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From its inception in northeastern India in the first millennium
BCE, the Buddhist tradition has advocated a range of ideas and
practices that were said to ensure health and well-being. As the
religion developed and spread to other parts of Asia, healing
deities were added to its pantheon, monastic institutions became
centers of medical learning, and healer-monks gained renown for
their mastery of ritual and medicinal therapeutics. In China,
imported Buddhist knowledge contended with a sophisticated,
state-supported system of medicine that was able to retain its
influence among the elite. Further afield in Japan, where Chinese
Buddhism and Chinese medicine were introduced simultaneously as
part of the country's adoption of civilization from the "Middle
Kingdom," the two were reconciled by individuals who deemed them
compatible. In East Asia, Buddhist healing would remain a site of
intercultural tension and negotiation. While participating in
transregional networks of circulation and exchange, Buddhist
clerics practiced locally specific blends of Indian and indigenous
therapies and occupied locally defined social positions as
religious and medical specialists. In this diverse and compelling
collection, an international group of scholars analyzes the
historical connections between Buddhism and healing in medieval
China and Japan. They focus on the transnationally conveyed aspects
of Buddhist healing traditions as they moved across geographic,
cultural, and linguistic boundaries. Simultaneously, their work
also investigates the local instantiations of these ideas and
practices as they were reinvented, altered, and re-embedded in
specific social and institutional contexts. Investigating the
interplay between the macro and micro, the global and the local,
this book demonstrates the richness of Buddhist healing as a way to
explore the history of cross-cultural exchange.
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Daoist Body Cultivation (Paperback)
Livia Kohn; Shawn Arthur, Bede Bidlack, Catherine Despeux, Stephen Jackowicz, …
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R1,063
Discovery Miles 10 630
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Daoist Body Cultivation is a comprehensive volume by a group of
dedicated scholars and practitioners that covers the key practices
of medical healing, breathing techniques, diets and fasting,
healing exercises, sexual practices, Qigong, and Taiji quan. Each
presentation places the practice in its historical and cultural
context and relates its current application and efficaciousness.
Ultimately aiming to energetically transform the person into a
spiritual and trancendent being, Daoist cultivation techniques have
proven beneficial for health time and again and can make an
important contribution in the world today. Daoist Body Cultivation
provides a deeper understanding of the practices in their cultural
and historical contexts, bridging the gap between healing and
religion and allowing both scholars and practitioner to reach a
deeper understanding and appreciation.
Daoism is the indigenous higher religion of traditional China.
Growing from a philosophical root and developing through practices
of longevity and immorality, it has found expression in communal
organizations, ritual structures, and age-old lineages. A
multifaceted tradition, Daoism in the 2,500 years of its history
has related to women in a number of different ways matching the
complexity of other religions, where the relationship to the female
is often ambiguous and ambivalent. They commonly see motherhood,
sexuality, fertility, esoteric knowledge, and secret powers as
closely linked with the feminine and evaluate these aspects
positively. But many religions also relegate women to inferior
status, considering them of a lower nature, impure and
irresponsible, and often suppressing them with greater or lesser
severity. The complexity of women's positions is particularly
poignant in the Daoist case, since the religion is caught between
its ideal cosmological premise of the power of yin and the
realities of a strongly patriarchal society following the Confucian
model. That is to say, cosmologically Daoism sees women as
expressions of the pure cosmic force of yin, necessary for the
working of the universe, equal and for some schools even superior
to yang. Daoism also links the Dao itself, the force of creation at
the foundation of the cosmos, to the female and describes it as the
mother of all beings. Within the religion there is a widespread
attitude of veneration and respect for the feminine, honouring the
cosmic connection as well as the productive and nurturing nature of
women.
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