Buddhism in the Modern World

Buddhism in the Modern World PDF Author: Steven Heine
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195146980
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
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.

Buddhism in the Modern World

Buddhism in the Modern World PDF Author: Steven Heine
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195146980
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Buddhism in Central Asia

Buddhism in Central Asia PDF Author: Baij Nath Puri
Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass Publ.
ISBN: 9788120803725
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
Buddhism in Central Asia is a saga of peaceful pursuit by Buddhist scholars from Kashmir and Kabul to propagate the message of the Buddha. This vast region between the Tien-Shan and the Kunlun ranges was the centre of activities of these Buddhist savants. Here people of different races and professions, speaking many languages, were finally blended into a cosmopolitan culture. This created an intellectual climate of high order. In this context, the famous silk trade route was helpful in adding to the material prosperity of the people in this region. The present study, therefore, is not one of Buddhism in isolation. It equally provides an account of the political forces confronting each other during the course of history of this region for well over a thousand years. For centuries the drifting desert sand of Central Asia enveloped this civilization and the religion connected with it. The late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century explorers and archaeologists successfully uncovered it at different centres along the old Silk Route. This has been helpful for a comprehensive study of Buddhism with its literature and art. The finds of hundreds of inscriptions have added to the cultural dimensions of the study.

Superiority Conceit in Buddhist Traditions

Superiority Conceit in Buddhist Traditions PDF Author: Bhikkhu Analayo
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1614297339
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 173

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Book Description
Renowned scholar-monk writes accessibly on some of the most contentious topics in Buddhism—guaranteed to ruffle some feathers. Armed with his rigorous examination of the canonical records, respected scholar-monk Bhikkhu Analayo explores—and sharply criticizes—four examples of what he terms “superiority conceit” in Buddhism: the androcentric tendency to prevent women from occupying leadership roles, be these as fully ordained monastics or as advanced bodhisattvas the Mahayana notion that those who don’t aspire to become bodhisattvas are inferior practitioners the Theravada belief that theirs is the most original expression of the Buddha’s teaching the Secular Buddhist claim to understand the teachings of the Buddha more accurately than traditionally practicing Buddhists Ven. Analayo challenges the scriptural basis for these conceits and points out that adhering to such notions of superiority is not, after all, conducive to practice. “It is by diminishing ego, letting go of arrogance, and abandoning conceit that one becomes a better Buddhist,” he reminds us, “no matter what tradition one may follow.” Thoroughly researched, Superiority Conceit in Buddhist Traditions provides an accessible approach to these conceits as academic subjects. Readers will find it not only challenges their own intellectual understandings but also improves their personal practice.

Phenomenological Reflections on Mindfulness in the Buddhist Tradition

Phenomenological Reflections on Mindfulness in the Buddhist Tradition PDF Author: Erol Čopelj
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000605477
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
This book offers an original phenomenological description of mindfulness and related phenomena, such as concentration (samādhi) and the practice of insight (vipassanā). It demonstrates that phenomenological method has the power to reanimate ancient Buddhist texts, giving new life to the phenomena at which those texts point. Beginning with descriptions of how mindfulness is encountered in everyday, pre-philosophical life, the book moves on to an analysis of how the Pali Nikāyas of Theravada Buddhism define mindfulness and the practice of cultivating it. It then offers a critique of the contemporary attempts to explain mindfulness as a kind of attention. The author argues that mindfulness is not attention, nor can it be understood as a mere modification of the attentive process. Rather, becoming mindful involves a radical shift in perspective. According to the author’s account, being mindful is the feeling of being tuned-in to the open horizon, which is contrasted with Edmund Husserl’s transcendental horizon. The book also elucidates the difference between the practice of cultivating mindfulness with the practice of the phenomenological epoché, which reveals new possibilities for the practice of phenomenology itself. Phenomenological Reflections on Mindfulness in the Buddhist Tradition will appeal to scholars and advanced students interested in phenomenology, Buddhist philosophy, and comparative philosophy.

Buddhist Tantras

Buddhist Tantras PDF Author: Alex Wayman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317722779
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
First published in 1995. The volume is divided into four sections: The introduction places the position of the Buddhist Tantras within Mahayana Buddhism and recalls their early literary history, especially the Guhyasamahatantra; the section also covers Buddhist Genesis and the Tantric tradition. Next is the he foundations of the Buddhist Tantras are discussed and the Tantric presentation of divinity; the preparation of disciples and the meaning of initiation; symbolism of the mandala-palace Tantric ritual and the twilight language. The third section explores the Tantric teachings of the inner Zodiac and the fivefold ritual symbolism of passion. The bibliographical research contains an analysis of the Tantric section of the Kanjur exegesis and a selected Western Bibliography of the Buddhist Tantras with comments.

Preparing to Die

Preparing to Die PDF Author: Andrew Holecek
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 1559394080
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
We all face death, but how many of us are actually ready for it? Whether our own death or that of a loved one comes first, how prepared are we, spiritually or practically? In Preparing to Die, Andrew Holecek presents a wide array of resources to help the reader address this unfinished business. Part One shows how to prepare one's mind and how to help others, before, during, and after death. The author explains how spiritual preparation for death can completely transform our relationship to the end of life, dissolving our fear and helping us to feel open and receptive to letting go in the dying process. Daily meditation practices, the stages of dying and how to work with them, and after-death experiences are all detailed in ways that will be particularly helpful for those with an interest in Tibetan Buddhism and in Tibetan approaches to conscious dying. Part Two addresses the practical issues that surround death. Experts in grief, hospice, the funeral business, and the medical and legal issues of death contribute chapters to prepare the reader for every practical concern, including advance directives, green funerals, the signs of death, warnings about the funeral industry, the stages of grief, and practical care for the dying. Part Three contains heart-advice from twenty of the best-known Tibetan Buddhist masters now teaching in the West. These brief interviews provide words of solace and wisdom to guide the dying and their caregivers during this challenging time. Preparing to Die is for anyone interested in learning how to prepare for death from a Buddhist perspective, both spiritually and practically. It is also for those who want to learn how to help someone else who is dying, both during the time of illness and death as well as after death.

A History of Indian Buddhism

A History of Indian Buddhism PDF Author: Akira Hirakawa
Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass Publ.
ISBN: 9788120809550
Category : Buddhism
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
This comprehensive and detailed survey of the first six centuries of Indian Buddhism sums up the results of a lifetime of research and reflection by one of Japan's most renowned scholars of Buddhism.

Women in Buddhism

Women in Buddhism PDF Author: Diana Y. Paul
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520054288
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
"In seeking to explore the interrelationships between, and mutual influence of, varieties of sexual stereotypes and religious views of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, Women in Buddhism succeeds in drawing our attention to matters of philosophical importance. Paul examines the 'image' of women which arise in a number of Buddhist texts associated with Mahayana and finds that, while ideally the tradition purports to be egalitarian, in actual practice it often betrayed a strong misogynist prejudice. Sanskrit and Chinese texts are organized by theme and type, progressing from those which treat the traditionally orthodox and negative to those which set forth a positive consideration of soteriological paths for women. . . . In Women in Buddhism, Diana Paul may be forcing our consideration of the problem of female enlightenment. Thus the main purport and accomplishment of her scholarship is revolutionary."—Philosophy East and West

The Buddhist Tradition

The Buddhist Tradition PDF Author: William Theodore de Bary
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307778797
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 443

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Book Description
This book, compiled from basic Buddhist writings, presents a survey of Buddhist thought in India, China, and Japan, covering the central doctrines and practices that has profoundly influenced human life in Asia. Developments in practical ethics, social attitudes, philosophical speculation, and religious and aesthetic contemplation are represented by selected excerpts from basic writings with succinct introductions and commentary. From these one may observe not only the remarkable vitality of Buddhism in its spread through Asia, but also the essential links between widely diverse forms, showing how the spiritual message of the Buddha found expression in different historical and cultural circumstances. Thus both its continuity in time and its wide range of influence mark Buddhism as a major spiritual force in the world. Buddha, as the Awakened One, has exemplified to millions of followers throughout the ages a living Truth, a dynamic wisdom and an active compassion. It is these qualities that have inspired hop and courage in men who were asked to face to the stark reality of man's condition: the inevitable involvement in suffering which arises from his persistent egoism and refusal to recognize his finitude.

Dāna

Dāna PDF Author: Ellison Banks Findly
Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass Publ.
ISBN: 9788120819566
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
This book argues that donation is one of the central practices in early Buddhism for, without it, Buddhism would not havesurvived and flourished in the many centuriesof its development and expansion. Buddhist relationship between donors and renunciants developed quickly into a complex web that involves material life and the views about how to attend to it. Buddhist dana`s great success is due to the early and continuing use of accomodation with other faiths as a foundational value,thus allowing the tradition to adapt to changing circumstances.