Download or read book Religious Epistemology through Schillebeeckx and Tibetan Buddhism written by Jason M. VonWachenfeldt and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-02-11 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study investigates how a comparison between the Catholic theologian Edward Schillebeeckx's controversial reading of Thomist philosophy and the Tibetan Buddhist Gendun Chopel's challenge to the standard Geluk teaching of Tsongkhapa's Madhyamaka philosophy might assist in rethinking conceptions of religious knowledge. Utilizing a wide variety of methodical approaches to establish an imaginary dialogue between these two thinkers, this comparison remains embodied in the thought and praxis of actual individuals, and yet still firmly embedded within the conversations and trajectories of their broader religious traditions.

Download or read book Religious Epistemology through Schillebeeckx and Tibetan Buddhism written by Jason M. VonWachenfeldt and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-02-11 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study investigates how a comparison between the Catholic theologian Edward Schillebeeckx's controversial reading of Thomist philosophy and the Tibetan Buddhist Gendun Chopel's challenge to the standard Geluk teaching of Tsongkhapa's Madhyamaka philosophy might assist in rethinking conceptions of religious knowledge. Utilizing a wide variety of methodical approaches to establish an imaginary dialogue between these two thinkers, this comparison remains embodied in the thought and praxis of actual individuals, and yet still firmly embedded within the conversations and trajectories of their broader religious traditions.

Download or read book Remaking Humanity written by Adam Beyt and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-08-22 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing upon Edward Schillebeeckx's theology and Judith Butler's philosophy, Adam Beyt uses the framework of nonviolent hope to construct a Catholic political theology responding to dehumanizing violence. Dehumanizing violence names words, institutions, or acts violating the inherent dignity of being made in the image and likeness of God. Theology can participate in dehumanizing violence by claiming an uninterrogated universality that marginalizes bodies due to their perceived differences such as gender, race, sexuality, or ability. The book's constructive project integrates Schillebeeckx's and Butler's thought with queer theory and phenomenology to model embodiment as an “enfleshing dynamism” between bodies and signification. The text then posits Catholic discipleship as incarnating hope by defending the humanum, the new humanity announced through God's Reign. Combining reflections from Schillebeeckx and Butler, this hope centers discipleship as nonviolent world building. Concluding with a sustained reflection with the writings of Franz Fanon and Walter Benjamin, the final chapter sketches a Catholic solidaristic response to contemporary struggles against the necropolitics of colonizing and state violence through assemblies of hope.

Download or read book Buddhism and Iconoclasm in East Asia written by Fabio Rambelli and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2012-11-08 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of Buddhism and iconoclasm in East Asia as part of a general theory of religious destruction.

Download or read book Buddhism written by Peter Harvey and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2001-07-05 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays examines ten core themes from a comparative perspective and thus provides an integrated introduction to the social and spiritual values at the centre of Buddhist thought. Following an introductory chapter, the themes covered are moral decision making, worship, myth and history, the role of women, attitudes to nature, sacred writings, beliefs about human nature, rites of passage, sacred place and the depiction of the divine. Each chapter concludes with a list of recommended further reading.

Download or read book A Critique of Western Buddhism written by Glenn Wallis and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-09-06 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched. What are we to make of Western Buddhism? Glenn Wallis argues that in aligning their tradition with the contemporary wellness industry, Western Buddhists evade the consequences of Buddhist thought. This book shows that with concepts such as vanishing, nihility, extinction, contingency, and no-self, Buddhism, like all potent systems of thought, articulates a notion of the “real.” Raw, unflinching acceptance of this real is held by Buddhism to be at the very core of human “awakening.” Yet these preeminent human truths are universally shored up against in contemporary Buddhist practice, contravening the very heart of Buddhism. The author's critique of Western Buddhism is threefold. It is immanent, in emerging out of Buddhist thought but taking it beyond what it itself publicly concedes; negative, in employing the “democratizing” deconstructive methods of François Laruelle's non-philosophy; and re-descriptive, in applying Laruelle's concept of philofiction. Through applying resources of Continental philosophy to Western Buddhism, A Critique of Western Buddhism suggests a possible practice for our time, an "anthropotechnic", or religion transposed from its seductive, but misguiding, idealist haven.

Download or read book Methods in Buddhist Studies written by Scott A. Mitchell and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-06-13 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Both a demonstration of and critical self-reflection on method, this book explores how methodologies shape our understanding of the diversity of Buddhist traditions in the past and the present. International contributors from the West and Asia explore case studies and reflect on methods in the study of Buddhism, united in their debt to Richard K. Payne, the influential Buddhist studies scholar. Methods in Buddhist Studies features new translations of Buddhist works as well as ethnographic studies on contemporary Buddhism in the United States and China. Topics discussed include Buddhist practices in relation to food, material culture, and imperial rituals; the development of modern Buddhist universities; the construction of the canon from the perspective of history, textual analysis, and ritual studies; and the ethical obligations of scholars toward the subject of Buddhism itself. Chapters are drawn from Payne's students and his colleagues, demonstrating the breadth of his intellectual interests. Payne's scholarship has left a remarkable impact on the field, making this volume essential reading for students and scholars of contemporary Buddhism and Buddhist studies.

Download or read book Knowledge and Liberation written by Anne Carolyn Klein and published by Shambhala. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Buddhist philosophy is concerned with defining and overcoming the limitations and errors of perception. To do this is essential to Buddhism's purpose of establishing a method for attaining liberation. Conceptual thought in this view can lead to a liberating understanding, a transformative religious experience. The author discusses the workings of both direct and conceptual cognition, drawing on a variety of Tibetan and Indian texts. The Gelukba interpretation of Dignaga and Dharmakirti is greatly at variance with virtually all other scholarship concerning these seminal Buddhist logicians.

Download or read book The Postmodern Sacred written by Emily McAvan and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2012-10-09 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From The Matrix and Harry Potter to Stargate SG:1 and The X-Files, recent science fiction and fantasy offerings both reflect and produce a sense of the religious. This work examines this pop-culture spirituality, or "postmodern sacred," showing how consumers use the symbols contained in explicitly "unreal" texts to gain a secondhand experience of transcendence and belief. Topics include how media technologies like CGI have blurred the lines between real and unreal, the polytheisms of Buffy and Xena, the New Age Gnosticism of The DaVinci Code, the Islamic "Other" and science fiction's response to 9/11, and the Christian Right and popular culture. Today's pervasive, saturated media culture, this work shows, has utterly collapsed the sacred/profane binary, so that popular culture is not only powerfully shaped by the discourses of religion, but also shapes how the religious appears and is experienced in the contemporary world.

Download or read book Sacred Objects in Secular Spaces written by Bruce M. Sullivan and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-10-22 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We have long recognized that many objects in museums were originally on display in temples, shrines, or monasteries, and were religiously significant to the communities that created and used them. How, though, are such objects to be understood, described, exhibited, and handled now that they are in museums? Are they still sacred objects, or formerly sacred objects that are now art objects, or are they simultaneously objects of religious and artistic significance, depending on who is viewing the object? These objects not only raise questions about their own identities, but also about the ways we understand the religious traditions in which these objects were created and which they represent in museums today. Bringing together religious studies scholars and museum curators, Sacred Objects in Secular Spaces is the first volume to focus on Asian religions in relation to these questions. The contributors analyze an array of issues related to the exhibition in museums of objects of religious significance from Hindu, Buddhist, and Sikh traditions. The “lives” of objects are considered, along with the categories of “sacred” and “profane”, “religious” and “secular”. As interest in material manifestations of religious ideas and practices continues to grow, Sacred Objects in Secular Spaces is a much-needed contribution to religious and Asian studies, anthropology of religion and museums studies.

Download or read book Taixu s On the Establishment of the Pure Land in the Human Realm written by Charles B. Jones and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-01-14 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Charles B. Jones provides the first English language translation of one of the most important texts of modern Chinese Buddhism: monk-reformer Taixu's 'On the Establishment of the Pure Land in the Human Realm'. The essay, written in 1926 as part of Taixu's attempt to revive Chinese Buddhism with a Humanistic Buddhist approach, incorporates Western thought into a reconstruction of the idea of the 'Pure Land in the human realm'. In his commentary on the text, Jones argues that it has been widely misunderstood and mischaracterized. Jones demonstrates that, besides laying out the very modern idea of the Pure Land in the human realm as a slogan for Buddhist engagement with the problems of the modern world, the essay does not, as commonly assumed, discourage practices leading to rebirth in the Pure Land. He also shows that the 'human realm' can mean anywhere in Buddhist cosmology that humans reside, and that the essay's attempts to reconcile Buddhism with modern science is tentative and incomplete. Jones reveals that the essay promotes visions of both paradises and utopias, and that Taixu supports his ideas with many lengthy sutra quotations. The book concludes with an examination of how Taixu's followers developed the idea of the Pure Land in the human realm into a more coherent and modernized ideal.

Download or read book Abrahamic Faiths Ethnicity and Ethnic Conflicts written by Paul Peachey and published by CRVP. This book was released on 1997 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This study of religions is concerned with the tension which can be generated from these sources and the resources which religions bring to their resolution. Especially it looks to the common Abrahamic roots of the three "religions of the book": Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Throughout it looks for the complex dialects of unity in diversity, and diversity in unity."

Download or read book The Culture of Giving in Myanmar written by Hiroko Kawanami and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-06-11 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can people living in one of the poorest countries in the world be among the most charitable? In this book, Hiroko Kawanami examines the culture of giving in Myanmar, and explores the pivotal role that Buddhist monastic members occupy in creating a platform for civil society. Despite having at one time been listed as one of the poorest countries in the world in GNP terms, Myanmar has topped a global generosity list for the past four years with more than 90 percent of the population engaged in 'giving' activities. This book explores the close relationship that Buddhists share with the monastic community in Myanmar, extending observations of this relationship into an understanding of wider Buddhist cultures. It then examines how deeply the reciprocal transactions of giving and receiving in society – or interdependent living – are implicated in the Buddhist faith. The Culture of Giving in Myanmar fills a gap in research on Buddhist offerings in Myanmar, and is an important contribution to the growing field of Myanmar studies and anthropology of Buddhism.

Download or read book Monks Money and Morality written by Christoph Brumann and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-04-22 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vibrantly engaging contemporary Buddhist lives, this book focuses on the material and financial relations of contemporary monks, temples, and laypeople. It shows that rather than being peripheral, economic exchanges are key to religious debate in Buddhist societies. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in countries ranging from India to Japan, including all three major Buddhist traditions, the book addresses the flows of goods and services between clergy and laity, the management of resources, the treatment of money, and the role of the state in temple economies. Along with documenting ritual and economic practices, these accounts deal with the moral challenges that Buddhist adherents are facing today, thereby bringing lived experience to the study of an often-romanticized religion.

Download or read book Women Religion and the Gift written by Morny Joy and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-10-19 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book introduces the special dynamics of women and their close relationships with the gift in both past and contemporary religious settings. Written from a cross-cultural perspective, it challenges depictions of women’s roles in religion where they have been relegated to compliance with specifically designated gendered attributes. The different chapters contest the resultant stereotypes that deny women agency. Each chapter describes women as engaged in an aspect of religion, from that of ritual specialists, to benefactors and patrons, or even innovators. The volume examines topics such as sainthood and sacrifice so as to refine these ideas in constructive ways that do not devalue women. It also examines the meaning of the term “gift” today, embracing the term in both figurative and literal ways. Such a collection of diverse women’s writings and activities provides a significant contribution to their quest for recognition, and also suggests ways this can be understood and realized today.

Download or read book Yasodhara and the Buddha written by Vanessa R. Sasson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-12-10 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By combining the spirit of fiction with the fabulism of Indian mythology and in-depth academic research, Vanessa R. Sasson shares the evocative story of the Buddha from the perspective of a forgotten woman: Yasodhara, the Buddha's wife. Although often marginalized, Yasodhara's narrative here comes to life. Written with a strong feminist voice, we encounter Yasodhara as a fiercely independent, passionate and resilient individual. We witness her joys and sorrows, her expectations and frustrations, her fairy-tale wedding, and her overwhelming devastation at the departure of her beloved. It is through her eyes that we witness Siddhattha's slow transformation, from a sheltered prince to a deeply sensitive young man. On the way, we see how the gods watch over the future Buddha from the clouds, how the king and his ministers try to keep the suffering of the world from him and how he eventually renounces the throne, his wife and newly-born son to seek enlightenment. Along with a foreword from Wendy Doniger, the book includes a scholarly introduction to Yasodhara's narrative and offers extensive notes along with study questions, to help readers navigate the traditional literature in a new way, making this an essential book for anyone wanting to learn about Buddhist narratives.

Download or read book Creating the Culture of Peace written by Anwarul K. Chowdhury and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-07-23 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The culture of peace and non-violence is essential to human existence, development and progress. In 1999, the United Nations General Assembly adopted by consensus the norm-setting, forward-looking “Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace”. Governments, institutions, NGOs, other civil society entities and, in particular, individuals – all are encouraged therein to contribute to the global movement for the culture of peace. Related to this vision, this rich and varied dialogue discusses how the culture of peace can be achieved in the world. Based on the extensive personal and professional experiences of two high-profile thinkers and activists, they analyse the challenges unfolding at local, national and global levels and how these relate to humanity's quest for peace, human security and happiness. Although coming from very different positions – one a Buddhist philosopher, educator and leader; the other a UN diplomat renowned for his international work in peace, development and human rights – these interlocutors are united in their search for justice and better quality of life for all and their conviction that women and young people are the most effective means to achieving positive change in the world. The dialogue provides ideas on the key challenges that face our planet: poverty and deprivation, war and violence, nuclear weapons and small arms, climate change and environmental degradation, weak governance and financial crises, marginalization of women and alienation of youth and the relentless drive for materialism. They also invite us to consider how the culture of peace can be practically achieved through an individual, collective and institutional transformation. Recognizing that global citizenship, multilateralism, women's equality and value-creating education are central and inter-linked themes, this dialogue also underscores the inherent strength of spirituality, compassion, empathy, forgiveness, respect for diversity and empowerment that comes from the trials and tribulations of life.