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10/08/2015: Death and Dying in Tibetan Buddhism

Tibetan Buddhist Monks from Labrang Tashi Kyil Monastery.
Tibetan Buddhist Monks from Labrang Tashi Kyil Monastery.

Tibetan Buddhist Monks from the Labrang Tashi Kyil Monastery

Thursday, October 8, 7:00 p.m.
Sussman Theater, Olmsted Center, Drake University

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What is death and dying in Tibetan Buddhism? Join us, as seven Tibetan Buddhist monks offer a presentation on death and dying as well as a demonstration of prayers, rituals, and dances related to death and dying. In particular, the monks will perform “Chod,” a ritual meditation on death to cut away attachments, and “Skeleton Dance,” a ritual dance of death to cultivate mindfulness of impermanence.

Seven monks from Labrang Tashikyil Monastery in Dehra Dun, India are touring the United States in 2015-16 to teach dharma, educate the public about the culture and religion of Tibet, and to raise funds for their monastery. The tour is being coordinated by the Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center in Bloomington, Indiana. It is the third such tour by the monastery.

View the monks’s powerpoint and hear their presentation

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Student Comparisons and Evaluations (S15)

Professor Knepper’s Spring 2105 Philosophy of Religion course looked at discourses of ineffability in Jewish mysticism and Muslim mysticism (as well as a little Zen Buddhism).  In their final papers students were asked to describe and compare several of these discourses, then both to explain their commonalities and differences and to evaluate the general claim that ultimate beings and/or experiences are ineffable. Below are some of their final papers:

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Student Comparisons and Evaluations (Spring 2014 Philosophy of Religion Course)

Professor Knepper’s Spring 2104 Philosophy of Religion course looked at discourses of ineffability in Chinese Daoism, West African Religion (of the dozos), Sikhism, and Christian mysticism.  In their final papers they were asked to describe and compare several of these discourses, then both to explain their commonalities and differences and to evaluate the general claim that ultimate beings and/or experiences are ineffable. Below are some of their final papers:

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03/28/2014: West African Dance Workshop

African Dance workshopWest African Dance Workshop with Diadié Bathily, Dancer, Caph Guéï, Drummer and introduction and interpretation by Joseph Hellweg

Friday, March 28, 12:15–1:45 p.m.

Studio 55 Theater, Harmon Fine Arts Center

The workshop will cover the study of West African dance and the accompanying music. Special emphasis will be placed on the dance, drumming, culture, language and arts of Ivory Coast, Guinea and Ivory Coast. It will consist of lecture and demonstration followed by active participation by students, primarily dancing and learning about the music. Students will build technique and develop an appreciation and understanding of the relevant resources available and how to research within them.

Diadié (pronounced Jah-Jay) Bathily has danced professionally for over 30 years on stages in Africa, Europe and North America. He is a world-renowned dancer, choreographer, instructor and costume designer. Bathily has conducted master classes and workshops throughout Europe and North America and has performed with or choreographed for such notable companies as the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble, the Katherine Dunham Centers for Arts & Humanities, Ecole de Danse et d’Echange Culturel with Ms. Marie Rose Guiraud, and Broadway Dance Center. He is the recipient of the N’gowa Prize for dance on the Ivory Coast and has performed at the United Nations, the Village of Arts and Humanities in Philadelphia and many festivals and events around the United States.

In 2003, he founded his own non-profit dance company, Afriky Lolo (Star of Africa) with troupes for adults, adolescents and children. They have performed and presented workshops all over the United States. Bathily was a guest choreographer and performer at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida and a visiting choreographer at Malcolm X College in Chicago. He also founded a satellite troupe of Afriky Lolo in Chicago.

See photos from the Dance Workshop

Watch a video of the dance workshop:

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02/13/2014: After Silence, That Which Comes Nearest

BellmanJonathan Bellman,
Professor of Music History & Literature, University of Northern Colorado

Response by Eric Saylor,
Associate Professor of Music History & Musicology, Drake University

Thursday, February 13 at 7:00 p.m.

St. Catherine of Siena Catholic Student Center, 1150 28th Street

Poets and philosophers have long agreed about music’s ability to express the inexpressible. The kinds of music to which they imputed this elevated capability, though, varied widely. By the mid-nineteenth century, the expressive vocabulary of western music was highly developed and well understood; today, though, its subtleties are largely forgotten. As a result, what to us might seem like an evocation of the Infinite might in its own time have been an expression of something far more explicit or even everyday in nature. Thus, musical expressions of the ineffable and thoroughgoingly effable are far closer than we might suspect. Much of music’s ability to reach beyond verbal language, then, is granted by and relies upon the expectations of the listener, rather than being inherent in the music itself.

Jonathan D. Bellman is a Professor of Music History and Literature and Head of Academic Studies in Music at the University of Northern Colorado. He earned piano performance degrees from the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of Illinois, and a Doctor of Musical Arts in Piano Performance Practices at Stanford University in 1990. His most recent book, Chopin’s Polish Ballade: Op. 38 as Narrative of National Martyrdom, was published by Oxford University Press in 2010. His articles have appeared in journals including The Journal of Musicological Research, Musical Quarterly, Nineteenth-Century Music, Early Music, Historical Performance, and The Journal of Musicology. His research interests include musical style in general, musical exoticism, the music and performance practices of Frédéric Chopin, and the concert music of George Gershwin.

Listen to audio of the lecture: [sc_embed_player_template1 fileurl=”http://comparisonproject-migration.wp.drake.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/143/2014/02/Bellman1.mp3″]

Download a PDF of Bellman’s talk

Prof. Saylor’s response (PDF)

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04/17/2013: Buddhism and the Ethics of Memory

kopfpromopicWednesday, April 17 7:00 p.m., Olin 101

Gereon Kopf received his Ph.D. from Temple University and is currently professor of Asian and comparative religion at Luther College. As a research fellow of the Japan Foundation and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, he conducted research in 1993 and 1994 at Obirin University in Machida, Japan, and at the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture in Nagoya, Japan, from 2002 to 2004. In the academic year of 2008-2009, he taught at the Centre of Buddhist Studies at the University of Hong Kong. He is the author of Beyond Personal Identity (2001), co-editor of Merleau-Ponty and Buddhism (2009), and editor of the Journal of Buddhist Philosophy.

The act of remembering is central to a variety of Buddhist responses to suffering, offering a foundation for responses to historical tragedies and political evil by drawing upon the relationship between the Buddhist principles of suffering, memory, and compassion. Taking various perspectives to the Nanjing massacre as its case study, Dr. Kopf’s lecture will identify and analyze four ways in which individuals and nations commemorate significant events, proposing an ethics of expression that examines the ideological, religious and moral dimensions of various remembrance practices. Ultimately it seeks to provide a theory that reveals the connections between ideological commitments, religious ritual, and moral agenda, reminding us that our self-understanding is inextricably tied to our values and
vice versa.

PowerPoint of Kopf’s lecture

Transcript of Kopf’s presentation

Listen to Kopf’s lecture:

[sc_embed_player_template1 fileurl=”http://comparisonproject-migration.wp.drake.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/143/2013/05/2013-04-17comparisonupdated.mp3″]