Friday Feb 27, 2009 Buddhism lectures

From Frances Garrett of University of Toronto:

UTSC presents a Tung Lin Kok Yuen Public Lecture:

*
PROFESSOR JEFFREY HOPKINS*

*"Gender, Sexuality and Tibetan Buddhism: How Sex Is Used in the Spiritual Path"*

Date: Friday February 27, 2009

Time: 7:30

Location: University of Toronto at Scarborough, Lecture Theatre AA112

Much of world culture views reason and sexual pleasure to be antithetical and relegates the pleasure of orgasm to a baser level of the personality incompatible with the true and the good. This has lent intellectual justification to exaggerated attempts by some males to assert control over the "baser" self (1) by identifying women and, by extension, homosexuals with these "base" passions and (2) by committing violent acts (including sex) against these lowly creatures in order to foster the self-delusion that sexual impulses are under their control. In Tibetan Buddhist systems, however, there are hints of a compatible relationship between reason and orgasmic bliss in that developed practitioners seek to utilize the blissful and powerful mind of orgasm to realize the truth and the all-good ground of consciousness. The suggestion is that the sense of bifurcation between reason and orgasmic bliss is the result of not appreciating the basic nature of mind.

Jeffrey Hopkins is Professor Emeritus of Tibetan Buddhist Studies at the University of Virginia where he taught Tibetan Buddhist Studies and Tibetan language for thirty-two years from 1973. He received a B.A. /magna cum laude/ from Harvard University in 1963, trained for five years at the Lamaist Buddhist Monastery of America in Freewood Acres, New Jersey, USA (now the Tibetan Buddhist Learning Center in Washington, New Jersey), and received a Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from the University of Wisconsin in 1973. He served as His Holiness the Dalai Lama's chief interpreter into English on lecture tours for ten years, 1979-1989. At the University of Virginia he founded programs in Buddhist Studies and Tibetan Studies and served as Director of the Center for South Asian Studies for twelve years. He has published thirty-nine books in a total of twenty-two languages, as well as twenty-three articles.

This lecture is free and open to the public. A shuttle bus will proceed from downtown, from the front of University of Toronto's Hart House, leaving at 6pm and returning after the event. Flyers and Posters for this public lecture are available at the Center for the Study of Religion, in the Jackman Humanities Building (Northwest corner of Bloor and St. George).

For any questions or more information about this event, please contact Sarah Richardson at sarahr@rom.on.ca

For more on events in Buddhist Studies at the University of Toronto, see http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/buddhiststudies/events.html


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Numata Buddhist Studies Lecture

NICOLAS SIHLE (University of Virginia)

Lecture: “The Lingering Question of the Structure of the Religious Field, and Other Legacies of the Anthropology of Buddhism”

Date: Friday, Feb. 27, 2009

Time: 4-6 pm

Location: Department of Religious Studies, McMaster University

For information on the Numata Buddhist Studies program, see http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/buddhiststudies/numata/

For events in Buddhist Studies at the University of Toronto, see http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/buddhiststudies/events.html

------ The content of this message does not represent the views or opinions of the University of Toronto.-----