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Buddhism in the Modern World explores the challenges faced by
Buddhism today, the distinctive forms that it has taken, the
individuals and movements that have shaped it, and the modern
history of Buddhism in different geographical regions. Part one
surveys the Buddhist tradition in different parts of the world,
from Southeast Asia to North America, while part two explores key
themes including globalisation, gender issues, and the ways in
which Buddhism has confronted modernity, science, popular culture
and national politics. Each chapter is written by a distinguished
scholar in the field, and is designed to offer a lively and up to
date overview of the subject. Students and scholars alike will find
this book an indispensable guide to the living Buddhist tradition
The scientific study of Buddhist forms of meditation has surged in
recent years. Such study has captured the popular imagination,
reshaping conceptions of what meditation is and what it can do.
Within the lab and now beyond it, people have come to see
meditation as a practical matter, a rewiring of the brain or an
optimization of consciousness as a means to better health, more
fulfilling relationships, and increasing productivity. Often
suppressed if not dropped from this pragmatic approach are the
beliefs, values, and cosmologies that underpin such practice from
the Buddhist point of view. Propelled by the imperatives of
empirical practicality, for perhaps the first time in history
meditation has shifted from Buddhist monasteries and practice
centers to some of the most prominent and powerful modern
institutions in the world-hospitals, universities, corporations,
and the military-as well as many non-institutional settings. As the
contributions to this volume show, as their contexts change, so do
the practices, sometimes drastically. New ways of thinking about
meditation, ways that profoundly affect millions of lives all over
the world, are emerging from its move to these more strictly
secular settings. To understand these changes and their effects,
the essays in this volume explore the unaddressed complexities in
the interrelations between Buddhist history and thought and the
scientific study of meditation. The contributors bring
philosophical, cultural, historical, and ethnographic perspectives
to bear, considering such issues as the philosophical presumptions
of practice, the secularization of meditation, the values and goods
assumed in clinical approaches, and the sorts of subjects that take
shape under the influence of these transformed and transformative
practices-all the more powerful for being so often formulated with
the authority of scientific discourse.
A dizzying array of meditation practices have emerged in the long
and culturally diverse history of Buddhism. Yet if you are seeking
out meditation today in North America and Europe-and, increasingly,
in the rest of the world as well-you will likely encounter one
particular type, often under the label "mindfulness." You will find
it taught in Zen monasteries, Insight Meditation centers, health
clubs, colleges, psychologists' offices, corporations, liberal
Christian churches, prisons, and the US military. Countless
articles in popular magazines promote its benefits, often depicting
it as a panacea for problems as wide-ranging as anxiety,
depression, heart disease, eating disorders, and psoriasis. There
are books on mindfulness and meditation not only by Buddhist monks
but also by medical doctors, psychologists, computer engineers,
business consultants, and a US congressman. Meditation teachers
will sometimes say that this is the same meditative practice that
the Buddha taught over 2500 years ago, and which has been
transmitted virtually unchanged down through the centuries to us
today. The "cultural baggage" surrounding the practices has
changed, but the essence is intact, and what it does for people,
whether you're a Buddhist monk or a corporate executive, remains
the same. Rethinking Meditation shows that the standard
articulation of mindfulness did not come down to us unchanged from
the time of the Buddha. Rather, it is a distillation of particular
strands of Buddhist thought that have combined with western ideas
to create a unique practice tailored to modern life. Rethinking
Meditation argues that the relationship between meditative
practices and cultural context is much more crucial than is
suggested in typical contemporary articulations. David McMahan
shows that most of the vast array of meditative practices that have
emerged in Buddhist traditions have been filtered out of typical
contemporary practice, allowing only a trickle of meditative
practices through. This book presents a genealogy of some specific
elements in classical Buddhist traditions that have fed into
contemporary meditative practices-those that have made it through
the filters of modernity. It asks: out of the many forms of
Buddhist meditation that have developed over two-and-a-half
millennia, how and why were particular practices selected to
coalesce into the Standard Version today?
Buddhism in the Modern World explores the challenges faced by
Buddhism today, the distinctive forms that it has taken, the
individuals and movements that have shaped it, and the modern
history of Buddhism in different geographical regions. Part one
surveys the Buddhist tradition in different parts of the world,
from Southeast Asia to North America, while part two explores key
themes including globalisation, gender issues, and the ways in
which Buddhism has confronted modernity, science, popular culture
and national politics. Each chapter is written by a distinguished
scholar in the field, and is designed to offer a lively and up to
date overview of the subject. Students and scholars alike will find
this book an indispensable guide to the living Buddhist tradition.
Includes photographs, summaries, discussion points and suggestions
for further readin
A great deal of Buddhist literature and scholarly writing about
Buddhism of the past 150 years reflects, and indeed constructs, a
historically unique modern Buddhism, even while purporting to
represent ancient tradition, timeless teaching, or the "essentials"
of Buddhism. This literature, Asian as well as Western, weaves
together the strands of different traditions to create a novel
hybrid that brings Buddhism into alignment with many of the
ideologies and sensibilities of the post-Enlightenment West.
In this book, David McMahan charts the development of this
"Buddhist modernism." McMahan examines and analyzes a wide range of
popular and scholarly writings produced by Buddhists around the
globe. He focuses on ideological and imaginative encounters between
Buddhism and modernity, for example in the realms of science,
mythology, literature, art, psychology, and religious pluralism. He
shows how certain themes cut across cultural and geographical
contexts, and how this form of Buddhism has been created by
multiple agents in a variety of times and places. His position is
critical but empathetic: while he presents Buddhist modernism as a
construction of numerous parties with varying interests, he does
not reduce it to a mistake, a misrepresentation, or fabrication.
Rather, he presents it as a complex historical process constituted
by a variety of responses -- sometimes trivial, often profound --
to some of the most important concerns of the modern era.
The scientific study of Buddhist forms of meditation has surged in
recent years. Such study has captured the popular imagination,
reshaping conceptions of what meditation is and what it can do.
Within the lab and now beyond it, people have come to see
meditation as a practical matter, a rewiring of the brain or an
optimization of consciousness as a means to better health, more
fulfilling relationships, and increasing productivity. Often
suppressed if not dropped from this pragmatic approach are the
beliefs, values, and cosmologies that underpin such practice from
the Buddhist point of view. Propelled by the imperatives of
empirical practicality, for perhaps the first time in history
meditation has shifted from Buddhist monasteries and practice
centers to some of the most prominent and powerful modern
institutions in the world-hospitals, universities, corporations,
and the military-as well as many non-institutional settings. As the
contributions to this volume show, as their contexts change, so do
the practices, sometimes drastically. New ways of thinking about
meditation, ways that profoundly affect millions of lives all over
the world, are emerging from its move to these more strictly
secular settings. To understand these changes and their effects,
the essays in this volume explore the unaddressed complexities in
the interrelations between Buddhist history and thought and the
scientific study of meditation. The contributors bring
philosophical, cultural, historical, and ethnographic perspectives
to bear, considering such issues as the philosophical presumptions
of practice, the secularization of meditation, the values and goods
assumed in clinical approaches, and the sorts of subjects that take
shape under the influence of these transformed and transformative
practices-all the more powerful for being so often formulated with
the authority of scientific discourse.
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