Author: Caitilin J. Griffiths
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824859391
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 233
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Book Description
Women have long been active supporters and promoters of Buddhist rituals and functions, but their importance in the operations of Buddhist schools has often been minimized. Chin’ichibō (?–1344), a nun who taught male and female disciples and lived in her own temple, is therefore considered an anomaly. In Tracing the Itinerant Path, Caitilin Griffiths’ meticulous research and translations of primary sources indicate that Chin’ichibō is in fact an example of her time—a learned female who was active in the teaching and spread of Buddhism—and not an exception. Chin’ichibō and her disciples were jishū, members of a Pure Land Buddhist movement of which the famous charismatic holy man Ippen (1239–1289) was a founder. Jishū, distinguished by their practice of continuous nembutsu chanting, gained the support of a wide and diverse populace throughout Japan from the late thirteenth century. Male and female disciples rarely cloistered themselves behind monastic walls, preferring to conduct ceremonies and religious duties among the members of their communities. They offered memorial and other services to local lay believers and joined itinerant missions, traveling across provinces to reach as many people as possible. Female members were entrusted to run local practice halls that included male participants. Griffiths’ study introduces female jishū who were keenly involved—not as wives, daughters, or mothers, but as partners and leaders in the movement. Filling the lacunae that exists in our understanding of women’s participation in Japanese religious history, Griffiths highlights the significant roles female jishū held and offers a more nuanced understanding of Japanese Buddhist history. Students of Buddhism, scholars of Japanese history, and those interested in women’s studies will find this volume a significant and compelling contribution.
Author: Caitilin J. Griffiths
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780494721643
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 510
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Book Description
Medieval Japan was a fluid society in which many wanderers, including religious preachers, traveled the roads. One popular band of itinerant proselytizers was the jishu from the Yugyo school, a gender inclusive Amida Pure Land Buddhist group. This dissertation details the particular circumstances of the jishu nuns through the evolving history of the Yugyo school. The aim is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the gender relations and the changing roles women played in this itinerant religious order. Based on the dominant Buddhist view of the status of women in terms of enlightenment, one would have expected the Buddhist schools to have provided only minimal opportunities for women. While the large institutionalized monasteries of the time do reflect this perspective, schools founded by hijiri practitioners, such as the early Yugyo school, contradict these expectations. This study has revealed that during the formation of the Yugyo school in the fourteenth century, jishu nuns held multiple and strong roles, including leadership of mix-gendered practice halls. Over time, as the Yugyo school became increasingly institutionalized, both in their itinerant practices and in their practice halls, there was a corresponding marginalization of the nuns. This thesis attempts to identify the causes of this change and argues that the conversion to a fixed lifestyle and the adoption of mainstream Buddhist doctrine discouraged the co-participation of women in their order.
Author: Robert H. Scott
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 143849243X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 293
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Book Description
This anthology provides an accessible introduction to East Asian Buddhism, focusing specifically on China, Korea, and Japan. It begins with a detailed historical introduction that includes an overview of the development of the various schools of Buddhism in East Asia and traces the transmission of Buddhism from Northwest India to China in the first century CE, and then to Korea and Japan in the fourth and sixth centuries CE. The first part of the book contains five chapters that offer creative pedagogies that can help college professors infuse East Asian Buddhism into their courses. The second part includes six interdisciplinary chapters that explore thematic links between East Asian Buddhism and religious studies, philosophy, film studies, literature, and environmental studies.
Author: Sonya Sharma
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350257184
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 497
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Book Description
Bringing together disciplines across the arts, humanities and social sciences, this Handbook presents novel and lively examinations of the dynamic ways religion, gender and sexuality operate. Applying feminist, intersectional, and reflexive approaches, the volume aims to loosen imperialist and exclusionary figurations that have underwritten and tethered religion, gender, and sexuality together. While holding onto the field of inquiry, the Handbook offers contributions that interrogate and untie it from the terms and conditions that have formed it. The volume is organized into thematic sections: - Forces and Futures - Activisms and Labors - Agencies and Practices - Relationships and Institutions - Texts and Objects Chapters range across religious, geographical, historical, political, and social contexts and feature an array of case-studies, experiences, and topics that exemplify the reflexive intention of the volume, including explorations of race, whiteness, colonialism, and the institutional intolerance of minority groups. Contributors also advance new areas of research in religion including artificial intelligence, farming, migrant mothering, child sexual abuse, mediatization, national security, legal frameworks, addiction and recovery, decolonial hermeneutics, creative arts, sport, sexual practices, and academic friendship. This is an essential contribution to the fields of religious studies and gender and sexuality studies.
Author: Ippen
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824819972
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 276
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Book Description
Ippen (1239-1289) was a wandering hijiri (holy man) and religious leader whose movement developed into one of the major schools of medieval Japanese Buddhism. In his life and thought we find elements of folk practices and mountain austerities, the critical spirit of Zen, and the cosmic vision of esoteric traditions. This volume presents a translation of all of Ippen's extant writings, including letters and verse, together with records of his spoken words.
Author: David L. Howell
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520240855
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
"One of the most important contributions of this book is its compelling portrait of the various itinerants within, and often without, early-modern Japan's status system. Even though the topic is a rather serious one, Howell reveals a refreshing sense of humor and an original approach. This is a pleasure to read."—Brett L. Walker, author of The Conquest of Ainu Lands "David Howell's immersion in contemporary Japanese scholarship is evident on every page of this masterful book. A probing work of great erudition."—Kären Wigen, author of The Making of a Japanese Periphery
Author: Chang-tai Hung
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520354869
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 468
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Book Description
This is the first comprehensive study of popular culture in twentieth-century China, and of its political impact during the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945 (known in China as "The War of Resistance against Japan"). Chang-tai Hung shows in compelling detail how Chinese resisters used a variety of popular cultural forms—especially dramas, cartoons, and newspapers—to reach out to the rural audience and galvanize support for the war cause. While the Nationalists used popular culture as a patriotic tool, the Communists refashioned it into a socialist propaganda instrument, creating lively symbols of peasant heroes and joyful images of village life under their rule. In the end, Hung argues, the Communists' use of popular culture contributed to their victory in revolution.
Author: Barbara Ambros
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479827622
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
A comprehensive history of women in Japanese religious traditions Scholars have widely acknowledged the persistent ambivalence with which the Japanese religious traditions treat women. Much existing scholarship depicts Japan’s religious traditions as mere means of oppression. But this view raises a question: How have ambivalent and even misogynistic religious discourses on gender still come to inspire devotion and emulation among women? In Women in Japanese Religions, Barbara R. Ambros examines the roles that women have played in the religions of Japan. An important corrective to more common male-centered narratives of Japanese religious history, this text presents a synthetic long view of Japanese religions from a distinct angle that has typically been discounted in standard survey accounts of Japanese religions. Drawing on a diverse collection of writings by and about women, Ambros argues that ambivalent religious discourses in Japan have not simply subordinated women but also given them religious resources to pursue their own interests and agendas. Comprising nine chapters organized chronologically, the book begins with the archeological evidence of fertility cults and the early shamanic ruler Himiko in prehistoric Japan and ends with an examination of the influence of feminism and demographic changes on religious practices during the “lost decades” of the post-1990 era. By viewing Japanese religious history through the eyes of women, Women in Japanese Religions presents a new narrative that offers strikingly different vistas of Japan’s pluralistic traditions than the received accounts that foreground male religious figures and male-dominated institutions.
Author: Sherman E. Lee
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art, Chinese
Languages : en
Pages : 512
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Book Description
Author: John Daido Loori
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0861717643
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 370
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Book Description
The Zen tradition has just two main meditative practices: shikantaza, or "just sitting"; and introspection guided by the powerful Zen teaching stories called koans. Following in the tradition of The Art of Just Sitting (endorsed as a "A book we have needed for a long, long time"), this new anthology from John Daido Loori illuminates the subtle practice of koan study from many different points of view. Includes writings by: Robert Aitken William Bodiford Robert Buswell Roko Sherry Chayat Francis Dojun Cook Eihei Dogen Heinrich Dumoulin Hakuin Ekaku Victor Sogen Hori Keizan Jokin Philip Kapleau Chung-fen Ming-Pen Taizan Maezumi Dennis Genpo Merzel Soen Nakagawa Ruth Fuller Sasaki Sokei-an Sasaki Nyogen Senzaki Zenkei Shibayama Eido Shimano Philip Yampolsky Hakuun Yasutani Wayne Yokoyama Katsushiro Yoshizawa
