Re Visioning Kamakura Buddhism

Author : Richard K. Payne
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 9780824820787
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.89/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Re-Visioning 'Kamakura' Buddhism written by Richard K. Payne and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 1998-05-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this collection are an interdisciplinary examination of various aspects of Buddhism during the Kamakura era, including religious practice, literature, and institutional history. They work toward a synchronic historiography and thus provide a broader understanding and appreciation of the complexity and richness of Buddhism during the Kamakura era and of Japanese Buddhism as a whole. Contributors: Richard K. Payne, James C. Dobbins, George S. Tanabe, Mark T. Unno, Jacqueline I. Stone, Robert E. Morrell, James H. Foard

Author : George J. Tanabe, Jr.
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 1684172950
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Myōe the Dreamkeeper written by George J. Tanabe, Jr. and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-05-11 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Kamakura period, Myoe Shonin (1173-1232) was a leader of Nara Buddhists who sought to revitalize traditional Buddhism in Japan. In his teaching, Myoe specially emphasized the value of the visions that could be achieved through meditation; and in his practice, he kept and occasionally illustrated a diary of his own visions and significant night dreams. The autograph copy of this remarkable document still exists, although some pages have been scattered among collectors. George J. Tanabe, Jr., here presents in English the most comprehensive compilation of the diary in any language. Moreover, his study of Myoe's life and teachings provides both a context within which the diary can be understood and a view of the often doctrinally contentious world of Kamakura Buddhism.

Author : James Harlan Foard
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 68 pages
Book Rating : 4.59/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book In Search of a Lost Reformation written by James Harlan Foard and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Jacqueline I. Stone
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 9780824827717
Total Pages : 578 pages
Book Rating : 4.16/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism written by Jacqueline I. Stone and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2003-05-31 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Original enlightenment thought (hongaku shiso) dominated Buddhist intellectual circles throughout Japan’s medieval period. Enlightenment, this discourse claims, is neither a goal to be achieved nor a potential to be realized but the true status of all things. Every animate and inanimate object manifests the primordially enlightened Buddha just as it is. Seen in its true aspect, every activity of daily life—eating, sleeping, even one’s deluded thinking—is the Buddha’s conduct. Emerging from within the powerful Tendai School, ideas of original enlightenment were appropriated by a number of Buddhist traditions and influenced nascent theories about the kami (local deities) as well as medieval aesthetics and the literary and performing arts. Scholars and commentators have long recognized the historical importance of original enlightenment thought but differ heatedly over how it is to be understood. Some tout it as the pinnacle of the Buddhist philosophy of absolute non-dualism. Others claim to find in it the paradigmatic expression of a timeless Japanese spirituality. According other readings, it represents a dangerous anti-nomianism that undermined observance of moral precepts, precipitated a decline in Buddhist scholarship, and denied the need for religious discipline. Still others denounce it as an authoritarian ideology that, by sacralizing the given order, has in effect legitimized hierarchy and discriminative social practices. Often the acceptance or rejection of original enlightenment thought is seen as the fault line along which traditional Buddhist institutions are to be differentiated from the new Buddhist movements (Zen, Pure Land, and Nichiren) that arose during Japan’s medieval period. Jacqueline Stone’s groundbreaking study moves beyond the treatment of the original enlightenment doctrine as abstract philosophy to explore its historical dimension. Drawing on a wealth of medieval primary sources and modern Japanese scholarship, it places this discourse in its ritual, institutional, and social contexts, illuminating its importance to the maintenance of traditions of lineage and the secret transmission of knowledge that characterized several medieval Japanese elite culture. It sheds new light on interpretive strategies employed in pre-modern Japanese Buddhist texts, an area that hitherto has received a little attention. Through these and other lines of investigation, Stone problematizes entrenched notions of “corruption” in the medieval Buddhist establishment. Using the examples of Tendai and Nichiren Buddhism and their interactions throughout the medieval period, she calls into question both overly facile distinctions between “old” and “new” Buddhism and the long-standing scholarly assumptions that have perpetuated them. This study marks a significant contribution to ongoing debates over definitions of Buddhism in the Kamakura era (1185–1333), long regarded as a formative period in Japanese religion and culture. Stone argues that “original enlightenment thought” represents a substantial rethinking of Buddhist enlightenment that cuts across the distinction between “old” and “new” institutions and was particularly characteristic of the medieval period.

Author : Linda Learman
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824874021
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.25/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Buddhist Missionaries in the Era of Globalization written by Linda Learman and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2004-11-30 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This insightful volume dispels the common notion that Buddhism is not a missionary religion by revealing Asian Buddhists as active agents in the propagation of their faith. It presents at the same time a new framework with which to study missionary activity in both Buddhist and other religious traditions. Included are case studies of Theravada, Chinese, and Tibetan Buddhist teachers and congregations, as well as the Pure Land, Shingon, Zen, and Soka Gakkai traditions of Japan. Contributors examine both foreign and domestic missions and the activities of emigrant communities, showing the resources and strategies garnered by late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century Buddhists who worked to uphold and further their respective traditions, often under difficult circumstances. Based on anthropological fieldwork and historical research, the essays break new ground and provide better analytical tools for studying mission activity than previously available. They provide instructive comparisons with Anglo-American Protestant missionary thinking and offer insights into the internal dynamics of Sri Lankan and Japanese missions as they make their way in Protestant and Catholic societies. Also included are nuanced studies of two major missionary figures in late twentieth-century Chinese Buddhism and a fascinating look at the present Dalai Lama’s relationships with his devotees and the American government, viewed through an exposition of the abiding tradition within Tibetan Buddhism that combines mission activity with the political goals of exiled lamas. Contributors: Stuart Chandler; Peter B. Clarke; C. Julia Huang; Steven Kemper; Linda Learman; Sarah LeVine; Richard K. Payne; Cristina Rocha; George J. Tanabe, Jr.; Gray Tuttle.

Author : Richard K. Payne
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199351589
Total Pages : 449 pages
Book Rating : 4.89/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Homa Variations written by Richard K. Payne and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout human history, and across many religious cultures, offerings are made into fire. The essays collected in Homa Variations provide detailed studies of this practice, known in the tantric world as the "homa," from its inception up to the present.

Author : Asuka Sango
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824854004
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Halo of Golden Light written by Asuka Sango and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2015-03-31 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this pioneering study of the shifting status of the emperor within court society and the relationship between the state and the Buddhist community during the Heian period (794–1185), Asuka Sango details the complex ways in which the emperor and other elite ruling groups employed Buddhist ritual to legitimate their authority. Although considered a descendant of the sun goddess, Amaterasu, the emperor used Buddhist idiom, particularly the ideal king as depicted in the Golden Light Sūtra, to express his right to rule. Sango’s book is the first to focus on the ideals presented in the sūtra to demonstrate how the ritual enactment of imperial authority was essential to justifying political power. These ideals became the basis of a number of court-sponsored rituals, the most important of which was the emperor’s Misai-e Assembly. Sango deftly traces the changes in the assembly’s format and status throughout the era and the significant shifts in the Japanese polity that mirrored them. In illuminating the details of these changes, she challenges dominant scholarly models that presume the gradual decline of the political and liturgical influence of the emperor over the course of the era. She also compels a reconsideration of Buddhism during the Heian as “state Buddhism” by showing that monks intervened in creating the state’s policy toward the religion to their own advantage. Her analysis further challenges the common view that Buddhism of the time was characterized by the growth of private esoteric rites at the expense of exoteric doctrinal learning. The Halo of Golden Light draws on a wide range of primary sources—from official annals and diaries written by courtiers and monks to ecclesiastical records and Buddhist texts—many of them translated or analyzed for the first time in English. In so doing, the work brings to the surface surprising facets in the negotiations between religious ideas and practices and the Buddhist community and the state.

Author : Scott A. Mitchell
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0197641563
Total Pages : 265 pages
Book Rating : 4.69/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Making of American Buddhism written by Scott A. Mitchell and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As of 2010, there were approximately 3-4 million Buddhists in the United States, and that figure is expected to grow significantly. Beyond the numbers, the influence of Buddhism can be felt throughout the culture, with many more people practicing meditation, for example, than claiming Buddhist identity. A century ago, this would have been unthinkable. So how did Buddhism come to claim such a significant place in the American cultural landscape? The Making of American Buddhism offers an answer, showing how in the years on either side of World War II second-generation Japanese American Buddhists laid claim to an American identity inclusive of their religious identity. In the process they-and their allies-created a place for Buddhism in America. These sons and daughters of Japanese immigrants-known as "Nisei," Japanese for "second-generation"-clustered around the Berkeley Bussei, a magazine published from 1939 to 1960. In the pages of the Bussei and elsewhere, these Nisei Buddhists argued that Buddhism was both what made them good Americans and what they had to contribute to America-a rational and scientific religion of peace. The Making of American Buddhism also details the behind-the-scenes labor that made Buddhist modernism possible. The Bussei was one among many projects that were embedded within Japanese American Buddhist communities and connected to national and transnational networks that shaped and allowed for the spread of modernist Buddhist ideas. In creating communities, publishing magazines, and hosting scholarly conventions and translation projects, Nisei Buddhists built the religious infrastructure that allowed the later Buddhist modernists, Beat poets, and white converts who are often credited with popularizing Buddhism to flourish. Nisei activists didn't invent American Buddhism, but they made it possible.

Author : Gereon Kopf
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 9048129249
Total Pages : 737 pages
Book Rating : 4.49/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy written by Gereon Kopf and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-06-03 with total page 737 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume introduces the central themes in and the main figures of Japanese Buddhist philosophy. It will have two sections, one that discusses general topics relevant to Japanese Buddhist philosophy and one that reads the work of the main Japanese Buddhist philosophers in the context of comparative philosophy. It combines basic information with cutting edge scholarship considering recent publications in Japanese, Chinese, English, and other European languages. As such, it will be an invaluable tool for professors teaching courses in Asian and global philosophy, undergraduate and graduate students, as well as the people generally interested in philosophy and/or Buddhism.

Author : Mark Unno
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 0861717635
Total Pages : 370 pages
Book Rating : 4.37/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Shingon Refractions written by Mark Unno and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-05-13 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shingon Buddhism arose in the eighth century and remains one of Japan's most important sects, at present numbering some 12 million adherents. As such it is long overdue appropriate coverage. Here, the well-respected Mark Unno illuminates the tantric practice of the Mantra of Light, the most central of Shingon practices, complete with translations and an in-depth exploration of the scholar-monk Myoe Koben, the Mantra of Light's foremost proponent.