Neither Monk Nor Layman

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Neither Monk nor Layman

Author : Richard M. Jaffe
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 300 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2021-06-08
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780691231099

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Neither Monk nor Layman by Richard M. Jaffe Pdf

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.

Pure Land, Real World

Author : Melissa Anne-Marie Curley
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 47,7 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.

The Prince and the Monk

Author : Kenneth Doo Young Lee
Publisher : State University of New York Press
Page : 244 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2012-02-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780791480465

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The Prince and the Monk by Kenneth Doo Young Lee Pdf

The Prince and the Monk addresses the historical development of the political and religious myths surrounding Shōtoku Taishi and their influence on Shinran, the founder of the Jōdo-Shinshū school of Pure Land Buddhism. Shōtoku Taishi (574–622) was a prince who led the campaign to unify Japan, wrote the imperial constitution, and promoted Buddhism as a religion of peace and prosperity. Shinran's Buddhism developed centuries later during the Kamakura period, which began in the late twelfth century. Kenneth Doo Young Lee discusses Shinran's liturgical text, his dream of Shōtoku's manifestation as Kannon (the world-saving Bodhisattva of Compassion), and other relevant events during his life. In addition, this book shows that Shinran's Buddhism was consistent with honji suijaku culture—the synthesis of the Shinto and Buddhist pantheons—prevalent during the Kamakura period.

The Constant and Changing Faces of the Goddess

Author : Phyllis K. Herman,Deepak Shimkhada
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2009-03-26
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781443807029

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The Constant and Changing Faces of the Goddess by Phyllis K. Herman,Deepak Shimkhada Pdf

The Constant and Changing Faces of the Goddess: Goddess Traditions of Asia contains essays written by established scholars in the field that trace the multiplicity of Asian goddesses: their continuities, discontinuities, and importance as symbols of wisdom, power, transformation, compassion, destruction, and creation. The essays demonstrate that while treatments of the goddess may vary regionally, culturally, and historically, it is possible to note some consistencies in the overall picture of the goddess in Asia. The book provides a comprehensive treatment of the goddess, culminating in the selections that draw from research on Indian, Nepali, Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese traditions, seldom found in other works of similar subject. The volume will be useful for students in religious studies, gender studies, Asian studies, and women's studies. With the intent of making the volume truly broad in scope, an effort has been made to include works written by art historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and religious studies scholars. Culture cannot be separated from religion; they are intertwined as an organic whole, and variations manifest themselves in the rituals and daily lives of the people. In this sense, all the essays are interconnected: the goddess manifests in many forms and appeals to differing aspects of a particular culture as a paradigm of the divine feminine.

Buddhism and Modernity

Author : Orion Klautau,Hans Martin Krämer
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Page : 305 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2021-03-31
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780824884581

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Buddhism and Modernity by Orion Klautau,Hans Martin Krämer Pdf

Japan was the first Asian nation to face the full impact of modernity. Like the rest of Japanese society, Buddhist institutions, individuals, and thought were drawn into the dynamics of confronting the modern age. Japanese Buddhism had to face multiple challenges, but it also contributed to modern Japanese society in numerous ways. Buddhism and Modernity: Sources from Nineteenth-Century Japan makes accessible the voices of Japanese Buddhists during the early phase of high modernity. The volume offers original translations of key texts—many available for the first time in English—by central actors in Japan’s transition to the modern era, including the works of Inoue Enryō, Gesshō, Hara Tanzan, Shimaji Mokurai, Kiyozawa Manshi, Murakami Senshō, Tanaka Chigaku, and Shaku Sōen. All of these writers are well recognized by Buddhist studies scholars and Japanese historians but have drawn little attention elsewhere; this stands in marked contrast to the reception of Japanese Buddhism since D. T. Suzuki, the towering figure of Japanese Zen in the first half of the twentieth century. The present book fills the chronological gap between the premodern era and the twentieth century by focusing on the crucial transition period of the nineteenth century. Issues central to the interaction of Japanese Buddhism with modernity inform the five major parts of the work: sectarian reform, the nation, science and philosophy, social reform, and Japan and Asia. Throughout the chapters, the globally entangled dimension—both in relation to the West, especially the direct and indirect impact of Christianity, and to Buddhist Asia—is of great importance. The Introduction emphasizes not only how Japanese Buddhism was part of a broader, globally shared reaction of religions to the specific challenges of modernity, but also goes into great detail in laying out the specifics of the Japanese case.

Seeking Sakyamuni

Author : Richard M. Jaffe
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 327 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2019-05-20
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780226391151

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Seeking Sakyamuni by Richard M. Jaffe Pdf

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.

Rescued from the Nation

Author : Steven Kemper
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 514 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2015-01-13
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780226199078

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Rescued from the Nation by Steven Kemper Pdf

Dharmapala is a galvanizing figure in Sri Lanka's recent history, widely regarded as the nationalist hero who saved the Sinhala people from cultural collapse and whose 'protestant' reformation of Buddhism drove monks toward increased political involvement and ethnic confrontation. Yet he spent the vast majority of his life abroad, dealing with other concerns. Steven Kemper re-evaluates this important figure in the light of an unprecedented number of his writings that paint a picture not of a nationalist zealot but of a spiritual seeker earnest in his pursuit of salvation.

Celibacy and Religious Traditions

Author : Carl Olson
Publisher : OUP USA
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2008
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780195306316

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Celibacy and Religious Traditions by Carl Olson Pdf

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.

Absolute Delusion, Perfect Buddhahood

Author : Jamie Hubbard
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Page : 356 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2001-01-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0824823451

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Absolute Delusion, Perfect Buddhahood by Jamie Hubbard Pdf

The San-chieh (Three Levels) was a popular and influential Chinese Buddhist movement during the Sui and T'ang periods, counting powerful statesmen, imperial princes, and even an empress, Empress Wu, among its patrons. In spite, or perhaps because, of its proximity to power, the San-chieh movement ran afoul of the authorities, and its teaching and texts were officially proscribed numerous times over a several-hundred-year history. This study of the San-chieh movement uses manuscripts discovered at Tun-huang to examine the doctrine and institutional practices of this movement in the larger context of Mahayana doctrine and practice.

Inoue Enryo

Author : Rainer Schulzer
Publisher : SUNY Press
Page : 430 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2019-02-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781438471877

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Inoue Enryo by Rainer Schulzer Pdf

The first comprehensive treatment of Inoue Enry?, a pioneer of modern Buddhism and a key figure in the reception of Western philosophy in East Asia. Rainer Schulzer provides the first comprehensive study, in English, of the modern Japanese philosopher Inoue Enry? (1858–1919). Enry? was a key figure in several important intellectual trends in Meiji Japan, including the establishment of academic philosophy, the public campaign against superstition, the permeation of imperial ideology, and the emergence of modern Japanese Buddhism. As one of the most widely read intellectuals of his time and one of the first Japanese authors ever translated into Chinese, an understanding of Enry?’s work and influence is indispensable for understanding modern East Asian intellectual history. His role in spreading the terminology of modern East Asian humanities reveals how later thinkers such as Nishida Kitar? and Suzuki T. Daisetsu emerged; while his key principles, Love of Truth and Protection of Country, illustrate the tensions inherent in Enry?’s enlightenment views and his dedication to the rise of the Japanese empire. The book also presents a systematic reconstruction of what was the first attempt to give Buddhism a sound philosophical foundation for the modern world. “This book is filled with interesting and important details about the unfolding of Enry?’s life and the formation of his major works. Schulzer also develops broader themes in terms of Japan’s intellectual and sociopolitical encounters with the West in light of the advent of its modern self-definition in the context of being part of a global arena for the first time.” — Steven Heine, author of From Chinese Chan to Japanese Zen: A Remarkable Century of Transmission and Transformation

The Mirror of Zen

Author : Boep Joeng
Publisher : Shambhala Publications
Page : 192 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2006-12-12
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0834826410

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The Mirror of Zen by Boep Joeng Pdf

The sacred radiance of our original nature never darkens. It has shined forth since beginningless time. Do you wish to enter the gate that leads to this? Simply do not give rise to conceptual thinking. Zen Master So Sahn (1520–1604) is a towering figure in the history of Korean Zen. In this treasure-text, he presents in simple yet beautiful language the core principles and teachings of Zen. Each section opens with a quotation—drawn from classical scriptures, teachings, and anecdotes—followed by the author’s commentary and verse. Originally written in Chinese, the text was translated into Korean in the mid-twentieth century by the celebrated Korean monk Boep Joeng. An American Zen monk, Hyon Gak, has translated it into English.

Imperial-Way Zen

Author : Christopher Ives
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Page : 290 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2009-07-08
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780824833312

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Imperial-Way Zen by Christopher Ives Pdf

During the first half of the twentieth century, Zen Buddhist leaders contributed actively to Japanese imperialism, giving rise to what has been termed "Imperial-Way Zen" (Kodo Zen). Its foremost critic was priest, professor, and activist Ichikawa Hakugen (1902–1986), who spent the decades following Japan’s surrender almost single-handedly chronicling Zen’s support of Japan’s imperialist regime and pressing the issue of Buddhist war responsibility. Ichikawa focused his critique on the Zen approach to religious liberation, the political ramifications of Buddhist metaphysical constructs, the traditional collaboration between Buddhism and governments in East Asia, the philosophical system of Nishida Kitaro (1876–1945), and the vestiges of State Shinto in postwar Japan. Despite the importance of Ichikawa’s writings, this volume is the first by any scholar to outline his critique. In addition to detailing the actions and ideology of Imperial-Way Zen and Ichikawa’s ripostes to them, Christopher Ives offers his own reflections on Buddhist ethics in light of the phenomenon. He devotes chapters to outlining Buddhist nationalism from the 1868 Meiji Restoration to 1945 and summarizing Ichikawa’s arguments about the causes of Imperial-Way Zen. After assessing Brian Victoria’s claim that Imperial-Way Zen was caused by the traditional connection between Zen and the samurai, Ives presents his own argument that Imperial-Way Zen can best be understood as a modern instance of Buddhism’s traditional role as protector of the realm. Turning to postwar Japan, Ives examines the extent to which Zen leaders have reflected on their wartime political stances and started to construct a critical Zen social ethic. Finally, he considers the resources Zen might offer its contemporary leaders as they pursue what they themselves have identified as a pressing task: ensuring that henceforth Zen will avoid becoming embroiled in international adventurism and instead dedicate itself to the promotion of peace and human rights. Lucid and balanced in its methodology and well grounded in textual analysis, Imperial-Way Zen will attract scholars, students, and others interested in Buddhism, ethics, Zen practice, and the cooptation of religion in the service of violence and imperialism.

Empire of the Dharma

Author : Hwansoo Ilmee Kim
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 458 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2020-03-17
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781684175208

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Empire of the Dharma by Hwansoo Ilmee Kim Pdf

"Empire of the Dharma explores the dynamic relationship between Korean and Japanese Buddhists in the years leading up to the Japanese annexation of Korea. Conventional narratives cast this relationship in politicized terms, with Korean Buddhists portrayed as complicit in the “religious annexation” of the peninsula. However, this view fails to account for the diverse visions, interests, and strategies that drove both sides. Hwansoo Ilmee Kim complicates this politicized account of religious interchange by reexamining the “alliance” forged in 1910 between the Japanese Soto sect and the Korean Wonjong order. The author argues that their ties involved not so much political ideology as mutual benefit. Both wished to strengthen Buddhism’s precarious position within Korean society and curb Christianity’s growing influence. Korean Buddhist monastics sought to leverage Japanese resources as a way of advancing themselves and their temples, and missionaries of Japanese Buddhist sects competed with one another to dominate Buddhism on the peninsula. This strategic alliance pushed both sides to confront new ideas about the place of religion in modern society and framed the way that many Korean and Japanese Buddhists came to think about the future of their shared religion."

Japanese New Religions in the West

Author : Peter B. Clarke,Jeffrey Somers
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 200 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2013-10-18
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781134241453

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Japanese New Religions in the West by Peter B. Clarke,Jeffrey Somers Pdf

An excellent and very timely update on an area seeing many recent developments.

Japanese Temple Buddhism

Author : Stephen Covell
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Page : 273 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2005-09-30
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780824863135

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Japanese Temple Buddhism by Stephen Covell Pdf

There have been many studies that focus on aspects of the history of Japanese Buddhism. Until now, none have addressed important questions of organization and practice in contemporary Buddhism, questions such as how Japanese Buddhism came to be seen as a religion of funeral practices; how Buddhist institutions envision the role of the laity; and how a married clergy has affected life at temples and the image of priests. This volume is the first to address fully contemporary Buddhist life and institutions—topics often overlooked in the conflict between the rhetoric of renunciation and the practices of clerical marriage and householding that characterize much of Buddhism in today’s Japan. Informed by years of field research and his own experiences training to be a Tendai priest, Stephen Covell skillfully refutes this "corruption paradigm" while revealing the many (often contradictory) facets of contemporary institutional Buddhism, or as Covell terms it, Temple Buddhism. Covell significantly broadens the scope of inquiry to include how Buddhism is approached by both laity and clerics when he takes into account temple families, community involvement, and the commodification of practice. He considers law and tax issues, temple strikes, and the politics of temple boards of directors to shed light on how temples are run and viewed by their inhabitants, supporters, and society in general. In doing so he uncovers the economic realities that shape ritual practices and shows how mundane factors such as taxes influence the debate over temple Buddhism’s role in contemporary Japanese society. In addition, through interviews and analyses of sectarian literature and recent scholarship on gender and Buddhism, he provides a detailed look at priests’ wives, who have become indispensable in the management of temple affairs.