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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Aspects of religions (non-Christian) > Worship > General
Buddhism in the Global Eye focuses on the importance of a global
context and transnational connections for understanding Buddhist
modernizing movements. It also explores how Asian agency has been
central to the development of modern Buddhism, and provides
theoretical reflections that seek to overcome misleading East-West
binaries. Using case studies from China, Japan, Vietnam, India,
Tibet, Canada, and the USA, the book introduces new research that
reveals the permeable nature of certain categories, such as
"modern", "global", and "contemporary" Buddhism. In the book,
contributors recognize the multiple nodes of intra-Asian and global
influence. For example, monks travelled among Asian countries
creating networks of information and influence, mutually
stimulating each other's modernization movements. The studies
demonstrate that in modernization movements, Asian reformers
mobilized all available cultural resources both to adapt local
forms of Buddhism to a new global context and to shape new foreign
concepts to local Asian forms.
Your young students will join Daniel and his Israeli cousin Rivkah
as they learn together about the Jewish holidays.
Buddhism in the Global Eye focuses on the importance of a global
context and transnational connections for understanding Buddhist
modernizing movements. It also explores how Asian agency has been
central to the development of modern Buddhism, and provides
theoretical reflections that seek to overcome misleading East-West
binaries. Using case studies from China, Japan, Vietnam, India,
Tibet, Canada, and the USA, the book introduces new research that
reveals the permeable nature of certain categories, such as
"modern", "global", and "contemporary" Buddhism. In the book,
contributors recognize the multiple nodes of intra-Asian and global
influence. For example, monks travelled among Asian countries
creating networks of information and influence, mutually
stimulating each other's modernization movements. The studies
demonstrate that in modernization movements, Asian reformers
mobilized all available cultural resources both to adapt local
forms of Buddhism to a new global context and to shape new foreign
concepts to local Asian forms.
"The Tibetan Book of the Dead" is the most famous Buddhist text
in the West, having sold more than a million copies since it was
first published in English in 1927. Carl Jung wrote a commentary on
it, Timothy Leary redesigned it as a guidebook for an acid trip,
and the Beatles quoted Leary's version in their song "Tomorrow
Never Knows." More recently, the book has been adopted by the
hospice movement, enshrined by Penguin Classics, and made into an
audiobook read by Richard Gere. Yet, as acclaimed writer and
scholar of Buddhism Donald Lopez writes, ""The Tibetan Book of the
Dead" is not really Tibetan, it is not really a book, and it is not
really about death." In this compelling introduction and short
history, Lopez tells the strange story of how a relatively obscure
and malleable collection of Buddhist texts of uncertain origin came
to be so revered--and so misunderstood--in the West.
The central character in this story is Walter Evans-Wentz
(1878-1965), an eccentric scholar and spiritual seeker from
Trenton, New Jersey, who, despite not knowing the Tibetan language
and never visiting the country, crafted and named "The Tibetan Book
of the Dead." In fact, Lopez argues, Evans-Wentz's book is much
more American than Tibetan, owing a greater debt to Theosophy and
Madame Blavatsky than to the lamas of the Land of Snows. Indeed,
Lopez suggests that the book's perennial appeal stems not only from
its origins in magical and mysterious Tibet, but also from the way
Evans-Wentz translated the text into the language of a very
American spirituality.
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