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Lotus Blossoms and Purple Clouds - Monastic Buddhism in Post-Mao China (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R1,976
Discovery Miles 19 760
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Lotus Blossoms and Purple Clouds - Monastic Buddhism in Post-Mao China (Hardcover)
Series: Contemporary Buddhism
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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Southeast China is a traditional stronghold of Buddhism, but little
scholarly attention has been paid to this fact. Brian Nichols’
pioneering book, Lotus Blossoms and Purple Clouds, centers on a
large Buddhist monastery in Quanzhou and combines ethnographic
detail with stimulating analysis to examine religion in post-Mao
China. Nichols conducted more than twenty-six months of field
research over a fourteen-year period (2005–2019) to develop a
re-description of Chinese monastic Buddhism that reaches beyond
canonical sources and master narratives to local texts, material
culture, oral history, and living traditions. His work decenters
normative accounts and sheds light on how Buddhism is lived and
practiced. It introduces readers to Quanzhou Kaiyuan Monastery and
its community of clergy striving to revive traditions after the
turmoil of the Maoist era; the lay Buddhists worshiping in the
monastery’s courtyards and halls; the busloads of tourists
marveling at the site’s buildings and artifacts, some dating as
far back as the Tang Dynasty (ninth century); and the local
officials dedicated to supporting—and restricting—the return of
religion. Using gazetteers, epigraphy, and other archival sources,
Nichols begins by tracing the history of Quanzhou Kaiyuan Monastery
from the Tang to the present, noting the continued relevance of
preternatural events like the lotus-blooming mulberry trees and
auspicious purple clouds associated with the founding of the
monastery. The contemporary monastery is then explored through
ethnographic participation/observation and interviews. Nichols
uncovers a number of unexpected features of Buddhist religious
life, making a case for the fundamentally liturgical nature of
Buddhist monastic practice—one marked by a program of daily
dhara?i (sacred text) recitation, esoteric traditions, and ancestor
veneration. Finally, he presents an innovative spatial analysis of
the Quanzhou Kaiyuan Monastery temple that reveals how different
groups engage with the site to create a place of religious
practice, a tourist attraction, and a community park.
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