio Health Hospice/Ohio University) “Thanatopoiesis: Zen and the Art of Hospice Care” Contemporary Western hospice care was conceived as a place for providing respite and peaceful dying with attention to the whole person, yet cultural trends in American healthcare delivery are eroding the hospice ideal. This paper describes the moral distress that emerges for interdisciplinary caregivers when their intimacy-based assumptions about human beings are overshadowed by integrity-based practices in end-of-life care. I assert that these affective energies are transforming hospice care towards a new balance, in the service of a resonant death, where the dying process is shared in intimate bonds among those in presence. Thanatopoiesis, a word chosen to connote the creative making of death, refers to a broad range of holistic transformations that dynamically unfold in spaces of death and dying. This paper suggests that Zen Buddhist philosophy is reinvigorating the hospice ideal towards creation of a place where dying resonates within a web of interdependent relation, beyond the individualized death of Western medicine. DEFOORT, Carine (University of Leuven, Belgium) “The Non-Place of ‘Chinese Philosophy’ at European Universities” During the last decades, there has been a lively debate on the legitimacy of Chinese philosophy and its continuous exclusion from the academic world. This debate has reached a point where it would benefit from more focus upon different periods and regions within and beyond China. As for the Western world, the situation in the United States has been mostly discussed. In this paper, I focus upon the situation in Europe, using my own university and research funding organizations as a case-study. The position of “Chinese philosophy” at European universities not only reflects longstanding views or assumptions concerning philosophy, but is also representative of the institutional rejection of China (along with other non-Western regions) in other disciplines of the human sciences. Detailed documentation of the non-place of Chinese philosophy at European institutions shows how different Europe is from the United States in this respect. DIPPMANN, Jeffery W. (Central Washington University) “Residing in De: Contentment, Home & Finding One’s Place in the Liezi and Zhuangzi” Although traditionally recognized as a classic, the Liezi 列子 has remained one of the most understudied and, in some ways, most misunderstood texts within the Daoist canon. The present study first elucidates the Liezi’s conception of de 德 as it relates to contentedness with one’s particular allotment (or fen 分) in life. Special attention is paid to the exchange between Beigongzi and Ximengzi (found in the Li Ming 力命 [Endeavor and Destiny] chapter). Here, in spite of his mean status and circumstances, Beigongzi discovers that contentment arises in the recognition of the virtue/worth/value inherent in his particular ming (命) from heaven. Whereas Ximengzi’s privileged status, and apparent happiness, was a result of his heaven-allocated luck, Beigongzi, and by extension the Liezi’s readers, learns that true happiness resides in making the most of one’s de, the inborn manifestation of dao 道 within all things. The paper then moves on to explore similar themes in the Zhuangzi, teasing out the various ways in which the text both supports and expands the Daoist conception of locating contentment and “home” within one’s “heavenly mandate” (tian ming 天命). As we read in Zhuangzi 4, “To serve one’s own mind so that neither sadness or joy sway or move it; to comprehend that what you can do nothing about and rest content it as your ming 命, this is de 德 perfected” 自事其心者，哀樂不易施乎前，知其不可奈何而安之若命，德之至也.Who and what we are ultimately resides in our homeground, the perfection of the virtue provided to each of us by heaven’s allocation. DIXON, Mark H. (Ohio Northern University) “Place and Emplacement in the Cinema” Much has been written about place and its role in being human. The simple truth is that as embodied beings, as beings in the world, humans are also emplaced beings – beings that must exist in some place at some particular time. The interactions between human beings and place is an intricate one in which places influence human beings and then human beings in turn influence places. Indeed the details that describe our emplacement then – the where, the when, the how, the why – have formative roles in our, social and personal, identities. In broad terms emplacement emerges through both conscious deliberate process – one chooses to live in a particular place – and through happenings outside our control – one receives a promotion and is sent to another office. There are also still other places where we have been throughout our lives and to which there are greater or lesser connections. Together all these places and connections influence who we are as persons. A place then is more than a geographical location it also includes all the historical associations and personal attitudes that binds us to the place. The question I shall consider in this paper concerns the role that place has in the cinema. German director, Wim Wenders writes that it is place that motivates the stories that films weave. Is this place’s sole role, to motivate stories? There is I believe deeper role as can be seen in this question: Can films ‘emplace’ us? Our lives and bodies emplace us somewhere in space and time. Our motivations and desires emplace us in particular places at particular times. But can films emplace us in the places that the film describes? I shall argue that, through image, sound and dialogue the cinema does have to power to emplace us – emplace us within moving frame in all its richness. As such the places we inhabit within films have the capabilities to influence or identities and the manner in which we dwell on the earth has human beings. What is in question here is more than a mere passing relocation or distraction, what is known as the suspension of disbelief. The best films do more then than relocate us in some trivial and provisional manner, rather through their visual, linguistic and aural properties these films emplace us within the place(s) the film describes. The processes here are analogous to those through which our choices and other happenings emplace us in ‘real world’ places. DONAHUE, Amy (Kennesaw State University) “Places of Knowing in Nyāya and Buddhist Philosophy: What ‘Philosophy’ Cannot Mean if It is Global” If philosophy is a universal human activity, then conventional representations in the academy of the concept ‘philosophy’ must change. In Nyāya and Buddhist philosophies of language, conceptual understandings are always situated in some place. These conceptual understandings are jn̄ānas – episodic cognitions involving specific knowers, objects, and mechanisms of cognition. Further, in Buddhist philosophies of language, conceptual understandings are inferential. They therefore emerge only from specific pakṣas, or places, and only through spatially, temporally, and causally situated (deśakālāvasthāniyata) processes of determination. Ultimately, according to these philosophies, therefore, understandings of concepts such as ‘philosophy’ cannot be universal. However, if one wishes to avoid radical implications of such Buddhist nominalist arguments for possibilities of communication (as I do), then one might instead seek to ground global understandings of ‘philosophy’ in other, perhaps less extreme, philosophical frameworks, such as Madhyamaka philosophies of conventional truth and Nyāya realism. However, arguments developed by Gaṅgeśa and Jñānaśrīmitra suggest that one could then no longer legitimately conceive of ‘philosophy’ as a universal human activity inaugurated by the Greeks dedicated to the examination of a vaguely specific set of “central” human problems and questions. DORSEY, Donna (MacEwan University, Canada) “A Buddhist View of Rebirth: Place or Not-place?” A Buddhist concept of rebirth might be understood as a way to enable a continuous presence, a determinate linking place, as it were, enabling karmic continuity. Or rebirth may be seen as a conduit to a place on the karmic wheel where a relative position is held within a sequence of possible ethicized places and, here, rebirth may be conditioned by craving and not by karma. However rebirth is envisioned, imagined or understood, the relation of rebirth to place is complicated. Rebirth is both place and not place since rebirth meets some of the conditions of place, but it also rejects such categorization. If rebirth is a place in the sense of a momentary existent determined by past acts it is also, in an important sense, no more of a place than any other moment in existence. The Buddhist doctrines of dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda) and impermanence (anitya) reject the belief that rebirth indicates a continuity, and the Buddhist doctrine of no-self (anātman) is a challenge to any claim that rebirth is an event in the history of a continuous being. In spite of these foundational Buddhist principles, rebirth seems to function in the manner of a fixed place for a rebirth-seeking-consciousness bound to the ethicized space of worldly samsara. Since no one account of the rebirth doctrine crossing all Buddhist schools is agreed upon, this paper instead will focus on the work of Santideva where, for example in the Bodhicharyavatara, rebirth is referred to as a snare. An explication of his thinking may provide a way in which the Buddhist idea of rebirth as place, or as not-place, can be best understood. Directory: phil -> wp-content -> uploads phil -> Going global oddities of globalism phil -> Identification ethics and spirituality phil -> Special Topic: “The home-made bombing at the Marathon Races in Boston, Massachusetts” by Sally Ramage pages 2-50 phil -> The Role of Error in Computer Science phil -> 菲律賓私立大專校院（非屬Autonomy and Deregulated heis） phil -> Gualtiero Piccinini phil -> Buildings Leased/Sold phil -> Phillip M. Adams & Associates, L. L. C., V. Dell, Inc. 2009 wl 910801 uploads -> Atman in Advaita Vedanta: Variations on a theme from the Download 0.89 Mb. Share with your friends:
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