2015年2月28日 星期六

Starr Reading Room, Yale University Library


With 15 libraries and nearly 15 million print and electronic volumes navigating the Yale University Library can be a daunting task. Read about how The Stephen A. Stack Jr. Fund is supporting students and librarians in their exploration in the latest issue of Nota Bene.http://elischolar.library.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi…
Photograph of the Starr Reading Room by Andrew Gray.

地球、宇宙



The first photograph from space taken by a human. For more vintage NASA photos: http://nyr.kr/1BnaxKm

 

Corpus Christi;英國2學院


Merton Street
Corpus Christi College on Merton Street, situated behind the High Street
Copyright © Oxford University Images / Rob Judges Photography -- All rights reserved.

Corpus Christi is college of the week. Students at Corpus, or Corpuscles as they are sometimes known, are part of one of the smallest Oxford colleges. It was founded in 1517 by an advisor to King Henry VII as a "place of Renaissance learning for the education of young men."
Alumni include Ed and David Miliband.






  1. Corpus Christi College - University of Cambridge

    www.corpus.cam.ac.uk/

    Corpus Christi College is one of the ancient colleges in the University of Cambridge. It was founded in 1352 by the Guilds of Corpus Christi and the Blessed ...


Corpus Christi 或指德州城市



Begbroke Science Park

Begbroke Science Park is the science park owned and managed by Oxford University.
There are over 20 research groups from departments spanning Materials, Engineering Science, and Earth Sciences, with Physics.
It is home to more than 30 different high tech spin out and start-up companies.
For more information: po.st/BifcoL

2015年2月27日 星期五

土場車站~見證太平山林業盛興的車站


Trip Date:2015.02.21 地址:宜蘭縣大同鄉太平村土場巷20-6號 ...
BLOG.SINA.COM.TW

台中公會堂


台中公會堂於1918年(大正7年)8月31日起工,同年底落成,是在官民親睦的目的之下,由台中廳下有志一同的官民捐獻七萬八千圓所興建,其建築構造為現代文藝復興(modern renaissance)式煉瓦造,一部分為兩層樓構造,建坪283坪,中央廣間達180坪可容納600人。1923年(大正12年)獲得州補助金八千圓,開始進行附屬建築物和內裝工程,同年6月底竣工。台中公會堂提供了學術、技藝、慈善的一個集會場所外,也是後來許多重要事件的場景,像是:
1927年1月3日台灣文化協會於台中公會堂舉行臨時大會(文協左右派分裂的對決)。
1930年2月全台詩人於台中公會堂舉行聯吟大會。
1933年8月16日 「地方自治聯盟」大會在台中公會堂召開。
照片來源:http://www.taipics.com/
資料來源:http://goo.gl/8Y7Xq4

中山堂,位於臺灣臺中市北區中正公園為鄰,佔地面積 33,564.94平方公尺,建坪16,531.93平方公尺,包括地下二層及地上三層之建築體,觀眾席分為樓上、樓下總席位計有1,665位,為臺灣中部功能最完善之室內劇場


北區中正公園內的中山堂

中山堂的象徵,孫中山銅像

嘉義市檜意森活村


【特別記事】台灣×KANO近藤教練的家-檜意森活村
「台灣特派員Katie 採訪記事vol.6」
近日在日本大為賣座的電影「KANO」,已掀起日本遊客至嘉義追場景的風潮,「KANO」電影中的棒球隊靈魂人物─近藤兵太郎的日式宿舍場景,成了影迷追場景的首要目標。而近藤兵太郎日式宿舍就位於嘉義市檜意森活村中,相信有看過KANO的人來到檜意森活村一定會像我一樣興奮^O^…
詳細內容請看連結→http://sakuravillage.jp/chinese/landscape/?id=908
⋯⋯更多
SAKURAvillage 編輯局
http://sakuravillage.jp/chinese
【特別記事】台灣×KANO近藤先生の家-檜ビレッジ
「台湾特派員Katie 取材記事vol.6」
先日、日本で上映された“KANO”の影響で、台湾や嘉義に対しての興味や、関心は次第に高まってきていますね!
日本から台湾である嘉義への観光客も増えてきているそうで、特にLCCが増便されてきていることもあり、日本の若者が“台湾に行きたい!”という想いが実現しやすくなっているんだなと感じています。
人気の嘉義旅行の中でも、1番の人気を誇るのが「檜ビレッジの近藤先生の家」なんですよ^^
私も、初めて訪れた時は大興奮でした!
詳細はこちら→http://sakuravillage.jp/landscape/?id=908
SAKURAvillage 編集局
http://sakuravillage.jp/

《立石鐵臣 臺灣畫冊》


夜懸念臺灣的感情。通過這本解說,日治年代戰爭時期的立石鐵臣這才真正回到生身的臺灣土地。
  這兩大巨冊的《立石鐵臣 臺灣畫冊》,較諸我當年所編的立石鐵臣《臺灣民俗圖繪》當然更具有重大意義。《臺灣民俗圖繪》呈現了立石在參與《民俗臺灣》編務階段的身影,通過雕刀、木板,黑白分明的油墨,刊登在泛黃紙頁上的版畫,流露的是戰爭時期立石對於臺灣底層社會、民俗風情的摯愛;回到日本之後的彩繪,則在顏彩和墨蹟的對應下,渲染著立石鐵臣對於臺灣以及他的青春歲月的濃烈鄉愁,這是此書出版的重要意義之一;其次,這兩大巨冊也更清晰且翔實的展現了立石鐵臣與臺灣的關係,以及作為一個日籍畫家、作家、民俗工作者的多重身影,有助於臺灣文化界重新認識、評價立石鐵臣在日治年代臺灣文化史中應有的地位及其貢獻。意義之三,則是本書在版本裝幀上相當考究,這應該與主事者時任文化中心主任的劉峰松、嗜書若狂的張良澤兩人有關,將此書放在臺灣出版史的位置,其裝幀之美,應屬首見。日治年代立石鐵臣曾和西川滿多次合作,開啟臺灣出版的裝幀藝術,畫冊的在臺出版,也有重現書籍之美的意義。
  事實上,除了《臺灣畫冊》之外,立石鐵臣戰後遣返日本,曾於1950年秋在東京舉行戰後初次個展;1965年又以「追憶之島」為題開了一次個展,作品都屬描寫臺灣風物的素描、淡彩,這些作品若能在臺灣出版,當能使立石鐵臣與臺灣結合在一起的精神更加彰顯。我願期待這個日子的到來。
24期通訊主題【臺灣風俗與年俗】,向陽(國立臺北教育大學臺灣文化研究所所長)詳細介紹<《立石鐵臣 臺灣畫冊》重見立石鐵臣的臺灣之愛>
網址:http://www.ntl.edu.tw/ct.asp?xItem=2390&ctNode=457&mp=5
圖為《立石鐵臣 臺灣畫冊》書封,.出版:臺北縣文化中心。

2015年2月26日 星期四

1940年代台北艋舺龍山寺;艋舺龍山寺詩聯書法





斯文在此 ──艋舺龍山寺詩聯書法之美
  • 2010-11-04
  • 中國時報
  • 【本報訊】

建寺至今已二七○年的艋舺龍山寺,不但是佛門名剎,且和故宮博物院、中正紀念堂並列為外國觀光客旅遊台北三大勝地。龍山寺建築遵循古制,藝術之美輪美奐,有目共睹。彩繪雕飾之外,龍山寺牆堵柱龕尚矗列甚多詩文、聯文石刻,或撰或書的騷人墨客的背景,縱跨清領、日治、民國三個時代,堪稱台灣古典詩詞的重鎮表徵。今逢第三屆青年書法大賞徵件開跑,主辦單位特邀熟稔台灣文史的諸家作者,娓娓道來,述說艋舺龍山寺的詩聯書法之美。──編者


打破對稱,逸脫傳統

  • 2010-11-04
  • 中國時報
  • 【李欽賢】

 蓬島山川舊,蓮宮結構新,鼓鐘醒綺夢,舺艋指迷津。香火人三縣,光明月一輪,兩朝經浩劫,色相尚存真。──顏雲年/撰 林知義/書(三川殿虎邊門左次間正立面詩文)
 踏入龍山寺廟埕,我們面對山川門時的左邊,通常是風水觀念下的出口虎門,面虎邊門牆右立面的窗櫺兩側刻有不對稱的對聯,右聯「蓬島山川 舊,蓮宮結構新,鼓鐘醒綺夢,艋舺指迷津,香火人三」;左聯「縣,光明月一輪,兩朝經浩劫,色相尚存真」(筆者加點),繼書吟龍顏雲年撰 林問漁書等較小字體作收尾。顯然地,這是原來詩句字數無法嵌成對稱的佈局,也許是當時的雕刻師靈機一動,而作出如此安排。
 本聯為楷書,無年款,但詩文中提到「鼓鐘」的新結構,那應是一九二二年新建鐘鼓樓,配合鐘鼓樓位於虎門這一側,特別請顏雲年撰文,林問漁手書,然後再鐫刻到龍山寺從虎門出來的左次間外牆正立面。
 顏雲年(1875~1923)為鐘鼓樓落成題詩的翌年即辭世,所以算是他最晚年的遺墨了。顏雲年號吟龍,出生台北縣瑞芳魚桀魚坑(今四角亭一帶),自幼入私塾啟蒙,一八九二年赴閩鄉試卻告落第,一八九五年日軍佔台,顏雲年的叔父疑涉反日活動被捕,顏雲年挺身營救,由於他辯才無礙,日軍反而激賞他的才華,此舉不但救了叔父,還被日軍留用負責疏通軍民的通譯任務。顏雲年既對科舉斷念,反求在鄉發展創業。一九○○年投入日資的礦業,主持材料與勞工調度,不久即自設商社,開採北台灣各地礦場。最為社會大眾所熟知的,他就是台陽礦業株式會社的創辦人,與胞弟顏國年合力締造了台灣礦業王國的輝煌成就。
 顏雲年生前於基隆興築「陋園」宅邸,這位礦業鉅子雖得意於商場,卻仍不忘以詩詞自娛,曾在此邸舉辦全台詩人聯吟大會。並時有詩友雅集,最後留下為龍山寺鐘鼓樓竣工所賦的詩句。
 書法家林問漁,生於一八七五年,昭和初年(約1930年之後)卒。林問漁是林知義的別名,出身竹塹(新竹),是當地富紳林占梅的姪子,一八九一年辛卯秀才,曾設帳於大稻埕,曰「步蘭亭」。日治以後任台北廳五股區長,曾經擔任台北第三高女的習字教師。
 今天,一進龍山寺廟埋,立見「出口」銅牌指標的那一口窗櫺,就是台灣五大家族之一的顏雲年,以及被譽為「楷法第一」的林問漁之文與書,再加上當年雕刻師巧手打破對稱,逸脫傳統佈局,令書法藝術頓時活潑起來。



1940年代台北艋舺龍山寺


Google Is Planning a Massive New Headquarters

A new facility to accommodate Google’s ever-growing workforce could place even more strain on the overcrowded Mountain View.

But some locals worry that the search giant is taking over their town
TI.ME

猶太人分布

After an anti-semitic attack killed a Jew in Copenhagen, Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, urged his coreligionists to leave “the soil of Europe” and to go to their real home: Israel. Many Jews are irked, yet in some ways such appeals are not new. Nor are complex and sometimes contradictory emotions felt by Jews in Israel, and by the 8m or so Jews who live outside ithttp://econ.st/18hfCbl

2015年2月25日 星期三

Inside the Forbidden Temple

Inside the Forbidden Temple

Christian Luczanits
View of the Tabo monastery from the east, June 21, 2006
There was a young man named “Super-Wealthy,” Sudhana in Sanskrit, probably from the Andhra region in southern India, who hungered for truth, or understanding, more than anyone before or after him. He spent years moving from one teacher to another—fifty-three in all, including various Buddhas-to-be, maverick ascetics, learned scholars, merchants, a fishermen, a mariner, ordinary householders, kings, a beggar, a goldsmith, a perfumer, a Hindu god, several women (one of them a young girl), and the eight Goddesses of the Night. Each had something unique to teach him about the ways of the world and the mind; each became for Sudhana a kalyana-mitra, a loving friend. But the true climax of this long progression came when Sudhana was invited to enter the tall palace or tower of Maitreya, the longed-for Buddha of the future:
He saw the tower immensely vast and wide, hundreds of thousands of leagues wide, as measureless as the sky, as vast as all of space, adorned with countless attributes; countless canopies, banners, pennants, jewels, garlands of pearls and gems, moons and half-moons, censers giving off fragrant fumes, showers of gold dust….Also, inside the great tower he saw hundreds of thousands of other towers similarly arrayed; he saw those towers as infinitely vast as space, evenly arrayed in all directions, yet these towers were not mixed up with one another, being each mutually distinct, while appearing reflected in each and every object of all the other towers. 
These innumerable mutually reflected towers were inhabited by endless families of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, Buddhas-to-be. But there was one tower higher than all the others, in which Sudhana saw a billion universes unfolding one by one, each embedded in and reflected by all the others; and in each of them Sudhana saw himself, bowing at Maitreya’s feet.
Sudhana’s path to understanding is recorded in one of the most ravishing of all Buddhist texts, the Sanskrit Gaṇḍa-vyūha (itself the final part of the immensely popular Avataṃsaka or Flower-Ornament Sūtra). We’re not sure what the title means: vyūha is something like an arrangement, an array, probably in the sense of a visual map of the universe; gaṇḍa means, among other things, a rhinoceros, a mark or spot, a stalk, or a bubble. So, perhaps, the Gaṇḍa-vyūha offers us, as Sudhana’s teachers offered him, “the cosmos seen as a bubble”: evanescent, radiant, light as empty space, yet overflowing with ever more beings and things.
Peter van Ham
Sudhana meets the perfumer Samantanetra, who tells him of his ability to cure maladies with remedies and shows him how to produce the “ball of wish-fulfilling fragrance to please all beings”
There are only two sites in the world where we find a complete set of illustrations for Sudhana’s story—one, in finely carved stone reliefs, at the great Buddhist monument of Borobodur in central Java (circa 800 AD), and the second in a remarkable sequence of painted murals in the Du-khang or Assembly Hall within the main shrine in the remote monastery of Tabo, situated in the arid, wind-swept Spiti Valley in northern India very close to today’s border with China (more specifically, to the historic kingdom of Guge in western Tibet). The Tabo paintings were completed in the mid-eleventh century, perhaps in conjunction with the arrival in the western Himalaya of the great Indian teacher Atisha, a central figure in what is usually called the “second wave” of Buddhist teaching in Tibet. Tabo, the most intact of all early medieval Buddhist artistic sites in the Western Himalaya, has been well studied—first by the great Tibetologist-explorer Giuseppe Tucci in the 1930s, and in our times by Deborah Klimburg-Salter, Christian Luczanits, Luciano Petech, Laxman S. Thakur, and Ernst Steinkellner. Peter van Ham, an authority on early Indo-Tibetan art, has now given us a splendid photographic record of the Tabo masterpieces—undoubtedly the finest pictures we have from this site, along with the superb images taken by Christian Luczanits that are available on the Internet. (To my taste, however, there is something about the color photographs in Deborah Klinburg-Salter’s Tabo: A Lamp for the Kingdom that truly captures the strange and moving texture of the original paintings.)
The painted panels in Tabo vary greatly in the elegance of their designs and in their execution; some of the figures are almost primitive, others—particularly the Bodhisattva panels—of a breathtaking complexity and finesse. All of them, however, seem to reveal to our eyes not merely the concrete phenomena (persons, deities, trees, animals) that we can identify by name but something of that empty spaciousness that has generated them. Especially powerful in this respect is the palette of colors the artists have used: the strangely muted yet radiant reds and ochres, the blues or pale black that often serve as background, filling the interstices of the panels and shading off into a shimmering golden green when yellow is mixed in. There is also a lively, granular, sometimes eerie white or beige infiltrating the inner surfaces of the figures and the burgeoning landscapes through which they move. It is also important to see the major panels, such as what is left of the large-scale depiction of Sudhana’s entry into Maitreya’s tower, as artistic wholes, teeming with the living creatures that inhabit these visionary inscapes.
Peter van Ham
Aparajita Sitataprapta, from Tabo’s “Golden Hall,” circa fifteenth century
Together with the photographs, many of them taken under extremely trying conditions, most of them astonishing in their clarity and imaginative spatial framing, we are given a series of essays about the iconographic program of the Tabo shrine. Sudhana is by no means the only artistic subject here; there is an exquisite series of paintings on the life of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni as well as a rich menu of other images, including a major set of thirty-three life-size painted clay sculptures of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, some of them looking serene, others rather spooky. Of primary importance is the arrangement of these colorful clay figures in what is called the “Circle of Crystalline Truth,” vajra-dhātu-maṇḍala. At the center of this three-dimensional circle we see a four-bodied image of the Buddha of Light, Mahavairocana, embodying the luminous adamantine force of liberating insight—the heart of the Mahayana Buddhist program. The other thirty-two clay figures, towering over the painted narrative panels, are arranged in symmetrical rows mirroring one another. The plan of the circle as a whole, possibly revealed in a dream to the lamas who initiated it, is clearly meant to move the pilgrim to Tabo through a sequence of interlocking internal states and processes culminating, if all goes well, in his or her merging, possibly irrevocably, with the central Buddha of Light and with the awareness that is proper to him.
Moving through this crowded space, the pilgrim enters into the underlying “emptiness”—really a kind of infinite spaciousness—that is the stuff of Tibetan Buddhist reality. It may be strange to think that a universe so densely populated is actually, in some profound sense, empty. Judging by the literary sources we have available, to take this spaciousness into oneself, momentarily clearing heart and mind of the detritus that normally clogs our perceptions, provides a sense of vast psychic relief. The seemingly empty space is, however, a highly active arena within which our minds weave the web that we take to be the world—a world filled with objects such as Maitreya’s towers and manifold creatures and, of course, these same Buddhas and Bodhisattvas continuously emerging out of empty space and dissolving back into it. A pilgrim proceeding through the Circle learns first to see them doing this, then to make them do it purposefully, and finally to control the same processes in his or her own restless existence, in his or her mind.
We can formulate in relatively straightforward language something of what this playing with consciousness might mean, despite its evidently abstruse and esoteric character. (I once heard His Holiness the Dalai Lama say, “We Buddhists think that truth is ineffable—but not very ineffable.”) It is best to avoid altogether the distorting language of symbolism and representations when speaking about the Circle and its overpowering figures, though van Ham, like many art historians, does gravitate to such terms. The Buddhas and Buddhas-to-be sitting in state on the walls of the Assembly Hall, like the painted deities that surround them, are at least as tangible and real as anyone looking at van Ham’s photographs. They have nothing in common with symbols.
Tibetan Buddhism is a religion of astonishing hopefulness, for it teaches us that the mind we are born with is the perfect instrument with which to see truth or, better, to become truth, although we habitually demean this instrument and use it (the mind is not an “it”) to enslave ourselves further. Hope also lies in the presence of a precise map, or path, to take us, unerringly, to the goal we seek. As we can see from the culmination of the Sudhana story, this practice involves a strong reflexive element: along with the visualization of the various divine beings inside the Circle, inside the mind, one has to visualize one’s own existentially tenuous “self” replicating itself infinitely as visible projections within the mirror-like realms of the inner eye.
As I lingered over van Ham’s photographs, I began to wonder if the Crystal Circle could work its magic even on a person sitting at home, far from Tabo, and turning the pages of this fine book. Somehow it feels like it could; but this thought may be yet another trick of the mind.

Peter van Ham
The temple compound of Tabo from the northeast

Peter van Ham
The north wall and the northern section of the west wall of the the Du-khang, or Assembly Hall, in late-afternoon light

Peter van Ham
View of the Du-khang’s southeast wall and corner, as well as part of the south wall

Peter van Ham
At the center of the circle, the four-figured monumental statue of Mahavairochana, almost thirteen feet high, looks in all directions

Peter van Ham
Vajragita, the “Song,” is the only one of the peaceful figures within the Circle of Crystalline Truth whose face bears a special expression—a smile

Peter van Ham
The happiness of awakening the heart of the Buddhahood seems to be literally painted into the warm and compassionate facial expression of Vajralāsya (“Dance”), the white Inner Offering Goddess of Akshobhya’s circle

Peter van Ham
Amoghasiddhi, the “Almighty” Tathagata, presides over the north of the Circle of Crystalline Truth, his hand gesture signifying fearlessness, protection, peace and belevolence

Peter van Ham
Yama, the bull-faced dharmapala, is understood as the judge of the dead who distributes the appropriate form of rebirth to beings according to their deeds (karma)

Peter van Ham
The red Bodhisattva Akshayamati holds a book

Peter van Ham
Sudhana sets out to reach enlightenment, seeking initiation and guidance from fifty-three spiritual teachers, beginning with the great Bodhisattva Manjushri (left)

Peter van Ham
A painting of Sudhana with the Boy Shrisambhava and the girl Shrimati, among the last of the series of the kalyana-mitra, or loving friends, Sudhana visits on his journey in search of learning and enlightenment; the children share with him the realization that everything of this world is produced by the illusion of causes and conditions

Peter van Ham
A painting showing the Buddha Shakyamuni with his two favorite disciples

Peter van Ham’s Tabo—Gods of Light: The Indo-Tibetan Masterpiece is published by Hirmerverlag.

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