Discipline and debate Lempert, Michael
2012., 20120331, 2012, c2012., 2012-04-30, 20120101
eBook
The Dalai Lama has represented Buddhism as a religion of non-violence, compassion, and world peace, but this does not reflect how monks learn their vocation. This book shows how monasteries use harsh ...methods to make monks of men, and how this tradition is changing as modernist reformers—like the Dalai Lama—adopt liberal and democratic ideals, such as natural rights and individual autonomy. In the first in-depth account of disciplinary practices at a Tibetan monastery in India, Michael Lempert looks closely at everyday education rites—from debate to reprimand and corporal punishment. His analysis explores how the idioms of violence inscribed in these socialization rites help produce educated, moral persons but in ways that trouble Tibetans who aspire to modernity. Bringing the study of language and social interaction to our understanding of Buddhism for the first time, Lempert shows and why liberal ideals are being acted out by monks in India, offering a provocative alternative view of liberalism as a globalizing discourse.
Action Dharma Queen, Christopher
2003, 20130111, 2013-01-11, 2003-06-05, 20030101
eBook
Action Dharma charts the emergence of a new chapter in an ancient faith - the rise of social service and political activism in Buddhist Asia and the West. Fourteen new essays treat the historical ...origins, global range, teachings and practices, and leaders and organizations that make up the latest turning of the Dharma. Environmentalism and peace walks through the minefields of Southeast Asia, the future of the 'untouchables' of Japan, and outreach to minorities and inmates of the criminal justice system in the West are some of the challenging topics considered.
Christopher Queen is Dean of students for continuing education and Lecturer on the study of religion in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University. He is editor and contributor to Engaged Buddhism: Buddhist Liberation Movements in Asia (With Sallie B, King), American Buddhism: Methods and Findings in recent Scholarship (with Duncan Ryuken Williams) and Engaged Buddhism in the West. Charles Prebish is Professor of Religious Studies at the Pennsylvania State Univesrity and founding co-editor of the online J ournal of Buddhist Ethics . He is author and editor of eleven books including Buddhist Monastic Discipline , American Buddhism , Historical Dictionary of Buddhism , A Survey of Vinaya Literature , T he Faces of Buddhism in America and Luminous Passage: The Practice and Study of Buddhism in America . Damien Keown is Senior Lecturer in Indian Religion at Goldmsiths College, University of London,and founding co-editor of the online Journal of Buddhist Ethics. His publications include The Nature of Buddhist Ethics , Buddhism and Bioethics and Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction .
Part 1. Historical Roots Part 2. Asian Developments Part 3. Western Frontiers Part 4. Three Critiques
Philosophical liberalism is the dominant view in the world today. Even those who reject liberalism philosophically, subscribe to its view of freedom, which is a negative view, common to liberalism, ...libertarianism, and anarchism. The alternative is recognition of nature, thoroughly, applied fully to human beings. The Buddha set it out as a philosophy, and he lived it. It was a practice. It brings death back into life. The common view is that death is the opposite of life. Yet death is part of life, from the beginning. We see this in many great writers, Dostoevsky, for example. His characters find human communion in suffering, despite their differences. Contradictions are inherent in life, but we find our way, not a single way. It brings realism back, which is truth. It has been present in human societies throughout history. It has been banished because of a false view of truth, connected to a false view of freedom. It could be recognized as philosophy. The Buddha taught people simply. There was no dogma. He did not teach them to follow him but to be masters of their own salvation. Unless this view is recognized as Philosophy, as it should be, including truth, it will again become religion, rather than a way of life, an art of living.
Human experience is not confined to waking life. Do experiences in
dreams matter? Humans are not the only living beings who have
experiences. Does nonhuman experience matter? The Buddhist
philosopher ...Vasubandhu, writing during the late fourth and early
fifth centuries C.E., argues in his work The Twenty Verses
that these alternative contexts ought to inform our understanding
of mind and world. Vasubandhu invites readers to explore
experiences in dreams and to inhabit the experiences of nonhuman
beings-animals, hungry ghosts, and beings in hell. Other
Lives offers a deep engagement with Vasubandhu's account of
mind in a global philosophical perspective. Sonam Kachru takes up
Vasubandhu's challenge to think with perspective-diversifying
contexts, showing how his novel theory draws together action and
perception, minds and worlds. Kachru pieces together the conceptual
system in which Vasubandhu thought to show the deep originality of
the argument. He reconstructs Vasubandhu's ecological concept of
mind, in which mindedness is meaningful only in a nexus with life
and world, to explore its ongoing philosophical significance.
Engaging with a vast range of classical, modern, and contemporary
Asian and Western thought, Other Lives is both a
groundbreaking work in Buddhist studies and a model of truly global
philosophy. The book also includes an accessible new translation of
The Twenty Verses , providing a fresh introduction to one
of the most influential works of Buddhist thought.
A seasoned Zen practitioner and neurologist looks more deeply at mindfulness, connecting it to our subconscious and to memory and creativity.
This is a book for readers who want to probe more deeply ...into mindfulness. It goes beyond the casual, once-in-awhile meditation in popular culture, grounding mindfulness in daily practice, Zen teachings, and recent research in neuroscience. In Living Zen Remindfully, James Austin, author of the groundbreaking Zen and the Brain, describes authentic Zen training—the commitment to a process of regular, ongoing daily life practice. This training process enables us to unlearn unfruitful habits, develop more wholesome ones, and lead a more genuinely creative life.
Austin shows that mindfulness can mean more than our being conscious of the immediate “now.” It can extend into the subconscious, where most of our brain's activities take place, invisibly. Austin suggests ways that long-term meditative training helps cultivate the hidden, affirmative resource of our unconscious memory. Remindfulness, as Austin terms it, can help us to adapt more effectively and to live more authentic lives.
Austin discusses different types of meditation, meditation and problem-solving, and the meaning of enlightenment. He addresses egocentrism (self-centeredness) and allocentrism (other-centeredness), and the blending of focal and global attention. He explains the remarkable processes that encode, store, and retrieve our memories, focusing on the covert, helpful remindful processes incubating at subconscious levels. And he considers the illuminating confluence of Zen, clinical neurology, and neuroscience. Finally, he describes an everyday life of “living Zen,” drawing on the poetry of Basho, the seventeenth-century haiku master.
This beautifully written work sheds new light on the origins and nature of Mahayana Buddhism with close readings of four well-known texts-the Lotus Sutra, Diamond Sutra, Tathagatagarbha Sutra, and ...Vimalakirtinirdesa.Treating these sutras as literary works rather than as straightforward philosophic or doctrinal treatises, Alan Cole argues that these writings were carefully sculpted to undermine traditional monastic Buddhism and to gain legitimacy and authority for Mahayana Buddhism as it was veering away from Buddhism's older oral and institutional forms. His sophisticated and sustained analysis of the narrative structures and seductive literary strategies used in these sutras suggests that they were specifically written to encourage devotion to the written word instead of other forms of authority, be they human, institutional, or iconic.
Chinese and Tibetan Esoteric Buddhism presents cutting-edge research and unfolds the sweeping impact of esoteric Buddhism on Tibetan and Chinese cultures, and the movement's role in forging distinct ...political, ethnical, and religious identities across Asia at large.
This research article deals with 1) logical definition 2) definitions of the Sikkhãpadavibhaṁga (Definition on the Training Rules) (SVBH) and the Pãdabhãjanĩya (Classification of Words) (PBH) of the ...four Pãrãjikas of the bhikkhu’s discipline and 3) a synthesis of SVBH and PBH with the definition principle so as to evaluate them with the Theravãda Buddhist philosophical outlook. There are two categories of definition: real definition and nominal definition. The former explains the essential meaning of words while the latter explains the verbal meaning. A good definition must be equivalent in meaning between definiendum, the term to be defined, and definiens, the defining term. For instance, an offence involving expulsion from a Buddhist monkhood is called Pãrãjikas (Defeat). There are four Pãrãjikas out of 237 Sikkhãpada (training rules) formulated by the Buddha for training behavior of bhikkhus. The four Pãrãjikas consist of six segments embodied as the training rules, one of which is the SVBH & PBH. The definition of words in the four Pãrãjikas is related to the SVBH and the classification used to define them more is related to the PBH. There are 379 definitions in total used in SVBH & PBH: 0.5% are real definition and 99.5% are nominal definition. It could be asserted that definitions in the SVBH & PBH are all nominal because they state something natural, though their 0.5% might be understood as real definition. This is compatible with the Theravãda Buddhist philosophy that rejects anything ‘supernatural’ in metaphysics, epistemology and ethics.
