Download or read book Neither Monk nor Layman written by Richard M. Jaffe and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Buddhism comes in many forms, but in Japan it stands apart from all the rest in one most striking way--the monks get married. In Neither Monk nor Layman, the most comprehensive study of this topic in any language, Richard Jaffe addresses the emergence of an openly married clergy as a momentous change in the history of modern Japanese Buddhism. He demonstrates, in clear and engaging prose, that this shift was not an easy one for Japanese Buddhists. Yet the transformation that began in the early Meiji period (1868-1912)--when monks were ordered by government authorities to adopt common surnames and allowed to marry, to have children, and to eat meat--today extends to all the country's Buddhist denominations. Jaffe traces the gradual acceptance of clerical marriage by Japanese Buddhists from the premodern emergence of the "clerical marriage problem" in the Edo period to its widespread practice by the start of the Second World War. In doing so he considers related issues such as the dissolution of clerical status and the growing domestication of Japanese temple life. This book reveals the deep contradictions between sectarian teachings that continue to idealize renunciation and a clergy whose lives closely resemble those of their parishioners in modern Japanese society. It will attract not only scholars of religion and of Japanese history, but all those interested in the encounter-conflict between regimes of modernization and religious institutions and the fate of celibate religious practices in the twentieth century.
Download or read book Neither Monk Nor Layman written by Richard M. Jaffe and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Buddhism comes in many forms, but in Japan it stands apart from all the rest in one striking way - the monks get married. This study addresses the emergence of an openly married clergy as a momentous change in the history of modern Japanese Buddhism.
Download or read book Seeking Sakyamuni written by Richard M. Jaffe and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-05-20 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though fascinated with the land of their tradition’s birth, virtually no Japanese Buddhists visited the Indian subcontinent before the nineteenth century. In the richly illustrated Seeking Śākyamuni, Richard M. Jaffe reveals the experiences of the first Japanese Buddhists who traveled to South Asia in search of Buddhist knowledge beginning in 1873. Analyzing the impact of these voyages on Japanese conceptions of Buddhism, he argues that South Asia developed into a pivotal nexus for the development of twentieth-century Japanese Buddhism. Jaffe shows that Japan’s growing economic ties to the subcontinent following World War I fostered even more Japanese pilgrimage and study at Buddhism’s foundational sites. Tracking the Japanese travelers who returned home, as well as South Asians who visited Japan, Jaffe describes how the resulting flows of knowledge, personal connections, linguistic expertise, and material artifacts of South and Southeast Asian Buddhism instantiated the growing popular consciousness of Buddhism as a pan-Asian tradition—in the heart of Japan.
Download or read book Facing Mount Kanchenjunga written by Sangharakshita and published by Windhorse Publications. This book was released on 2014-04-29 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1950 Kalimpong was a lively trading town in the intrigue-ridden corner of India that borders Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim and Tibet. Finding a welcome in this town, nestled high in the mountains, were a bewildering array of guests and settlers, including Sangharakshita, a young English monk. In this delightful volume of memoirs, Sangharakshita shares the incidents and insights of his early years in Kalimpong, including a meeting with Dr B.R. Ambedkar and his friendship with Lama Anagarika Govinda.
Download or read book The Princess Nun written by Gina Cogan and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-05-11 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Princess Nun tells the story of Bunchi (1619–1697), daughter of Emperor Go-Mizunoo and founder of Enshōji. Bunchi advocated strict adherence to monastic precepts while devoting herself to the posthumous welfare of her family. As the first full-length biographical study of a premodern Japanese nun, this book incorporates issues of gender and social status into its discussion of Bunchi’s ascetic practice and religious reforms to rewrite the history of Buddhist reform and Tokugawa religion. Gina Cogan’s approach moves beyond the dichotomy of oppression and liberation that dogs the study of non-Western and premodern women to show how Bunchi’s aristocratic status enabled her to carry out reforms despite her gender, while simultaneously acknowledging how that same status contributed to their conservative nature. Cogan’s analysis of how Bunchi used her prestigious position to further her goals places the book in conversation with other works on powerful religious women, like Hildegard of Bingen and Teresa of Avila. Through its illumination of the relationship between the court and the shogunate and its analysis of the practice of courtly Buddhism from a female perspective, this study brings historical depth and fresh theoretical insight into the role of gender and class in early Edo Buddhism.
Download or read book Words and Deeds written by Jörg Gengnagel and published by Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. This book was released on 2005 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Words and Deeds is a collection of articles on rituals in South Asia with a special focus on their texts and context. The volume presupposes that a comprehensive definition of "ritual" does not exist. Instead, the papers in it avoid essentialist definitions, allowing for a possible polythetic definition of the concept to emerge. Papers in this volume include those on Initiation, Pre-Natal Rites, Religious Processions, Royal Consecration, Rituals which mark the commencement of ritual, Rituals of devotion and Vedic sacrifice as well as contributions which address the broader theoretical issues of engaging in the study of ritual texts and ritual practice, both from the etic and the emic perspective. These studies show that any study of the relationship between the text and the context of rituals must also allow for the possibility that different categories of performers can and do subjectively constitute the relationship between their ritual knowledge and ritual practice, between text and context in differing and nuanced ways.
Download or read book Managing Monks written by Jonathan A. Silk and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-15 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The paradigmatic Buddhist is the monk. It is well known that ideally Buddhist monks are expected to meditate and study -- to engage in religious practice. The institutional structure which makes this concentration on spiritual cultivation possible is the monastery. But as a bureaucratic institution, the monastery requires administrators to organize and manage its functions, to prepare quiet spots for meditation, to arrange audiences for sermons, or simply to make sure food, rooms, and bedding are provided. The valuations placed on such organizational roles were, however, a subject of considerable controversy among Indian Buddhist writers, with some considering them significantly less praiseworthy than meditative concentration or teaching and study, while others more highly appreciated their importance. Managing Monks, as the first major study of the administrative offices of Indian Buddhist monasticism and of those who hold them, explores literary sources, inscriptions and other materials in Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, and Chinese in order to explore this tension and paint a picture of the internal workings of the Buddhist monastic institution in India, highlighting the ambivalent and sometimes contradictory attitudes toward administrators revealed in various sources.
Download or read book Religions in Focus written by Graham Harvey and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-08 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Religions in Focus" engages with the religious lives of members of some of the most significant religions today. It presents religions as contemporary ways of life that motivate and inspire people. Because religious people refer to sacred texts, honour the founders of their religions, learn from elders, or mould their lives according to authoritative teachings, "Religions in Focus" explains the relationship between tradition and contemporary practice. It offers an introduction to religions that is rooted in the best scholarship of the Study of Religions and provides a secure foundation for further study.A team of Religious Studies scholars from many countries, all skilled communicators about the contemporary religions with which they are thoroughly familiar, introduce what it means to live as a religious person today. They insist that however old or young these religions may be, what is most interesting is the ways in which people express them today. This is not a history of religions but an insightful introduction to living religions. A guide to further study and a companion website will point to ways of building on knowledge gained in studying this book, and applying skills developed in studying people's religious lives.
Download or read book Pure Land written by Charles B. Jones and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introductory guide to the beliefs and key concepts of Pure Land Buddhism, the most widely practiced form of Buddhism in East Asia. Pure Land is a brief introduction to the history and practices of Pure Land Buddhism, a popular and growing global tradition. Pure Land practices center on Amitābha Buddha, rebirth in his pure buddha-land, and the guaranteed attainment of buddhahood. It constitutes the dominant tradition of most Buddhists in East Asia and is the most common form of practice within immigrant Buddhist communities in America, yet it remains elusive to many general readers of Buddhism. This brief introduction summarizes the core teachings of this tradition and charts its growth throughout the world. Part of the Buddhist Foundations series, Pure Land covers the spiritual tenets behind the tradition before describing how prayer and devotion to Amitābha allow for rebirth in a realm free from suffering and ideal for progress on the path to enlightenment. It then outlines specific Pure Land practices, all the while providing historical context to account for its widespread popularity throughout East Asia. The author also covers contemporary Pure Land traditions, providing a useful touch point for modern readers. Pure Land practitioners and readers interested in Asian-American Buddhist communities now have a concise guide to the ideas, practices, and origins of this widely popular spiritual tradition.
Download or read book Sylvester Syropoulos on Politics and Culture in the Fifteenth Century Mediterranean written by Fotini Kondyli and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-09-17 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Memoirs of Sylvester Syropoulos is a text written by a Βyzantine ecclesiastical official in the 15th century. Syropoulos participated in the Council for the union of the Greek and Latin Churches held in Ferrara and Florence, Italy, in 1438-1439. As a high-ranking official and an eye-witness of the union, he offers a unique perspective on this important political and religious event that would so decisively contribute to the political, military and religious development of Europe at the end of the Middle Ages. Experts in different fields - historians, philologists, art historians and archaeologists - have come together in this volume to explore the actions and motives of the various political and religious groups that participated in the council. With Syropoulos as their starting point, the contributors of this volume reconstruct the living conditions, cross-cultural interaction, artistic and commercial exchange in the 15th-century Mediterranean. At the same time, they discuss the text as an invaluable source for political and diplomatic affairs at that time, as a travel account, an eye-witness narrative and as a literary work. Emphasis is placed on Syropoulos’s Section IV where he describes the journey of the Byzantine delegation from Constantinople to Italy, their stay in Venice and in Ferrara, the diplomatic contacts with the doge and the pope, and finally the beginning of the council’s proceedings. An annotated English translation of the text is included as an appendix to the book. The papers bring out the richness of the information in Syropoulos’s writings about the people involved in the Council of Ferrara-Florence and especially the interaction among different social, religious and political groups throughout that event. His work is unique because it is a rare eye-witness account, deriving from personal experience, rather than an objective historical narrative.
Download or read book Dictionary of World Monasticism written by Steven Olderr and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2020-08-10 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The roots of monasticism may go back as far as 1700 BCE, to ascetic practices in ancient India. Since that time, the monastic world has naturally developed its own extensive and distinct vocabulary. Countless volumes have been written on monasticism yet many do not clearly define obscure or vernacular terms. Some terms may be found in standard dictionaries but without in-depth explanations. This first comprehensive dictionary--not a proselytizing work but a reference with historical and biographical focus--fills the gap, with a worldwide scope covering not only Christianity, but all faiths that have monastic traditions, including but not limited to Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism.
Download or read book Religion and Ecological Sustainability in China written by James Miller and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-04-29 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book sheds light on the social imagination of nature and environment in contemporary China. It demonstrates how the urgent debate on how to create an ecologically sustainable future for the world’s most populous country is shaped by its complex engagement with religious traditions, competing visions of modernity and globalization, and by engagement with minority nationalities who live in areas of outstanding natural beauty on China’s physical and social margins. The book develops a comprehensive understanding of contemporary China that goes beyond the tradition/ modernity dichotomy, and illuminates the diversity of narratives and worldviews that inform contemporary Chinese understandings of and engagements with nature and environment.
Download or read book Himalayan Buddhist Villages Environment Resources Society And Religion Life In Zagskar Ladakh Eds written by John Crook and published by Motilal Banarsidass Publ.. This book was released on 2001-12-31 with total page 1002 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Preface, PART One: Introduction to the Philosophy of Navya-Nyaya, PART Two: Summaries of Works, Notes, Index.
Download or read book Calling in Today s World written by Cahalan & Schuurman and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2016 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of "vocation" or "calling" is a distinctively Christian concern, grounded in the long-held belief that we find our meaning, purpose, and fulfillment in God. But what about religions other than Christianity? What does it mean for someone from another faith tradition to understand calling or vocation? In this book contributors with expertise in Catholic and Protestant Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism, and secular humanism explore the idea of calling from these eight faith perspectives. - from back of book.
Download or read book Hakata written by Andrew Cobbing and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Hakata: The Cultural Worlds of Northern Kyushu, experts in various fields have collaborated to produce an interdisciplinary collection offering diverse insights on a region yet to be fully addressed in English. A historic port situated in a strategically vital region as the closest point of contact with the Asian continent, Hakata has long served as a key hub in the transcultural networks linking Japan with the outside world. This volume explores the rich legacy of these wider interactions, in particular the cosmopolitan, international dimension deeply embedded in Hakata's urban culture. With an identity all its own and quite distinct from other regions in Japan, it is a culture once again increasingly relevant in today's world of borderless communications.
Download or read book Sanathana Dharma The Eternal Quest for Truth written by Sreeramana Aithal and published by Srinivas Publication, Mangalore. This book was released on 2024-03-20 with total page 1450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sanathana Dharma: The Eternal Quest for Truth A systematic Informative book on fundamentals of Sanathana Dharma (Hinduism) compiled as per requirement of the modern Society Chapter 1: Introduction to Sanathana Dharma Chapter 2: The Concept of Atman and Brahman Chapter 3: The Paths of Yoga Chapter 4: The Four Pillars of Sanathana Dharma Chapter 5: The Role of Scriptures Chapter 6: The Concept of Time and Creation Chapter 7: The Guru-Disciple Tradition Chapter 8: The Practice of Meditation and Contemplation Chapter 9: The Concept of Maya and Illusion Chapter 10: The Science of Karma and Reincarnation Chapter 11: The Importance of Ethics and Morality Chapter 12: The Eternal Quest Continues Chapter 13: Duality in Spirituality and Dvita Philosophy to Embrace the Eternal Wisdom Chapter 14: Athman and Quantum Physics for Connecting Science and Spirituality The vibrant structure of this book with 14 Chapters and 41 Sessions focuses on the multifaceted aspects of Sanathana Dharma, offering insights into its fundamental, philosophical, spiritual, and eternal perspectives, and how they can be applied to address the challenges of human beings. This book complements our other open book “Sanathana Dharma: Navigating Modernity with Ancient Wisdom”.
Download or read book Celibacy and Religious Traditions written by Carl Olson and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2008 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For an educated, general readership and for use in college courses, this text introduces the role of celibacy, or a lack of it, in various religious traditions, and the contributors present the rationale for its observance (or not) within the context of each tradition.
