This book is about how Western social psychology interfaces with an Eastern Zen Buddhist perspective. It is neither a purely Zen Buddhist critique of the former, nor is it merely a social psychological interpretation of Zen. Rather, it is an attempt to create common ground between each through the systematic comparison of certain shared fundamental concepts and ideas. Anglo-American social psychology is not much more than a century old despite having its roots in a broad philosophical tradition. Alternately, the Zen version of Buddhism can trace its historical origins to roughly 1,500 years ago in China. Even though the two arose at different times and at first glance appear stridently antithetical, the authors show that they share considerable areas of overlap. The logic of Zen contemplates the consequences of the taken-for-granted tyranny created by personal memories and culture. These traits, common to every culture, include hubris, greed, self-centeredness, distrust, prejudice, hatred, fear, anxiety, and violence. Social psychology leans more toward a "nurture" rather than "nature" explanation for behavior. Both areas of research are firmly rooted within the domain of sociological social psychology; the processes are also sometimes referred to as learning or conditioning. Zen challenges in radical terms key assumptions of both sociology and psychology concerning individual identity, human nature, and human motivation. This stimulating volume will provoke new thoughts about an old tradition and a newer area of scholarly work.

The first-ever comprehensive analysis of its kind in any western language, this unique volume provides a social art history of Yungang: a 5th-century rock-cut court cave complex, UNESCO World Heritage site, and one of the greatest Buddhist monuments of all time. Yungang asks why, when, and under what circumstances this impressive cave sanctuary was made, and who played significant roles at various stages. Recent economic changes in China including the expansion of roads have led to unprecedented numbers of objects being unearthed on site and near the cave-chapels. Archaeological discoveries in 2010 have shed significant new light on the architectural configuration of monasteries in the capital and the functions of different sections of the cave complex, as well as monastic life within it. For the first time, it is possible to reconstruct where the monks lived and translated sacred literary texts, and to fully understand that freestanding monasteries are an important component of the rock-cut cave complex. Illustrated throughout with remarkable full-colour photographs, this re-examination of the cave-chapels, which brings together previous scholarship, primary documentation, and more than a decade of first-hand field research, will not only fill in the gaps in our knowledge about Yungang, but also raise, and perhaps answer, new questions in art history.

Nation, Constitutionalism and Buddhism in Sri Lanka offers a new perspective on contemporary debates about Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism in Sri Lanka. In this book de Silva Wijeyeratne argues forcefully that 'Sinhalese Buddhism' in the period prior to its engagement with the British colonial State signified a relatively unbounded (although at times boundary forming) set of practices that facilitated both the inclusion and exclusion of non-'Buddhist' concepts and people within a particular cosmological frame. Juxtaposing the premodern against the backdrop of colonial modernity, de Silva Wijeyeratne tells us that in contrast modern 'Sinhalese Buddhism/nationalism' is a much more reified and bounded concept, one imagined through a 19th century epistemology whose purpose was not so much inclusion, but a much more radical exclusion of non-'Buddhist' ideas and people. In this insightful analysis modern Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism, then, emerges through the conjunction of discourse, power and knowledge at a distinct moment in the trajectory of the colonial State. An intrinsic feature of this modernist moment is that premodern categories (such as the cosmic order) were subject to a bureaucratic re-valuation that generated profound consequences for State-society relations and the wider constitutional/legal imaginary. This book goes onto explore how key constitutional and nation-building moments were framed within the cultural milieu of modern Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism - a nationalism that reveals the power of a re-valued Buddhist cosmic order to still inform the present. Given the intensification of the Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist project following the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in 2009, this book is of interest to scholars of nationalism, South Asian studies, the anthropology of ritual, and comparative legal history.

Although recent scholarship has shown that the term 'Theravada' in the familiar modern sense is a nineteenth- and twentieth-century construct, it is now used to refer to the more than 150 million people around the world who practice that form of Buddhism. Buddhist practices such as meditation, amulets, and merit making rituals have always been inseparable from the social formations that give rise to them, their authorizing discourses and the hegemonic relations they create. This book is composed of chapters written by established scholars in Buddhist studies who represent diverse disciplinary approaches from art history, religious studies, history and ethnography. It explores the historical forces, both external to and within the tradition of Theravada Buddhism and discusses how modern forms of Buddhist practice have emerged in South and Southeast Asia, in case studies from Nepal to Sri Lanka, Burma, Cambodia and Southwest China. Specific studies contextualize general trends and draw on practices, institutions, and communities that have been identified with this civilizational tradition throughout its extensive history and across a highly diverse cultural geography. This book foreground diverse responses among Theravadins to the encroaching challenges of modern life ways, communications, and political organizations, and will be of interest to scholars of Asian Religion, Buddhism and South and Southeast Asian Studies.

This title was first published in 2001: From Sacred Text to Internet addresses two key issues affecting the global spread of religion: first, the impact of new media on the ways in which religious traditions present their messages, and second, the global relocation of religions in novel geographical and social settings. The book offers extended studies of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and a wide-ranging survey chapter that refers to the presence on the Internet of many of the world's most influential religions. The chapters explore the relationship between scholarly reconstructions of the life of Jesus and representations of Jesus in contemporary popular cultures; the production and use of sacred images for the Hindu mass market; how Buddhism is represented and spread in the West; the Islamization of Egypt, its causes and influences; and the uses to which the Internet is put by religions as well as how information technology has influenced the future shape of religion. The five textbooks and Reader that make up the Religion Today Open University/Ashgate series are: o From Sacred Text to Internet o Religion and Social Transformations o Perspectives on Civil Religion o Global Religious Movements in Regional Context o Belief Beyond Boundaries o Religion Today: A Reader

Tantric Revisionings presents stimulating new perspectives on Hindu and Buddhist religion, particularly their Tantric versions, in India, Tibet or in modern Western societies. Geoffrey Samuel adopts an historically and textually informed anthropological approach, seeking to locate and understand religion in its social and cultural context. The question of the relation between 'popular' (folk, domestic, village, 'shamanic') religion and elite (literary, textual, monastic) religion forms a recurring theme through these studies. Six chapters have not been previously published; the previously published studies included are in publications which are difficult to locate outside major specialist libraries.

Shoma (Masatake) Morita, M.D. (1874-1938) was a Japanese psychiatrist-professor who developed a unique four stage therapy process. He challenged psychoanalysts who sanctioned an unconscious or unconsciousness (collective or otherwise) that resides inside the mind. Significantly, he advanced a phenomenal connection between existentialism, Zen, Nature and the therapeutic role of serendipity. Morita is a forerunner of eco-psychology and he equalised the strength between human-to-human attachment and human-to-Nature bonds. This book chronicles Morita's theory of "peripheral consciousness", his paradoxical method, his design of a natural therapeutic setting, and his progressive-four stage therapy. It explores how this therapy can be beneficial for clients outside of Japan using, for the first time, non-Japanese case studies. The author's personal material about training in Japan and subsequent practice of Morita's ecological and phenomenological therapy in Australia and the United States enhance this book. LeVine's coining of "cruelty-based trauma" generates a rich discussion on the need for therapy inclusive of ecological settings. As a medical anthropologist, clinical psychologist and genocide scholar, LeVine shows how the four progressive stages are essential to the classic method and the key importance of the first "rest" stage in outcomes for clients who have been embossed by trauma. Since cognitive science took hold in the 1970s, complex consciousness theories have lost footing in psychology and medical science. This book reinstates "consciousness" as the dynamic core of Morita therapy. The case material illustrates the use of Morita therapy for clients struggling with the aftermath of trauma and how to live creatively and responsively inside the uncertainty of existence. The never before published archival biographic notes and photos of psychoanalyst Karen Horney, Fritz Perls, Eric Fromm and other renowned scholars who took an interest in Morita in the 1950s and 60s provide a dense historical backdrop.

This study presents details about the life and philosophy of the founder of Buddhism, Prince Gautama of India or the Buddha, in the form of a poem as told from an imaginary Buddhist character. When originally published in 1926, little was known of Buddhism in Europe and Arnold aimed to inform the west of basic Buddhist concepts and the effects this had on India and Hinduism. This title will be of interest to students of Religion and Asian studies.

This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched. What are we to make of Western Buddhism? Glenn Wallis argues that in aligning their tradition with the contemporary wellness industry, Western Buddhists evade the consequences of Buddhist thought. This book shows that with concepts such as vanishing, nihility, extinction, contingency, and no-self, Buddhism, like all potent systems of thought, articulates a notion of the "real." Raw, unflinching acceptance of this real is held by Buddhism to be at the very core of human "awakening." Yet these preeminent human truths are universally shored up against in contemporary Buddhist practice, contravening the very heart of Buddhism. The author's critique of Western Buddhism is threefold. It is immanent, in emerging out of Buddhist thought but taking it beyond what it itself publicly concedes; negative, in employing the "democratizing" deconstructive methods of Francois Laruelle's non-philosophy; and re-descriptive, in applying Laruelle's concept of philofiction. Through applying resources of Continental philosophy to Western Buddhism, A Critique of Western Buddhism suggests a possible practice for our time, an "anthropotechnic", or religion transposed from its seductive, but misguiding, idealist haven.

Collected essays on different facets of Buddhism, linked by the themes of: dependent co-origination (pratitya-samutpada); the effects of Madhyamika and Yogacara ideas on Japanese literature and culture; and the tensions and harmonies amongst different religious traditions and Buddhist sects.

Although Christians have well-developed responses to other religions, the counterpart scholarship from Buddhists has thus far lagged behind. Breaking new ground, Buddhist Inclusivism analyzes the currently favored position towards religious others, inclusivism, in Buddhist traditions. Kristin Beise Kiblinger presents examples of inclusivism from a wide range of Buddhist contexts and periods, from Pali texts to the Dalai Lama's recent works. After constructing and defending a preferred, alternative form of Buddhist inclusivism, she evaluates the thought of particular contemporary Buddhists such as Thich Nhat Hanh and Masao Abe in light of her ideal position. This book offers a more systematic treatment of Buddhist inclusivism than has yet been provided either by scholars or by Buddhist leaders.

Recent decades have seen a groundswell in the Buddhist world, a transnational agitation for better opportunities for Buddhist women. Many of the main players in the transnational nuns movement self-identify as feminists but other participants in this movement may not know or use the language of feminism. In fact, many ordained Buddhist women say they seek higher ordination so that they might be better Buddhist practitioners, not for the sake of gender equality. Eschewing the backward projection of secular liberal feminist categories, this book describes the basic features of the Buddhist discourse of the female body, held more or less in common across sectarian lines, and still pertinent to ordained Buddhist women today. The textual focus of the study is an early-first-millennium Sanskrit Buddhist work, "Descent into the Womb scripture" or Garbhavakranti-sutra. Drawing out the implications of this text, the author offers innovative arguments about the significance of childbirth and fertility in Buddhism, namely that birth is a master metaphor in Indian Buddhism; that Buddhist gender constructions are centrally shaped by Buddhist birth discourse; and that, by undermining the religious importance of female fertility, the Buddhist construction of an inauspicious, chronically impure, and disgusting femininity constituted a portal to a new, liberated, feminine life for Buddhist monastic women. Thus, this study of the Buddhist discourse of birth is also a genealogy of gender in middle period Indian Buddhism. Offering a new critical perspective on the issues of gender, bodies and suffering, this book will be of interest to an interdisciplinary audience, including researchers in the field of Buddhism, South Asian history and religion, gender and religion, theory and method in the study of religion, and Buddhist medicine.

Since the 1970s, tens of thousands of Vietnamese immigrants have settled in Louisiana, Florida, and other Gulf Coast states, rebuilding lives that were upended by the wars in Indochina. For many, their faith has been an essential source of community and hope. But how have their experiences as migrants influenced their religious practices and interpretations of Buddhist tenets? And how has organized religion shaped their understanding of what it means to be Vietnamese in the United States? This ethnographic study follows the monks and lay members of temples in the Gulf Coast region who practice Pure Land Buddhism, which is prevalent in East Asia but in the United States is less familiar than forms such as Zen. By treating the temple as a site to be made and remade, Vietnamese Americans have developed approaches that sometimes contradict fundamental Buddhist principles of nonattachment. This book considers the adaptation of Buddhist practices to fit American cultural contexts, from temple fundraising drives to the rebranding of the Vu Lan festival as Vietnamese Mother's Day. It also reveals the vital role these faith communities have played in helping Vietnamese Americans navigate challenges from racial discrimination to Hurricane Katrina.

Buddhism, in its diverse forms and throughout its long history, has had a profound influence on Asian cultures and the lives of countless individuals. In recent times, it has also attracted great interest among people in other parts of the world, including philosophers. Buddhist traditions often deal with ideas and concerns that are central to philosophy. A distinctively Buddhist philosophy of religion can be developed which focuses on Buddhist responses to issues such as the problem of suffering, the purpose and potential of human existence, life after death, freedom and moral responsibility, appearance and reality, the nature of religious language, attitudes to religious diversity and the relationship between Buddhism and science. Buddhism: A Contemporary Philosophical Investigation examines some of the central questions that such ideas raise, drawing on ancient and more recent sources from a variety of Buddhist traditions, as viewed from a contemporary philosophical standpoint.

Providing a rigorous analysis of Buddhist ways of understanding religious diversity, this book develops a new foundation for cross-cultural understanding of religious diversity in our time. Examining the complexity and uniqueness of Buddha's approach to religious pluralism using four main categories - namely exclusivism, inclusivism, pluralistic-inclusivism and pluralism - the book proposes a cross-cultural and interreligious interpretation of each category, thus avoiding the accusation of intellectual colonialism. The key argument is that, unlike the Buddha, most Buddhist traditions today, including Theravada Buddhism and even the Dalai Lama, consider liberation and the highest stages of spiritual development exclusive to Buddhism. The book suggests that the Buddha rejects many doctrines and practices found in other traditions, and that, for him, there are nonnegotiable ethical and doctrinal standards that correspond to the Dharma. This argument is controversial and likely to ignite a debate among Buddhists from different traditions, especially between conservative and progressive Buddhists. The book fruitfully contributes to the literature on inter-religious dialogue, and is of use to students and scholars of Asian Studies, World Religion and Eastern Philosophy.

This book, written with hospital spiritual care providers in mind, investigates how to expand the field and scope of compassion within the hospital context, for the spiritual care and safety of transgender patients. Written by a law-educated pastoral counselor, it advocates for chaplain legal literacy, and explains the consequences of spiritual care providers not knowing more about the law. It explores the current political and legal situation transgender hospital patients find themselves in, and especially how these new policies put transgender people at risk when they are in a hospital setting. Pamela Ayo Yetunde offers Buddhist-Christian activist interreligious dialogue methods to promote deeper understanding of how spiritual practices can cultivate empathy for transgender patients.

Cyber Zen ethnographically explores Buddhist practices in the online virtual world of Second Life. Does typing at a keyboard and moving avatars around the screen, however, count as real Buddhism? If authentic practices must mimic the actual world, then Second Life Buddhism does not. In fact, a critical investigation reveals that online Buddhist practices have at best only a family resemblance to canonical Asian traditions and owe much of their methods to the late twentieth-century field of cybernetics. If, however, they are judged existentially, by how they enable users to respond to the suffering generated by living in a highly mediated consumer society, then Second Life Buddhism consists of authentic spiritual practices. Cyber Zen explores how Second Life Buddhist enthusiasts form communities, identities, locations, and practices that are both products of and authentic responses to contemporary Network Consumer Society. Gregory Price Grieve illustrates that to some extent all religion has always been virtual and gives a glimpse of possible future alternative forms of religion.

This book offers a new interpretation of the relationship between 'insight practice' (satipatthana) and the attainment of the four jhanas (i.e., right samadhi), a key problem in the study of Buddhist meditation. The author challenges the traditional Buddhist understanding of the four jhanas as states of absorption, and shows how these states are the actualization and embodiment of insight (vipassana). It proposes that the four jhanas and what we call 'vipassana' are integral dimensions of a single process that leads to awakening. Current literature on the phenomenology of the four jhanas and their relationship with the 'practice of insight' has mostly repeated traditional Theravada interpretations. No one to date has offered a comprehensive analysis of the fourfold jhana model independently from traditional interpretations. This book offers such an analysis. It presents a model which speaks in the Nikayas' distinct voice. It demonstrates that the distinction between the 'practice of serenity' (samatha-bhavana) and the 'practice of insight' (vipassana-bhavana) - a fundamental distinction in Buddhist meditation theory - is not applicable to early Buddhist understanding of the meditative path. It seeks to show that the common interpretation of the jhanas as 'altered states of consciousness', absorptions that do not reveal anything about the nature of phenomena, is incompatible with the teachings of the Pali Nikayas. By carefully analyzing the descriptions of the four jhanas in the early Buddhist texts in Pali, their contexts, associations and meanings within the conceptual framework of early Buddhism, the relationship between this central element in the Buddhist path and 'insight meditation' becomes revealed in all its power. Early Buddhist Meditation will be of interest to scholars of Buddhist studies, Asian philosophies and religions, as well as Buddhist practitioners with a serious interest in the process of insight meditation.

Tsong khapa (14th-century) is arguably the most important and influential philosopher in Tibetan history. An Ocean of Reasoning is the most extensive and perhaps the deepest extant commentary on Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika (Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way), and it can be argued that it is impossible to discuss Nagarjuna's work in an informed way without consulting it. It discusses alternative readings of the text and prior commentaries and provides a detailed exegesis, constituting a systematic presentation of Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophy. Despite its central importance, however, of Tsong khapa's three most important texts, only An Ocean of Reasoning remains untranslated, perhaps because it is both philosophically and linguistically challenging, demanding a rare combination of abilities on the part of a translator. Jay Garfield and Ngawang Samten bring the requisite skills to this difficult task, combining between them expertise in Western and Indian philosophy, and fluency in Tibetan, Sanskrit, and English. The resulting translation of this important text will not only be a landmark contribution to the scholarship of Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, but will serve as a valuable companion volume to Jay Garfield's highly successful translation of The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way.

First published in 1913, this book presents a translation of five stories written by the the author. Each of the five stories illustrates and elucidates central concepts in Buddhist philosophy while eschewing any technical terminology. As such, this book is ideal for those seeking an accessible introduction to Buddhist philosophy and will provide a platform for further study.

First published in 1915, this book presents a dramatization of part ofthe author's The Light of Asia. The original text represents one of the first successful attempts to popularise Buddhism and its founder Gautama Buddha - presenting his life, teachings and philosophy in verse poetry. This adaptation dramatizes part of the The Light of Asia and includes staging instructions, properties required, illustrative drawings of suggested costumes, and incidental music composed specifically for the piece. This book will be of interest to students of Indian and Buddhist literature - and how this has interacted with the West - as well as students of drama.