Join us for a free one-day workshop for educators at the Japanese American National Museum, hosted by the USC U.S.-China Institute and the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia. This workshop will include a guided tour of the beloved exhibition Common Ground: The Heart of Community, slated to close permanently in January 2025. Following the tour, learn strategies for engaging students in the primary source artifacts, images, and documents found in JANM’s vast collection and discover classroom-ready resources to support teaching and learning about the Japanese American experience.
The Divine Feminine in Tibetan Esoteric Buddhism
The Crow Collection of Asian Art presents an exhibition on female divinity in Buddhist art.
Where
Tibetan Buddhism comprises the foundational teachings of Buddhism but focuses on teachings of the Vajrayana, also known as Esoteric or Tantric Buddhism. Tantric Buddhism uses meditations, visualizations, mantras, and the performance of rituals to cultivate the spiritual powers of body, speech, and mind to enable the practitioner to transform obstructions to enlightenment into the energy of its realization. A Buddha is one who has achieved complete spiritual perfection or enlightenment, and has clearly realized the true nature of all things. In general, Tibetan Buddhism considers both men and women, regardless of race or status, to be equal in their enlightenment potential and capacity for Buddha-hood.
The prominence and proliferation of female Buddhas and bodhisattvas in Tibetan sacred art has existed for centuries, long connected to pre-Buddhist Indian gods and goddesses. Many Tibetan Tantric systems have a female Buddha as their principal deity, where a male practitioner would meditate upon this female form, just as would a female practitioner meditate upon a male Buddha form, and see themselves as being both male and female simultaneously. Buddhas and bodhisattvas are often represented as embodying both male and female aspects.
This exhibition features a selection of Tibetan bronze statues from the Crow Collection of Asian Art that emphasize the many manifestations of the feminine divine in Tibetan Esoteric Buddhism, ranging from well-known forms such as benevolent bodhisattvas to fierce guardians and forest goddesses. In Buddhism, with the bliss of enlightenment, divisions and differentiations of sex and gender are ultimately illusory
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Please join us for the Grad Mixer! Hosted by USC Annenberg Office of International Affairs, Enjoy food, drink and conversation with fellow students across USC Annenberg. Graduate students from any field are welcome to join, so it is a great opportunity to meet fellow students with IR/foreign policy-related research topics and interests.
RSVP link: https://forms.gle/1zer188RE9dCS6Ho6
Events
Hosted by USC Annenberg Office of International Affairs, enjoy food, drink and conversation with fellow international students.
Join us for an in-person conversation on Thursday, November 7th at 4pm with author David M. Lampton as he discusses his new book, Living U.S.-China Relations: From Cold War to Cold War. The book examines the history of U.S.-China relations across eight U.S. presidential administrations.