This 2004 book is about the ascetic self in the scriptural religions of Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism. The author claims that asceticism can be understood as the internalisation of tradition, ...the shaping of the narrative of a life in accordance with the narrative of tradition that might be seen as the performance of the memory of tradition. Such a performance contains an ambiguity or distance between the general intention to eradicate the will, or in some sense to erase the self, and the affirmation of will in ascetic performance such as weakening the body through fasting. Asceticism must therefore be seen in the context of ritual. The book also offers a paradigm for comparative religion more generally, one that avoids the inadequate choices of either examining religions through overarching categories on the one hand and the abandoning of any comparative endeavour that focuses purely on area-specific study on the other.
Japanese Religion Ellwood, Robert; Pilgrim, Richard
1985, 20160913, 1984, 2016-09-19
eBook
This book provides an overview of religion in Japan, from ancient times to the present. It also emphasizes the cultural and attitudinal manifestations of religion in Japan, withough neglecting dates ...and places.
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
For centuries, Buddhist teachers and laypeople have used stories, symbols, cultural metaphors, and anecdotes to teach and express their religious views. In this introductory textbook, Carl Olson ...draws on these narrative traditions to detail the development of Buddhism from the life of the historical Buddha to the present. By organizing the text according to the structure of Buddhist thought and teaching, Olson avoids imposing a Western perspective that traditional texts commonly bring to the subject.The book offers a comprehensive introduction to the main branches of the Buddhist tradition in both the Mahayana and Theravada schools, including the Madhyamika school, the Yogacara school, Pure Land devotionalism, Tibetan Tantric Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, and village folk Buddhist traditions. Chapters explore the life and teachings of the Buddha in historical context, the early development and institutionalization of Buddhism, its geographic spread across Asia and eventually to the United States, philosophy and ethics, the relationship between monks and laity, political and ethical implications, the role of women in the Buddhist tradition, and contemporary reinterpretations of Buddhism.Drawn from decades of classroom experience, this creative and ambitious text combines expert scholarship and engaging stories that offer a much-needed perspective to the existing literature on the topic.
In this book Paul O. Ingram adds his voice to a long list of writers seeking to relate Christian tradition to the hard realities of this post-Christian age of religious and secular pluralism. As a ...Lutheran, Ingram thinks grace flows over this universe like a waterfall. So he brings Christian mystical theology into a discussion of the meaning of grace. Alfred North Whitehead's philosophical vision provides a language that serves as a hermeneutical bridge by which historians of religions can interpret the teachings and practices of religious Ways other than their own without falsification, and by which theologians can appropriate history-of-religions research as a means of helping Christians advance in their own faith journeys. The purpose of the journey of faith is what Whitehead called "creative transformation." The contemporary theological tradition that has most systematically and coherently followed Whitehead's lead in its reflection on non-Christian Ways is process theology, which is perhaps the only liberal or progressive theological movement now active in the twenty-first century.
Flowing traces Sanford, James H; Lafleur, William R; Nagatomi, Masatosht
2014., 2014, 1992, 2014-07-14, Letnik:
137
eBook
According to the contributors to this volume, the relationship of Buddhism and the arts in Japan is less the rendering of Buddhist philosophical ideas through artistic imagery than it is the ...development of concepts and expressions in a virtually inseparable unity. By challenging those who consider religion to be the primary phenomenon and art the secondary arena for the apprehension of religious meanings, these essays reveal the collapse of other dichotomies as well. Touching on works produced at every social level, they explore a fascinating set of connections within Japanese culture and move to re-envision such usual distinctions as religion and art, sacred and secular, Buddhism and Shinto, theory and substance, elite and popular, and even audience and artist. The essays range from visual and literary hagiographies to No drama, to Sermon-Ballads, to a painting of the Nirvana of Vegetables. The contributors to the volume are James H. Foard, Elizabeth ten Grotenhuis, Frank Hoff, Laura S. Kaufman, William R. LaFleur, Susan Matisoff, Barbara Ruch, Yoshiaki Shimizu, and Royall Tyler.Originally published in 1992.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
The book offers a conception of philosophy as a form of self-enquiry which begins not in reflection, but in silence and meditation, conceived as conditions for the emergence and cessation of ...contending states of mind which influence perception and action. The philosopher thus becomes a kind of cartographer of a shifting interior landscape. This underlying perspective explains the personal nature of the writing and its mixing of genres. The book draws on both the Greek and Buddhist traditions, recognising that it is time for Western thinkers to acknowledge and respond to an intercultural canon. It aims to integrate ethics and a non-theistic philosophy of religion through the medium of aesthetics, mapping Buddhist 'mindfulness' and the Greek virtues and vices of temperance and licentiousness, continence and incontinence, onto an account of the development of moral sentiments and their relation to practical judgement in the context of oppressive political and social realities.
This innovative volume brings together the views of leading scholars on a range of controversial subjects including human rights, animal rights, ecology, abortion, euthanasia, and contemporary ...business practice.
