The Victorian AABS Seminar for 2012, in partnership with the Buddhist Council of Victoria, will be held on Saturday 27th October from 2.00-5.00 pm
The final Victorian AABS Seminar for 2012, in partnership with the Buddhist Council of Victoria, will be held on Saturday 27th October from 2.00-5.00 pm at the Quang Minh Temple, 18 Burke St, Braybrook, Victoria. The Venerable Thich Phuoc Tan, Associate Professor Judith Snodgrass and Mr Quang Luu will speak on Buddhism in Australia.
There has been a significant rise of interest in Buddhism in Australia, evident in an increasing amount of publications and conference presentations on this topic, in recent years. This seminar, held in partnership with the BCV and featuring three eminent speakers, will discuss several key themes pertaining to Buddhism in Australia including community building, media engagement, community-government relations, and the current state of studies of Buddhism in Australian universities. It will also provide an opportunity for Buddhist community leaders, scholars of Buddhism and members of Buddhist communities to interact on a range of topics and issues of concern to Buddhist communities in Victoria. There will be plenty of time for questions and discussions following the presentations and over refreshments, which will be kindly provided by the Quang Minh Temple.
The Venerable Thich Phuoc Tan OAM has been the Abbot of Quang Minh Temple in Braybrook, Melbourne, Australia since 1997. He took Seminary Precepts with The Most Venerable Thich Phuoc Hue at Phuoc Hue Monastary in Sydney in 1981, the same year that he arrived in Australia as a refugee. In 2008, Venerable Phuoc Tan was awarded an Order of Australia Medal in recognition of his services to the community. He was also a patron for the Parliament of World Religions, held in Melbourne in 2009.
Associate Professor Judith Snodgrass writes, researches and teaches in the areas of Buddhism in the West, Buddhism and Asian modernity, Buddhist nationalism, and Western knowledge of Asia. She is the author of Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West: Orientalism, Occidentalism and the Colombian Exposition (University of North Carolina Press, 2003), which looks at the introduction of Mahayana to the West at the World’s Parliament of Religions (1893). She has been interested in Buddhism in Australia for some time and is currently president of the Australasian Association of Buddhist Studies.
Mr Quang Luu was Head of SBS Radio from 1989 to 2006. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) and was named “Australian Achiever of the Year” in 2002, in recognition of his voluntary work and his contribution to Australia through multicultural broadcasting. Quang Luu was also a senior executive of the Australian Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs and has served as the Department’s State Director for NSW.
Gold leaf covered schist reliquary in the form of a stupa. Kusana period, North Western India. National Museum, Karachi, Pakistan. Copyright: Huntington, John C. and Susan L.Huntington Archive
Source: Australasian Association for Buddhist Studies
