Download or read book Empire of the Dharma written by Hwansoo Ilmee Kim and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kim explores the dynamic relationship between Korean and Japanese Buddhists in the years leading up to the Japanese annexation of Korea. Conventional narratives portray Korean Buddhists as complicit in the religious annexation of the peninsula, but this view fails to account for the diverse visions, interests, and strategies that drove both sides.
Download or read book Empire of the Dharma written by Hwansoo Ilmee Kim and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-03-17 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Empire of the Dharma explores the dynamic relationship between Korean and Japanese Buddhists in the years leading up to the Japanese annexation of Korea. Conventional narratives cast this relationship in politicized terms, with Korean Buddhists portrayed as complicit in the “religious annexation” of the peninsula. However, this view fails to account for the diverse visions, interests, and strategies that drove both sides. Hwansoo Ilmee Kim complicates this politicized account of religious interchange by reexamining the “alliance” forged in 1910 between the Japanese Soto sect and the Korean Wonjong order. The author argues that their ties involved not so much political ideology as mutual benefit. Both wished to strengthen Buddhism’s precarious position within Korean society and curb Christianity’s growing influence. Korean Buddhist monastics sought to leverage Japanese resources as a way of advancing themselves and their temples, and missionaries of Japanese Buddhist sects competed with one another to dominate Buddhism on the peninsula. This strategic alliance pushed both sides to confront new ideas about the place of religion in modern society and framed the way that many Korean and Japanese Buddhists came to think about the future of their shared religion."
Download or read book Building a Religious Empire written by Brenton Sullivan and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2020-12-11 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The vast majority of monasteries in Tibet and nearly all of the monasteries in Mongolia belong to the Geluk school of Tibetan Buddhism, best known through its symbolic head, the Dalai Lama. Historically, these monasteries were some of the largest in the world, and even today some Geluk monasteries house thousands of monks, both in Tibet and in exile in India. In Building a Religious Empire, Brenton Sullivan examines the school's expansion and consolidation of power along the frontier with China and Mongolia from the mid-seventeenth through the mid-eighteenth centuries to chart how its rise to dominance took shape. In contrast to the practice in other schools of Tibetan Buddhism, Geluk lamas devoted an extraordinary amount of effort to establishing the institutional frameworks within which everyday aspects of monastic life, such as philosophizing, meditating, or conducting rituals, took place. In doing so, the lamas drew on administrative techniques usually associated with state-making—standardization, record-keeping, the conscription of young males, and the concentration of manpower in central cores, among others—thereby earning the moniker "lama official," or "Buddhist bureaucrat." The deployment of these bureaucratic techniques to extend the Geluk "liberating umbrella" over increasing numbers of lands and peoples leads Sullivan to describe the result of this Geluk project as a "religious empire." The Geluk lamas' privileging of the monastic institution, Sullivan argues, fostered a common religious identity that insulated it from factionalism and provided legitimacy to the Geluk project of conversion, conquest, and expansion. Ultimately, this system succeeded in establishing a relatively uniform and resilient network of thousands of monasteries stretching from Nepal to Lake Baikal, from Beijing to the Caspian Sea.
Download or read book Worldly Saviors and Imperial Authority in Medieval Chinese Buddhism written by April D. Hughes and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2021-05-31 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although scholars have long assumed that early Chinese political authority was rooted in Confucianism, rulership in the medieval period was not bound by a single dominant tradition. To acquire power, emperors deployed objects and figures derived from a range of traditions imbued with religious and political significance. Author April D. Hughes demonstrates how dynastic founders like Wu Zhao (Wu Zetian, r. 690–705), the only woman to rule China under her own name, and Yang Jian (Emperor Wen, r. 581–604), the first ruler of the Sui dynasty, closely identified with Buddhist worldly saviors and Wheel-Turning Kings to legitimate their rule. During periods of upheaval caused by the decline of the Dharma, worldly saviors arrived on earth to quell chaos and to rule and liberate their subjects simultaneously. By incorporating these figures into the imperial system, sovereigns were able to depict themselves both as monarchs and as buddhas or bodhisattvas in uncertain times. In this inventive and original work, Hughes traces worldly saviors—in particular Maitreya Buddha and Prince Moonlight—as they appeared in apocalyptic scriptures from Dunhuang, claims to the throne made by various rebel leaders, and textual interpretations and assertions by Yang Jian and Wu Zhao. Yang Jian associated himself with Prince Moonlight and took on the persona of a Wheel-Turning King whose offerings to the Buddha were not flowers and incense but weapons of war to reunite a long-fragmented empire and revitalize the Dharma. Wu Zhao was associated with several different worldly savior figures. In addition, she saw herself as the incarnation of a Wheel-Turning King for whom it was said the Seven Treasures manifested as material representations of his right to rule. Wu Zhao duly had the Seven Treasures created and put on display whenever she held audiences at court. The worldly savior figure allowed rulers to inhabit the highest role in the religious realm along with the supreme role in the political sphere. This incorporation transformed notions of Chinese imperial sovereignty, and associating rulers with a buddha or bodhisattva continued long after the close of the medieval period.
Download or read book Greek Buddha written by Christopher I. Beckwith and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-28 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a history of early Buddhism based solely on dateable artefacts and archaeology rather than received tradition, much of which data is provided by studying Pyrrho's history
Download or read book Buddhism and Ireland written by Laurence Cox and published by Equinox Publishing (UK). This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ireland and Buddhism have a long history. Shaped by colonialism, contested borders, religious wars, empire and massive diasporas, Irish people have encountered Asian Buddhism in many ways over fourteen centuries. From the thrill of travellers' tales in far-off lands to a religious alternative to Christianity, from the potential of anti-colonial solidarity to fears of 'going native', and from recent immigration to the secular spread of Buddhist meditation, Buddhism has meant many different things to people in Ireland. Knowledge of Buddhist Asia reached Ireland by the seventh century, with the first personal contact in the fourteenth - a tale remembered for five hundred years. The first Irish Buddhists appeared in the political and cultural crisis of the nineteenth century, in Dublin and the rural West, but also in Burma and Japan. Over the next hundred years, Buddhism competed with esoteric movements to become the alternative to mainstream religion. Since the 1960s, Buddhism has exploded to become Ireland's third-largest religion. Buddhism and Ireland is the first history of its subject, a rich and exciting story of extraordinary individuals and the journey of ideas across Europe and Asia.
Download or read book Being a Buddhist Nun written by Kim Gutschow and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: They may shave their heads, don simple robes, and renounce materialism and worldly desires. But the women seeking enlightenment in a Buddhist nunnery high in the folds of Himalayan Kashmir invariably find themselves subject to the tyrannies of subsistence, subordination, and sexuality. Ultimately, Buddhist monasticism reflects the very world it is supposed to renounce. Butter and barley prove to be as critical to monastic life as merit and meditation. Kim Gutschow lived for more than three years among these women, collecting their stories, observing their ways, studying their lives. Her book offers the first ethnography of Tibetan Buddhist society from the perspective of its nuns. Gutschow depicts a gender hierarchy where nuns serve and monks direct, where monks bless the fields and kitchens while nuns toil in them. Monasteries may retain historical endowments and significant political and social power, yet global flows of capitalism, tourism, and feminism have begun to erode the balance of power between monks and nuns. Despite the obstacles of being considered impure and inferior, nuns engage in everyday forms of resistance to pursue their ascetic and personal goals. A richly textured picture of the little known culture of a Buddhist nunnery, the book offers moving narratives of nuns struggling with the Buddhist discipline of detachment. Its analysis of the way in which gender and sexuality construct ritual and social power provides valuable insight into the relationship between women and religion in South Asia today.
Download or read book Rebuilding Buddhism written by Sarah LeVine and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2007-09-30 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rebuilding Buddhism describes in evocative detail the experiences and achievements of Nepalis who have adopted Theravada Buddhism. This form of Buddhism was introduced into Nepal from Burma and Sri Lanka in the 1930s, and its adherents have struggled for recognition and acceptance ever since. With its focus on the austere figure of the monk and the biography of the historical Buddha, and more recently with its emphasis on individualizing meditation and on gender equality, Theravada Buddhism contrasts sharply with the highly ritualized Tantric Buddhism traditionally practiced in the Kathmandu Valley. Based on extensive fieldwork, interviews, and historical reconstruction, the book provides a rich portrait of the different ways of being a Nepali Buddhist over the past seventy years. At the same time it explores the impact of the Theravada movement and what its gradual success has meant for Buddhism, for society, and for men and women in Nepal.
Download or read book A History of Buddhism in India and Tibet written by and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-07-19 with total page 987 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This volume contains the first full English translation of a thirteenth-century history of Buddhism in India and Tibet. That means most of all a complete life of the Buddha with the history of his renunciate order and of early Buddhist authors in India. Midway through, the action moves to Tibet where there is an emphasis on the Tibetan ruling dynasty, the translators of Buddhist texts, and the lineages that transmitted doctrinal understanding, meditative insights, and practical realization. It concludes with a pessimistic account of the demise of the monastic order followed by optimism with the advent of the future Buddha Maitreya. The composer of this remarkably ecumenical Buddhist history remains anonymous but was likely a follower of rare lineages of Dzogchen and Zhijé teachings. He put together some of the most important early sources on the Tibetan imperial period that had been preserved in his times and supplies the best witnesses we have for many of them in our own times"--
Download or read book Asoka the Buddhist Emperor of India written by Vincent Arthur Smith and published by . This book was released on 1909 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Heart of Buddha Heart of China written by James Carter and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: James Carter, accessing previously untapped sources, tells the story of Tanxu's life and gives first-person immediacy to one of the most turbulent periods in Chinese history.
Download or read book The British Discovery of Buddhism written by Philip C. Almond and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book to examine the British discovery of Buddhism during the Victorian period. It was only during the nineteenth century that Buddhism became, in the western mind, a religious tradition separate from Hinduism. As a result, Buddha emerge from a realm of myth and was addressed as a historical figure. Almond's exploration of British interpretations of Buddhism--of its founder, its doctrines, its ethics, its social practices, its truth and value--illuminates more than the various aspects of Buddhist culture: it sheds light on the Victorian society making these judgements.
Download or read book Faith and Empire written by Karl Debreczeny and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This catalog is published in conjunction with the exhibition Faith and Empire: Art and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism, organized and presented by the Rubin Museum of Art, New York, February 1-July 15, 2019, and curated by Karl Debreczeny, Senior Curator, Collections and Research, with the assistance of Lizzie Doorly"--Colophon.
Download or read book Zen at War written by Brian Daizen Victoria and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2006-06-22 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling history of the contradictory, often militaristic, role of Zen Buddhism, this book meticulously documents the close and previously unknown support of a supposedly peaceful religion for Japanese militarism throughout World War II. Drawing on the writings and speeches of leading Zen masters and scholars, Brian Victoria shows that Zen served as a powerful foundation for the fanatical and suicidal spirit displayed by the imperial Japanese military. At the same time, the author recounts the dramatic and tragic stories of the handful of Buddhist organizations and individuals that dared to oppose Japan's march to war. He follows this history up through recent apologies by several Zen sects for their support of the war and the way support for militarism was transformed into 'corporate Zen' in postwar Japan. The second edition includes a substantive new chapter on the roots of Zen militarism and an epilogue that explores the potentially volatile mix of religion and war. With the increasing interest in Buddhism in the West, this book is as timely as it is certain to be controversial.
Download or read book To Uphold the World written by Bruce Rich and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2010-03-01 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1991, Bruce Rich traveled to Orissa and gazed upon the rock edicts erected by the Indian emperor Ashoka over 2,200 years ago. Intrigued by the stone inscriptions that declared religious tolerance, conservation, nonviolence, species protection, and human rights, Rich was drawn into Ashoka's world. Ashoka was a powerful conqueror who converted to Buddhism on the heels of a bloody war, yet his empire rested on a political system that prioritized material wealth and amoral realpolitik. This system had been perfected by Kautilya, a statesman who wrote the world's first treatise on economics. In this powerful critique of the current wave of globalization, Rich urgently calls for a new global ethic, distilling the messages of Ashoka and Kautilya while reflecting on thinkers from across the ages—from Aristotle and Adam Smith to George Soros.
Download or read book To Uphold the World written by Bruce Rich and published by Penguin Books India. This book was released on 2008 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At The Beginning Of The Twenty-First Century, We Cannot Escape The Turbocharged Global Economy We Live In. Yet The Very Forces That Link All Of Us Have Accelerated The Dissolution Of Traditional Sources Of Social Authority And Historical Identity, Spurring Increasingly Violent Counter Movements. We Realize Traditional National Politics And The Reorganization Of All Social Values Around Markets Cannot Hold Together The Six And A Half Billion Inhabitants Of This Small Planet The World Needs A New Global Order Based On A Common Global Ethic And Global Justice. To Uphold The World Is Bruce Rich'S Deeply Illuminating And Thought-Provoking Exploration Of Such An Alternative. His Search To Found A Civil And International Order On Principles That Transcend The Goals Of Pure Economic Efficiency And Amoral Realpolitik Is Inspired By The Writings And Lives Of Two Of The Greatest Figures Of Ancient India Ashoka And Kautilya. Ashoka Provides A Unique Example Of A World Ruler His Empire At The Time Was Arguably The World'S Largest, Richest And Most Powerful Multi-Ethnic State Who Tried To Put Into Practice A Secular State Ethic Of Non-Violence And Reverence For Life, Which He Also Extended To International Relations. Kautilya, One Of History'S Greatest Political Geniuses, Wrote The World'S First Treatise On Political Economy, The Arthasastra, Which Proclaims Accumulation Of Material Riches As The Chief Underpinning Of Human Society. Both Addressed The Questions Of Political Realism And Idealism, The Role Of Force And Violence In International Relations, And The Tension Between Economics And Ethics. Through The Retelling Of Mythical And Historical Accounts, Bruce Rich Distils The Message Of Ashoka And Kautilya To Help Us Uphold Our World In The Twenty-First Century. A Unique Blend Of Historical And Political Narrative Combined With Reflections On Contemporary Society, The International Environment And Human Rights, To Uphold The World Is Particularly Timely, Because It Puts Forth A Truly Original Perspective And Thinking On Our Responses To The Political, Economic And Ethical Challenges Of Globalization. 'The Reader Is Drawn Powerfully Into A Long-Gone World In Which An Extraordinary Human Being Dramatically Changed His Own Life And The World Around Him . . . A Highly Readable Book On The Importance And Reach Of Some Arguments In Ancient India, And On Their Relevance For Global Problems Today.' From The Foreword By Amartya Sen. 'To Uphold The World Should Serve As A Source Of Great Inspiration . . . It Is My Hope And Prayer That Readers Today May Be Inspired By This Tale Of A Powerful Ruler To Find Ways To Contribute To Making The World . . . A More Just And Peaceful Place.' From The Afterword By His Holiness The Dalai Lama
Download or read book Building a Religious Empire written by Brenton Sullivan and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2020-11-13 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The vast majority of monasteries in Tibet and nearly all of the monasteries in Mongolia belong to the Geluk school of Tibetan Buddhism, best known through its symbolic head, the Dalai Lama. Historically, these monasteries were some of the largest in the world, and even today some Geluk monasteries house thousands of monks, both in Tibet and in exile in India. In Building a Religious Empire, Brenton Sullivan examines the school's expansion and consolidation of power along the frontier with China and Mongolia from the mid-seventeenth through the mid-eighteenth centuries to chart how its rise to dominance took shape. In contrast to the practice in other schools of Tibetan Buddhism, Geluk lamas devoted an extraordinary amount of effort to establishing the institutional frameworks within which everyday aspects of monastic life, such as philosophizing, meditating, or conducting rituals, took place. In doing so, the lamas drew on administrative techniques usually associated with state-making—standardization, record-keeping, the conscription of young males, and the concentration of manpower in central cores, among others—thereby earning the moniker "lama official," or "Buddhist bureaucrat." The deployment of these bureaucratic techniques to extend the Geluk "liberating umbrella" over increasing numbers of lands and peoples leads Sullivan to describe the result of this Geluk project as a "religious empire." The Geluk lamas' privileging of the monastic institution, Sullivan argues, fostered a common religious identity that insulated it from factionalism and provided legitimacy to the Geluk project of conversion, conquest, and expansion. Ultimately, this system succeeded in establishing a relatively uniform and resilient network of thousands of monasteries stretching from Nepal to Lake Baikal, from Beijing to the Caspian Sea.
