abstract: The Vimalakirti Sutra is one of the classics of early Indian Mahayana Buddhism. The sutra narrates that Vimalakirti, an enlightened layman, once made it appear as if he were sick so that he could demonstrate the Law of Mahayana Buddhism to various figures coming to inquire about his illness. This dissertation studies representations of The Vimalakirti Sutra in Chinese painting from the fourth to the nineteenth centuries to explore how visualizations of the same text could vary in different periods of time in light of specific artistic, social and religious contexts. In this project, about forty artists who have been recorded representing the sutra in traditional Chinese art criticism and catalogues are identified and discussed in a single study for the first time. A parallel study of recorded paintings and some extant ones of the same period includes six aspects: text content represented, mode of representation, iconography, geographical location, format, and identity of the painter. This systematic examination reveals that two main representational modes have formed in the Six Dynasties period (220-589): depictions of the Great Layman as a single image created by Gu Kaizhi, and narrative illustrations of the sutra initiated by Yuan Qian and his teacher Lu Tanwei. The latter mode, which became more popular than the former in the Tang Dynasty (618-907), experienced adaptation from handscroll to panoramic mural. It is also during this period that a minor scenario, the Heavenly Maiden Scattering Flowers, became a necessary vignette for representation of the sutra. Since the Song Dynasty (960-1279), the Heavenly Maiden Scattering Flowers gradually became an independent theme. This author investigates the thematic shift caused by various factors. These include the transformation of later Chinese narrative painting and the prevalence of shinu hua 仕女畫, painting of beauties, in later Chinese painting. There is also a change in the role of the Heavenly Maiden from one of many maidens to the only and necessary partner of Vimalakirti. Ultimately, the image of the Heavenly Maiden evolves from a Buddhist heavenly being to a Daoist fairy and later to a symbol representing auspicious meanings. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Art History 2011

As human beings, we come across situations where our reasons, experience, or guidance from adults can be contradictory. A teacher also experiences these contradictory situations in the educational setting. In such cases, what should be the teacher's philosophy is my main idea or research question of this paper. To address this question, I started my exploration with the  Philosophy of the Teacher  by Nigel Tubbs, which states that contradictions exist as part of the teaching process and narrates the experience of the teacher as master, servant, and/or spiritual teacher. As part of this reading, I understood that the central contradiction is how the teacher can communicate the truth to the student in an educational practice where freedom for the child is given importance. On the other hand, Sankara from Indian Advaita Vedanta Philosophy states that teaching is defect free with no contradictions in teaching Brahma Vidya (Inquiry of Brahman). This view of Sankara made me explore more of Advaita Vedanta philosophy. In this exploration process, I learned from Sankara's Dakshinamoorthy stotram that interpretation of truth or reality as Brahman and further to the question why teaching is free from contradictions, I explore Brahma Sutra Bhashyam with the aid of Ahdyasa Bhashyam (error analysis) of Sankara. Adhyasa Bhashyam employed the method of superimposition and elimination (neti-neti or negation) along with methods like questioning, illustration of examples, and story.

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<p>This dissertation explores how the Buddhist texts carved on the cliffs of mountains served their patrons’ religious and cultural goals. During the Northern Qi period (550-577 CE), these carved Buddhist sutra texts and Buddha names were prevalent, and were carved directly onto the surfaces of numerous mountains in southwestern Shandong Province. The special focus of this study is on the Buddhist engravings at Mt. Hongding in Dongping, and at Mt. Tie in Zoucheng. Created in approximately 553-564 CE, the carvings at Mt. Hongding stand as the terminus a quo of the history of Buddhist sutras carved into the rocks of the Shandong mountains. The Buddhist carvings at Mt. Hongding served monastic goals. The monk patrons, Seng’an Daoyi, Fahong, and others created the carvings as an integral part of their Buddhist meditation practices. The carvings at Mt. Tie paint a very different picture. At Mt. Tie, a colossal Buddhist sculpture-style carving was created in 579 CE. Sponsored by several Han Chinese patrons, the carving was designed in the form of a gigantic Chinese traditional stele. This study suggests that several Han Chinese local elites proudly displayed their Han Chinese linage by using the gigantic stele form of Buddhist text carving as a means to proclaim Han Chinese cultural and artistic magnificence. To achieve these non-religious goals, they appropriated rhetorical devices often used by the Han elite, such as the stele form, written statements about the excellence of the calligraphy used, and discourse on calligraphy connoisseurship.</p> / Dissertation

The tath&amacr;gatagarbha doctrine of Mah&amacr;y&amacr;na Buddhism affirms the existence of some permanent, significant content of sentient beings that is of the same character as a Buddha. While this alone was an important innovation within Buddhist thought, some of its authors ventured further to deem this significant content an &amacr;tman: a ‘self’, in apparent contradiction to the central Buddhist teaching of the absence of self (an&amacr;tman) in the constitution of all beings. The aims of this thesis are two. Firstly, to examine usage of the term &amacr;tman in the Indian tath&amacr;gatagarbha sources which develop use of this expression. This entails a close reading of relevant sources (primarily Mah&amacr;y&amacr;na s&umacr;tra literature), and attention to how this term is used in the context of each. These sources present different perspectives on the tath&amacr;gatagarbha and its designation as a self; this study aims to examine significant differences between, and similarities across, these texts and their respective doctrines. The second aim is to attempt an account of why authors of these texts ventured to designate the tath&amacr;gatagarbha with the term &amacr;tman, especially when some of our sources suggest that this innovation received some opposition, while others deem it in requirement of strong qualification, or to be simply inappropriate. It is not my objective to account for whether or not the tath&amacr;gatagarbha is or is not implicitly what we may deem ‘a self’ on the terms of Buddhist tradition; rather, I am concerned with the manner in which this expression itself was adopted, and – in light of clear difficulties raises by it – what may have motivated those authors responsible. I argue not only that we can trace the development of this designation across the tath&amacr;gatagarbha literature, but also that those authors responsible for its earliest usage adopted an attitude towards non-Buddhist discourses on the self that requires special attention. This, I believe, had its roots in an account of the Buddha and his influence that advances our understanding of one tradition of Mah&amacr;y&amacr;na Buddhology, and its ambition to affirm its superiority over other Indian religious traditions.

"January 14, 2004" Includes bibliographical references (leaves 201-213)

The movement of a fluid and solute through a porous medium is of great practical interest because this describes the spread of contaminants through an aquifer. Many contaminants occur at concentrations sufficient to alter the density of the fluid, in which case the physics is typically modelled mathematically by a pair of coupled, nonlinear partial differential equations. There is disagreement as to the exact form of these governing equations. Codes aiming to solve some version of the governing equations are typically tested against the Henry and Elder benchmark problems. Neither benchmark has an analytic solution, so in practice they are treated as exercises in inter code comparison. Different code developers define the boundary conditions of the Henry problem differently, and the Elder problems results are poorly understood. The Henry, Elder and some other problems are simulated on several different codes, which produce widely-varying results. The existing benchmarks are unable to distinguish which code, if any, simulates the problems correctly, illustrating the benchmarks' limitations. To determine whether these discrepancies might be due to numerical error, one popular code, SUTRA, is considered in detail. A numerical analysis of a special case reveals that SUTRA is numerically dispersive. This is confirmed using the Gauss pulse test, a benchmark that does have an analytic solution. To further explain inter code discrepancies, a testcode is developed which allows a choice of numerical methods. Some of the methods are based on SUTRA's while others are finite difference methods of varying levels of accuracy. Simulations of the Elder problem reveal that the benchmark is extremely sensitive to the choice of solution method: qualitative differences are seen in the flow patterns. Finally, the impact of numerical error on a real-world application, the simulation of saline disposals, is considered. Saline disposal basins are used to store saline water away from rivers and agricultural land in parts of Australia. Existing models of disposal basins are assessed in terms of their resemblance to real fieldsite conditions, and in terms of numerical error. This leads to the development of a new model which aims to combine verisimilitude with numerical accuracy. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--School of Mathematical Sciences (Applied Mathematics), 2004.

Recent research suggests that brackish, marine-derived groundwater up-wells in the oligohaline ecotone of the coastal Everglades, bringing with it phosphorus to an otherwise phosphorus-poor environment. The purpose of this study is to estimate the rates and timing of the groundwater discharge by using variable-density groundwater models constructed, calibrated, and validated with field measurements of hydraulic head and surface and subsurface temperature. Modeled groundwater discharge rates ranged from 5.4E-04 mm/day in August to -1.3E-03 mm/day in June for Shark Slough and 4.8E-01 mm/day in June to -1.4E-01 mm/day in January for Taylor Slough, where positive values imply groundwater discharge and negative values imply groundwater recharge. These results indicate that groundwater discharge rates during the period of study were low and perhaps a negligible source of marine-derived phosphorous in the oligohaline ecotone of Shark Slough but much higher and perhaps significant source of marine-derived phosphorous in the oligohaline ecotone of Taylor Slough.

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楞嚴經中的身心關係, 簡單地說來, 是以空性為基礎而達至 '身心一體' 的結論, 實際理論分析的過程, 則可用 '不即不離本一體, 非因非自體空寂' 二句話概括. '不即' 是指因先揀擇真妄 (心真身妄) 而顯現出心與身之不一, '不離' 則是說明此虛妄之身與心之不異, 而不一不異的可能性在於二者 '本一體'; 然此體非一實在之自體, 其性空寂, 雙遣因緣和自然, 展現出離一切戲論言說之妙真如性, 後者即一般所謂的 '空如來藏'. 在論文的第二章第二節 '視覺分析與光影成像' 中,我們藉一般的常識說明普通人 的觀念----書在眼外, 心在身內----是錯 誤的, 文中名之為 '視網膜弔詭', 這是理解本論文的重要方法.