Harker’s Cum Laude Society continued to host engaging talks for its Cum Laude Lecture Series in late October and early November. On Oct. 26, Buddhist abbot Jian-Hu Shi of the Chung Tai Zen Center of Sunnyvale once again visited Nichols Hall auditorium to give attendees a primer on the key tenets of Buddhism and how they related to the lives of Harker students. This marks his final appearance at Harker for some time, as he plans to embark on a retreat to Taiwan for a number of years.

A week later, on Nov. 2, Chris Nikoloff, head of school, delivered the second of his lectures inspired by Alan Watts’ “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are.” In this lecture, Nikoloff touched on how opposites depend on one another, and how easy it is to take this co-dependency for granted. For instance, when listening to a piece of music, it is common to let the space between notes (sometimes represented as silence) go unnoticed even though they are essential to the piece itself.