ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Brook Ziporyn, PhD, is the Mircea Eliade Professor of Chinese Religion, Philosophy, and Comparative Thought at the University of Chicago and a scholar of Chinese religion and philosophy. In this conversation, we explore Tiantai Buddhism, a school of Chinese Buddhist thought that developed a radically inclusive philosophy: the idea that nothing, not even delusion or evil, stands outside enlightenment.We talk through the origins of Tiantai as Chinese Buddhists worked to reconcile centuries of contradictory Indian texts, the shift from two truths to three, and what it means to say a cup is only a cup because we're ignoring almost everything else it could be. We also get into the famous "three thousand realms in one moment of thought," and what it means for delusion and enlightenment to mutually include each other rather than one canceling out the other.This is dense material, and Ziporyn expresses the depth and profundity of it.Emptiness and Omnipresence: An Essential Introduction to Tiantai Buddhism (Indiana University Press, 2016)https://www.amazon.com/Emptiness-Omnipresence-Essential-Introduction-Philosophies/dp/025302112XExperiments in Mystical Atheism: Godless Epiphanies from Daoism to Spinoza and Beyond (University of Chicago Press, 2024)https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/E/bo230169826.html
