Traditional Chinese Art Under Western Influence: Introduction to Contemporary Leading Chinese Artists

An important issue within the contemporary Chinese art circle is the close relationship between Eastern and Western cultures, and their effects on one another when it comes to traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy. Chinese art today is heavily influenced by Western art and concepts, particularly ink and oil paintings, and performance arts. By transforming both … Read more

The Transformation of Gangs in Chinatown (1970-2000)

Arriving to the United States from Taiwan in 1964, Mr. Hsin Yuan Cheng, an immigrant with an extensive background in journalism and broadcasting, has spent more than thirty years of his life immersed in the hustle and bustle of Chinatown. Over the past three decades, from 1970 to 2000, he has both reported and witnessed … Read more

Using -wa in Japanese and in English

https://youtu.be/DB3aLf_6CbU One of the most difficult tasks of teaching Japanese to English speakers is the explanation of wa. Linguists are always trying to find systematic or consistent ways of explaining what something means. For those who don’t speak Japanese, wa is a sentence particle that goes on the topic of the sentence, telling someone what … Read more

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.

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