Ven. Yifa at Yangguang Forum
On October 16th and 17th 2015, Ven. Yifa attended and spoke at the first annual Yangguang Forum on "Public Wisdom and Development" (2015首届“公共智慧与社会发展”阳光论坛) in Beijing at the Peking University Yingjie Exchange Center. Hosted by Zhengxin Tang, in partnership with the School of Journalism and Communication at Peking University and sponsored by the Dunhe Foundation, the Yangguang Forum gathered experts in Tibetan and Chinese Buddhism, old and young, from East and West, for the purpose of "sharing and communicating about how to use the wisdom of traditional teachings to make the 'Chinese Dream' come true, advance societal cohesion, promote cultural understanding between East & West and bring along global development." In addition to Ven. Yifa's lecture, Woodenfish also contributed to the event by inviting two prominent names in the world of Buddhist studies: Richard Gombrich and Stephen Teiser. Professor Gombrich is an Indologist extremely learned in Sanskrit and Pali who taught at Oxford for over 40 years and currently heads the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies. He has authored works such as Precept and practice: traditional Buddhism in the rural highlands of Ceylon and On being Sanskritic: a plea for civilized study and the study of civilization. Professor Teiser is D.T. Suzuki Professor in the Department of Religions and the Director of the Department of East Asian Studies at Princeton University. He is the author of The Ghost Festival in Medieval China and Reinventing the Wheel: Paintings of Rebirth in Medieval Buddhist Temples. See the links below for recordings of the entire forum (sadly, no English translation is available).
