Transforming Buddhism

Author : Richard Gombrich
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691019010
Total Pages : 508 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Buddhism Transformed written by Richard Gombrich and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this study a social and cultural anthropologist and a specialist in the study of religion pool their talents to examine recent changes in popular religion in Sri Lanka. As the Sinhalas themselves perceive it, Buddhism proper has always shared the religious arena with a spirit religion. While Buddhism concerns salvation, the spirit religion focuses on worldly welfare. Buddhism Transformed describes and analyzes the changes that have profoundly altered the character of Sinhala religion in both areas.

Author : Andre Van Der Braak
Publisher : LIT Verlag Münster
ISBN 13 : 3643901186
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.87/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Transforming Buddhism written by Andre Van Der Braak and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2018-09 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world of Buddhism has always been a dynamic one. There are endless developments and interactions as the dharma spread throughout Asia. In more recent times Buddhism has even made a more global appeal, dharma centers are everywhere nowadays. Transforming Buddhism presents a number of casestudies of a group of scholars who each of them focus on the ways how Buddhism transforms and is transformed, both in the past and in modernity. The book presents results of research performed in Asia for instance on women in the Buddhist monastic tradition of Thailand, foreigners living in the harsh conditions of specific Thai Theravāda monasteries, and childmonks in Tibet. Other subjects are developments within Japanese Zen Buddhism in interaction with modern western philosophy and the Japanese Buddhism incited by Kōbō Daishi (774-835). Next there is the inspiration for modernity that can be found in the works of the Korean monk Chinul (1158-1210), and themes in Buddhist life-histories, legendary, historical and personal. As such Transforming Buddhism gives a broad view on a number of transformations of the Buddhist dharma from various perspectives.

Author : James William Coleman
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780195152418
Total Pages : 276 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The New Buddhism written by James William Coleman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2002-05-16 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text outlines the development and spread of ancient Buddhism. It describes its journey west and its evolution here, sketching the lives and teachings of some of Western Buddhism's most important figures.

Author : Chae-ryong Sim
Publisher : 지문당
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 324 pages
Book Rating : 4.77/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Korean Buddhism written by Chae-ryong Sim and published by 지문당. This book was released on 1999 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Nancy Eberhardt
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 9780824829193
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.90/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Imagining the Course of Life written by Nancy Eberhardt and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imagining the Course of Life offers a rich portrait of rural life in contemporary Southeast Asia and an accessible introduction to the complexities of Theravada Buddhism as it is actually lived and experienced. It is both an ethnography of indigenous views of human development and a theoretical consideration of how any ethnopsychology is embedded in society and culture. Drawing on long-term fieldwork in a Shan village in northern Thailand, Nancy Eberhardt illustrates how indigenous theories of the life course are connected to local constructions of self and personhood. In the process, she draws our attention to contrasting models in the Euro-American tradition and invites us to reconsider how we think about the trajectory of a human life. Moving beyond the entrenched categories that can hamper our understanding of other views, Imagining the Course of Life demonstrates the real-life connections between the "religious" and the "psychological." Eberhardt shows how such beliefs and practices are used, sometimes strategically, in people's constructions of themselves, in their interpretations of others' behavior, and in their attempts at social positioning. Individual chapters explore Shan ideas about the overall course of human development, from infancy to old age and beyond, and show how these ideas inform people's understanding of personhood and maturity, gender and social inequality, illness and well-being, emotions and mental health.

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

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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 : Edward R. Drott
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 082486686X
Total Pages : 249 pages
Book Rating : 4.60/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Buddhism and the Transformation of Old Age in Medieval Japan written by Edward R. Drott and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2016-05-31 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars have long remarked on the frequency with which Japanese myths portrayed gods (kami) as old men or okina. Many of these “sacred elders” came to be featured in premodern theater, most prominently in Noh. In the closing decades of the twentieth-century, as the number of Japan’s senior citizens climbed steadily, the sacred elder of premodern myth became a subject of renewed interest and was seen by some as evidence that the elderly in Japan had once been accorded a level of respect unknown in recent times. In Buddhism and the Transformation of Old Age in Medieval Japan, Edward Drott charts the shifting sets of meanings ascribed to old age in medieval Japan, tracing the processes by which the aged body was transformed into a symbol of otherworldly power and the cultural, political, and religious circumstances that inspired its reimagination. Drott examines how the aged body was used to conceptualize forms of difference and to convey religious meanings in a variety of texts: official chronicles, literary works, Buddhist legends and didactic tales. In early Japan, old age was most commonly seen as a mark of negative distinction, one that represented the ugliness, barrenness, and pollution against which the imperial court sought to define itself. From the late-Heian period, however, certain Buddhist authors seized upon the aged body as a symbolic medium though which to challenge traditional dichotomies between center and margin, high and low, and purity and defilement, crafting narratives that associated aged saints and avatars with the cults, lineages, sacred sites, or religious practices these authors sought to promote. Contributing to a burgeoning literature on religion and the body, Buddhism and the Transformation of Old Age in Medieval Japan applies approaches developed in gender studies to “denaturalize” old age as a matter of representation, identity, and performance. By tracking the ideological uses of old age in premodern Japan, this work breaks new ground, revealing the role of religion in the construction of generational categories and the ways in which religious ideas and practices can serve not only to naturalize, but also challenge “common sense” about the body.

Author : Donald Rothberg
Publisher : Beacon Press
ISBN 13 : 9780807077252
Total Pages : 262 pages
Book Rating : 4.59/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Engaged Spiritual Life written by Donald Rothberg and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2006-10-15 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Buddhist meditation teacher offers a new path to transformation—within ourselves and within the wider world—that integrates spiritual wisdom and social action By the time Donald Rothberg was in his early twenties, he knew he had two vocations. He wanted to dedicate himself to justice and social change, and he wanted to commit himself to exploring the depths of human consciousness—to an awakening of our deeper spiritual nature. It has been his life's work, as an activist, organizer, writer, and teacher, to bring these two paths together and to reveal how deeply they require one another. The Engaged Spiritual Life is the fruit of this work. Skillfully weaving together basic spiritual teachings, real-life examples, social context, and exercises, Rothberg provides a clear, thorough, and compelling guide for those interested in connecting inner and outer transformation. At the core of the book are ten spiritual principles and associated practices that will enable readers to engage all the parts of their lives—whether personal, interpersonal, or political—into a seamless whole.

Author : Dalai Lama XIV Bstan-ʼdzin-rgya-mtsho
Publisher : HarperThorsons
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 186 pages
Book Rating : 4.39/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Transforming the Mind written by Dalai Lama XIV Bstan-ʼdzin-rgya-mtsho and published by HarperThorsons. This book was released on 2000 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Teachings of the Dalai Lama given at a series of lectures in London in May 1999, based on the text "Eight Verses on Transforming the Mind" by eleventh-century meditator Lang : Thangpa

Author : Thich Nhat Hanh
Publisher : Parallax Press
ISBN 13 : 1937006859
Total Pages : 117 pages
Book Rating : 4.53/5 ( download)

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Download or read book No Mud, No Lotus written by Thich Nhat Hanh and published by Parallax Press. This book was released on 2014-12-02 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The secret to happiness is to acknowledge and transform suffering, not to run away from it. Here, Thich Nhat Hanh offers practices and inspiration transforming suffering and finding true joy. Thich Nhat Hanh acknowledges that because suffering can feel so bad, we try to run away from it or cover it up by consuming. We find something to eat or turn on the television. But unless we’re able to face our suffering, we can’t be present and available to life, and happiness will continue to elude us. Nhat Hanh shares how the practices of stopping, mindful breathing, and deep concentration can generate the energy of mindfulness within our daily lives. With that energy, we can embrace pain and calm it down, instantly bringing a measure of freedom and a clearer mind. No Mud, No Lotus introduces ways to be in touch with suffering without being overwhelmed by it. "When we know how to suffer," Nhat Hanh says, "we suffer much, much less." With his signature clarity and sense of joy, Thich Nhat Hanh helps us recognize the wonders inside us and around us that we tend to take for granted and teaches us the art of happiness.