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Huafan University

Huafan University
華梵大學
The logo of Huafan University
Motto 德智能仁
Motto in English
Virtue, Wisdom, Competence and Benevolence
Type Private
Established 1990
Founder Ven. Hiu Wan (曉雲法師)
President Poyuan Kao (高柏園)
Academic staff
133
Undergraduates 3,188
Postgraduates 1,173
Location Shiding, New Taipei, Taiwan
Campus Suburban
Website www.HFU.edu.tw
Huafan University
Traditional Chinese
Simplified Chinese

Huafan University (HFU; Chinese: 華梵大學) is an institute of higher education founded by members of the Buddhist community in Shiding District, New Taipei, Taiwan. The university consists of 4 colleges, 12 departments, 12 graduate institutes, and 5 research centers.

Huafan University was founded in 1990 as the Hua Fan Institute of Technology. In 1993, the name was changed to the Hua Fan College of Humanities, Science and Technology. In 1997, the school was conferred the status of university by the Taiwan Ministry of Education and the name was changed to its current name of Huafan University.

Before her ordination, the Ven. Hiu Wan, or Yu Wan-shan, was one of the most acclaimed female Chinese brush painters of the 20th century. Under the guidance of Kao Chien-fu, the master of the Ling-nan School, she majored in art at Kwangtung College of Humanities and Technology and later at the Art College of Hong Kong. For years, she had been a visiting professor to Tagore University in India, where she taught in the Art Department and had traveled extensively. She had studied and reproduced the most representative mural paintings at Ajanta and had held art exhibitions all over the world. She was renowned for her Ch'an or Zen paintings and her invention of the modern Buddhist scriptural illustrations.

As prestigious as she had been after her ordination, she resolved never to build a temple or be an abbess. Education had always been her primary concern. Once she said, "Education is my life. I will be with it as long as I can breathe." She had founded both Tien-tai School and Hui-hai School in Hong Kong before being invited to Taiwan in 1966 to direct the Graduate Institute of Buddhism at the College of Chinese Culture. In the years to follow, she founded the Lotus Buddhist Seminary and the Institute for Sino-Indian Buddhist Studies and had hosted the International Conference on Buddhist Education and Culture. In 1990, Huafan University was founded in fulfillment of her ideals—the education of enlightenment and the integration of humanities and technology.

For her singular achievement in education, arts, religion, and writing, the Ven. Hiu Wan was awarded the Cultural Medal, the nation's highest civic honor, by the government in 1997. In October 2006, she died, but her ideals and her long-lasting influence on education will remain forever.

The name of the university, Huafan, comes from the Chinese characters Hua (華), meaning Chinese culture, and Fan (梵), meaning Buddhism. This is intended to highlight the integration of 5,000 years of Chinese culture and 3,000 years of Buddhist philosophy to educate people with professional and technical knowledge to provide a service to society. Huafan University's goal as an educational institution is to help students improve themselves through self-education, or the "Education of Enlightenment" as advocated by its founder, the Ven. Hiu Wan. This involves self-awakening, self-development, and human-oriented education based on Chinese ethics and Buddhist compassion. Through this path of education, Huafan University’s objectives are to promote its students' academic competency and personal integrity, to help them achieve wisdom and compassion, and ultimately to benefit humankind as a whole. By integrating Hua (Chinese culture) and Fan (Buddhism) in education, these objectives will become one step closer.


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