An Asian American Experience: One Year in India
Ravi Kulkarni discusses his year-long experience in India, and thoughts on what AAARI can do for CUNY faculty and students.
Month: June 2002
An Evening of Asian American Poetry
Asian American poets Meena Alexander, Regie Cabico, Luis Francia and Kimiko Hahn share their latest work.
Introduction to Agama Sutra: The First Buddhist Scripture
The Mahayana school of Buddhism in China often emphasized the role of altruism and disparaged self-salvation. Its sutras were considered to be the first sermons by the Buddha whose profound ideas were too difficult for the ordinary people to understand. To cater to their level, it was said that Buddha then delivered the Agama Sutra for the less intellectually endowed. For more than 1500 years after it was translated into Chinese, Agama Sutra has been ignored by Chinese Buddhists mainly because of this prejudice. More recently, Master Yin Shun has vastly expanded the research started by Lu Jing, and has written many volumes of texts to clarify the origins of Buddhism. This lecture will be based mostly on writings by him and his disciples.