From Self to No Self: Buddhist and Daoist Perspectives | M3Cs Workshop

null, null, null, Kai-Yuan Cheng (National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University), Monima Chadha, Kevin Berryman (Monash University)

Join us and our fabulous panel of speakers to workshop whether there is a way we can both build a healthy sense of self, at the same time as abandon our identification with it?

If a healthy sense of self is so important to well-being, why is it that Buddhists keep telling us to abandon the self? Daoism on the other hand encourages the development of harmony between the self and nature through unattached action. Is there a way we can both build a healthy sense of self, and at the same time abandon our identification with it? In this M3CS workshop, Kai-Yuan Cheng, Yenyi Shi and Kevin Berryman will offer Daoist, Buddhist, and psychological perspectives on progressions between selves that are reified and dualistic towards selves that are connected yet void. Kai will speak on the Daoist’s emphasis on skillful practice in connection to self and performing morally and politically right action. Yenyi will speak on mental space expansion where the experience of self can expand and eventually dissolve into a whole space field, and how this process might occur through meditators progressing through identification with small ‘s’ self, to big ‘S’ Self, through to no self and the void. Finally, Kevin will offer some alternative interpretations of the no self doctrine from the early Buddhist texts, showing how in some cases, the historical Buddha encouraged strengthening certain self-concepts through skillful action. The aim of the workshop is to facilitate open discussion between Daoist and Buddhist perspectives on the self, and how some of the contemplative insights of each tradition might align.

Moderator: Monima Chadha

Speakers:

Kai-Yuan Cheng, M3CS and Institute of Philosophy of Mind and Cognition, National Yang-Ming Chiao-Tung University, Taiwan

Yenyi Shi, National Yang-Ming Chiao-Tung University, Taiwan, Buddhist monk in the Dhamma Drum Mountain lineage

Kevin Berryman, M3CS, Buddhist monk in the Forest lineage

When: Friday 30th June

Time: 3.00-4.30pm