Join us for a lecture over Zoom with Dr. Jeffery Long.

Thursday, November 14, 2024
7:00-8:30PM (Pacific Time)
On Zoom: Click here to Register for the Zoom Link

This lecture will explore the life, the religious practices, and the philosophy of Sri Ramakrishna, and the relevance of Ramakrishna to inter-religious relations in the contemporary world. Living in nineteenth-century Bengal, Sri Ramakrishna is known for having practiced a wide array of spiritual disciplines drawn from multiple traditions. He practiced each of these disciplines until he had an experience of samadhi, or complete absorption in the ideal of that particular tradition. After these experiences, he concluded that many paths can lead to the experience of ultimate reality. His close disciple, Swami Vivekananda, carried this teaching to the world, establishing the Ramakrishna Order and Ramakrishna Mission in India and the Vedanta Societies in the West. The relevance of Ramakrishna’s ideal of dharma samanvaya, or the harmony of religions is urgent in today’s world.

Jeffery D. Long is the Carl W. Zeigler Professor of Religion, Philosophy, and Asian Studies at Elizabethtown College, in Pennsylvania, where he has taught since receiving his doctoral degree from the University of Chicago Divinity School in the year 2000. He has written many books and articles, including Jainism: An Introduction (Bloomsbury, 2013) and Discovering Indian Philosophy (Bloomsbury, 2024). In 2022, his book, Hinduism in America: A Convergence of Worlds (Bloomsbury, 2020), received the Rajinder and Jyoti Gandhi Award for Excellence in Philosophy, Theology, and Critical Reflection. He has spoken at the United Nations and appears in a PBS documentary on the life of Swami Vivekananda.

Symposium webpage: https://www.drbu.edu/symposium
For inquiries, please email:  symposium@drbu.edu