Tour of the Rubin Museum of Art
with Harry Miller
Buddhist practitioner and scholar Harry Miller, has offered the Shantideva community an opportunity to attend a guided tour of the Rubin Museum of Art. We will explore the underlying Buddhist themes with a closer look at some of the Rubin’s offerings.
We will be looking at three exhibits: The first stop will be a visit to the mandala lab, which also includes an introduction to the five buddha families.
Following that we will view an exhibit of life-size facsimiles of an entire sequence of murals from the Lukhang, the Dalai Lamas’ Secret Temple near the Potala Palace in Lhasa which reveals very esoteric practices.
The tour will appropriately end with a visit to the new exhibit called Death Is Not the End, which is a cross-cultural comparison of attitudes towards death and the afterlife.
This is a unique opportunity to explore the museum’s collections with someone who will point our attention to interesting details, interpret iconography, and give us some historical context.
After the tour ends, please join us for lunch with Harry at Cafeteria Restaurant in the neighborhood, where we can share our experiences and enjoy each other’s company.
About the Facilitator
Harry Miller has studied and practiced meditation for the better part of four decades. He studied with Master Shengyen, the renowned Chan Master, for over 30 years. He was editor of The Chan Newsletter for over 10 years, and he is a frequent contributor to Chan Magazine, and a certified Dharma Teacher at the Chan Meditation Center.
In addition, he is a board member at CMC, and a docent at the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art, in NYC. He is a Dharma Teacher for the Buddhist Sangha at All Souls, NYC, where he leads a bi-weekly study group. He holds a B.A in French and English literature from Sarah Lawrence and an M.A. in Chinese Literature and an M.Phil. in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.
He is a recipient of an NEA grant for his Chinese translations, and he is the translator of the soon-to-be-published The Need to be Gentle, a book by Master Shengyen about incorporating Chan into everyday life. He recently finished giving thirty lectures on the Lotus Sutra.
