Download or read book Engaged Buddhism in Japan Volume 1 written by Jonathan S. Watts and published by . This book was released on 2023-03-21 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is the culmination of sixteen years of research and engagement in the growing Socially Engaged Buddhist movement of Japan. Volume I provides an essential presentation of historical themes that make Japanese Buddhism so unique and hard to understand for even other Buddhists in Asia. Volume I also provides a critical and comprehensive survey of Socially Engaged Buddhism in the modern era, which for the postwar period has never been fully documented. Volume II presents the new Socially Engaged Buddhist activities of 21st century Japan, a dynamic movement arising out of the social crisis of Japan's "disconnected society" (mu-en shakai). These volumes are the third major publication of the Engaged Buddhism Project of the International Buddhist Exchange Center (IBEC) @ Kodosan in Yokohama, Japan. They follow its two volumes dedicated to the Northeast Japan tsunami and nuclear disaster in This Precious Life: Buddhist Tsunami Relief and Anti-Nuclear Activism in Post 3/11 Japan (2012) & Lotus in the Nuclear Sea: Fukushima and the Promise of Buddhism in the Nuclear Age (2013).

Download or read book Engaged Buddhism written by Christopher S. Queen and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1996-01-01 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first comprehensive coverage of socially and politically engaged Buddhism in Asia, presenting the historical development and institutional forms of engaged Buddhism in the light of traditional Buddhist conceptions of morality, interdependence, and liberation.

Download or read book Action Dharma written by Christopher S. Queen and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These essays chart the emergence of a new chapter in an ancient faith - the rise of social service and political activism in Buddhist Asia and the West. Engaged Buddhists have sought new ways to comfort society's oppressed communities.

Download or read book Being Benevolence written by Sallie B. King and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2005-06-30 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Engaged Buddhism is the contemporary movement of nonviolent social and political activism found throughout the Buddhist world. Its ethical theory sees the world in terms of cause and effect, a view that discourages its practitioners from becoming adversaries, blaming or condemning the other. Its leaders make some of the most important contributions in the Buddhist world to thinking about issues in political theory, human rights, nonviolence, and social justice. Being Benevolence provides for the first time a rich overview of the main ideas and arguments of prominent Engaged Buddhist thinkers and activists on a variety of questions: What kind of political system should modern Asian states have? What are the pros and cons of Western "liberalism"? Can Buddhism support the idea of human rights? Can there ever be a nonviolent nation-state? It identifies the roots of Engaged Buddhist social ethics in such traditional Buddhist concepts and practices as interdependence, compassion, and meditation, and shows how these are applied to particular social and political issues. It illuminates the movement’s metaphysical views on the individual and society and goes on to examine how Engaged Buddhists respond to fundamental questions in political theory concerning the proper balance between the individual and society. The second half of the volume focuses on applied social-political issues: human rights, nonviolence, and social justice.

Download or read book Embracing Uncertainty written by John W. Traphagan and published by . This book was released on 2021-07-14 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here you have the product of my thinking as an anthropologist who has studied and traveled to Japan for over thirty years. In one sense, the book is an anthropological memoir in which I work through ideas of uncertainty and undifferentiation evident in the writings of Dogen as they relate to ethics and culture, but also explore other thinkers like philosopher Richard Rorty and anthropologist Clifford Geertz. I describe what I call the ethnographic outlook, which has the potential to generate humility, as a potentially powerful means to transform both self and society. A central goal of the book is to explore the idea that all knowledge is inherently uncertain, including knowledge of right and wrong, and that the quest for certainty leads to many of the problems we see in the modern world. The book threads a discussion of jazz improvisation as a way of thinking about the human experience and presents the idea of the lead sheet as a metaphor for culture and the ongoing process of change that is the world.

Download or read book True Peace Work written by Thich Nhat Hanh and published by Parallax Press. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thich Nhat Hanh, His Holiness The Dalai Lama, bell hooks, Bill McKibben, Gary Snyder, Maha Ghosananda, Charles Johnson, Bhikkhu Bodhi, Matthieu Ricard, and many others are featured alongside each other in this foundational trove of Buddhist essays, poems, and teachings. Now a modern classic, True Peace Work is the premier collection of writings on the practice of Engaged Buddhism, a term that Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh coined in the 1960s as part of his peace work in Vietnam that has grown to become a worldwide movement. The topics covered here are especially relevant in today's world: from creating nonviolent social change, to raising climate awareness, to simply learning how to walk (and enjoy it). This is not purely an activist's manual, however. True Peace Work is a spiritual bedrock that is as timeless as it is timely, one that insists on the connection between peace in oneself and peace in the world. Originally published in 1996 as Engaged Buddhist Reader, this revised edition has been expanded for our current time with a new introduction and additional contributors.

Download or read book Walk Like a Mountain written by Innen Ray Parchelo and published by . This book was released on 2012-11 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WALK LIKE A MOUNTAIN is the definitive guide to walking as Buddhist practice, not just for the serious practitioner but for anyone who wants to bring more contemplative depth to their everyday walks. From kinhin during zazen sessions to pilgrimage and beyond, this handbook offers the "how-to" with clarity and insight. Posture, hand positions and foot mechanics are merely the beginning. Other topics that are addressed in this comprehensive book include: Preparations and aids Prayer walking Purification and dedication Kaihogyo (marathon contemplative walking) Leading a walking practice Walking for change Walking as daily life Walking the symbolic landscape Alms rounds Mandalas Circumambulation Labyrinths Walking Nembutsu Alternatives in contemplative walking. Innen Ray Parchelo has studied, taught and practiced Buddhism for more than 40 years and acts as both the Priest to the Red Maple Sangha and Director of Tendai Canada. He began his formal dharma practice in 1974 and has been a member of several Buddhist centres, first taking refuge in 1994. In 2008, he renewed his refuge- vows as a student of Ven. Monshin Paul Naamon, and, in 2010, was ordained a Tendai priest. Innen is has lived and worked as a clinical social worker in the Ottawa Valley since 1975. He regularly uses walking and mindfulness techniques in a social work setting. He has degrees in Comparative Religion and Social Work and has published general and scholarly articles on dharma and social work topics and is a popular conference speaker. He is the regular Buddhist contributor to the Ottawa Citizen's "Ask the Religion Experts" column. He and his wife, Judy, live with their three dogs in a old log schoolhouse, near Renfrew, Ontario.

Download or read book Buddhism and Modernity written by Orion Klautau and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2021-03-31 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japan was the first Asian nation to face the full impact of modernity. Like the rest of Japanese society, Buddhist institutions, individuals, and thought were drawn into the dynamics of confronting the modern age. Japanese Buddhism had to face multiple challenges, but it also contributed to modern Japanese society in numerous ways. Buddhism and Modernity: Sources from Nineteenth-Century Japan makes accessible the voices of Japanese Buddhists during the early phase of high modernity. The volume offers original translations of key texts—many available for the first time in English—by central actors in Japan’s transition to the modern era, including the works of Inoue Enryō, Gesshō, Hara Tanzan, Shimaji Mokurai, Kiyozawa Manshi, Murakami Senshō, Tanaka Chigaku, and Shaku Sōen. All of these writers are well recognized by Buddhist studies scholars and Japanese historians but have drawn little attention elsewhere; this stands in marked contrast to the reception of Japanese Buddhism since D. T. Suzuki, the towering figure of Japanese Zen in the first half of the twentieth century. The present book fills the chronological gap between the premodern era and the twentieth century by focusing on the crucial transition period of the nineteenth century. Issues central to the interaction of Japanese Buddhism with modernity inform the five major parts of the work: sectarian reform, the nation, science and philosophy, social reform, and Japan and Asia. Throughout the chapters, the globally entangled dimension—both in relation to the West, especially the direct and indirect impact of Christianity, and to Buddhist Asia—is of great importance. The Introduction emphasizes not only how Japanese Buddhism was part of a broader, globally shared reaction of religions to the specific challenges of modernity, but also goes into great detail in laying out the specifics of the Japanese case.

Download or read book Buddhism of the Heart written by Jeff Wilson and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-10-08 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes a foreword by Mark Unno and Taitetsu Unno. Jeff Wilson started his walk on the Buddha's Path as a Zen practitioner-taking up a tradition of vigorous self-effort, intensive meditation, and meticulous attention to rectitude in every action. But in Jeff's case, rather than freeing him from his suffering, he found those Zen practices made him nothing short of insufferable. And so he turned to Shin Buddhism-a path that is easily the most popular in Zen's native land of Japan but is largely unknown in the West. Shin emphasizes an ''entrusting heart,'' a heart that is able to receive with gratitude every moment of our mistake-filled and busy lives. Moreover, through walking the Shin path, Jeff comes see that each of us (himself especially included) are truly ''foolish beings,'' people so filled with endlessly arising ''blind passions'' and ingrained habits that we so easily cause harm even with our best intentions. And even so, Shin holds out the tantalizing possibility that, by truly entrusting our foolish selves to the compassionate universe, we can learn to see how this foolish life, just as it is, is nonetheless also a life of grace. Buddhism of the Heart is a wide-ranging book of essays and open-hearted stories, reflections that run the gamut from intensely personal to broadly philosophical, introducing the reader to a remarkable religious tradition of compassionate acceptance.

Download or read book Japanese Rinzai Zen Buddhism written by Jørn Borup and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2008-02-28 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Zen Buddhist ideas and practices in many ways are unique within the study of religion, and artists, poets and Buddhists practitioners worldwide have found inspiration from this tradition. Until recent years, representations of Zen Buddhism have focussed almost entirely on philosophical, historical or “spiritual” aspects. This book investigates the contemporary living reality of the largest Japanese Rinzai Zen Buddhist group, Myōshinji. Drawing on textual studies and ethnographic fieldwork, Jørn Borup analyses how its practitioners use and understand their religion, how they practice their religiosity and how different kinds of Zen Buddhists (monks, nuns, priest, lay people) interact and define themselves within the religious organization. Japanese Rinzai Zen Buddhism portrays a living Zen Buddhism being both uniquely interesting and interestingly typical for common Buddhist and Japanese religiosity.

Download or read book Cultivating Spirituality written by Mark L. Blum and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2011-12-15 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cultivating Spirituality is a seminal anthology of Shin Buddhist thought, one that reflects this tradition's encounter with modernity. Shin (or Jodō Shinshū) is a popular form of Pure Land Buddhism, the most widely practiced form of Buddhism in Japan, but is only now becoming well known in the West. The lives of the four thinkers included in the book spanned the years 1863–1982, from the Meiji opening to the West to Japan's establishment as an industrialized democracy and world economic power. Kiyozawa Manshi, Soga Ryōjin, Kaneko Daiei, and Yasuda Rijin, all associated with Kyoto's Ōtani University, dealt with the spiritual concerns of a society undergoing great change. Their philosophical orientation known as "Seishinshugi" ("cultivating spirituality") provides a set of principles that prioritized personal, subjective experience as the basis for religious understanding. In addition to providing access to work generally unavailable in English, this volume also includes both a contextualizing introduction and introductions to each figure included.

Download or read book Mountains and Rivers Sutra Teachings by Norman Fischer A Weekly Practice Guide written by Zoketsu Norman Fischer and published by Sumeru Press Incorporated. This book was released on 2020-02-23 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these talks given at the Upaya Zen Center in 2012, Norman Fischer presents Dogen's medieval essay in language understandable to us in the 21st century and gives us a rich commentary on how to apply these principles in our daily lives. The talks are in 52 short sections as a weekly guide, with each accompanied by practice suggestions.

Download or read book Bonds of the Dead written by Mark Michael Rowe and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-09-30 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite popular images of priests seeking enlightenment in snow-covered mountain temples, the central concern of Japanese Buddhism is death. For that reason, Japanese Buddhism’s social and economic base has long been in mortuary services—a base now threatened by public debate over the status, treatment, and location of the dead. Bonds of the Dead explores the crisis brought on by this debate and investigates what changing burial forms reveal about the ways temple Buddhism is perceived and propagated in contemporary Japan. Mark Rowe offers a crucial account of how religious, political, social, and economic forces in the twentieth century led to the emergence of new funerary practices in Japan and how, as a result, the care of the dead has become the most fundamental challenge to the continued existence of Japanese temple Buddhism. Far from marking the death of Buddhism in Japan, Rowe argues, funerary Buddhism reveals the tradition at its most vibrant. Combining ethnographic research with doctrinal considerations, this is a fascinating book for anyone interested in Japanese society and religion.

Download or read book Buddhist Texts From Japan Volume 1 written by Friedrich Max Müller and published by Legare Street Press. This book was released on 2022-10-27 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Download or read book A Thousand Hands written by Nathan Jishin Michon and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Thousand Hands is an anthology of 50 articles by Buddhist chaplains, teachers, therapists, and social workers, presenting Buddhist approaches and resources designed to help community leaders respond to the many challenges brought to them by their communities. As a Buddhist community leader--or even a concerned community member--we may have read many sutras, practiced thousands of hours of meditation, or become well versed in Buddhist philosophy, but that does not prepare us for every situation we will face. It is very natural that people turn to a spiritual or religious community in times of trouble, and when such a person comes our hearts may fill with compassion and want to do whatever we can to ease their suffering. However, conversations with Buddhists in the West show that both training and resources in these areas are often lacking. This book is divided into three sections. The first deals primarily with ways to help one's self--ways to help develop one's capacity to be present in an effective way to help others in need, whether that is through listening more effectively or better organizing a group's money in order to keep a temple or organization stable. The second section is more about helping individuals with particular issues, such as cancer, divorce, anger, financial troubles, and depression. The third section contains chapters with broader community themes like group facilitation, leading projects, creating family programs, and volunteering. In each chapter, further resources, recommended reading, and relevant organizations are listed. "The voices contributing to this volume demonstrate that North American Buddhism is awakening from its predominantly inward and private focus and realizing that our strength for the future lies in healthy, whole, and peaceful communities. Yet the forms of suffering that manifest in communities boggle the imagination in their diversity. The essays collected here show that the necessary concern has been aroused and the helping hands of compassion are reaching out, each hand, like that of the bodhisattva Guan Yin, emblazoned with the eye of intelligence that looks into the underlying causes and the prospects for a solution." Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi "A Thousand Hands provides a remarkably broad set of resources aimed at helping people navigate suffering with greater clarity and ease. The editors have done a wonderful job gathering together many wise voices to share on a host of important topics." Sharon Salzberg, author of Lovingkindness and Real Happiness "Buddhist communities struggle with the reality that we bring the world with us--that walking into the doors of the sangha does not instantly liberate us from our mental illness, addictions, trauma, and emotional woundedness. Even more jarring is confronting the truth that our sanghas are organized to privilege the mental, physical, and fi nancial elite. The Buddha taught a Dharma for all ages, and at its heart is the call for radical loving integrated with truth. This book helps us to hold love and truth together as we move into the profound, beautiful, and very uncomfortable space of meeting people where they are and asking: How can I care for you?" Lama Rod Owens, co-author of Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation

Download or read book Religions of Japan in Practice written by George J. Tanabe Jr. and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 583 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This anthology reflects a range of Japanese religions in their complex, sometimes conflicting, diversity. In the tradition of the Princeton Readings in Religions series, the collection presents documents (legends and miracle tales, hagiographies, ritual prayers and ceremonies, sermons, reform treatises, doctrinal tracts, historical and ethnographic writings), most of which have been translated for the first time here, that serve to illuminate the mosaic of Japanese religions in practice. George Tanabe provides a lucid introduction to the "patterned confusion" of Japan's religious practices. He has ordered the anthology's forty-five readings under the categories of "Ethical Practices," "Ritual Practices," and "Institutional Practices," moving beyond the traditional classifications of chronology, religious traditions (Shinto, Confucianism, Buddhism, etc.), and sects, and illuminating the actual orientation of people who engage in religious practices. Within the anthology's three broad categories, subdivisions address the topics of social values, clerical and lay precepts, gods, spirits, rituals of realization, faith, court and emperor, sectarian founders, wizards, and heroes, orthopraxis and orthodoxy, and special places. Dating from the eighth through the twentieth centuries, the documents are revealed to be open to various and evolving interpretations, their meanings dependent not only on how they are placed in context but also on how individual researchers read them. Each text is preceded by an introductory explanation of the text's essence, written by its translator. Instructors and students will find these explications useful starting points for their encounters with the varied worlds of practice within which the texts interact with readers and changing contexts. Religions of Japan in Practice is a compendium of relationships between great minds and ordinary people, abstruse theories and mundane acts, natural and supernatural powers, altruism and self-interest, disappointment and hope, quiescence and war. It is an indispensable sourcebook for scholars, students, and general readers seeking engagement with the fertile "ordered disorder" of religious practice in Japan.

Download or read book Critical Buddhism written by James Mark Shields and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-22 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the relative calm world of Japanese Buddhist scholarship was thrown into chaos with the publication of several works by Buddhist scholars Hakamaya Noriaki and Matsumoto Shiro, dedicated to the promotion of something they called Critical Buddhism (hihan bukkyo). In their quest to re-establish a "true" - rational, ethical and humanist - form of East Asian Buddhism, the Critical Buddhists undertook a radical deconstruction of historical and contemporary East Asian Buddhism, particularly Zen. While their controversial work has received some attention in English-language scholarship, this is the first book-length treatment of Critical Buddhism as both a philosophical and religious movement, where the lines between scholarship and practice blur. Providing a critical and constructive analysis of Critical Buddhism, particularly the epistemological categories of critica and topica, this book examines contemporary theories of knowledge and ethics in order to situate Critical Buddhism within modern Japanese and Buddhist thought as well as in relation to current trends in contemporary Western thought.