Localizing Paradise

Localizing Paradise PDF Author: David Leo Moerman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Cults
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description

Localizing Paradise

Localizing Paradise PDF Author: David Leo Moerman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Cults
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description


Localizing Paradise

Localizing Paradise PDF Author: D. Max Moerman
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 168417399X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
"Although located far from the populated centers of traditional Japan, the three Kumano shrines occupied a central position in the Japanese religious landscape. For centuries Kumano was the most visited pilgrimage site in Japan and attracted devotees from across the boundaries of sect (Buddhist, Daoist, Shinto), class, and gender. It was also a major institutional center, commanding networks of affiliated shrines, extensive landholdings, and its own army, and a site of production, generating agricultural products and symbolic capital in the form of spiritual values. Kumano was thus both a real place and a utopia: a non-place of paradise or enlightenment. It was a location in which cultural ideals—about death, salvation, gender, and authority—were represented, contested, and even at times inverted.This book encompasses both the real and the ideal, both the historical and the ideological, Kumano. It studies Kumano not only as a site of practice, a stage for the performance of asceticism and pilgrimage, but also as a place of the imagination, a topic of literary and artistic representation. Kumano was not unique in combining Buddhism with native traditions, for redefining death and its conquest, for expressing the relationship between religious and political authority, and for articulating the religious position of women. By studying Kumano’s particular religious landscape, we can better understand the larger, common religious landscape of premodern Japan."

Paradise

Paradise PDF Author: Robert Mayne Patterson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Intermediate state
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Localizing Paradise

Localizing Paradise PDF Author: David Max Moerman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
"This book encompasses both the real and the ideal, both the historical and the ideological, Kumano. It studies Kumano not only as a site of practice, a stage for performance, but also as a place of the imagination, a topic of literary and artistic representation. Kumano was unique in combining Buddhism with native traditions, for redefining death and its conquest, for expressing the relationship between religious and political authority, and for articulating the religious position of women. By studying Kumano's particular religious landscape, we can better understand the larger, common religious landscape of premodern Japan."--BOOK JACKET.

The Other Side of Zen

The Other Side of Zen PDF Author: Duncan Ryūken Williams
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400832594
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Popular understanding of Zen Buddhism typically involves a stereotyped image of isolated individuals in meditation, contemplating nothingness. This book presents the "other side of Zen," by examining the movement's explosive growth during the Tokugawa period (1600-1867) in Japan and by shedding light on the broader Japanese religious landscape during the era. Using newly-discovered manuscripts, Duncan Ryuken Williams argues that the success of Soto Zen was due neither to what is most often associated with the sect, Zen meditation, nor to the teachings of its medieval founder Dogen, but rather to the social benefits it conveyed. Zen Buddhism promised followers many tangible and attractive rewards, including the bestowal of such perquisites as healing, rain-making, and fire protection, as well as "funerary Zen" rites that assured salvation in the next world. Zen temples also provided for the orderly registration of the entire Japanese populace, as ordered by the Tokugawa government, which led to stable parish membership. Williams investigates both the sect's distinctive religious and ritual practices and its nonsectarian participation in broader currents of Japanese life. While much previous work on the subject has consisted of passages on great medieval Zen masters and their thoughts strung together and then published as "the history of Zen," Williams' work is based on care ul examination of archival sources including temple logbooks, prayer and funerary manuals, death registries, miracle tales of popular Buddhist deities, secret initiation papers, villagers' diaries, and fund-raising donor lists.

Routledge Handbook of Premodern Japanese History

Routledge Handbook of Premodern Japanese History PDF Author: Karl F. Friday
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351692011
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 621

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Book Description
Scholarship on premodern Japan has grown spectacularly over the past four decades, in terms of both sophistication and volume. A new approach has developed, marked by a higher reliance on primary documents, a shift away from the history of elites to broader explorations of social structures, and a re-examination of many key assumptions. As a result, the picture of the early Japanese past now taught by specialists differs radically from the one that was current in the mid-twentieth century. This handbook offers a comprehensive historiographical review of Japanese history up until the 1500s. Featuring chapters by leading historians and covering the early Jōmon, Yayoi, Kofun, Nara, and Heian eras, as well as the later medieval periods, each section provides a foundational grasp of the major themes in premodern Japan. The sections will include: Geography and the environment Political events and institutions Society and culture Economy and technology The Routledge Handbook of Premodern Japanese History is an essential reference work for students and scholars of Japanese, Asian, and World History.

The Taoists of Peking, 1800–1949

The Taoists of Peking, 1800–1949 PDF Author: Vincent Goossaert
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 1684174546
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
"By looking at the activities of Taoist clerics in Peking, this book explores the workings of religion as a profession in one Chinese city during a period of dramatic modernization. The author focuses on ordinary religious professionals, most of whom remained obscure temple employees. Although almost forgotten, they were all major actors in urban religious and cultural life.The clerics at the heart of this study spent their time training disciples, practicing and teaching self-cultivation, performing rituals, and managing temples. Vincent Goossaert shows that these Taoists were neither the socially despised illiterates dismissed in so many studies, nor otherworldly ascetics, but active participants in the religious economy of the city. In exploring exactly what their crucial role was, he addresses the day-to-day life of modern Chinese religion from the perspective of ordinary religious specialists. This approach highlights the social processes, institutions, and networks that transmit religious knowledge and mediate between prestigious religious traditions and the people in the street. In modern Chinese religion, the Taoists are such key actors. Without them, ""Taoist ritual"" and ""Taoist self-cultivation"" are just empty words."

The Oxford Handbook of Buddhist Practice

The Oxford Handbook of Buddhist Practice PDF Author: Kevin Trainor
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190632925
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 689

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Book Description
"This Handbook provides a state-of-the-art exploration of several key dynamics in current studies of the Buddhist tradition with a focus on practice. Embodiment, materiality, emotion, and gender shape the way most Buddhists engage with their traditions, in contrast to popular representations of Buddhism as spiritual, disembodied, and largely devoid of ritual. This volume highlights how practice often represents a fluid, dynamic, and strategic means of defining identity and negotiating the challenges of everyday life. Essays explore the transformational aims of practices that require practitioners to move, gesture, and emote in prescribed ways, including the ways that scholars' own embodied practices are integral to their research methodology. The chapters are written by acknowledged experts in their respective subject areas and taken together offer an overview of current thinking in the field. The volume is of particular value to scholars who seek an orientation to current perspectives on important conceptual, theoretical, and methodological concerns that are shaping the field in areas outside their primary expertise. The inclusion of substantial, up-to-date bibliographies also makes the volume an important guide to current scholarship"--

Picturing Heaven in Early China

Picturing Heaven in Early China PDF Author: Lillian Lan-ying Tseng
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674060695
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
Preliminary Material -- Images and References -- Constructing the Cosmic View -- Engraving Auspicious Omens -- Imagining Celestial Journeys -- Highlighting Celestial Markers -- Mapping Celestial Bodies -- Visibility and Visuality -- Illustration Credits -- Endnotes -- Works Cited -- Index -- Harvard East Asian Monographs.

Negotiating Urban Space

Negotiating Urban Space PDF Author: Si-yen Fei
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674035614
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
Urbanization was central to development in late imperial China. Yet scholars agree it triggered neither Weberian urban autonomy nor Habermasian civil society. Using Nanjing as a central case, the author shows that, prompted by this contradiction, the actions and creations of urban residents transformed the city on multiple levels.