Download or read book Buddhism Betrayed written by Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1992-07-15 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume seeks to answer the question of how the Buddhist monks in today's Sri Lanka—given Buddhism's traditionally nonviolent philosophy—are able to participate in the fierce political violence of the Sinhalese against the Tamils.
Download or read book Buddha or Bust written by Perry Garfinkel and published by Harmony. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why does an idea that’s 2,500 years old seem more relevant today than ever before? How can the Buddha’s teachings help us solve many of the world’s problems? Journalist Perry Garfinkel circumnavigated the globe to discover the heart of Buddhism and the reasons for its growing popularity—and ended up discovering himself in the process. The assignment from National Geographic couldn’t have come at a better time for Garfinkel. Burned out, laid up with back problems, disillusioned by relationships and religion itself, he was still hoping for that big journalistic break—and the answers to life’s biggest riddles as well. So he set out on a geographic, historical and personal expedition that would lead him around the world in search of those answers, and then some. First, to better understand the man who was born Prince Siddhartha Gautama, he followed the time-honored pilgrimage “in the footsteps of the Buddha” in India. From there, he tracked the historical course of Buddhism: to Sri Lanka, Thailand, China, Tibet, Japan and on to San Francisco and Europe. He found that the Buddha’s teachings have spawned a worldwide movement of “engaged Buddhism,” the application of Buddhist principles to resolve social, environmental, health, political and other contemporary problems. From East to West and back to the East again, this movement has caused a Buddhism Boom. Along the way he met a diverse array of Buddhist practitioners—Thai artists, Indian nuns, Sri Lankan school children, Zen archers in Japan, kung fu monks in China and the world’s first Buddhist comic (only in America). Among dozens of Buddhist scholars and leaders, Garfinkel interviewed His Holiness the Dalai Lama, an experience that left him speechless—almost. As just reward for his efforts, toward the end of his journey Garfinkel fell in love in the south of France at the retreat center of a leader of the engaged movement, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh—a romance that taught him as much about Buddhism as all the masters combined. In this original, entertaining book, Garfinkel separates Buddhist fact from fiction, sharing his humorous insights and keen perceptions about everything from spiritual tourism to Asian traffic jams to the endless road to enlightenment.
Download or read book The Spread of Theravada Buddhism in South India written by Ven Dr Hindagala Gnanadhara Thero and published by . This book was released on 2018-03-02 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is surprising that the chronicle Mahavamsa fails to make any reference to the son of Asoka, Arahan Mahinda and Sri Lanka Bhikkus (monks) and Bhikkhunis (nuns), who propagated Buddhism in Tamil Nadu. Scholars like I.K. Sharma and Sathian Nathan Iyar stated that Atahanta Mahinda functioned as the head of Tondamandalam Vihara at Kaveri Pattinam. Reference to the Theravada Buddhist concept paticcasamuppada (causality), four noble truths and Tilakkhana suggest the widely prevalent Theravada Buddhism in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Scholars Srinivasan and Nilakanta Sastri established the birthplace of Buddhagosa, who arrived here in the 5th Century and composed 14 Pali commentaries, at Mahavihara in Anuradhapura, from a village called Moranam in Kanchipuram. Traveller Hiuen Tsang stated that 10000 priests were in 100 monasteries in Tamil Nadu. Thirty-five plates of Buddha statues unearthed there were included in the text. Ilankilli, brother of Kanchipuram Chola king Killivalavam, constructed a Temple with a chetiya (pagoda). Many Chola kings had Buddhist names like Buddhavarman and Asokavarman. They extended their patronage to Buddhism. Vajrabodhi, Bodhidharma and Dhammaruci propagated Buddhism in China, translating the Mayana Buddhist text to Chinese. The text also includes information given by scholars, clergymen and laymen of the 9th century, who were witnesses to the existence of Buddhism in Tamil Nadu.
Download or read book Buddhism Among Tamils in Pre colonial Tami akam and am The period of the imperial C la r Tami akam and la m written by Peter Schalk and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Glimpses of Ceylon s Past written by Senarat Paranavitana and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book American Buddhism written by Christopher Queen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-18 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first scholarly treatment of the emergence of American Buddhist Studies as a significant research field. Until now, few investigators have turned their attention to the interpretive challenge posed by the presence of all the traditional lineages of Asian Buddhism in a consciously multicultural society. Nor have scholars considered the place of their own contributions as writers, teachers, and practising Buddhists in this unfolding saga. In thirteen chapters and a critical introduction to the field, the book treats issues such as Asian American Buddhist identity, the new Buddhism, Buddhism and American culture, and the scholar's place in American Buddhist Studies. The volume offers complete lists of dissertations and theses on American Buddhism and North American dissertations and theses on topics related to Buddhism since 1892.
Download or read book This Divided Island written by Samanth Subramanian and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-12-15 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Samanth Subramanian has written about politics, culture, and history for the New York Times and the New Yorker. Now, Subramanian takes on a complex topic that touched millions of lives in This Divided Island. In the summer of 2009, the leader of the dreaded Tamil Tiger guerrillas was killed, bringing to an end the civil war in Sri Lanka. For nearly thirty years, the war's fingers had reached everywhere, leaving few places, and fewer people, untouched. What happens to the texture of life in a country that endures such bitter conflict? What happens to the country's soul? Subramanian gives us an extraordinary account of the Sri Lankan war and the lives it changed. Taking us to the ghosts of summers past, he tells the story of Sri Lanka today. Through travels and conversations, he examines how people reconcile themselves to violence, how the powerful become cruel, and how victory can be put to the task of reshaping memory and burying histories.
Download or read book Faces of the Feminine in Ancient Medieval and Modern India written by Mandakranta Bose and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2000-02-10 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a variety of scholarly studies in the idea, situation, and definition-including the self-definition-of women in India, from the earliest historical period up to the present day. Both in its range of topics and depth of research, this volume creates a sustained focus that is not presently available in the literature of women in India. Faces of the Feminine in Ancient, Medieval, and Modern India comprises 25 essays contributed by a diverse mix of Indian, Canadian, American, and British women scholars, most of whom have lived in South Asia either for all of their lives or for extended periods. Arranged chronologically, these groundbreaking essays set aside the myths and prejudices that often clutter discussions about women in India. Part I, which is dedicated to the ancient period, defines women's positions as depicted in the sacred law, considers subordinated women in major Hindu epics, describes women's roles in ritual and their understanding of religion, and examines the patriarchal organization of women's lives in Buddhism. Part II begins with an essay on Tantra, a major force in medieval India that influenced both Hinduism and Buddhism and placed women at the center of its sacred rites. Other essays in Part II look at the life and legends of a medieval woman saint poet, the portrayal of a Hindu goddess in medieval Bengal, and the role of women from Mughal harems in decision making. Part III describes the colonial perception of Indian women in the late nineteenth century and shows how women's self-perceptions have been expressed through their art and writing as well as through their political action in the twentieth century. Providing informed and balanced analysis of extensive primary source material, this book will be an essential resource for students of women's lives in India.
Download or read book The Language of the Gods in the World of Men written by Sheldon Pollock and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 705 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The scholarship exhibited here is not only superior; it is in many ways staggering. The author's control of an astonishing range of primary and secondary texts from many languages, eras, and disciplines is awe-inspiring. This is a learned, original, and important work."—Robert Goldman, Sanskrit and India Studies, University of California, Berkeley
Download or read book Donors Devotees and Daughters of God written by Leslie C. Orr and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2000-03-09 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through the use of epigraphical evidence, Leslie C. Orr brings into focus the activities and identities of the temple women (devadasis) of medieval South India. This book shows how temple women's initiative and economic autonomy involved them in medieval temple politics and allowed them to establish themselves in roles with particular social and religious meanings. This study suggests new ways of understanding the character of the temple woman and, more generally, of the roles of women in Indian religion and society.
Download or read book The Buddha and the Sahibs written by Charles Allen and published by John Murray. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today there are many Buddhists in the West, but for 2000 years the Buddha's teachings were unknown outside Asia. It was not until the late 18th century, when Sir William Oriental Jones, a British judge in India, broke through the Brahmin's prohibition on learning their sacred language. Sanskrit, that clues about the origins of a religion quite distinct from Hinduism began to be deciphered from inscriptions on pillars and rocks. This study tells the story of the search that followed, as evidence mounted that countries as diverse as Ceylon, Japan and Tibet shared a religion which had its origins in India yet was unknown there. British rule brought to India, Burma and Ceylon a whole band of enthusiastic Orientalist amateurs - soldiers, administrators and adventurers - intent on investigating the subcontinent's lost past. Unwittingly, these men helped lay the foundations for the revival of Buddhism in Asia during the 19th century and its spread to the West in the 20th. Charles Allen's book is a mixture of detective work and story-telling, as this acknowledged master of British Indian history pieces together early Buddhist history to bring a handful of extraordinary characters to life.
Download or read book Imagining a Place for Buddhism written by Anne E. Monius and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2001-12-06 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While Tamil-speaking South India is celebrated for its preservation of Hindu tradition, other religious communities have played a significant role in shaping the region's religious history. Among these non-Hindu communities is that of the Buddhists, who are little-understood because of the scarcity of remnants of Tamil-speaking Buddhist culture. Here, focusing on the two Buddhist texts in Tamil that are complete (a sixth-century poetic narrative and an eleventh-century treatise on grammar and poetics), Monius sheds light on the role of literature and literary culture in the formation, articulation, and evolution of religious identity and community.
Download or read book Buddhist Monks and the Politics of Lanka s Civil War written by Suren Raghavan and published by Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies Monographs. This book was released on 2018-08-06 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The war in Sri Lanka was violent and costly in human and material terms. This was one of the longest wars in modern South Asia. Often referred to as an 'ethnic' conflict between the majority Sinhalas and the minority Tamils, the war had a profound religious dimension. The majority of Sinhala Buddhist monks (the Sangha) not only opposed any meaningful powersharing but latterly advocated an all-out military solution. Such a nexus between Buddhism and violence is paradoxical; nevertheless it has a historical continuity. In 2009 when the war ended amid serious questions of war crimes and crimes against humanity, monks defended the military and its Buddhist leadership. Taking the lives of three key Sangha activists as the modern framework of a Sinhala Buddhist worldview, this book examines the limitations of Western theories of peacebuilding and such solutions as federalism and multinationalism. It analyzes Sinhala Buddhist ethnoreligious nationalism and argues for the urgent need to engage Buddhist politics - in Lanka and elsewhere - with approaches and mechanisms that accommodate the Sangha as key actors in political reform. Sinhala Buddhism is often studied from a sociological or anthropological standpoint. This book fills a gap by examining the faith and practice of the Sinhala Sangha and their followers from a political science perspective.
Download or read book Buddhism Transformed written by Richard Gombrich and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-09 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.
Download or read book Historicizing Emotions Practices and Objects in India China and Japan written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-09-11 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Historicizing Emotions: Practices and Objects in India, China, and Japan, nine Asian Studies scholars offer intriguing case studies of moments of change in community or group-based emotion practices, including emotionally coded objects. Posing the questions by whom, when, where, what-by, and how the changes occurred, these studies offer not only new geographical scope to the history of emotions, but also new voices from cultures and subcultures as yet unexplored in that field. This volume spans from the pre-common era to modern times, with an emphasis on the pre-modern period, and includes analyses of picturebooks, monks’ writings, letters, ethnographies, theoretic treatises, poems, hagiographies, stone inscriptions, and copperplates. Covering both religious and non-religious spheres, the essays will attract readers from historical, religious, and area studies, and anthropology. Contributors are: Heather Blair, Gérard Colas, Katrin Einicke, Irina Glushkova, Padma D. Maitland, Beverley McGuire, Anne E. Monius, Kiyokazu Okita, Barbara Schuler.
Download or read book Buddha or Bust written by Perry Garfinkel and published by Harmony. This book was released on 2007-07-24 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why does an idea that’s 2,500 years old seem more relevant today than ever before? How can the Buddha’s teachings help us solve many of the world’s problems? Journalist Perry Garfinkel circumnavigated the globe to discover the heart of Buddhism and the reasons for its growing popularity—and ended up discovering himself in the process. The assignment from National Geographic couldn’t have come at a better time for Garfinkel. Burned out, laid up with back problems, disillusioned by relationships and religion itself, he was still hoping for that big journalistic break—and the answers to life’s biggest riddles as well. So he set out on a geographic, historical and personal expedition that would lead him around the world in search of those answers, and then some. First, to better understand the man who was born Prince Siddhartha Gautama, he followed the time-honored pilgrimage “in the footsteps of the Buddha” in India. From there, he tracked the historical course of Buddhism: to Sri Lanka, Thailand, China, Tibet, Japan and on to San Francisco and Europe. He found that the Buddha’s teachings have spawned a worldwide movement of “engaged Buddhism,” the application of Buddhist principles to resolve social, environmental, health, political and other contemporary problems. From East to West and back to the East again, this movement has caused a Buddhism Boom. Along the way he met a diverse array of Buddhist practitioners—Thai artists, Indian nuns, Sri Lankan school children, Zen archers in Japan, kung fu monks in China and the world’s first Buddhist comic (only in America). Among dozens of Buddhist scholars and leaders, Garfinkel interviewed His Holiness the Dalai Lama, an experience that left him speechless—almost. As just reward for his efforts, toward the end of his journey Garfinkel fell in love in the south of France at the retreat center of a leader of the engaged movement, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh—a romance that taught him as much about Buddhism as all the masters combined. In this original, entertaining book, Garfinkel separates Buddhist fact from fiction, sharing his humorous insights and keen perceptions about everything from spiritual tourism to Asian traffic jams to the endless road to enlightenment.
Download or read book The Buddhist Vi u written by John Clifford Holt and published by Motilal Banarsidass Publishe. This book was released on 2008 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Holt's groundbreaking study examines the assimilation, transformation, and subordination of the Hindu deity Visnu within the contexts of Sri Lankan history and Sinhala Buddhist religious culture. Holt argues that political agendas and social forces, as much as doctrinal concerns, have shaped the shifting patterns of the veneration of Visnu in Sri Lanka. Holt begins with a comparative look at the assimilation of the Buddha in Hinduism. He then explores the role and rationale of medieval Sinhala kings in assimilating Visnu into Sinhala Buddhism. Offering analyses of texts, many of which have never before been translated into English, Holt considers the development of Visnu in Buddhist literature and the changing practices of deity veneration. Shifting to the present, Holt describes the efforts of contemporary Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka to discourage the veneration of Visnu, suggesting that many are motivated by a reactionary fear that their culture and society will soon be overrun by the influences and practices of Hindus, Muslims, and Christians.
