This is the only book to date offering a critical overview of Shinto from early times to the modern era, and evaluating Shinto's place in Japanese religious culture. In recent years, a few books on medieval Shinto have appeared, but none has attempted to depict the broader picture, to examine critically Shinto's origins and its subsequent development through the medieval, pre-modern and modern periods. The essays in this book address such key topics as Shinto and Daoism in early Japan, Shinto and the natural environment, Shinto and state ritual in early Japan, Shinto and Buddhism in medieval Japan, and Shinto and the state in the modern period. All of the essays highlight the dynamic nature of Shinto and shrine history by focusing on the three-way relationship, often fraught, between local shrine cults, Shinto agendas and Buddhism.

This critical overview of Shinto from early times to the modern era evaluates Shinto's place in Japanese religious culture. In recent years, a few books on mediaeval Shinto have appeared, but not has attempted to depict the broader picture, to examine critically Shinto's origins and its subsequent development through the mediaeval, pre-modern and modern periods. The essays here address such key topics as Shinto and Daoism in early Japan, Shinto and the natural environment, Shinto and state ritual in early Japan, Shinto and Buddhism in medieval Japan, and Shinto and the state in the modern period. They highlight the dynamic nature of Shinto and shrine history by focusing on the three-way relationship, often fraught, between local shrine cults, Shinto agenda and Buddhism.

This book focuses on the ritualized forms of mobility that constitute phenomena of pilgrimage in South Asia and establishes a new analytical framework for the study of ritual journeys. The book advances the conceptual scope of 'classical' Pilgrimage Studies and provides empirical depth through individual case studies. A key concern is the strategies of ritualization through which actors create, assemble and (re-)articulate certain modes of displacement to differentiate themselves from everyday forms of locomotion. Ritual journeys are understood as being both productive of and produced by South Asia's socio-economically uneven, politically charged and culturally variegated landscapes. From various disciplinary angles, each chapter explores how spaces and movements in space are continually created, contested and transformed through ritual journeys. By focusing on this co-production of space and mobility, the book delivers a conceptually driven and empirically grounded engagement with the diverse and changing traditions of ritual journeying in South Asia. Interdisciplinary in its approach, the book is a must-have reference work for academics interested in South Asian Studies, Religious Studies, Anthropology and Human Geography with a focus on pilgrimage and the socio-spatial ideas and practices of ritualized movements in South Asia.

This innovative volume brings together the views of leading scholars on a range of controversial subjects including human rights, animal rights, ecology, abortion, euthanasia, and contemporary business practice.

Buddha was a revolutionary. His practice was subversive; his message, seditious. His enlightened point of view went against the norms of his day--in his words, "against the stream." His teachings changed the world, and now they can change you too.

Presenting the basics of Buddhism with personal anecdotes, exercises, and guided meditations, bestselling author Noah Levine guides the reader along a spiritual path that has led to freedom from suffering and has saved lives for 2,500 years. Levine should know. Buddhist meditation saved him from a life of addiction and crime. He went on to counsel and teach countless others the Buddhist way to freedom, and here he shares those life-changing lessons with you. Read and awaken to a new and better life.

Combines the voices of scholars and practitioners in analysing Buddhist women's history. 26 articles document the lives of women who have set in motion changes within Buddhist societies, with analyses of issues such as gender, ethnicity, authority, and class that affect the lives of women in traditional Buddhist cultures and, increasingly, the west.

Massmarket edition of this spiritual guide to making the most of life, through bad times as well as good, from bestselling author Pema Choedroen. This accessible book has been on the US bestseller lists consistently for four years now. In The Wisdom of No Escape, bestselling author Pema Choedroen shows us the profound value of our situation of 'no exit' from the ups and downs of life. This book is about saying yes to life in all its manifestations - about making friends with ourselves and our world and embracing the potent mixture of joy, suffering, brilliance, and confusion that characterizes the human experience. It urges us to wake up wholeheartedly to everything and to use the abundant, richly textured fabric of everyday life as our primary spiritual teacher and guide.

New interpretations of the central teachings of early Buddhism, mainly the relationship between identity and perception in early Buddhism.

Building on the author's previous published work, this book focuses on the relationship between identity and perception in early Buddhism, drawing out and explaining the way they relate in terms of experience. It presents a coherent picture of these issues in the context of Buddhist teachings as a whole and suggests that they represent the heart of what the Buddha taught. This book will be of primary interest to scholars working within all fields of Buddhist studies.

Looks at Aum's claims about itself and asks, why did a religious movement ostensibly focussed on yoga, meditation, asceticism and enlightenment become involved in violent activities, and discusses Aum's spiritual roots, placing it in the context of contemporary Japanese religious patterns.

This innovative volume brings together the views of leading scholars on a range of controversial subjects including human rights, animal rights, ecology, abortion, euthanasia, and contemporary business practice.

This volume investigates the historic and ethnographic accounts of the ongoing religious contestations over the status of the Mahabodhi Temple complex in Bodhgaya (a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2002) and its surrounding landscape to critically analyse the working and construction of sacredness. It endeavours to make a ground-up assessment of ways in which human participants in the past and present respond to and interact with the Mahabodhi Temple and its surroundings. The volume argues that sacredness goes beyond scriptural texts and archaeological remains. The Mahabodhi Temple is complex and its surround ing landscape is a 'living' heritage, which has been produced socially and constitutes differential densities of human involvement, attachment, and experience. Its significance lies mainly in the active interaction between religious architecture within its dynamic ritual settings. This endless con testation of sacredness and its meaning should not be seen as the 'death' of the Mahabodhi Temple; on the contrary, it illustrates the vitality of the ongoing debate on the meaning, understanding, and use of the sacred in the Indian context. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka

The Tokyo subway attack in March 1995 was just one of a series of criminal activities including murder, kidnapping, extortion, and the illegal manufacture of arms and drugs carried out by the Japanese new religious movement Aum Shinrikyo, under the guidance of its leader Asahara Shoko. Reader looks at Aum's claims about itself and asks, why did a religious movement ostensibly focussed on yoga, meditation, asceticism and the pursuit of enlightenment become involved in violent activities?

Reader discusses Aum's spiritual roots, placing it in the context of contemporary Japanese religious patterns. Asahara's teaching are examined from his earliest public pronouncements through to his sermons at the time of the attack, and statements he has made in court. In analysing how Aum not only manufactured nerve gases but constructed its own internal doctrinal justifications for using them Reader focuses on the formation of what made all this possible: Aum's internal thought-world, and on how this was developed.

Reader argues that despite the horrors of this particular case, Aum should not be seen as unique, nor as solely a political or criminal terror group. Rather it can best be analysed within the context of religious violence, as an extreme example of a religious movement that has created friction with the wider world that escalated into violence.

Vajra Speech, by Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, renowned for his
extra-ordinary experience and realization, is a wide ranging
collection of pith instructions for the Dzogchen yogi. This Tibetan
master's advice reduces negative emotions and naturally
enables loving kindness, compassion and wisdom to flourish.
"A swan can separate water and milk when drinking. The
yogi should be like the swan in sepa rating the milk of original
wakefulness from the water of ignorance."
--Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche
"Compared to many years studying books and going through
analytical meditation, we found it more beneficial to ask questions
of Tulku Urgyen and listen to his answers."
--Orgyen Topgyal Rinpoche

Dzigar Kongtrul guides us through intelligent reasoning to identify our deluded perception of a truly existing self and shows us the key to awakening from this fundamental confusion. Rinpoche's brilliant commentary on the classical Indian Buddhist text, The Way of the Bodhisattva by Shantideva is a testament to this inspiring teacher's compassionate and compelling style. Uncommon Happiness is saturated with advice from an adept practitioner of the Buddhist Path. By expounding the essential meaning of the engaged Buddhism and introducing skillful methods to utilize along the way, he reveals our innate wisdom mind and challenges us to meet and employ our intrinsic enlightened capacity.
In this extraordinary book, we have the unique opportunity to connect with a realized teacher, renown for his compassion and kindness, who skillfully teaches us how to reach that same level of conviction and certainty in our self. This clarification overflows with the genuine delight and humanity Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche embodies. These qualities transcend time, race, and place and are universal principles for all people to live by.
Here is a combination of primordial notions expounded in the 8th century and practiced throughout the world till the present time and a modern interpretation pertinent to contemporary audiences. These values include loving kindness, compassion, joy and impartiality as well as generosity, patience, discipline, morality, diligence, peaceful abiding and intelligence. Instructions to engage in these trainings are presented with clear and precise language, easy to comprehend and apply.

Wellsprings of the Great Perfection presents the primary sources explaining how the Dzogchen teachings came into this world, who received them and through whom they passed. It is an impressive collection of original translations from a vast number of classical Tibetan documents, including songs of realization by the early masters of the lineage.
" The Dzogchen teachings of the Greatest Secret, also known as the Great Perfection, are the words of the compassionate Buddha, and among the causal and resultant vehicles, they are of the type that employ the fruition as the path, Wellsprings of the Great Perfection describes the origin, and gives both short and detailed historical accounts and teachings.
"I see a profound importance in studying, reflecting upon and practicing the authentic statements and explanations of the Dzogchen lineage masters- especially for people who aspire to realize the Great Perfection- the Through cut of primordial purity, the view of Trekcho. I therefore request readers to keep these scriptures in the center of their hearts."
- Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche, author of Present Fresh Wakefulness
"The ultimate origin and absolute teachings of Dzogchen inscribed in this most sacred text and whispered by the greatest adepts of its lineage are finally available in this volume. Every serious student Dzogchen must study and enshrine it in their heart."
- Tulku Thondup, author of The Healing Power of Mind

Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche spent many years in retreat, assimilating the teachings within his experience. He spoke with humor and true understanding, expressing plainly and simply what he himself had undergone. Consequently, his teachings are uniquely accessible, with a powerfully beneficial impact on those who hear or read his words. This book, a selection of his oral and written teachings, spells out the essential points of spiritual practice and leads readers along the same path they would follow in the presence of a master. Through direct, pithy instructions, students are encouraged to question the master repeatedly, while at the same time processing their own experiences. Representing the heart of Rinpoche's teachings, "Repeating the Words of the Buddha" shows that the enlightened essence is present within the mind of any sentient being, and that it can be recognized by all who seek it.

Jan Westerhoff unfolds the story of one of the richest episodes in the history of Indian thought, the development of Buddhist philosophy in the first millennium CE. He starts from the composition of the Abhidharma works before the beginning of the common era and continues up to the time of Dharmakirti in the sixth century. This period was characterized by the development of a variety of philosophical schools and approaches that have shaped Buddhist thought up to the present day: the scholasticism of the Abhidharma, the Madhyamaka's theory of emptiness, Yogacara idealism, and the logical and epistemological works of Dinnaga and Dharmakirti. The book attempts to describe the historical development of these schools in their intellectual and cultural context, with particular emphasis on three factors that shaped the development of Buddhist philosophical thought: the need to spell out the contents of canonical texts, the discourses of the historical Buddha and the Mahayana sutras; the desire to defend their positions by sophisticated arguments against criticisms from fellow Buddhists and from non-Buddhist thinkers of classical Indian philosophy; and the need to account for insights gained through the application of specific meditative techniques. While the main focus is the period up to the sixth century CE, Westerhoff also discusses some important thinkers who influenced Buddhist thought between this time and the decline of Buddhist scholastic philosophy in India at the beginning of the thirteenth century. His aim is that the historical presentation will also allow the reader to get a better systematic grasp of key Buddhist concepts such as non-self, suffering, reincarnation, karma, and nirvana.

By providing an annotated translation of, and applying the methods of literary criticism to, a first-century account of the life of the saint Purna, this study introduces the reader to a genre which has played an essential role in Buddhist self-understanding for over 2000 years.

Scholars of Buddhism, themselves Buddhist, here seek to apply the critical tools of the academy to reassess the truth and transformative value of their tradition in its relevance to the contemporary world.

The first scholarly study of the emergence of American Buddhist Studies as a significant research field, approaching issues such as identity in Asian-American Buddhism, the new Buddhism, and the scholar's place in American Buddhist Studies.

Offers essays and dialogues by well-known Buddhist and Christian scholars on topics that were of primary interest to Frederick J. Streng, in whose honour the volume was created. Topics include interreligious dialogue, ultimate reality, nature and ecology, social and political issues of liberation, and ultimate transformation or liberation.

In the last 30 years, embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended (4E) accounts of mind and experience have flourished. A more cosmopolitan and pluralistic approach to the philosophy of mind has also emerged, drawing on analytic, phenomenological, pragmatist, and non-Western sources and traditions. This is the first book to fully engages the 4E approach and Buddhist philosophy, drawing on and integrating the intersection of enactivism and Buddhist thought. This book deepens and extends the dialogue between Buddhist philosophy and 4E philosophy of mind and phenomenology. It engages with core issues in the philosophy of mind broadly construed in and through the dialogue between Buddhism and enactivism. Indian philosophers developed and defended philosophically sophisticated and phenomenologically rich accounts of mind, self, cognition, perception, embodiment, and more. As a work of cross-cultural philosophy, the book investigates the nature of mind and experience in dialogue with Indian and Western thinkers. On the basis of this cross-traditional dialogue, the book articulates and defends a dynamic, non-substantialist, and embodied account of experience, subjectivity, and self.

Emptiness means that all entities are empty of, or lack, inherent existence - entities have a merely conceptual, constructed existence. Though Nagarjuna advocates the Middle Way, his philosophy of emptiness nevertheless entails nihilism, and his critiques of the Nyaya theory of knowledge are shown to be unconvincing.

Probes the complex relationship between nationalism, violence and Buddhism in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Burma, bringing us to present-day Burma and the struggle by Aung San Suu Kyi for a new Burmese identity.