Download or read book Engaged Buddhism in Japan Volume 2 written by Jonathan S Watts and published by . This book was released on 2023-10-28 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These volumes are the culmination of sixteen years of research and engagement in the growing Socially Engaged Buddhist movement in Japan by the International Buddhist Exchange Center (IBEC) @ Kodosan in Yokohama, Japan. They follow its two publications 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). 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). It focuses on five sub-movements in end-of-life care, suicide prevention, disaster relief and Buddhist chaplaincy, poverty and homelessness, and anti-nuclear activism and holistic development. An Afterword ponders the possibility of a new movement for gender justice. Volume I provides an essential presentation of historical themes and a comprehensive survey of Socially Engaged Buddhism in the modern era.
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 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 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 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 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 Engaged Buddhism in the West written by Christopher S. Queen and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-11-12 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Engaged Buddhism is founded on the belief that genuine spiritual practice requires an active involvement in society. Engaged Buddhism in the West illuminates the evolution of this new chapter in the Buddhist tradition - including its history, leadership, and teachings - and addresses issues such as violence and peace, race and gender, homelessness, prisons, and the environment. Eighteen new studies explore the activism of renowned leaders and organizations, such as Thich Nhat Hanh, Bernard Glassman, Joanna Macy, the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, and the Free Tibet Movement, and the emergence of a new Buddhism in North America, Europe, South Africa, and Australia.
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 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 Interbeing 4th Edition written by Thich Nhat Hanh and published by Parallax Press. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The beloved Zen teacher presents 14 Buddhist guidelines for living consciously and ethically in our modern, uncertain times—a must-read for social activists, Engaged Buddhists, and anyone eager for long-term global change. If you want to live life as an active agent for change: begin here. Originally formulated by Nobel Peace Prize nominee and Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh during the Vietnam War, Interbeing is a call to collective awakening and a guidebook for getting there. The Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings are a radical expression of Buddhist ethics and morality that offer essential insights for existing mindfully, and not burning out. This fourth edition introduces the most up-to-date revision of the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings, with fresh commentary on living in contemporary society. Extra depth is added with a new foreword by Sister Chan Khong, one of the first six people to be ordained as a monastic by Thich Nhat Hanh, who opens a vivid personal window into the history and lineage of these trainings. Thich Nhat Hanh is a Zen master, scholar, and peacemaker. He was nominated by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., for the Nobel Peace Prize and is author of over thirty books, including Being Peace, Living Buddha Living Christ, and Teachings on Love. He is the founder of Plum Village, a meditation community in France that leads retreats on “the art of mindful living.”
Download or read book Pure Land Real World written by Melissa Anne-Marie Curley and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2017-02-28 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For close to a thousand years Amida’s Pure Land, a paradise of perfect ease and equality, was the most powerful image of shared happiness circulating in the Japanese imagination. In the late nineteenth century, some Buddhist thinkers sought to reinterpret the Pure Land in ways that would allow it speak to modern Japan. Their efforts succeeded in ways they could not have predicted. During the war years, economist Kawakami Hajime, philosopher Miki Kiyoshi, and historian Ienaga Saburō—left-leaning thinkers with no special training in doctrinal studies and no strong connection to any Buddhist institution—seized upon modernized images of Shinran in exile and a transcendent Western Paradise to resist the demands of a state that was bearing down on its citizens with increasing force. Pure Land, Real World treats the religious thought of these three major figures in English for the first time. Kawakami turned to religion after being imprisoned for his involvement with the Japanese Communist Party, borrowing the Shinshū image of the two truths to assert that Buddhist law and Marxist social science should reinforce each other, like the two wings of a bird. Miki, a member of the Kyoto School who went from prison to the crown prince’s think tank and back again, identified Shinran’s religion as belonging to the proletariat: For him, following Shinran and working toward building a buddha land on earth were akin to realizing social revolution. And Ienaga’s understanding of the Pure Land—as the crystallization of a logic of negation that undermined every real power structure—fueled his battle against the state censorship system, just as he believed it had enabled Shinran to confront the world’s suffering head on. Such readings of the Pure Land tradition are idiosyncratic—perhaps even heretical—but they hum with the same vibrancy that characterized medieval Pure Land belief. Innovative and refreshingly accessible, Pure Land, Real World shows that the Pure Land tradition informed twentieth-century Japanese thought in profound and surprising ways and suggests that it might do the same for twenty-first-century thinkers. The critical power of Pure Land utopianism has yet to be exhausted.
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 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 Handbook of Contemporary Japanese Religions written by Inken Prohl and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2012-09-03 with total page 675 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Representing work by some of the leading scholars in the field, the chapters in this handbook survey the transformation and innovation of religious traditions and practices in contemporary Japan.
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 Against Harmony written by James Mark Shields and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-03 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Against Harmony traces the history of progressive and radical experiments in Japanese Buddhist thought and practice, from the mid-Meiji period through the early Showa. Perhaps the two best representations of progressive Buddhism during this time were the New Buddhist Fellowship (1899-1915) and the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism (1931-1936), both non-sectarian, lay movements well-versed in both classical Buddhist texts and Western philosophy and religion. Their work effectively collapsed commonly held distinctions between religion, philosophy, ethics, politics, and economics. Unlike many others of their day, they did not regard the novel forces of modernization as problematic and disruptive, but as opportunities. James Mark Shields examines the intellectual genealogy and alternative visions of progressive and radical Buddhism in the decades leading up to the Pacific War. Exposing the variety in the conceptions and manifestations of progress, reform, and modernity in this period, he outlines their important implications for postwar and contemporary Buddhism in Japan and elsewhere.
