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This second volume of passages gathered from the leading monks and
teachers of the Pure Land, or Shin, school of Buddhist teaching
focuses on religious practice. Extending from the foundational
texts and first interpreters in the 4th century, to Rennyo in the
15th century, Professor Bloom s selections trace the development of
Shin Buddhist teaching from monastic visualization practices to the
widely popular path to salvation through faith in, and recitation
of, the name of Amida Buddha. Volume 2 features a foreword by
Kenneth K. Tanaka and an introduction by renowned scholar and
editor, Alfred Bloom, whose selected passages have been arranged
topically for easy reference on issues of Pure Land teaching. The
key interpreters featured are the Seven Great Teachers from India,
China, and Japan (Nagarjuna, Vasubandhu; T an-luan, Tao-ch o,
Shan-tao; Genshin, Honen), selected as doctrinal authorities by
Shinran (1173-1263), the founder of the Japanese Pure Land sect."
Buddhism is the fastest growing religion in the United States, with
adherents estimated in the several millions. But what exactly
defines a 'Buddhist'? This has been a much-debated question in
recent years, particularly in regard to the religion's bifurcation
into two camps: the so-called 'imported' or ethnic Buddhism of
Asian immigrants and the 'convert' Buddhism of a mostly
middle-class, liberal, intellectual elite. In this timely
collection Charles S. Prebish and Kenneth K. Tanaka bring together
some of the leading voices in Buddhist studies to examine the
debates surrounding contemporary Buddhism's many faces. The
contributors investigate newly Americanized Asian traditions such
as Tibetan, Zen, Nichiren, Jodo Shinshu, and Theravada Buddhism and
the changes they undergo to meet the expectations of a Western
culture desperate for spiritual guidance. Race, feminism,
homosexuality, psychology, environmentalism, and notions of
authority are some of the issues confronting Buddhism for the first
time in its three-thousand-year history and are powerfully
addressed here. In recent years American Buddhism has been featured
as a major story on ABC television news, National Public Radio, and
in other national media. A strong new Buddhist journalism is
emerging in the United States, and American Buddhism has made its
way onto the Internet. The faces of Buddhism in America are
diverse, active, and growing, and this book will be a valuable
resource for anyone interested in understanding this vital
religious movement.
The Brahma’s Net Sutra plays an important niche role in the
development of East Asian Mahayana Buddhism. It is the primary
extant Vinaya text that articulates the precepts from a Mahayana
perspective. That is, it takes its main audience to be
“bodhisattva practitioners,” mainly householders who remain
engaged with society rather than becoming renunciant monks or nuns.
The Vinayas, and especially the discourse in this sutra, show
monastic and lay Buddhist practitioners engaged at every level of
society, from top to bottom. Buddhist practitioners were involved
in military affairs, political intrigues, matchmaking, and every
other sort of “mundane” social activity. The Vinaya texts
reveal how the Buddhist community in its time judged and dealt with
such matters. The Brahma’s Net Sutra was written in two
fascicles, each radically different in structure, content, theme,
grammar, etc., from the other. The first fascicle discusses the
forty Mahayana stages: the ten departures toward the destination,
the ten nourishing states of mind, the ten adamantine states of
mind, and the ten bodhisattva grounds. The second fascicle explains
the ten grave precepts and the forty-eight minor precepts. These
came to be referred to as the “bodhisattva precepts,” the
“great Brahma’s Net precepts,” the “buddha precepts,” and
so forth. The second fascicle has been especially esteemed,
studied, and circulated separately for more than a millennium as
the scriptural authority for the Mahayana bodhisattva precepts.
[Adapted from the Translators' Introduction.]
The discourse of Buddhist studies has traditionally been structured
around texts and nations (the transmission of Buddhism from India
to China to Japan). And yet, it is doubtful that these categories
reflect in any significant way the organizing themes familiar to
most Buddhists. It could be argued that cultic practices associated
with particular buddhas and bodhisattvas are more representative of
the way Buddhists conceive of their relation to tradition. This
volume aims to explore this aspect of Buddhism by focusing on one
of its most important cults, that of the Buddha Amitabha.
Approaching the Land of Bliss is a rich collection of studies of
texts and ritual practices devoted to Amitabha, ranging from Tibet
to Japan and from early medieval times to the present. The cult of
Amitabha is identified as an integral part of Tibet's Mahayana
Buddhist tradition in the opening essay by Matthew Kapstein. Next
Daniel Getz, Jr., locates the Pure Land patriarch Shengchang more
firmly in a Huayancontext and his Pure Conduct Society not so much
in the propagation of Pure Land praxis but as a means of modifying
anti-Buddhist sentiments. Jacqueline Stone's study of the practice
of reciting nenbutsu at the time of death gives us an understanding
of both the practice itself and the motivating logic behind it.
Kakuban-the founder of the one major ""schism"" in the history of
the Shingon tradition-is placed in a typology of Japanese Pure Land
thought inJames Sanford's study of Kakuban's Amida hishaku. Hank
Glassman contributes an essay on the ""subsidiary cult"" of
Chujohime, whichderived from the cult of Amitabha but grew to such
importance that it displaced the latter as the focus of worship in
medieval Japan. In his examination of ""radical Amidism,"" Fabio
Rambelli discusses different forms of Japanese Pure Land thought
that constitute divergences from the mainstream or normative forms.
Richard Jaffeexamines the work of the seventeenth-century cleric
Ungo Kiyo, who sought to match his teaching to the needs and
capacities of hisdisciples. Todd Lewis highlights the importance of
cultic life and finds traces of the desire for rebirth into
Sukhavati in stupa worship among Newari Buddhists. Charles Jones'
""thick description"" of a one-day recitation retreat in Taiwan
provides us with a closer look at how the cult of Amitabha
continues in present-day East Asia. Approaching the Land of Bliss
moves beyond the limitations of defining Buddhism in terms of its
textual corpus or nation states,opening up the cult of Amitabha in
Nepal, Tibet, China, and Taiwan, and uncovering new aspects of
Japanese Pure Land. Contributors: Daniel A. Getz, Jr.; Hank
Glassman; Richard Jaffe; Charles B. Jones; Matthew T. Kapstein;
Todd T. Lewis; Richard K. Payne; Fabio Rambelli; James H. Sanford;
Jacqueline I. Stone.
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