In 2008, an international team of climbers discovered a large collection of Tibetan manuscripts in a cave complex called Mardzong, in Nepal's remote Mustang district. The following year, the entire cache-over five thousand folios from some sixty different works of the Buddhist and Boen religions, some more than seven centuries old-were removed to the safe keeping of a monastery, where they were later examined by experts from different disciplines. This book is the result of their findings. The authors present what they have been able to discover about the content of these manuscripts, their age, the materials with which they were made, the patrons who commissioned them and the scribes and artists who created them. Contributors include: Agnieszka Helman-Wazny, Charles Ramble, Nyima Drandul Gurung, Naljor Tsering, Sarah Skumanov, Emilie Arnaud-Nguyen and Bazhen Zeren

In what ways do Buddhists recognize, define, and sort waste from non-waste? What happens to Buddhist-related waste? How do new practices of Buddhist consumption result in new forms of waste and consequently new ways of dealing with waste? This book explores these questions in a close examination of a religion that is often portrayed as anti-materialist and non-economic. It provides insight into the complexity of Buddhist consumption, conceptions of waste, and waste care. Examples include scripture that has been torn and cannot be read, or an amulet that has disintegrated, as well as garbage left behind on a pilgrimage, or the offerings of food and prayer scarves that create ecological contamination. Chapters cover mass-production and over-consumption, the wastefulness of consumerism, the by-products of Buddhist practices like rituals and festivals, and the impact of increased Buddhist consumption on religious practices and social relations. The book also looks at waste in terms of what is discarded, exploring issues of when and why particular objects and practices are sorted and handled as sacred and disposable. Contributors address how sacred materiality is destined to wear and decay, as well as ideas about redistribution, regeneration or recycling, and the idea of waste as afterlife.

Buddhism in America provides the most comprehensive and up to date survey of the diverse landscape of US Buddhist traditions, their history and development, and current methodological trends in the study of Buddhism in the West, located within the translocal flow of global Buddhist culture. Divided into three parts (Histories; Traditions; Frames), this introduction traces Buddhism's history and encounter with North American culture, charts the landscape of US Buddhist communities, and engages current methodological and theoretical developments in the field. The volume includes: - A short introduction to Buddhism - A historical survey from the 19th century to the present - Coverage of contemporary US Buddhist communities, including Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana Theoretical and methodological issues and debates covered include: - Social, political and environmental engagement - Race, feminist, and queer theories of Buddhism - Secular Buddhism, digital Buddhism, and modernity - Popular culture, media, and the arts Pedagogical tools include chapter summaries, discussion questions, images and maps, a glossary, and case studies. The book's website provides recommended further resources including websites, books and films, organized by chapter. With individual chapters which can stand on their own and be assigned out of sequence, Buddhism in America is the ideal resource for courses on Buddhism in America, American Religious History, and Introduction to Buddhism.

Virtuous Bodies breaks new ground in the field of Buddhist ethics by investigating the diverse roles bodies play in ethical development. Traditionally, Buddhists assumed a close connection between body and morality. Thus Buddhist literature contains descriptions of living beings that stink with sin, are disfigured by vices, or are perfumed and adorned with virtues. Taking an influential early medieval Indian Mahayana Buddhist text-Santideva's Compendium of Training (Siksasamuccaya)-as a case study, Susanne Mrozik demonstrates that Buddhists regarded ethical development as a process of physical and moral transformation.
Mrozik chooses The Compendium of Training because it quotes from over one hundred Buddhist scriptures, allowing her to reveal a broader Buddhist interest in the ethical significance of bodies. The text is a training manual for bodhisattvas, especially monastic bodhisattvas. In it, bodies function as markers of, and conditions for, one's own ethical development. Most strikingly, bodies also function as instruments for the ethical development of others. When living beings come into contact with the virtuous bodies of bodhisattvas, they are transformed physically and morally for the better.
Virtuous Bodies explores both the centrality of bodies to the bodhisattva ideal and the corporeal specificity of that ideal. Arguing that the bodhisattva ideal is an embodied ethical ideal, Mrozik poses an array of fascinating questions: What does virtue look like? What kinds of physical features constitute virtuous bodies? What kinds of bodies have virtuous effects on others? Drawing on a range of contemporary theorists, this book engages in a feminist hermeneutics of recoveryand suspicion in order to explore the ethical resources Buddhism offers to scholars and religious practitioners interested in the embodied nature of ethical ideals.