Time: January 27, 7:00am (EST) | 12:00pm (London) | 8:00pm (Beijing/Taipei)
Host: Peking University
The lecture will be live-streamed via YouTube with simultaneous English and Mandarin channels.
Abstract:
How might Buddhist storytelling contribute to cross-species thinking in an age of climate crisis? In this talk I will examine how animals have figured into Buddhist stories in both the past and the present. I will begin by discussing premodern Chinese sources that show karmic connections between human and animal lives as a means to shape ethical behavior in the present. Even though reincarnation narratives are necessarily anthropocentric in their orientation, they show empathetic imagination at work by voicing animal perspectives.
I will then bring this tradition into conversation with contemporary Taiwanese Buddhist picturebooks to show how these sources depict ecological entanglements that go beyond the six realms of rebirth and even the category of sentient beings. I will argue that children’s literature represents not only a site of moral formation for future generations, but—building on older examples—that it offers models for how we might tell new stories to motivate change in an age of climate crisis.
About the speaker:
Natasha Heller, Associate Professor, Department of Religious Studies, University of Virginia
Natasha Heller is a cultural historian of Chinese Buddhism with research interests spanning the premodern period (primarily 10th through 14th c.) and the contemporary era. She teaches in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, and is currently a Faculty Fellow of UVA’s Institute of the Humanities and Global Cultures.
About the discussants:
Ven. De Yuan, Chairman of Yayasan Pendidikan Tzu Chi Malaysia and Chairman of Tzu Chi Foundation Canada. She is fluent in Mandarin, English and Malaysian Malay
Shih De Yuan (Dharma name) was born and raised in the small town of Kodiang, Malaysia . She graduated with a Bachelor in Mechanical Engineering from the Universiti Teknologi and worked as a Product/ Procurement Engineer. In the early 2000’s, De Yuan witnessed Dharma Master Cheng Yen’s compassion in the disaster relief of Typhoon Nari and the 9/11 a ttacks in the United States and she silently made a wish to learn from her at the Jing Si Abode, Taiwan, the monastery of Dharma Master Cheng Yen. De Yuan became a novice in 2009 and was ordained in 2011. In recent years, she has attended and spoken at many international conferences including 2018 PWR at Toronto, Canada and 2019 China US Canada Buddhist Fo rum at New York, United States. Currently, De Yuan hold s the post s as Chairman of Yayasan Pendidikan Tzu Chi Malaysia and Chairman of Tzu Chi Foundation Canada. She is fluent in Mandarin, English and Malaysian Malay.
Lei Ying, Assistant Professor, Asian Languages and Civilizations, Amherst College
Lei Ying received her Ph.D. from Harvard University as a Presidential Scholar. She specializes in the interdisciplinary study of religion and literature, especially the interconnection between Buddhism and modern Chinese literary and intellectual history. Her current book project, “Our Shared Karma: Buddhism, Literature, and the Modern Chinese Revolution,” questions the secularist assumption underlying the received narrative of China’s modern transformation, and argues for a profoundly Buddhist beginning of the modern Chinese revolution. Her works have appeared (or will appear) in Journal of Asian Studies, A New Literary History of Modern China, Religions, and Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture, among others. Lei teaches Chinese and Buddhist literature at Amherst College.
Host : You Zhao, Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Peking University
About the Yin-Cheng Distinguished Lecture Series: Launched in September, 2021, the Yin-Cheng Distinguished Lecture Series (印證佛學傑出學術系列講座) is a collaborative, multi-university partnership between Peking University, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, Inalco (Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales), Princeton University, Harvard University, and the University of British Columbia. The Lecture Series is established in honour of Venerable Cheng-yen 證嚴, founder of Tzu Chi, and her mentor Yinshun 印順 (1906–2005), with the goal of promoting topics in Buddhist Studies.
Click to download the poster
