Moderated by Assistant Professor Yu-Cheng Liao of the Department of Chinese Literature, National Pingtung University, this lecture features Distinguished Professor Chung-Hsiu Huang of the Graduate Institute of Philosophy, National Central University, with Assistant Professor Yen-Ting Lin of the Department of Philosophy, Soochow University, serving as discussant. The lecture will be held on Tuesday, September 30, 2025, from 15:00 to 17:00, at the Academic Lecture Hall, College of Liberal Arts.
Taking the popular anime Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba as its point of departure, this lecture connects the “breathing techniques” depicted in the series with Northern Song Confucian scholar Zhou Dunyi’s Explanation of the Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate and the theories of self-cultivation in Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism, proposing the “Nine Forms of Stillness and Tranquility.”
This lecture transforms the seemingly difficult concept of the “practice of stillness and tranquility” in Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism into a contemporary narrative of bodily and mental self-cultivation. It reminds us that life is a continuous process of confronting the inner “demons” within ourselves. The ultimate power to slay demons does not lie in external force, but in whether one can return to the original substance of moral consciousness, shining clearly like the sun. In the present-day “battlefield of body and mind,” everyone faces inner disturbances and distortions of the spirit, and the practice of stillness and tranquility may be understood as a contemporary method for confronting and transforming these inner demons.
