The Ordination of a Tree

The Ordination of a Tree PDF Author: Susan M. Darlington
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438444664
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Thai Buddhist monks wrap orange clerical robes around trees to protect forests. "Ordaining" a tree is a provocative ritual that has become the symbol of a small but influential monastic movement aimed at reversing environmental degradation and the unsustainable economic development and consumerism that fuel it. This book examines the evolution of this movement from the late 1980s to the present, exploring the tree ordination and other rituals used to resist destructive national projects. Susan M. Darlington explores monks' motivations, showing how they interpret their lived religion as the basis of their actions, and provides an in-depth portrait of activist monk Phrakhru Pitak Nanthakhun. The obstacles monks face, including damage to their reputations, arrest, and even assassination, reveal the difficulty of enacting social justice. Even the tree ordination itself must now withstand its appropriation for state projects. Despite this, monks have gone from individual action to a loosely allied movement that now works with nongovernmental organizations. This is a fascinating, firsthand account of engaged Buddhism.

The Ordination of a Tree

The Ordination of a Tree PDF Author: Susan M. Darlington
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438444664
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 338

Get Book Here

Book Description
Thai Buddhist monks wrap orange clerical robes around trees to protect forests. "Ordaining" a tree is a provocative ritual that has become the symbol of a small but influential monastic movement aimed at reversing environmental degradation and the unsustainable economic development and consumerism that fuel it. This book examines the evolution of this movement from the late 1980s to the present, exploring the tree ordination and other rituals used to resist destructive national projects. Susan M. Darlington explores monks' motivations, showing how they interpret their lived religion as the basis of their actions, and provides an in-depth portrait of activist monk Phrakhru Pitak Nanthakhun. The obstacles monks face, including damage to their reputations, arrest, and even assassination, reveal the difficulty of enacting social justice. Even the tree ordination itself must now withstand its appropriation for state projects. Despite this, monks have gone from individual action to a loosely allied movement that now works with nongovernmental organizations. This is a fascinating, firsthand account of engaged Buddhism.

Teachers of Enlightenment

Teachers of Enlightenment PDF Author: Kulananda
Publisher: Windhorse Publications
ISBN: 1909314412
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
The Refuge Tree is a symbol of the highest ideals of Buddhism, a traditional image in the Tibetan tradition that takes different forms in different schools. On the refuge tree are formal teachers from Buddhism's history. The Refuge Tree of the Triratna Buddhist Order founded by Sangharakshita includes figures from India, Tibet, China and Japan as well as archetypal Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and the teachers whose guidance helped to shape Sangharakshita's understanding of Buddhism.

Religious Tourism in Northern Thailand

Religious Tourism in Northern Thailand PDF Author: Brooke Schedneck
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295748931
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
Temples are everywhere in Chiang Mai, filled with tourists as well as saffron-robed monks of all ages. The monks participate in daily urban life here as elsewhere in Thailand, where Buddhism is promoted, protected, and valued as a tourist attraction. Yet this mountain city offers more than a fleeting, commodified tourist experience, as the encounters between foreign visitors and Buddhist monks can have long-lasting effects on both parties. These religious contacts take place where economic motives, missionary zeal, and opportunities for cultural exchange coincide. Brooke Schedneck incorporates fieldwork and interviews with student monks and tourists to examine the innovative ways that Thai Buddhist temples offer foreign visitors spaces for religious instruction and popular in-person Monk Chat sessions in which tourists ask questions about Buddhism. Religious Tourism in Northern Thailand also considers how Thai monks perceive other religions and cultures and how they represent their own religion when interacting with tourists, resulting in a revealing study of how religious traditions adapt to an era of globalization.

Theravada Traditions

Theravada Traditions PDF Author: John Clifford Holt
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824872452
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
Theravada Traditions offers a unique comparative approach to understanding Buddhism: it examines popular rituals of central importance in the predominantly Theravada Buddhist cultures of Laos, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar, and Cambodia. Instead of focusing on how religious ideas have impacted the ideals of government or ethical practice, author John Holt tries to ascertain how important changes, or shifts, in the trajectories of the political economies of societies have impacted the character of religious cultures. Each of the five chapters focuses on a particular rite and provides detailed historical, political, or social context: Holt shows how worship of the Phra Bang Buddha image in the annual pi mai or New Year’s rites in Luang Phrabang, Laos, has changed dramatically since the 1975 communist revolution and the subsequent opening up of the country to tourism; he describes how, in the face of insurrections and a prolonged civil war, the annual asala perahara processions in Kandy, Sri Lanka, have come to reflect a robust assertion of a Sinhala Buddhist nationalist identity; how ordination rites among Thai Buddhists reflect the manner in which Thai culture has been ever more “commodified” in the context of its dramatically developing economy; and how in tightly controlled Myanmar the kathina rite, the act of giving new robes to members of the sangha after the completion of the rain-retreat season, transformed into a season of campaigning for gift-giving and merit-making; finally, he demonstrates how, in light of the devastating losses inflicted by the Khmer Rouge, pchum ben, the annual rite of caring ritually for one’s deceased kin, became the most popular and perhaps most emotionally observed of all rites in the Khmer calendar year. In short, Theravada Traditions illustrates how popular, public ritual performance, far from being static, clearly indexes patterns of social and political change. Broad but deep, rigorous yet accessible, this rich, innovative volume provides a provocative introduction to the practice of Theravada Buddhism and the nature of social change in contemporary Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia.

A Person is Like a Tree

A Person is Like a Tree PDF Author: Yitzhak Buxbaum
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780765761286
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
A Person Is Like a Tree: A Sourcebook for Tu BeShvat is the only sourcebook available for celebrating the Jewish holiday of Tu BeShvat, also traditionally known as the New Year of the Trees. The Tu BeShvat seder, created by kabbalists in sixteenth century Safed in Israel, is similar to the Passover seder and involves drinking four cups of wine and eating a great variety of fruits. The kabbalists sought, by their eating of fruit at the seder, to make a mystical tikkun (fixing) to repair the sin of Adam and Eve in eating fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Yitzhak Buxbaum, the author of this sourcebook, notes that whereas most Jewish holidays are biblical in origin, and while Chanukah and Purim were instituted by the ancient rabbis. Tu BeShvat is the only holiday ordained by the kabbalists..

Bla Ma'i Mchod Pa

Bla Ma'i Mchod Pa PDF Author: Robert A. F. Thurman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 9780743257626
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
The most prominent expert on Buddhism in the West presents his most importantteaching and meditation practice for everyday life.

Radical Regeneration:

Radical Regeneration: PDF Author: Carolyn Baker
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1663211965
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
This is a demanding book—but our times are demanding. It is an honest book—and our times demand truth. —Matthew Fox, American priest, theologian, and author The genius of this book is the knowledge that this catastrophe is a necessary precursor to a radical transformation that we are co-creating with the divine. Radical Regeneration is an indispensable guide for what lies ahead. —Betty J. Kovács, Ph.D., author of Merchants of Light: The Consciousness That Is Changing the World This book, Radical Regeneration, is a radiant offering of the possibility of the evolution of human consciousness in the midst of extinction. It’s exactly the fierce and sacred medicine we need right now. —V (formerly known as Eve Ensler), author of The Vagina Monologues and The Apology Andrew Harvey and Carolyn Baker invite us to rise to these times as a grand initiation, to be renewed in splendor, or to stand idly and be swallowed by Kali, the goddess of time and death. —Alberto Villoldo PhD, Bestselling author of One Spirit Medicine and Shaman Healer Sage If ever we needed a guidebook that truly addressed the crises of our times while inspiring us with guidance and wisdom, this is that book. —Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit and Intimate Conversations with the Divine What is being made crystal clear is that humanity stands at a monumentally fragile threshold with two stark choices placed before it in a situation of complete uncertainty: Those choices are: 1) To continue to worship a vision of power, totally distanced from sacred reality 2) Or to choose the path of submitting bravely to the alchemy of being transfigured by a global dark night event that shatters all illusions but reveals the greatest imaginable possibility being born out of the greatest imaginable disaster. If humanity chooses the second path, which is what is being celebrated in this book, then it will have trained itself in the new radical unity necessary to weather the even worse crises that most certainly will quickly follow.

Eco–Art History in East and Southeast Asia

Eco–Art History in East and Southeast Asia PDF Author: De-nin D. Lee
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527527301
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
The essays in this anthology examine artwork and sites in East and Southeast Asia through the lens of eco–art history. In these regions, significant anthropogenic changes to terrain, watercourses, and ecosystems date back millennia, as do artwork and artefacts that both conceptualize and modify the natural world. The rising interest in earth-conscious modes of analysis, or “eco–art history,” informs this anthology, which explores the mutual impact of artistic expressions and local environments in East and Southeast Asia. Moreover, conceptual tools and case studies focused on these regions impart important insights bearing on the development of eco–art history. The book includes case studies examining the impact of the Little Ice Age on court painting and systems of representing marine life in the Joseon period in Korea. Other contributors consider contemporary artistic strategies, such as developing a “sustainability aesthetics” and focusing attention to non-human agents, to respond to environmental damage and climate change in the present. Additional essays analyse the complicated art historical ecology of heritage sites and question the underlying anthropocentrism in art historical priorities and practices. As a whole, this anthology argues for the importance of ecological considerations in art history.

Ecological Resistance Movements

Ecological Resistance Movements PDF Author: Bron Raymond Taylor
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791426456
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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Book Description
Ecological resistance movements are proliferating around the world. Some are explicitly radical in their ideas and militant in their tactics while others have emerged from a variety of social movements that, in response to environmental deterioration, have taken up ecological sustainability as a central objective. This book brings together a team of international scholars to examine contemporary movements of ecological resistance. The first four sections focus on the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, Africa, and Europe, and the book concludes with a selection of articles that address the philosophical and moral issues these movements pose, assess trends found among them, and evaluate their impacts and prospects. [Among the many contributors to the volume are Daniel Deudney, Robert Edwards, Heidi Hadsell, Sheldon Kamieniecki, Lois Lorentzen, David Rothenberg, Wolfgang Rudig, Jerry Stark, Paul Wapner, and Ben Wisner.]

Eco Bible

Eco Bible PDF Author: Yonatan Neril
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781735338842
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
"What can the Bible say about ecology? As people face huge ecological challenges-including growing hurricanes, floods, forest fires, and plastic pollution-the groundbreaking Eco Bible dives into this question. Drawing on 3,500 years of religious ethics, it shows how the Bible itself and its great scholars embrace care for God's creation as a fundamental and living message. Eco Bible both informs the reader and inspires spiritual commitment and action to protect all of God's creation. Eco Bible has been a #1 bestseller on multiple Amazon Kindle categories.This 'earth Bible' is a great read for those interested in Jewish and Christian social issues. It also represents an important contribution to eco theology, and to the spiritual ecology movement. Publishers Weekly called the book an """"insightful analysis,"""" which """"will inspire contemplation on how to live in harmony with nature and the power of conservation. Ecologically minded readers interested in the Hebrew Bible will love this."""" Eco Bible Volume 2 explores Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Together they cover 450 verses in the Five Books of Moses / Pentateuch / Old Testament. By linking faith and science, the book connects religion with contemporary scientific thought regarding human health, biodiversity, and clean air, land, and water. Professor Bill Brown, Professor of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary, calls Eco Bible "a rich repository of insights?for people of faith to move forward with wisdom, inspiration, and hope, all for the sake of God's good creation." Applying Biblical ethics to stewardship, conservation, and creation care is not just an idea for today, but is essential for a future where we live in balance and thrive on a planet that remains viable for all life. At a time of both ecological and spiritual crisis, an ecological reading of the Bible can have profound impact on human behavior, since billions of people worldwide consider it a holy book. Eco Bible uniquely explores the Bible's deep inspiration for fulfilling the blessing of all life, changing course to preserve God's creation, and sustaining human life in harmony with nature and all God's creatures."