A Buddha Land In This World

Author : Lajos Brons
Publisher : punctum books
Page : 491 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2022-04-13
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781685710347

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A Buddha Land in This World by Lajos Brons Pdf

In the early twentieth century, Uchiyama Gudō, Seno'o Girō, Lin Qiuwu, and others advocated a Buddhism that was radical in two respects. Firstly, they adopted a more or less naturalist stance with respect to Buddhist doctrine and related matters, rejecting karma or other supernatural beliefs. And secondly, they held political and economic views that were radically anti-hegemonic, anti-capitalist, and revolutionary. Taking the idea of such a "radical Buddhism" seriously, A Buddha Land in This World: Philosophy, Utopia, and Radical Buddhism asks whether it is possible to develop a philosophy that is simultaneously naturalist, anti-capitalist, Buddhist, and consistent. Rather than a study of radical Buddhism, then, this book is an attempt to radicalize it. The foundations of this "radicalized radical Buddhism" are provided by a realist interpretation of Yogācāra, elucidated and elaborated with some help from thinkers in the broader Tiantai/Tendai tradition and American philosophers Donald Davidson and W.V.O. Quine. A key implication of this foundation is that only this world and only this life are real, from which it follows that if Buddhism aims to alleviate suffering, it has to do so in this world and in this life. Twentieth-century radical Buddhists (as well as some engaged Buddhists) came to a similar conclusion, often expressed in their aim to realize "a Buddha land in this world." Building on this foundation, but also on Mahāyāna moral philosophy, this book argues for an ethics and social philosophy based on a definition of evil as that what is or should be expected to cause death or suffering. On that ground, capitalism should be rejected indeed, but utopianism must be treated with caution as well, which raises questions about what it means - from a radicalized radical Buddhist perspective - to aim for a Buddha land in this world. Lajos Brons is a Dutch philosopher and social scientist living in Japan. After receiving a PhD from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands for a dissertation on an aspect of the history and philosophy of the social sciences, he gradually moved further and further into philosophical territory. Currently, Lajos is teaching logic, ethics, and philosophy at a university in Tokyo. His research interests are divided over two broad areas in philosophy: one is in the overlap of (meta-)ethics and social/political philosophy; the other is in the intersection of philosophy of language, metaphysics, and epistemology. Research in the former focuses on the relations between death, suffering, and compassion. Research in the latter concerns the relations between language, thought, and reality, and is heavily influenced by the philosophies of Donald Davidson and W.V.O. Quine, and by Buddhist philosophy. More information about publications and research interests, as well as Lajos's blog can be found at www.lajosbrons.net

Author : Melissa Anne-Marie Curley
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2017-02-28
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780824857783

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Pure Land, Real World by Melissa Anne-Marie Curley Pdf

For close to a thousand years Amida’s Pure Land, a paradise of perfect ease and equality, was the most powerful image of shared happiness circulating in the Japanese imagination. In the late nineteenth century, some Buddhist thinkers sought to reinterpret the Pure Land in ways that would allow it speak to modern Japan. Their efforts succeeded in ways they could not have predicted. During the war years, economist Kawakami Hajime, philosopher Miki Kiyoshi, and historian Ienaga Saburō—left-leaning thinkers with no special training in doctrinal studies and no strong connection to any Buddhist institution—seized upon modernized images of Shinran in exile and a transcendent Western Paradise to resist the demands of a state that was bearing down on its citizens with increasing force. Pure Land, Real World treats the religious thought of these three major figures in English for the first time. Kawakami turned to religion after being imprisoned for his involvement with the Japanese Communist Party, borrowing the Shinshū image of the two truths to assert that Buddhist law and Marxist social science should reinforce each other, like the two wings of a bird. Miki, a member of the Kyoto School who went from prison to the crown prince’s think tank and back again, identified Shinran’s religion as belonging to the proletariat: For him, following Shinran and working toward building a buddha land on earth were akin to realizing social revolution. And Ienaga’s understanding of the Pure Land—as the crystallization of a logic of negation that undermined every real power structure—fueled his battle against the state censorship system, just as he believed it had enabled Shinran to confront the world’s suffering head on. Such readings of the Pure Land tradition are idiosyncratic—perhaps even heretical—but they hum with the same vibrancy that characterized medieval Pure Land belief. Innovative and refreshingly accessible, Pure Land, Real World shows that the Pure Land tradition informed twentieth-century Japanese thought in profound and surprising ways and suggests that it might do the same for twenty-first-century thinkers. The critical power of Pure Land utopianism has yet to be exhausted.

Author : Thich Nhat Hanh
Publisher : Parallax Press
Page : 146 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2001-08-09
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781888375343

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Finding Our True Home by Thich Nhat Hanh Pdf

Finding Our True Home presents a new definitive translation of the Amitabha Sutra along with Thich Nhat Hanh’s first commentary on one of the most practiced forms of Buddhism in the world, the Pure Land school. Introduced in the Buddha’s own lifetime, Pure Land practice puts us in touch with the beauty in our own world and brings us the security, solidity, and freedom we need in order to truly enjoy it. Realizing that Buddha is within us, we see that the Pure Land (paradise) is here and now, rather than in the future. Finding Our True Home will open a new Dharma door to many students of meditation.

Author : Dennis Hirota
Publisher : SUNY Press
Page : 276 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2000-03-31
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0791445291

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Toward a Contemporary Understanding of Pure Land Buddhism by Dennis Hirota Pdf

Explores the potential significance of Japanese Pure Land Buddhist Thought in the contemporary world, and provides a new model of interreligious dialogue as Buddhist thinkers engage with Christian theologians concerned with the present-day significance of their own tradition.

Author : Xuan Pan,Hsing Yun,Robert Smitheram
Publisher : Buddha's Light Publishing
Page : 340 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2013
Category : Religion
ISBN : 1932293817

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Buddha Land in the Human World by Xuan Pan,Hsing Yun,Robert Smitheram Pdf

Twenty-six hundred years ago, the Buddha walked the earth, transforming it forever with the compassion of his conduct and the wisdom of his teachings.Buddha Land in the Human World chronicles the construction of the Buddha Memorial Center, a complex built to honor this great sage. Beautiful landscapes, interactive museum exhibits, and breathtaking shrines surround the central artifact, previously locked away from the public eye for centuries: the Buddha's tooth relic.Learn the origin, vision, and the stories of the thousands of people who worked together to create this bastion of Buddhist learning.

Author : Vikram Lall
Publisher : National Geographic Books
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2014-09-02
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9780789211941

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The Golden Lands by Vikram Lall Pdf

A groundbreaking survey of the Buddhist architecture of Southeast Asia, abundantly illustrated with new color photography and 3-D renderings Over the course of its 2,500-year history, Buddhism has found expression in countless architectural forms, from the great monastic complexes of ancient India to the fortified dzongs of Bhutan, the rock-carved temple grottoes of China, the wooden shrines of Japan, and the colorful wats of Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand. Architecture of the Buddhist World, a projected six-volume series by the noted architect and scholar Vikram Lall, represents a new multidisciplinary approach to this fascinating subject, showing how Buddhist thought and ritual have interacted with local traditions across the Asian continent to produce masterpieces of religious architecture. The first volume in the series, The Golden Lands, is devoted to Southeast Asia, home to many of the most spectacular Buddhist monuments. Following a general introduction to the early history of Buddhism and its most characteristic architectural forms (the stupa, the temple, and the monastery), Lall examines the Buddhist architecture of Myanmar, Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos in turn. For each country, he provides both a historical overview and case studies of noteworthy structures. Lall’s concise and accessible text is illustrated throughout with new color photography, as well as 3-D architectural renderings that make even the most complex structures easily comprehensible. The monuments that Lall considers in The Golden Lands range from the modest Bupaya stupa, constructed in Bagan, Myanmar, in the third century AD, to the vast complex of Borobudur in Central Java, the world’s largest Buddhist monument; his achievement is to place them all within a single panorama of history, religion, and artistic innovation. Distributed for JF Publishing

Author : Charles B. Jones
Publisher : Shambhala Publications
Page : 265 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2021-05-18
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780834843448

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Pure Land by Charles B. Jones Pdf

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.

Author : Bandhuprabha
Publisher : BDK America
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 2002-06
Category : Religion
ISBN : STANFORD:36105119806342

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Interpretation of the Buddha Land, The by Bandhuprabha Pdf

This fourth-century commentary on the Buddhabhûmi-sûtra is one of the earliest texts of the Yogâcâra tradition. It includes an introductory description of the setting in which it was preached by the Buddha; the main body of the text, which treats the five factors that constitute a Buddha land, i.e., the Pure Dharma Realm and the four wisdoms: mirror wisdom, equality wisdom, discernment wisdom, and duty-fulfillment wisdom; and a concluding section of two illustrative similes and four summary verses. The overall theme of these texts is that the Pure Land is not a physical location, but a symbol of the mind of wisdom - constituted by the five factors of the Pure Dharma Realm and the four wisdoms. These four wisdoms, grounded in the Pure Dharma Realm, present the varied structure of wisdom as conceived by Yogacara thinkers. Mirror wisdom and equality wisdom are nondiscriminative, while discernment wisdom and duty-fulfillment wisdom distinguish the nature of bodhisattva tasks and carry them out in the world. Thus the overarching context for these texts is the tension created between the critical awareness and "deliteralization" tendency of Yogacara, and the Pure Land cultus, with its veneration of many Pure Land Buddhas and its hopes of being born in the Pure Land.

Author : Charles B. Jones
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 167 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2021-01-14
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781350144279

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Taixu’s ‘On the Establishment of the Pure Land in the Human Realm’ by Charles B. Jones Pdf

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.

Author : Stuart Chandler
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Page : 393 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2004-07-31
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780824862404

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Establishing a Pure Land on Earth by Stuart Chandler Pdf

With more than 150 temples in thirty countries, Foguangshan has developed over the last thirty-five years into one of the world’s largest and most influential Chinese Buddhist movements. The result of two years of fieldwork in Foguangshan temples in Taiwan, the U.S., Australia, and South Africa, this volume is an unprecedented examination of the inner workings of a dynamic and innovative religious movement. Based on direct observations, private interviews, and careful textual and historical analysis, Stuart Chandler looks at the challenges faced by Foguangshan’s leader, Master Xingyun, and his followers as they try to adhere to traditional practices and values while tapping into the advantages afforded by modern, global society. Foguangshan’s slogans (“Humanistic Buddhism” and “Establishing a Pure Land on Earth”) are placed in historical context to reveal their role in shaping the group’s attitudes toward capitalism, women’s rights, and democracy, as well as toward the traditional Chinese virtue of filial piety and the Chinese Buddhist concept of “links of affinity” (jieyuan). Chandler goes on to analyze Foguangshan’s educational system and its understanding of how precepts relate to contemporary problems such as abortion and capital punishment. The book’s final chapters consider the cultural and political dynamics at play in Foguangshan’s ambitious attempt to spread Humanistic Buddhism around the world and how its followers have reinterpreted the Buddhist ideal of homelessness to take advantage of the spiritual potentialities of people’s lives as global citizens.

Author : Kenneth K. Tanaka
Publisher : State University of New York Press
Page : 340 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 1990-08-14
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781438421834

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The Dawn of Chinese Pure Land Buddhist Doctrine by Kenneth K. Tanaka Pdf

Author : Steven Heine,Charles S. Prebish
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2003-09-11
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0195349091

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Buddhism in the Modern World by Steven Heine,Charles S. Prebish Pdf

The history of Buddhism has been characterized by an ongoing tension between attempts to preserve traditional ideals and modes of practice and the need to adapt to changing cultural conditions. Many developments in Buddhist history, such as the infusion of esoteric rituals, the rise of devotionalism and lay movements, and the assimilation of warrior practices, reflect the impact of widespread social changes on traditional religious structures. At the same time, Buddhism has been able to maintain its doctrinal purity to a remarkable degree. This volume explores how traditional Buddhist communities have responded to the challenges of modernity, such as science and technology, colonialism, and globalization. Editors Steven Heine and Charles S. Prebish have commissioned ten essays by leading scholars, each examining a particular traditional Buddhist school in its cultural context. The essays consider how the encounter with modernity has impacted the disciplinary, textual, ritual, devotional, practical, and socio-political traditions of Buddhist thought throughout Asia. Taken together, these essays reveal the diversity and vitality of contemporary Buddhism and offer a wide-ranging look at the way Buddhism interacts with the modern world.

Author : Angela Falco Howard
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 271 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2023-08-14
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9789004646551

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The Imagery of the Cosmological Buddha by Angela Falco Howard Pdf

Author : Jimmy Davis
Publisher : Lulu.com
Page : 68 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2009-03-13
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780557050482

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Western Pure Land Buddhism by Jimmy Davis Pdf

Western Pure Land Buddhism (WPLB) is the name I have given to one of the latest teachings of the Mahayana Pure Land tradition. It shares with all other Buddhist groups the ideal of attaining Nirvana, not just for oneself, but also for all beings. Thus the goal of one's life is to realize Buddhahood in order to help others see this world of birth-and-death (samsara) as Nirvana. Where WPLB differs from most other Buddhists is in teaching that Buddhahood is a gift to us from Amida, the Buddha of Infinite Light and Life, and that we acknowledge that gift by the saying of Nembutsu (Namah Amida Buddha).The life of Nembutsu consists of chanting the Nembutsu and teaching others the way. It is to live a life without fear. And to join with others to better achieve these goals.

Author : Ryōmin Akizuki
Publisher : Jain Publishing Company
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 1990
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780895819000

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New Mahāyāna by Ryōmin Akizuki Pdf

In 1959 Newsweek reported that a young Zen monk and scholar threatened to shake Japanese Buddhism by publishing the "secret answers" to the koan. Though he never took that step, Akizuki Ryomin did make good on his promise to devote himself to "breaking the formalism that constricts Zen and exposing the fake masters." Here, he brings his ideas on reform together into a proclamation of a "New Mahayana."