Manifestations of Tibetan Buddhism in Pudacuo National Park and its Effectiveness as an Environmental Education Tool

Pudacuo National Park in Shangri-la, Yunnan is mainland China’s first national park and comprehensive conservation and eco-tourism attempt. The Nature Conservancy worked with Yunnan provincial government to establish park guidelines and advocate for certain conservation measures. One of the important guidelines that The Nature Conservancy included was local cultural preservation. A primary goal of this experiment in US-modeled national parks is to ensure the longevity of traditional values and beliefs in the parkland area. Pudacuo National Park is not only attempting to conserve the local Tibetan Buddhist tradition but also is attempting to capitalize on the uniqueness of the experience by providing environmental education revolving around the belief system. This paper synthesizes Pudacuo National Park’s use of Tibetan Buddhism to promote environmental education by looking at the inclusion of Tibetan Buddhism in all aspects of the Pudacuo visitor’s typical experience. This paper will go on to show via an environmental education study that Pudacuo National Park’s use of Tibetan Buddhism on signs is an effective way to educate visitors

A Perspectival Mirror of the Elephant: Investigating Language Bias on Google, ChatGPT, Wikipedia, and YouTube

Contrary to Google Search's mission of delivering information from "many angles so you can form your own understanding of the world," we find that Google and its most prominent returned results -- Wikipedia and YouTube, simply reflect the narrow set of cultural stereotypes tied to the search language for complex topics like "Buddhism," "Liberalism," "colonization," "Iran" and "America." Simply stated, they present, to varying degrees, distinct information across the same search in different languages (we call it 'language bias'). Instead of presenting a global picture of a complex topic, our online searches turn us into the proverbial blind person touching a small portion of an elephant, ignorant of the existence of other cultural perspectives. The language we use to search ends up as a cultural filter to promote ethnocentric views, where a person evaluates other people or ideas based on their own culture. We also find that language bias is deeply embedded in ChatGPT. As it is primarily trained on English language data, it presents the Anglo-American perspective as the normative view, reducing the complexity of a multifaceted issue to the single Anglo-American standard. In this paper, we present evidence and analysis of language bias and discuss its larger social implications. Toward the end of the paper, we propose a potential framework of using automatic translation to leverage language bias and argue that the task of piecing together a genuine depiction of the elephant is a challenging and important endeavor that deserves a new area of research in NLP and requires collaboration with scholars from the humanities to create ethically sound and socially responsible technology together

Editing with­out an Ur-text: Buddhist sūtras, Rabbinic text criticism, and the Open Philology Digital Humanities project

Horizon 2020(H2020)741884Asian Studie

Faculty Of Education UNHI

Faculty Of Education UNH

A Cross Cultural Examination of the Psychological Dynamics in Music and Religious Practice

Music and religion exist ubiquitously across time and space, hold profound phylogenetic importance to the human condition, and provide fruitful avenues for culture research. Existing norms, values, schemas, language, and mythological frameworks interact with auditory harmony, melody, and rhythm, within naturalistic settings, to condition profound psychological mechanisms with deep implications to the study of social psychology and culture. Music has been and continues to be a normative tool in the use of religious ritualistic practice. Music has both the ability to facilitate changes in cognition and emotion on an individual level, while also strengthening group bonds and unifying a community at the social level. Religion represents a powerful cultural framework that one is typically conditioned to at an extremely early age and exerts massive pressure on the norms and values of the environment it exists in. This dissertation seeks to explore differences and similarities of music and religious practice across cultures and offers implications for the field of cross-cultural psychology. The first essay is a quantitative paper that examines how one’s religion and how one practices their religion shapes their psychological mechanisms associated with the emotional construal of terror, within the naturalistic setting of the covid-19 pandemic. During the pandemic many people have turned to their religious faiths for comfort and meaning in these existentially threatening times, however, many people have also found their ability to practice their religion effected by Covid-19, as well. The second essay will utilize a qualitative methodology to probe the use of music in ritualistic settings to understand cultural similarities and differences and what implications that may have for further understanding human cognitive and emotional capabilities and potentials. The final paper will be an interdisciplinary theory paper that borrows from social psychology, organizational psychology, musical psychology, and theology to propose mechanisms for how live musical practice in a communal setting interact to induce transformations in an individual’s sense of self. Often referred to as the “human obsession”, music is a unique communicative agent capable of arousing powerful cognitive and emotional responses in both the listener and performer across cultures

The Qi connection: A study in studying Qi

The concept of Qi (pronounced chee ) is a difficult one to understand, let alone study. It strikes most of us as amorphous at best. Traditional Chinese Medicine enthusiasts in the West translate the term as life-energy . How much more broad could it be! Some try to make the term scientific, referring to Qi as bio-electrical or bio-magnetic , but they succeed only in clouding the issue further. Certainly, it does not help matters that those who would seem to know the most about this concept of Qi, the Qigong masters, are themselves most mysterious. Is it any wonder that many in the Western scientific paradigm discount the Qi concept as fiction, superstition, or quackery? Though more scientific study has been devoted to Traditional Chinese Medicine in the West over the past few decades, this attitude about Traditional Chinese Medicine is still very prevalent, largely because of the system\u27s seeming reliance on the Qi Theory. Furthermore, most studies do not address the issue of Qi itself, but instead try to fit a Western model on a Traditional Chinese Medicine phenomenon. In my opinion, this often leads to studies which are ambiguous or which do not actually study Traditional Chinese Medicine. At any rate, even the best studies rarely get to the heart of Traditional Chinese Medicine- the Qi concept. (Hereafter, Traditional Chinese Medicine will be abbreviated as TCM) How can we hope to explore a concept as broad and clouded with mystery as Qi? I propose to show that the understanding of Qi is not only possible within the Western scientific paradigm, but is really quite simple. I think the misunderstanding between the two paradigms (TCM and Western science) is more a matter of translation than disagreement. Furthermore, I hold that the Qi concept must be more narrowly defined before its validity can be properly examined, by scientific study or otherwise. I believe this process of definition is best accomplished by having a philosophical dialogue with TCM practitioners, carefully reading ancient Chinese medical texts, and designing studies based on the results of this translation effort. In my attempt to make my position clear, I will examine three basic questions: 1) What is Qi? 2) Is Qi real? 3) Can Qi be scientifically analyzed? Let us only hope that my exposition will be slightly less mysterious than its topic

The Buddha’s Voice: Ritual Sound And Sensory Experience In Medieval Chinese Religious Practice

This dissertation explores Buddhist chanting practices in mainly the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE), showing that they were more than just one part of ritual practice: chanting could also be a type of music, an educational tool, a means for manipulating the supernatural, and a cure and cause of illness. Previous studies of chanting practices in Chinese Buddhism have addressed histories of transmission, doctrinal approaches, and made efforts to preserve melodies through notation. However, they do not necessarily capture how individuals who engaged in chanting experienced this practice. Therefore this dissertation aims to investigate this experience through accounts found in hagiography, miracle tales, and other Buddhist materials. In studying chanting from this perspective, we can see how local and individual experiences, goals, and needs interacted with practices, and how these practices operated within Chinese Buddhist communities. Furthermore, we can understand how and when these understandings and practices were informed by scripture, and when they were not, through how individuals performed, listened to, and promoted them

Does meditation play an integral role in achieving high-level wellness as defined by Travis and Ryan (2004)?

In the emerging discipline of wellness, Travis and Ryan (2004) develop a dynamic theory of wellness that while not explicitly stated takes a systems theory approach to health and wellness. As a result, their theory of wellness resonates with many of the concepts and ideals experienced through a meditation practice. It is with this congruence in mind that the current paper explores whether there is any relationship between meditation and high-level wellness and if meditation techniques play an integral role in helping to achieve enhanced levels of wellness. A wide range of research across disciplines is reviewed, and despite controversies in the methodology employed to test meditation’s efficacy, it is readily apparent that numerous benefits or wellness outcomes are derived from a meditation practice. However, it is doubtful that meditation is the only path to deliver high-level wellness, other means exist—some that may be a function of the natural human condition