This book treats systematically the ethical thought of the fifth-century CE Theravāda Buddhist thinker Buddhaghosa. It focuses on an important equivalence in Buddhist thought that identifies ...intention (cetanā) as the principal component of action (karma), and how this idea is interpreted in the four main genres of Pāli Buddhist literature: Suttanta, Abhidhamma, Vinaya, and narrative. Attentive to Buddhaghosa’s commentarial guidance in learning how to read each of these genres, it explores canonical and commentarial discussions of intention, agency, and moral psychology. In contrast to many studies that assimilate Buddhist moral thinking to Western theories of ethics, the book attends to distinctively Buddhist ways of systematizing and theorizing its own categories—charting new territory in Buddhist ethics and reading Buddhist commentary.
The funeral casino Klima, Alan
2002., 20090110, 2009, 2002, 2002-01-01
eBook
The Funeral Casino is a heretical ethnography of the global age. Setting his book within Thailand's pro-democracy movement and the street massacres that accompanied it, Alan Klima offers a strikingly ...original interpretation of mass-mediated violence through a study of funeral gambling and Buddhist meditation on death. The fieldwork for the book began in 1992, when a freewheeling market of illegal "massacre-imagery" videos blossomed in Bangkok on the very site where, days earlier, for the third time in two decades, a military-controlled government had killed scores of unarmed pro-democracy protesters. Such killings and their subsequent representation have lent force to Thailand's transition from military control to a "media-financial complex." Probing the ways in which death is marketed, visualized, and remembered through practices both local and global, Klima inverts conventional relationships between ethnography and theory through a compelling narrative that reveals a surprising new direction available to anthropology and critical theory.
American Sutra Williams, Duncan Ryūken
2019, 2019-02-22
eBook
A Los Angeles Times Bestseller "Raises timely and important questions about what religious freedom in America truly means."—Ruth Ozeki"A must-read for anyone interested in the implacable quest for ...civil liberties, social and racial justice, religious freedom, and American belonging."—George TakeiOn December 7, 1941, as the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, the first person detained was the leader of the Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist sect in Hawai'i. Nearly all Japanese Americans were subject to accusations of disloyalty, but Buddhists aroused particular suspicion. From the White House to the local town council, many believed that Buddhism was incompatible with American values. Intelligence agencies targeted the Buddhist community, and Buddhist priests were deemed a threat to national security.In this pathbreaking account, based on personal accounts and extensive research in untapped archives, Duncan Ry?ken Williams reveals how, even as they were stripped of their homes and imprisoned in camps, Japanese American Buddhists launched one of the most inspiring defenses of religious freedom in our nation's history, insisting that they could be both Buddhist and American."A searingly instructive story…from which all Americans might learn."— Smithsonian "Williams' moving account shows how Japanese Americans transformed Buddhism into an American religion, and, through that struggle, changed the United States for the better."—Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of The Sympathizer "Reading this book, one cannot help but think of the current racial and religious tensions that have gripped this nation—and shudder."—Reza Aslan, author of Zealot
This project at the interface of Buddhist-Christian studies, comparative theology, and Christian systematic theology proceeds by way of exploring questions related to the presence and activity of the ...Holy Spirit in a 21st century world of many faiths.
A provocative essay challenging the idea of Buddhist exceptionalism, from one of the world's most widely respected philosophers and writers on Buddhism and science Buddhism has become a uniquely ...favored religion in our modern age. A burgeoning number of books extol the scientifically proven benefits of meditation and mindfulness for everything ranging from business to romance. There are conferences, courses, and celebrities promoting the notion that Buddhism is spirituality for the rational; compatible with cutting-edge science; indeed, "a science of the mind." In this provocative book, Evan Thompson argues that this representation of Buddhism is false. In lucid and entertaining prose, Thompson dives deep into both Western and Buddhist philosophy to explain how the goals of science and religion are fundamentally different. Efforts to seek their unification are wrongheaded and promote mistaken ideas of both. He suggests cosmopolitanism instead, a worldview with deep roots in both Eastern and Western traditions. Smart, sympathetic, and intellectually ambitious, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in Buddhism's place in our world today.
The crowning cultural achievement of medieval India, Tantric Buddhism is known in the West primarily for the sexual practices of its adherents, who strive to transform erotic passion into spiritual ...ecstasy. Historians of religion have long held that the enlightenment thus attempted was for men only, and that women in the movement were at best marginal and subordinated and at worst degraded and exploited. Miranda Shaw argues to the contrary, presenting extensive new evidence of the outspoken and independent female founders of the Tantric movement and their creative role in shaping its distinctive vision of gender relations and sacred sexuality.
Greek Buddha Beckwith, Christopher I
2015, 2015., 20150609, 2015-06-09
eBook
Pyrrho of Elis went with Alexander the Great to Central Asia and India during the Greek invasion and conquest of the Persian Empire in 334-324 BC. There he met with early Buddhist masters.Greek ...Buddhashows how their Early Buddhism shaped the philosophy of Pyrrho, the famous founder of Pyrrhonian scepticism in ancient Greece.
Christopher I. Beckwith traces the origins of a major tradition in Western philosophy to Gandhara, a country in Central Asia and northwestern India. He systematically examines the teachings and practices of Pyrrho and of Early Buddhism, including those preserved in testimonies by and about Pyrrho, in the report on Indian philosophy two decades later by the Seleucid ambassador Megasthenes, in the first-person edicts by the Indian king Devanampriya Priyadarsi referring to a popular variety of the Dharma in the early third century BC, and in Taoist echoes of Gautama's Dharma in Warring States China. Beckwith demonstrates how the teachings of Pyrrho agree closely with those of the Buddha Sakyamuni, "the Scythian Sage." In the process, he identifies eight distinct philosophical schools in ancient northwestern India and Central Asia, including Early Zoroastrianism, Early Brahmanism, and several forms of Early Buddhism. He then shows the influence that Pyrrho's brand of scepticism had on the evolution of Western thought, first in Antiquity, and later, during the Enlightenment, on the great philosopher and self-proclaimed Pyrrhonian, David Hume.
Greek Buddhademonstrates that through Pyrrho, Early Buddhist thought had a major impact on Western philosophy.
Spinoza’s philosophy and Buddhism have often been compared based upon their tendencies towards seeing the world as a single order and moving beyond our passions and desires. But the comparison of ...these philosophies also creates interesting problems. One problem is the way we relate to this order itself. In Spinoza we achieve enlightenment when we recognize that we are a part of a single substance which has its own order and necessity. This leads us to transcend the bondage of our passions through reason. And when we reach the highest level of the intellectual love of God, we show kindness on all beings still trapped in this bondage. Buddhist enlightenment is the recognition of the dependent origination of all things. It is a larger order of causality which we are a part. We suffer within this order through our attachments so our goal is to eliminate our attachments. When we see the world in this way, we do not judge through the categories of good and evil and we show compassion to all living creatures still in the state of ignorance. So there are obvious similarities. But a major difference in these two approaches is differing ways they regard the order itself. Spinoza focuses on the love of this order – intellectual love of God – which leads him affirm non-judgment and kindness. And Buddhism focuses on the non-attachment to this order which leads to compassion. Comparing and contrasting these two philosophies is valuable because it allows a deeper understanding of the Buddhist role of compassion as a special kind of (non-passive) passion which breaks the suffering of others. It also clarifies elements of Spinoza’s philosophy which are not easily understood, for instance, his claim that pity as a useless emotion.
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The groundbreaking account of U.S. clandestine efforts to use Southeast Asian Buddhism to advance Washington's anticommunist goals during the Cold WarHow did the U.S. government make use of a ..."Buddhist policy" in Southeast Asia during the Cold War despite the American principle that the state should not meddle with religion? To answer this question, Eugene Ford delved deep into an unprecedented range of U.S. and Thai sources and conducted numerous oral history interviews with key informants. Ford uncovers a riveting story filled with U.S. national security officials, diplomats, and scholars seeking to understand and build relationships within the Buddhist monasteries of Southeast Asia.This fascinating narrative provides a new look at how the Buddhist leaderships of Thailand and its neighbors became enmeshed in Cold War politics and in the U.S. government's clandestine efforts to use a predominant religion of Southeast Asia as an instrument of national stability to counter communist revolution.
Simas Carbine, Jason A; Davis, Erik W
01/2022
eBook
Human-fashioned boundaries transform spaces by introducing
dualisms, bifurcations, creative symbioses, contradictions, and
notions of inclusion and exclusion. The Buddhist boundaries
considered in ...this book, sīmās-a term found in South and Southeast
Asian languages and later translated into East Asian languages-come
in various shapes and sizes and can be established on land or in
bodies of water. Sometimes, the word sīmā refers not only to a
ceremonial boundary, but the space enclosed by the boundary, or
even the markers (when they are used) that denote the boundary.
Sīmās were established early on as places where core legal acts
(kamma), including ordination, of the monastic community (sangha)
took place according to their disciplinary codes. Sīmās continue to
be deployed in the creation of monastic lineages and to function in
diverse ways for monastics and non-monastics alike. As foundations
of Buddhist religion, sīmās are used to sustain, revitalize, or
reform Buddhist practices, notions of identity, and
conceptualizations of time and history. In the last few decades,
scholarly awareness of and expertise on sīmās has developed to a
point where a volume like this one, which examines sīmās across
numerous cultural contexts and scholarly fields of inquiry, is both
possible and needed. Sīmā traditions expressed in the Theravāda
cultures of Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Bangladesh, and Sri
Lanka constitute the dominant focus of the work; a chapter on East
Asia raises questions of historical transmission beyond these
areas. Throughout contributors engage texts; history; archaeology;
politics; art; ecology; economics; epigraphy; legal categories;
mythic narratives; understandings of the cosmos; and
conceptualizations of compassion, authority, and violence.
Examining sīmās through multiple perspectives allows us to look at
them in their contextual specificity, in a way that allows for
discernment of variation as well as consistency. Sīmā spaces can be
both simple and extremely intricate, and this book helps show why
and how that is the case.
