Grant News from SICEP

We are pleased to share two pieces of grant news from Sungkyun Institute for Confucian Studies and East Asian Philosophy that it director, Philip J. Ivanhoe, and Dr. Hwa Yeong WANG have received two grants from the Korean Studies Promotion Service and the American Council of Learned Societies, with support from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange. Congratulations!

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NPR Story about Shanghai Subway Passenger

This story about a foreigner passing out on the subway in Shanghai caught my attention; and I thought it might interest some of our readers as well. It turns out that after fainting and falling to the floor, not a single person tried to help the foreigner. The explanations in the article seem a bit dubious; and there’s no fat villan to throw in front of the subway car, which would make for a more interesting discussion; but I’m guessing a few of you might have some thoughts on the piece nonetheless.

Malik’s Piece on Buddhism and Bigotry in the NYT

I thought this was interesting, though Malik clearly undermines his own implied connection between Buddhism and the bigotry late in the article. Worth a quick read perhaps? Here’s a little bit to get you started:

There is perhaps no religion that Western liberals find more appealing than Buddhism. Politicians fawn over the Dalai Lama, celebrities seek out Buddhist meditation, and scientists and philosophers insist that Buddhism has much to teach us about human nature and psychology.

Even some of the so-called New Atheists have fallen for Buddhism’s allure. For most of its Western sympathizers, Buddhism is a deeply humanist outlook, less a religion than a philosophy, a way of life to create peace and harmony.

The Rohingya people of Myanmar take a very different view of Buddhism. The Rohingya are Muslims who live mostly in Rakhine, in western Myanmar, bordering Bangladesh. Early Muslim settlements there date from the seventh century. Today, in a nation that is 90 percent Buddhist, there are some eight million Muslims, of whom about one in six is Rohingya.

For the Myanmar government, however, the Rohingya simply do not exist…

NY Times – Tibetan Buddhist Texts in Chengdu, China

The New York Times just published an excellent piece on E. Gene Smith’s collection of Tibetan Buddhist texts and their new home in Chengdu, China. The texts are housed in a new library bearing Smith’s name at Southwest University for Nationalities in Chengdu.

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