Date and Time: Apr 29, 2011 | 6:30pm to 8:00pm
Venue: Asia Society, 725 Park Avenue, New York, NY
Free Event, limited seating available. Registration Required
Debate is an essential skill in Tibetan monastic tradition. Buddhists consider ignorance to be the root of all suffering. Wisdom is the antidote to ignorance and thus the cure to suffering.
Characterized by hand gestures, loud clapping, and foot stomping, Tibetan debate is a physically and verbally aggressive exercise. The debate process is an intense critical analysis of one’s learning aimed at fine-tuning one’s mental skills.
Monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery will demonstrate the debates in Tibetan. Geshe Thupten Jinpa and Professor Daniel Perdue will introduce and explain Tibetan debate. They will stage a debate in English on the issue of the ethics of compassion and justice.
The program is part of the Asia Society’s Great Debates: Traditions and Forms series exploring debate and discourse across cultures. Future debates will include Pilpul, a Talmudic debate; Ijtihad, an intellectual Islamic approach to debates; and the Socratic Method, a method of questioning in an unending search for truth.
The Great Debates: Traditions and Forms series is made possible by a grant from the Rockefeller Fund Cultural Innovation Grant.
Can’t make it to this program? Tune in to the free live video webcast on AsiaSociety.org/Live from 6:30 to 8:00 pm ET. Online viewers are encouraged to submit their questions to moderator@asiasociety.org during the webcast.
