BODHI STAND

Introduces 
Upasaka Wu Yi, Ph.D.

Professor Wu Yi, now thirty-eight years of age, was originally a native of the district of Ch'ing T'ien in Chekiang Province in China. He received his B.A. from the Taiwanese National University for Teachers and Educators in the Chinese Language Department, and then attended the College of Chinese Culture in the Graduate School of Philosophy. There he obtained his M.A. and went on to be awarded the National Literature Ph.D. When he had completed his doctorate, he was appointed Chairperson of the College of Chinese Culture's  Department of Philosophy, discharge those duties for six years before accepting the post of Chairperson of the College of Chinese Culture Graduate School of Philosophy for another two years. During that time he emphasized Chinese Philosophy, and developed the finest program in Chinese philosophical studies in Taiwan, making that department a center for teacher training in Chinese Philosophy.
Professor Wu specializes in the philosophies of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, Ch'an Buddhism, and the history of Chinese philosophy. Besides teaching those subjects, he writes on them extensively. While he was still in graduate school, he regularly furnished philosophical essays to the Taiwanese newspapers. Those articles have been compiled and published in three volumes: Man and the Path, Man and the Bridge, and A Bundle of Straw. He was also the co-author of The Story of Chinese Philosophy along with Professor Constant C.L. Chang. While in graduate school, he concentrated on the study of Buddhist philosophy and Tao-ist thought, and during that time he wrote Ch'an in Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, That Free and Easy Chuang Tsu. He translated his teacher. Dr. C.H. Wu's book

The Golden Age of Zen into English from Chinese, and his own Ph.D. thesis was entitled The Philosophy of Sincerity in the Golden Mean. Lectures he has delivered at several universities have been collected into the book Lectured Essays in Philosophy.
      
      Professor Wu has always maintained the idea of combining Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian studies, and has always felt that people should be concerned with saving the world and rescuing humanity; and that they should communicate that concern to others on a vast scale. He has also always cherished the hope that Eastern and Western philosophies and religions could meet and each fill in what was lacking in the other to form a complete philosophy and religion. He feels that everyone should endeavor to bring peace and blessings to humankind, and that philosophy should especially stress ethics and the importance of actual practice as opposed to mere theorizing. He believes in the application of the principle of profound understanding expressed in easy to understand form as a method for improving society.

      Professor Wu has recently accepted the post of Chairperson of the Department of Chinese Philosophy and Religion at Dharma Realm Buddhist University in Talmage, California. He wishes, as he says, to plant the seeds of the understanding of Chinese philosophy and religion in Western soil, with the hope that Westerners will tend and irrigate the garden which will then produce the flowers and fruit of all the best in human nature shining forth for humanity.