課程名稱：Critical Zen CARE: Meditative Critical Humanities of the Climate–AI Age
授課導師：張嘉如教授 / Dr. Chia-ju Chang, Brooklyn College, CUNY
時間：2026 年六月中旬至七月初; 每週 3 次 | 18:30 - 21:30 (共 9 堂)
地點：香港大學 (實體上課)
課程簡述
在數位與 AI 時代，人類對自身與世界的經驗正逐漸滑向即時、零碎且難以累積的感受形式，使我們愈來愈難以建立能承載意義的經驗結構。本課程由此出發，邀請學生重新思考一個根本問題：在一個高度中介、加速與分心的時代，我們該如何重建與自己、他人以及世界之間的關係起點？
本短期密集課程聚焦數位與 AI 時代所引發的注意力與經驗危機，並以「冥想批判人文學」（Meditative Critical Humanities）作為高等人文教育的回應路徑。課程引介「CARE 冥想研究架構」（The CARE Meditative Framework）──一套專為氣候–AI 時代所設計的冥想導向教育學程，整合冥想練習、批判思考與倫理實踐，作為面對當代文明困境的學習途徑。
CARE 架構由四個彼此關聯的向度構成：C—專注（Concentration）、A—覺察（Awareness）、R—回應（Responsiveness）、E—行動／參與（Engagement）。課程引導學生從注意力的培養出發，經由具身與感知層次的覺察，逐步發展以相互依存與共同體為基礎的倫理回應與實踐能力。
第一週探討當代的注意力危機，並將專注練習理解為回應數位分心與注意力經濟的一種倫理實踐。第二週聚焦於具身覺察，結合梅洛－龐蒂的現象學與禪宗冥想，探討知覺作為一種身體性的「接觸」如何受到習氣（vāsanā）的形塑，並重新開展我們面向世界的方式。第三週則轉向倫理與關係層次，討論相即（interbeing）存在、生態危機與關係倫理，將其理解為當代所共同面對的存在性挑戰。
每堂課結合文本討論、冥想練習與禪宗公案研讀，強調理論、經驗與實踐之間的相互生成。課程最後以學生自行設計的 CARE Engagement Project 作為總結，鼓勵學生將專注、覺察與回應轉化為一項小型的觀照性、創作性或關係性的介入實踐。
本課程為研究生層級的夏季密集課程，旨在引導學生在有限時間內，系統性地探索冥想批判人文學，並將 CARE 冥想架構轉化為具身且具倫理回應力的學術實踐。
Course Description
In the digital and AI age, human experience of the self and the world has increasingly fragmented into immediate, fleeting, and discontinuous sensations, making it difficult to sustain experiences capable of carrying meaning over time. This course begins from this condition and invites students to reconsider a foundational question: in an era of acceleration, mediation, and distraction, how might we reestablish a point of departure for our relationships with ourselves, others, and the world?
This short, intensive course focuses on the crisis of attention and experience precipitated by digital technologies and AI, and approaches this condition through the lens of Meditative Critical Humanities. The course introduces the CARE Framework—a meditation-oriented educational pathway designed for the climate–AI age—which integrates contemplative practice, critical inquiry, and ethical engagement as a response to contemporary civilizational challenges.
CARE consists of four interrelated dimensions: Concentration, Awareness, Responsiveness, and Engagement. The course guides students from the cultivation of attention, through embodied and perceptual awareness, toward the development of ethical responsiveness and relational forms of practice grounded in interdependence and community.
Week One examines the contemporary crisis of attention and frames concentration practice as an ethical response to digital distraction and the attention economy. Week Two focuses on embodied awareness, bringing together Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology and Zen meditation to explore perception as bodily “contact,” shaped by habitual patterns (vāsanā), and to reopen alternative ways of relating to the world. Week Three turns to ethical and relational dimensions, engaging questions of interbeing, ecological crisis, and relational ethics as shared existential challenges of our time.
Each session integrates textual discussion, meditation practice, and Zen koan study, emphasizing the co-constitution of theory, experience, and practice. The course culminates in a student-designed CARE Engagement Project, through which students translate concentration, awareness, and responsiveness into a small-scale contemplative, creative, or relational intervention.
This graduate-level summer intensive course is designed to enable students to explore MCH within a limited timeframe, and to apply the CARE meditative Framework as an embodied and ethically responsive mode of scholarly practice.