Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Buddhist Materiality
This innovative book shows that throughout its history, contrary to received assumptions, Buddhism developed a sophisticated philosophy of materiality--one that allowed human beings to give shape and expression to their deepest religious and spiritual ideas.
Buddhism under Capitalism
This book argues that Buddhism has spread due to globalized capitalism, and explores how capitalism is also impacting Buddhists and Buddhism today. Edited by two leading scholars in Buddhist studies, the book examines how capitalism and neo-liberalism have shaped global perceptions of Buddhism, as well as specific local practices and attitudes. It examines the institutional practices that sustained the spread of Buddhism for two and a half millennia, and the adaptation of Buddhist institutions in contemporary, global economic systems-particularly in Europe and the United States over the last century and half. These innovative essays on the interfaces between Buddhism and capitalism will prompt readers to rethink the connection between Buddhism and secular society. Case studies include digital capitalism, tourism, and monasticism, and are drawn from the USA, Tibet, China, Japan, and Thailand.
The Bloomsbury Handbook of Japanese Religions
Chaplaincy and spiritual care / Kasai Kenta -- Cultural heritage / Lindsey DeWitt -- Disasters / Levi McLaughlin -- Economy and spirituality / Ioannis Gaitanidis -- Economy of Buddhism / Jørn Borup -- Case study. Buddhist temples of the future / Paulina K. Kolata -- Empire and colonialism / Emily Anderson -- Case study. Aesthetics of Buddhist modernism / Paride Stortini -- Environmentalism / Aike P. Rots -- Case study. Grassroots environmental activities in Risshō Kōseikai / Aura di Febo -- Food offerings / Allan G. Grapard -- Folk performing arts / Suzuki Masataka -- Gender / Kawahashi Noriko -- Globalization / Richard Payne -- Case study. Diaspora Buddhism / Jørn Borup -- Islam / Komur...
Buddhism and Iconoclasm in East Asia
This is a cross-cultural study of the multifaceted relations between Buddhism, its materiality, and instances of religious violence and destruction in East Asia, which remains a vast and still largely unexplored field of inquiry. Material objects are extremely important not just for Buddhist practice, but also for the conceptualization of Buddhist doctrines; yet, Buddhism developed ambivalent attitudes towards such need for objects, and an awareness that even the most sacred objects could be destroyed. After outlining Buddhist attitudes towards materiality and its vulnerability, the authors propose a different and more inclusive definition of iconoclasm-a notion that is normally not employed in discussions of East Asian religions. Case studies of religious destruction in East Asia are presented, together with a new theoretical framework drawn from semiotics and cultural studies, to address more general issues related to cultural value, sacredness, and destruction, in an attempt to understand instances in which the status and the meaning of the sacred in any given culture is questioned, contested, and ultimately denied, and how religious institutions react to those challenges.
A Buddhist Theory of Semiotics
One of the first attempts ever to present in a systematic way a non-western semiotic system. This book looks at Japanese esoteric Buddhism and is based around original texts, informed by explicit and rigorous semiotic categories. It is a unique introduction to important aspects of the thought and rituals of the Japanese Shingon tradition. Semiotic concerns are deeply ingrained in the Buddhist intellectual and religious discourse, beginning with the idea that the world is not what it appears to be, which calls for a more accurate understanding of the self and reality. This in turn results in sustained discussions on the status of language and representations, and on the possibility and methods to know reality beyond delusion; such peculiar knowledge is explicitly defined as enlightenment. Thus, for Buddhism, semiotics is directly relevant to salvation; this is a key point that is often ignored even by Buddhologists. This book discusses in depth the main elements of Buddhist semiotics as based primarily on original Japanese pre-modern sources. It is a crucial publication in the fields of semiotics and religious studies.
Defining Shugendo
1. Introduction -- Part 1: Intellectual History of Shugendo Studies -- 2. A Critical History of the Study of Shugendo and Mountain Beliefs in Japan, Suzuki Masataka (Keio University, Japan) Part 2: Constructed Topologies and Invented Chronologies -- 3. Shugendo within Japanese Buddhism, Hasegawa Kenji (Prefectural Museum of Tokushima, Japan) -- 4. Imagining an Ancient Tradition: Eighteenth-Century Narratives of Shugendo at Mount Togakushi, -- Caleb Carter (Kyushu University, Japan) -- 5. Otake Dainichi Nyorai and Haguro Shugendo: Unearthing a Lost History, Gaynor Sekimori (SOAS, University of London, UK) -- 6. Shugendo and Modernity Face to Face: The Daigoji Case, Hayashi Makoto (Aichi Gakui...
Buddhas and Kami in Japan
This volume offers a multidisciplinary approach to the combinatory tradition that dominated premodern and early modern Japanese religion, known as honji suijaku (originals and their traces). It questions received, simplified accounts of the interactions between Shinto and Japanese Buddhism, and presents a more dynamic and variegated religious world, one in which the deities' Buddhist originals and local traces did not constitute one-to-one associations, but complex combinations of multiple deities based on semiotic operations, doctrines, myths, and legends. The book's essays, all based on specific case studies, discuss the honji suijaku paradigm from a number of different perspectives, always integrating historical and doctrinal analysis with interpretive insights.
The Sea and the Sacred in Japan
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.
Vegetal Buddhas
A study of the doctrines on the salvation of plants and inanimate objects in medieval Japanese Buddhism, and an explanation of the ideological and economic reasons behind their introduction.
Spirits and Animism in Contemporary Japan
This book draws attention to a striking aspect of contemporary Japanese culture: the prevalence of discussions and representations of “spirits” (tama or tamashii). Ancestor cults have played a central role in Japanese culture and religion for many centuries; in recent decades, however, other phenomena have expanded and diversified the realm of Japanese animism. For example, many manga, anime, TV shows, literature, and art works deal with spirits, ghosts, or with an invisible dimension of reality. International contributors ask to what extent these are cultural forms created by the media for consumption, rather than manifestations of “traditional” ancestral spirituality in their adapt...
