This study examines the impact of Buddhism on the political process of Asian countries in recent times. The intersection between Buddhism and politics; religious authority and political power is explored through the engagement of Buddhist monks and lay activists in the process of nation-building, development, and implementation of democracy.

Published in English in 1884, this is the posthumous third edition of an 1862 study by the German orientalist Martin Haug (1827 76). He produced this groundbreaking analysis and comparison of Sanskrit and the Avesta while professor of Sanskrit at the Government College of Poona. His time in India enabled him to make an unprecedented study of Zoroastrian texts, becoming the first to translate the seventeen Gathas into a European language, thereby helping to highlight that they were composed by Zoroaster. Edward William West (1824 1905), an engineer and self-taught orientalist, met Haug in India. Having read this work's first edition, he was inspired to study further the Pahlavi language. On his and Haug's return to Europe in 1866, they worked closely together in translating and publishing Zoroastrian texts. West's edition of Haug's Essays includes several updates, unpublished papers from Haug's collection, appendices of further translations, and a biography of the author.

This volume is the first in-depth study of a recently discovered Sanskrit dharani spell text from around the 5th century CE surviving in two palm-leaf and three paper manuscript compendia from Nepal. This rare Buddhist scripture focuses on the ritual practice of thaumaturgic weather control for successful agriculture through overpowering mythical Nagas. Traditionally, these serpentine beings are held responsible for the amount of rainfall. The six chapters of the Vajratundasamayakalparaja present the vidyadhara spell-master as a ritualist who uses mandalas, mudras and other techniques to gain mastery over the Nagas and thus control the rains. By subjugating the Nagas, favourable weather and good crops are guaranteed. This links this incantation tradition to economic power and the securing of worldly support for the Buddhist community.

This volume investigates Paul Tillich's relationship to Asian religions and locates Tillich in a global religious context. It appreciates Tillich's heritage within the western and eastern religious contexts and explores the possibility of global religious-cultural understanding through the dialogue of Tillich's thought and East-West religious-cultural matrix.

One of the most dramatic and surprising developments of the last twenty years was the proliferation of aggressive political movements linked to religion. This book examines the interplay of religion and politics in predominantly Hindu India, Islamic Pakistan, and Buddhist Sri Lanka. This collection of studies by internationally known scholars challenges traditional stereotypes and interpretations of South Asian religion and politics and provides a multidisciplinary perspective on contemporary conflicts. While the focus of the work is on Pakistan, India, and Sri Lanka, the arguments advanced by the authors are useful for understanding recent developments in religion and politics around the world. An informative introduction overviews the link between religion and political conflict in South Asia and offers a framework and synopsis of the chapters that follow. These are grouped into three parts by nationality. The chapters on India examine recent elections and the growth of militant Hinduism, the impact of caste relations on socio-economic conditions, and the problems of Muslims as the largest religious minority in India. The chapters on Pakistan explore how political and economic changes led to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism; the historical relationship among gender, nationalism, and the Islamic state; and the evolution of a capitalist social system in an Islamic nation. The chapters on Sri Lanka explain the role of Buddhist myth in justifying political oppression, the conflict between the ideal of Buddhist pacifism and the reality of political violence, and the impact of race, class, and gender on political conflict. Political scientists, historians, and religion scholars will find this study a timely and valuable addition to their libraries.

Engaging in existential discourse beyond the European tradition, this book turns to Asian philosophies to reassess vital questions of life's purpose, death's imminence, and our capacity for living meaningfully in conditions of uncertainty. Inspired by the dilemmas of European existentialism, this cross-cultural study seeks concrete techniques for existential practice via the philosophies of East Asia. The investigation begins with the provocative writings of twentieth-century Korean Buddhist nun Kim Iryop, who asserts that meditative concentration conducts a potent energy outward throughout the entire karmic network, enabling the radical transformation of our shared existential conditions. Understanding her claim requires a look at East Asian sources more broadly. Considering practices as diverse as Buddhist merit-making ceremonies, Confucian/Ruist methods for self-cultivation, the ritual memorization and recitation of texts, and Yijing divination, the book concludes by advocating a speculative turn. This 'speculative existentialism' counters the suspicion toward metaphysics characteristic of twentieth-century European existential thought and, at the same time, advances a program for action. It is not a how-to guide for living, but rather a philosophical methodology that takes seriously the power of mental cultivation to transform the meaning of the life that we share.

The centrality of death rituals has rarely been documented in anthropologically informed studies of Buddhism. Bringing together a range of perspectives including ethnographic, textual, historical and theoretically informed accounts, this edited volume presents the diversity of the Buddhist funeral cultures of mainland Southeast Asia and China. While the contributions show that the ideas and ritual practices related to death are continuously transformed in local contexts through political and social changes, they also highlight the continuities of funeral cultures. The studies are based on long-term fieldwork and covering material from Theravada Buddhism in Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and various regions of Chinese Buddhism, both on the mainland and in the Southeast Asian diasporas. Topics such as bad death, the feeding of ghosts, pollution through death, and the ritual regeneration of life show how Buddhist cultures deal with death as a universal phenomenon of human culture.

The book offers a novel introduction to the use of mindfulness skills in communication in a range of settings.

This book critically examines the term 'religion' (shukyo) as a social category within the sociological context of contemporary Japan. Whereas the nineteenth-century construction of shukyo has been critically studied by many, the same critical approach has not been extended to the contemporary context of the Japanese-language discourse on shukyo and Temple Buddhism. This work aims to unveil the norms and imperatives which govern the utilization of the term shukyo in the specific context of modern day Japan, with a particular focus upon Temple Buddhism. The author draws on a number of popular publications in Japanese, many of which have been written by Buddhist priests. In addition, the book offers rich interview material from conversations with Buddhist priests. Readers will gain insights into the critical deconstruction, the historicization, and the study of social classification system of 'religion', in terms of its cross-cultural application to the contemporary Japanese context. The book will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines including Japanese Studies, Buddhology, Religious Studies, Social Anthropology, and Sociology.

Offers a comprehensive view of the emerging fields of secular-scientific mindfulness and Mindfulness-Based Teaching and Learning (MBTL) for professionals for use in a range of educational and clinical settings, including preK-12, higher education, adult and community education, social work, workplace education, medicine, psychology, and counselling. Provides intellectual depth, including addressing key critiques, while offering constructive support to practitioners and professionals in the full spectrum of skills and competencies required of secular-scientific mindfulness specialists, including an up-to-date competency framework. Presents a multi-disciplinary approach to secular-scientific mindfulness and its practices, with implications for teacher preparation and continuing education for a range of professions. These multi-disciplinary perspectives provide a fulsome view of mindfulness as it is unfolding in modern contexts, including the continuing dialogue with traditional Buddhist and classical Western philosophical sources; empirical perspectives from psychology and cognitive science, and practice-oriented scholarship from education, medicine, and social work.

Mindfulness-Based Wellbeing Enhancement (MBWE) integrates Mindfulness and Wellbeing to realize human flourishing and the attainment of happiness. This 9-session program, conducted over 8 weeks, enhances wellbeing, happiness and quality of life through self-understanding and self-awareness. The first part of the book is devoted to presenting mindfulness, wellbeing, the happiness paradigm and the curriculum of the Mindfulness-Based Wellbeing Enhancement (MBWE) program. It presents the foundations of mindfulness-based programs, and how mindfulness intersects with wellbeing. The authors argue, with the support of evidence, that mindfulness is well placed to promote human flourishing rather than limiting its relevance to stress reduction and preventing depression relapse. Several chapters are devoted to presenting the MBWE program comprehensively with weekly agendas, homework, handouts, facilitation guides and practice scripts. The second part of the book presents the evidence base of mindfulness, cultural adaptations for different populations, the therapeutic effectiveness of group learning inherent in Mindfulness-Based Programs and the often-untold history of mindfulness. The authors present the often-neglected Asian roots of Mindfulness and justify how secular Mindfulness, as taught by Jon Kabat-Zinn, is influenced by multiple wisdom traditions as opposed to it being a solely Buddhist practice. This book serves as a hands-on resource for trained mindfulness teachers, psychologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, counsellors, social workers, practitioners, educators, coaches, and consultants. It is also suitable for anyone who is interested in the appreciation of mindfulness and human flourishing.

Mindfulness-Based Wellbeing Enhancement (MBWE) integrates Mindfulness and Wellbeing to realize human flourishing and the attainment of happiness. This 9-session program, conducted over 8 weeks, enhances wellbeing, happiness and quality of life through self-understanding and self-awareness. The first part of the book is devoted to presenting mindfulness, wellbeing, the happiness paradigm and the curriculum of the Mindfulness-Based Wellbeing Enhancement (MBWE) program. It presents the foundations of mindfulness-based programs, and how mindfulness intersects with wellbeing. The authors argue, with the support of evidence, that mindfulness is well placed to promote human flourishing rather than limiting its relevance to stress reduction and preventing depression relapse. Several chapters are devoted to presenting the MBWE program comprehensively with weekly agendas, homework, handouts, facilitation guides and practice scripts. The second part of the book presents the evidence base of mindfulness, cultural adaptations for different populations, the therapeutic effectiveness of group learning inherent in Mindfulness-Based Programs and the often-untold history of mindfulness. The authors present the often-neglected Asian roots of Mindfulness and justify how secular Mindfulness, as taught by Jon Kabat-Zinn, is influenced by multiple wisdom traditions as opposed to it being a solely Buddhist practice. This book serves as a hands-on resource for trained mindfulness teachers, psychologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, counsellors, social workers, practitioners, educators, coaches, and consultants. It is also suitable for anyone who is interested in the appreciation of mindfulness and human flourishing.

In the summer of 1960 Paul Tillich visited Japan. Together with his wife Hannah, he spent eight weeks in the country sightseeing, lecturing, and having discussions with local scholars. This monograph provides the first comprehensive documentation of Tillich s journey, highlighting the political context and the itinerary of his visit. Moreover, Tomoaki Fukai presents the manuscripts of Tillich s lectures, his conversations with leading Buddhists in Kyoto, and his correspondence with his Japanese hosts."

In this interdisciplinary inquiry, John Clifford Holt seeks to uncover how Buddhism was understood and expressed during the waning years of indigenous political power in Asia's oldest continuing Buddhist culture. Holt focuses on King Kirti Sri Rajasinha and how, despite powerful and persistent Dutch colonial threats and a deeply suspicious Kandyan Buddhist Sinhalese aristocracy, he successfully revived Sinhalese Theravada Buddhism. As Holt demonstrates, Kirti Sri succeeded in formulating his vision of an orthodox Buddhism in a number of ways: through the patronage of monastic sanha and re-establishing traditional lines of ordination, translating the Pali suttas into Sinhala, sponsoring public Buddhist religious rites, and refurbishing almost all Buddhist temples in the Kandyan culture region. The ultimate aim of Holt's study is to describe and interpret Kirti Sri's articulation of a normative Buddhist world, the essentials of which remain normative for many Buddhists in the Kandyan region of Sri Lanka today. Scholars and students will find The Religious World of Kirti Sri is an indispensable resource for the understanding of orthodox Buddhism at this important historical juncture, as well as the present day.

This book derives from a series of lectures given in 1888 by Monier Monier-Williams, who was Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford for over 30 years and whose work broke new ground in the Western understanding of Buddhism and other South Asian religions. This substantial historical survey of Buddhism begins with an account of the Buddha and his earliest teaching, as well as a brief description of the origin and composition of the scriptures containing the Buddha's law (Dharma). Monier-Williams explains the early constitution of the Buddha's order of monks (Sangha), and outlines the philosophical doctrines of Buddhism together with its code of morality and theory of perfection, culminating in Nirvana. He also describes formal and popular rituals and practices, and sacred places and objects. The book is an example of Victorian Orientalist scholarship which remains of interest to historians of religious studies, Orientalism, and the British Empire.

In this volume Sangharakshita approaches communicating Buddhism in the West from two very different, but equally illuminating, angles. In the first part, in talks given in the early years of his teaching in England, he introduces the apparently exotic worlds of Tibetan Buddhism (1965) and its creative symbols (1972) and Zen Buddhism (1965), clarifying their mysteries while also somehow allowing them to work their magic. In the second part, by contrast, he examines the practice of Buddhism in the context of Western culture. In the polemical paper The FWBO and 'Protestant Buddhism' (first published in 1992) he looks at the characteristics of the Triratna community (the FWBO at the time of writing) as it was 25 years after its founding, in a response to an academic's assessment of the nascent Buddhist movement. And in From Genesis to the Diamond Sutra (first published in 2005) he reveals his own attitude to the literature and doctrines of Christianity, including the Christian view of homosexuality, in a multi-faceted exploration which includes autobiographical material not found anywhere else in his written work.

Nakazawa connects Buddhist philosophy with modern sciences such as psychology, quantum theory, and mathematics, as well as linguistics and the arts to present a perspective on understanding the mind in a world built on interconnection and networks of relations. While Lemma Science is a new and modern study of humans, its provenance is deeply rooted in the Eastern thought tradition. The ancient Greeks identified two modes of human intelligence: the logos and lemma intellects. Etymologically, logos signifies to "arrange and organize what has been gathered in front of one's self." To practice logos-based thinking, one must rely on language. Thus, humans organize and understand the objects in the universe according to linguistic syntax. In contrast, lemma etymologically signifies the intellectual capacity to "grasp the whole at once." Instead of arranging objects along a time axis, as language does, the lemma intellect perceives the world in an intuitive, non-linear and non-causal manner, comprehending the whole in an instant. This book embarks on a venture to establish a new science based upon the lemma intellect. Using non-logos-based materials, rigorously following lemma-based methods, and transgressing the boundaries of academic fields, Nakazawa seeks to construct this new science as a fluid, dynamic entity. This book will be of great interest to researchers across the fields of Japanese studies, Buddhist studies, psychology and linguistics.

This book is about contemporary senses of life after death in the United States, Japan, and China. By collecting and examining hundreds of interviews with people from all walks of life in these three societies, the book presents and compares personally held beliefs, experiences, and interactions with the concept of life after death. Three major aspects covered by the book Include, but are certainly not limited to, the enduring tradition of Japanese ancestor veneration, China's transition from state-sponsored materialism to the increasing belief in some form of afterlife, as well as the diversity in senses of, or disbelief in, life after death in the United States. Through these diverse first-hand testimonies the book reveals that underlying these changes in each society there is a shift from collective to individual belief, with people developing their own visions of what may, or may not, happen after death. This book will be valuable reading for students of Anthropology as well as Religious, Cultural, Asian and American Studies. It will also be an impactful resource for professionals such as doctors, nurses, and hospice workers.

This book analyzes Buddhist discussions of the Aryan myth and scientific racism and the ways in which this conversation reshaped Buddhism in the United States, and globally. The book traces the development of notions of Aryanism in Buddhism through Buddhist publications from 1899-1957, focusing on this so-called "yellow peril," or historical racist views in the United States of an Asian "other." During this time period in America, the Aryan myth was considered to be scientific fact, and Buddhists were able to capitalize on this idea throughout a global publishing network of books, magazines, and academic work which helped to transform the presentation of Buddhism into the "Aryan religion." Following narratives regarding colonialism and the development of the Aryan myth, Buddhists challenged these dominant tropes: they combined emic discussions about the "Aryan" myth and comparisons of Buddhism and science, in order to disprove colonial tropes of "Western" dominance, and suggest that Buddhism represented a superior tradition in world historical development. The author argues that this presentation of a Buddhist tradition of superiority helped to create space for Buddhism within the American religious landscape. The book will be of interest to academics working on Buddhism, race and religion, and American religious history.

This book highlights what Buddhism has to offer for "living well" here and now-for individuals, society as a whole, all sentient beings and the planet itself. From the perspectives of a variety of Buddhist thinkers, the book evaluates what a good life is like, what is desirable for human society, and ways in which we should live in and with the natural world. By examining this-worldly Buddhist philosophy and movements in India, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, the Tibetan diaspora, Korea, Taiwan, Japan and the United States, the book assesses what Buddhists offer for the building of a good society. It explores the proposals and programs made by progressive and widely influential lay and monastic thinkers and activists, as well as the works of movement leaders such as Thich Nhat Hanh and Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, for the social, economic, political and environmental systems in their various countries. Demonstrating that Buddhism is not solely a path for the realization of nirvana but also a way of living well here and now, this book will be of interest to researchers working on contemporary and modern Buddhism, Buddhism and society, Asian religion and Engaged Buddhism.

Originally published in 1916. Author: Ananda Coomaraswamy D.Sc. Language: English Keywords: Religion Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Obscure Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

"Buddhism, Modernity, and the State in Asia" explores the relationships between Buddhism and various nations in South, Southeast, and East Asia. Rather than promulgating a "Buddhist exceptionalism" in which Buddhist actors and institutions transcend politics, Pattana Kitiarsa and John Whalen-Bridge have assembled a collection of essays that closely examine the ways in which Buddhism and Asian Modernities are constantly interacting with and conditioning each other. Instead of presenting a monolithic vision of Buddhism, this volume treats particular situations in Burma, Cambodia, China, India, Laos, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam to demonstrate the wide variety of forms and influences that Buddhism has taken in its many consequential roles in Asian political history.