Topic: “Guanyin (also Kuan yin) and the Chinese Transformation of Avalokitesvara”
(觀音：菩薩中國化的演變)
Date: 2011/10/23 (Sunday) 2-4 pm
Speaker: Professor Chun-fang Yu
Guanyin (Avalokitesvara in Sanskrit) is worshiped by all Buddhists in the world as the great bodhisattva of compassion. Celebrated in many Buddhist sutras, Guanyin has played different roles and assumed different identities in Asia. While serving as a powerful symbol of royalty in South, Southeast Asia and Tibet, Guanyin assumed new forms in China and subsequently in Korea and Japan. Today we see this bodhisattva primarily as the maternal White-robe (baiyi) or Child-giving (Songzi) Guanyin. But this was not always the case, for during the first thousand years after Guanyin was introduced into China, the bodhisattva was depicted in art as masculine as it was the case in India and other countries. Why and how did Guanyin undergo a sexual transformation and what does this mean in the context of Chinese culture and Chinese Buddhism are some of the topics this talk will address.
Professor Chun-fang Yu, Sheng Yen Professor of Chinese Buddhist Studies, Department of Religion and Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University . She was born in China and educated in Taiwan, received BA from Tunghai University in Taiwan, MA from Smith College, and Ph.D. from Columbia University in Religion, specializing in Chinese Buddhism. She taught at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey from 1972 to 2004. She began her interests in Guanyin from her childhood experience with her grandmother. She met Master Sheng Yen about 30 years ago at the Temple of Enlightenment, became his disciple, and inspired by him to dedicate her research in Chinese Mahayana Buddhism. She spent many years studying Guanyin, and finished a comprehensive work in this beloved deity, which was highly-regarded as the most important resource to study Guanyin.
Online Registration (Closed)
Program is open to the public free of charge.
Contact Sunandi at (845) 225-1819 ext 103 or library@baus.org for more information