This lecture is based on Dr. Barkley's recent book, Taking Charge of Adult ADHD (2021; New York, Guilford Publications). ADHD is now recognized as a relatively common mental disorder of teens and adults, affecting 4-5 percent of the adult population and accounting for an increasing number of referrals mental health and family practices in this country. The disorder has a pervasive impact on most major domains of daily life activities, including occupational, educational, and social functioning and health-related behavior. It is therefore imperative that mental health, medical, and educational professionals have as much up-to-date knowledge of this adult disorder and its treatment as possible. This presentation will provide current information on the nature, comorbid disorders, adaptive impairments, and underlying nature of ADHD as it occurs in adults. Dr. Barkley will provide guidance on the diagnosis of ADHD and the need for clinical judgment beyond just employing a DSM-5 algorithm. He will also describe the most effective treatment components focusing particularly on counseling, medication, cognitive-behavioral therapy for executive function deficits, and Adult ADHD Coaching, as well as the need for educational and workplace accommodations. This presentation is 1.5 hours in length.
China’s Hermit Tradition: The Importance of Solitude
Bill Porter knows more about the hermit tradition in China – and Buddhism, Tang and Song poetry, and the Chinese language—than just about any other living westerner. After spending three years in a Buddhist monastery in Taiwan in the 1970s, he has spent a lifetime studying and translating Chinese religious and philosophical texts. An anthropologist by training, Porter traveled deep into the Zhongnan Mountains in the late 1980s, discovering that the hermit tradition is very much alive in China today.
On May 24, China Institute is honored to welcome Porter to help us search for China’s soul with a lecture and conversation about “China’s Hermit Tradition: The Importance of Solitude,” in conjunction with our current exhibition, Art of the Mountain: Through the Chinese Photographer’s Lens.
The search for solitude has been at the core of Chinese civilization ever since it began 5,000 years ago. Spending time alone, usually in the mountains, has been an essential part of all three major spiritual traditions in China—Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism—and it continues to be so today. In this unique event, Porter will share slides from his personal collection and talk about religion in China today and the tradition that has played such an important part in Chinese culture and in the teachings of Laozi, Confucius, and Bodhidharma.
Bill Porter (aka Red Pine) is an independent scholar, an expert on Buddhism and Chinese philosophy, traditional Chinese poetry, and a prolific writer and translator of traditional Chinese works. He has given lectures at many universities in the US, England and Germany on Chinese history, culture, poetry, and religion. His translations of texts dealing with these subjects have been honored with a number of awards, including two NEA translation fellowships, a PEN translation award, the inaugural Asian Literature Award of the American Literary Translators Association, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and more recently the Thornton Wilder Prize for Translation bestowed by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
After graduating from UC Santa Barbara, Porter studied anthropology at Columbia University with Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict. In 1972 he moved to a Buddhist monastery in Taiwan, where he lived for more than three years. Over the years, he has translated Chinese poetry and Buddhist texts, and authored many books about religion and philosophy in ancient—and today’s—China.
The Zhongnan mountains have been a popular dwelling-place for Daoist hermits since at least the Qin Dynasty. Buddhist monks began living in the mountains after Buddhism's introduction into China from India in the early first millennium AD. The Complete Perfection Sect, one of the largest branches of modern Taoism, was founded in the Zhongnan mountains by Song Dynasty Taoist Wang Chongyang. Due to the mountains' close proximity to the ancient capital of Chang'an, officials who incurred the imperial court's wrath often fled to these mountains to escape punishment.
Bill Porter, Road To Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits. Counterpoint, 1993. ISBN1-58243-523-5.
Edward A. Burger, Amongst White Clouds. Buddhist Hermit Masters of China's Zhongnan Mountains, Festival Media, 2007. Documentary movie.
'Books saved me. Despair, stupidity, cowardice, boredom. The great texts hoist us above ourselves, enlarge us to the dimensions of a republic of the mind.'
- Blaise Pascal
INTRODUCTION
It might seem that about Blaise Pascal, and about the two works on which his fame is founded, everything that there is to say had been said. The details of his life are as fully known as we can expect to know them; his mathematical and physical discoveries have been treated many times; his religious sentiment and his theological views have been discussed again and again; and his prose style has been analysed by French critics down to the finest particular. But Pascal is one of those writers who will be and who must be studied afresh by men in every generation. It is not he who changes, but we who change. It is not our knowledge of him that increases, but our world that alters and our attitudes towards it. The history of human opinions of Pascal and of men of his stature is a part of the history of humanity. That indicates his permanent importance. (more @ site)
“The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will. No one is compos sui [master of himself] if he have it not. An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence.”
William James, Psychology: Briefer Course, p. 424 (Harper Torchbooks, 1961)
