92152

HUM 135 BC WHAT IS MILLENIALISM?

Bruce Chilton

. T . . .

4:40pm-7:00pm

OLIN 305

1 credit

This class will meet for five weeks on the following dates: August 30, September 6, 13, 20 and 27

Human history will close with a thousand years (a millennium) of utopia. That promise, voiced in the last book of the New Testament (Apocalypse 20:3-4), has been incorporated within modern forms of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. In all three, however, millennialism today is more threat than promise, and has emerged with programs of violent action that we will seek to understand.

92151

HUM 135 TVP WHAT IS ZEN BUDDHISM?

Tatjana von Prittwitz

. T . . .

4:40pm-7:00pm

Center for James

1 credit

This class will meet for five weeks on the following dates: October 18, 25, and November 1, 8, 15

"Zen" meaning "meditation" is a practice rooted in the transformative power of insight into one's own nature. Zen Buddhism is therefore called "a special transmission outside the scriptures." If experience itself is wordless, how then can it be talked about or pointed to? For this reason the Zen arts - as an expression of the inexpressible - play a crucial role in walking this way/dao: poetry (haiku), calligraphy (sho-do), painting (sumie), tea ceremony (cha-do), flower arrangement (ikebana). We will look at the origins of Zen Buddhism, read central texts by both ancient and contemporary Zen masters from East and West, and study this conundrum of no-self.