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Dr John Jorgensen will discuss the topic as the guest speaker at the April Port Macquarie Philosophy Forum.
The forum is at Port City Bowling Club on April 28.
Dr Jorgensen is currently an independent scholar.
His doctoral dissertation (Australian National University 1990) was on Chan and poetics. He taught Japanese Studies at Griffith University for 20 years and has published on East Asian Buddhism and on Korean new religions.
Chief publications include Inventing Hui-neng, the Sixth Patriarch: Hagiography and Biography in Early Ch'an (2005) and The Foresight of Dark Knowing: Chong Kam Nok and Insurrectionary Prognostication in Pre-modern Korea (2018); three volumes of translation in the Collected Works of Korean Buddhism series [vol. 3, Hyujeong: Selected Works; vol. 7-2, Gongan Collections II; vol. 8, Seon Dialogues] (2012), A Handbook of Korean Zen Practice: A Mirror on the Son School of Buddhism (Son'ga kwigam) (2015), and The Gyeongheo Collection:Prose and Poetry by the Restorer of Korean Seon (2016).
Recent research has been on Chan and Zhu Xi, the developments of Buddhism in early Republican China, Yogacara in the late Ming, and participation in a team translation of the Dasheng qixin lun into English (in press).
"The basics of Indic Buddhism, namely the diagnosis that human life is marked by suffering and that suffering is produced by ignorance and the desire for permanence are shared by virtually all Buddhist groups," he said.
"Buddhists often describe the analysis of the human condition and the prescription of a cure in medical terms, and these analyses contain many philosophical aspects, such as causation and epistemology.
"It also contains religious elements such as karma, an ethical force, and the related doctrine of 'rebirth'.
These are religious in that they are articles of faith, are untestable.
"This analysis of the philosophical aspects will examine what is meant by suffering, what is desire, what is ignorance, and will describe how these are related to causation, thereby forming the foundations of all Buddhist philosophy."
The Port Macquarie Philosophy Forum is on Sunday April 28, 6pm until 7.30pm, Port City Bowling Club.
Cost is $10 or $5 pensioner concession.
For information about other upcoming talks please go to the website.
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