Intro to Tiantai Buddhism

Join Dr. Brook Ziporyn of the University of Chicago for an introduction to the thought of Tiantai Zhiyi (538–597), the founder of Tiantai Buddhism. Dr. Ziporyn will discuss the seemingly paradoxical emergence of Tiantai ideas of the eternity, omnipresence, blissfulness and ultimate reality of all things, as an immanent development of the early Buddhist ideas of the impermanence, non-self, and suffering of all things. Mahāyāna Buddhist notions of Emptiness, Two Truths, and Bodhisattvahood, and the surprising tweaks given to these by the main scripture of the Tiantai school, the Lotus Sutra, will also be discussed.

Dr. Brook Ziporyn is Mircea Eliade Professor of Chinese Religion, Philosophy and Comparative Thought. He is the author of "Emptiness and Omnipresence: An Essential Introduction to Tiantai Buddhism," (Indiana Univ. Press 2016). His latest work is "Experiments in Mystical Atheism: Godless Ephiphanies from Daoism to Spinoza and Beyond" (University of Chicago Press, 2024.)

Join this program in person in James Parlor, 2nd floor, 77 W. Washington St. Chicago (SE corner of Washington & Clark St.) or via Zoom. See our website for the link: [SwedLib.org](http://swedlib.org/)