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Community Lecture Series: Melissa Curley

Melissa Curley
April 5, 2017
All Day
Mendenhall 100

Professor Melissa Curley of the Department of Comparative Studies will deliver the second talk in the 2016-2017 "Religions of the World: Past and Present" Community Lecture series. Her lecture, like all others in the Center for the Study of Religion-sponsored series, is free and open to all. There will be a brief question-and-answer session and a reception following the lecture.

The lecture will be held in Mendenhall Laboratory Rm 100 on The Ohio State University's Columbus campus.


Turning Back the Radiance: Buddhism and Psychotherapy in Twentieth-Century Japan (and Twenty-First-Century America)

In recent years, Americans have shown great interest in the possibility of adapting Buddhist techniques in order to deal with forms of psychological suffering and pain particular to the contemporary world. A century ago, some Japanese thinkers grappling with the stresses of modernity likewise made a turn to Buddhism, inventing new kinds of meditation to suit their modern patients. The lecture introduces two styles of Buddhist-inspired psychotherapies, one developed on the basis of Japanese Zen and the other on the basis of Japanese Pure Land, arguing that although they start from different premises, they arrive at the same conclusion: the healthiest mind is no-mind, and the happiest self is no-self. 


For the full list of speakers in the 2015-2016 Community Lectures on Religion series, please click here.