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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Non-Christian religions > Religions of Indic & Oriental origin > Oriental religions
The basis of Chinese religious culture, and with that many aspects
of daily life, was the threat and fear of demonic attacks. These
were inherently violent and could only be counteracted by violence
as well - even if this reactive violence was masked by euphemisms
such as execution, expulsion, exorcisms and so on. At the same
time, violence was a crucial dimension of the maintenance of norms
and values, for instance in sworn agreements or in beliefs about
underworld punishment. Violence was also an essential aspect of
expressing respect through sacrificial gifts of meat (and in an
earlier stage of Chinese culture also human flesh) and through a
culture of auto-mutilation and ritual suicide. At the same time,
conventional indigenous terms for violence such as bao were not
used for most of these practices since they were not experienced as
such, but rather justified as positive uses of physical force.
Shinto, Nature and Ideology in Contemporary Japan is the first
systematic study of Shinto's environmental turn. The book traces
the development in recent decades of the idea of Shinto as an
'ancient nature religion,' and a resource for overcoming
environmental problems. The volume shows how these ideas gradually
achieved popularity among scientists, priests, Shinto-related new
religious movements and, eventually, the conservative shrine
establishment. Aike P. Rots argues that central to this development
is the notion of chinju no mori: the sacred groves surrounding many
Shinto shrines. Although initially used to refer to remaining areas
of primary or secondary forest, today the term has come to be
extended to any sort of shrine land, signifying not only historical
and ecological continuity but also abstract values such as
community spirit, patriotism and traditional culture. The book
shows how Shinto's environmental turn has also provided legitimacy
internationally: influenced by the global discourse on religion and
ecology, in recent years the Shinto establishment has actively
engaged with international organizations devoted to the
conservation of sacred sites. Shinto sacred forests thus carry
significance locally as well as nationally and internationally, and
figure prominently in attempts to reposition Shinto in the centre
of public space.
The notion of qi/gi ( ) is one of the most pervasive notions found
within the various areas of the East Asian intellectual and
cultural traditions. While the pervasiveness of the notion provides
us with an opportunity to observe the commonalities amongst the
East Asian intellectual and cultural traditions, it also allows us
to observe the differences. This book focuses more on understanding
the different meanings and logics that the notion of qi/gi has
acquired within the East Asian traditions for the purpose of
understanding the diversity of these traditions. This volume begins
to fulfill this task by inquiring into how the notion was
understood by traditional Korean philosophers, in addition to
investigating how the notion was understood by traditional Chinese
philosophers.
This book explains a distinctive pluralist account of truth,
jointly-rooted perspectivism ('JRP' for short). This explanation
unifies various representative while philosophically interesting
truth-concern approaches in early Chinese philosophy on the basis
of people's pre-theoretic "way-things-are-capturing" understanding
of truth. It explains how JRP provides effective interpretative
resources to identify and explain one unifying line that runs
through those distinct truth-concern approaches and how they can
thus talk with and complement each other and contribute to the
contemporary study of the issue of truth. In so doing, the book
also engages with some distinct treatments in the modern study of
Chinese philosophy. Through testing its explanatory power in
effectively interpreting those representative truth-concern
approaches in the Yi-Jing philosophy, Gongsun Long's philosophy,
Later Mohist philosophy, classical Confucianism and classical
Daoism, JRP is also further justified and strengthened. Mou defends
JRP as an original unifying pluralist account in the context of
cross-tradition philosophical engagement, which can also
effectively engage with other accounts of truth (including other
types of pluralist accounts) in contemporary philosophy. The
purpose of this book is dual: (1) it is to enhance our
understanding and treatment of the truth concern as one strategic
foundation of various movements of thought in classical Chinese
philosophy that are intended to capture "how things are"; (2) on
the other hand, it is to explore how the relevant resources in
Chinese philosophy can contribute to the contemporary exploration
of the philosophical issue of truth in philosophically interesting
and engaging way.
When John C. H. Wu's spiritual autobiography Beyond East and West
was published in 1951, it became an instant Catholic best seller
and was compared to Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain,
which had appeared four years earlier. It was also hailed as the
new Confession of St. Augustine for its moving description of Wu's
conversion in 1937 and early years as a Catholic. This new edition,
including a foreward written by Wu's son John Wu, Jr., makes this
profoundly beautiful book by one of the most influential Chinese
lay Catholic intellectuals of the twentieth century available for a
new generation of readers hungry for spiritual sustenance. Beyond
East and West recounts the story of Wu's early life in Ningpo,
China, his family and friendships, education and law career,
drafting of the constitution of the Republic of China, translation
of the Bible into classical Chinese in collaboration with Chinese
president Chiang Kai-Shek, and his role as China's delegate to the
Holy See. In passages of arresting beauty, the book reveals the
development of his thought and the progress of his growth toward
love of God, arriving through experience at the conclusion that the
wisdom in all of China's traditions, especially Confucian thought,
Taoism, and Buddhism, point to universal truths that come from, and
are fulfilled in, Christ. In Beyond East and West, Wu develops a
synthesis between Catholicism and the ancient culture of the
Orient. A sublime expression of faith, here is a book for anyone
who seeks the peace of the spirit, a memorable book whose ideas
will linger long after its pages are closed.
The Sea and the Sacred in Japan is the first book to focus on the
role of the sea in Japanese religions. While many leading Shinto
deities tend to be understood today as unrelated to the sea, and
mountains are considered the privileged sites of sacredness, this
book provides new ways to understand Japanese religious culture and
history. Scholars from North America, Japan and Europe explore the
sea and the sacred in relation to history, culture, politics,
geography, worldviews and cosmology, space and borders, and ritual
practices and doctrines. Examples include Japanese indigenous
conceptualizations of the sea from the Middle Ages to the 20th
century; ancient sea myths and rituals; sea deities and sea cults;
the role of the sea in Buddhist cosmology; and the international
dimension of Japanese Buddhism and its maritime imaginary.
This volume of new essays is the first English-language anthology
devoted to Chinese metaphysics. The essays explore the key themes
of Chinese philosophy, from pre-Qin to modern times, starting with
important concepts such as yin-yang and qi and taking the reader
through the major periods in Chinese thought - from the Classical
period, through Chinese Buddhism and Neo-Confucianism, into the
twentieth-century philosophy of Xiong Shili. They explore the major
traditions within Chinese philosophy, including Daoism and Mohism,
and a broad range of metaphysical topics, including monism,
theories of individuation, and the relationship between reality and
falsehood. The volume will be a valuable resource for upper-level
students and scholars of metaphysics, Chinese philosophy, or
comparative philosophy, and with its rich insights into the
ethical, social and political dimensions of Chinese society, it
will also interest students of Asian studies and Chinese
intellectual history.
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