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.
Behold the Buddha
Images of the Buddha are everywhere—not just in temples but also in museums and homes and online—but what these images mean largely depends on the background and circumstance of those viewing them. In Behold the Buddha, James Dobbins invites readers to imagine how premodern Japanese Buddhists understood and experienced icons in temple settings long before the advent of museums and the internet. Although widely portrayed in the last century as visual emblems of great religious truths or as exquisite works of Asian art, Buddhist images were traditionally treated as the very embodiment of the Buddha, his palpable presence among people. Hence, Buddhists approached them as living entities in ...
Jodo Shinshu
This work combines the biography of the founder of Shin Buddhism with a detailed study of the complex development of the religion, from its simple beginnings as a small, rural primarily lay Buddhist movement in the 12th century to its rapid growth as a powerful urban religion in the 15th century.
Letters of the Nun Eshinni
Eshinni (1182–1268?), a Buddhist nun and the wife of Shinran (1173–1262), the celebrated founder of the True Pure Land, or Shin, school of Buddhism, was largely unknown until the discovery of a collection of her letters in 1921. In this study, James C. Dobbins, a leading scholar of Pure Land Buddhism, has made creative use of these letters to shed new light on life and religion in medieval Japan. He provides a complete translation of the letters and an explication of them that reveals the character and flavor of early Shin Buddhism. Readers will come away with a new perspective on Pure Land scholarship and a vivid image of Eshinni and the world in which she lived. After situating the ide...
Sins and Sinners
Asian religious traditions have always been deeply concerned with "sins" and what to do about them. As the essays in this volume illustrate, what Buddhists in Tibet, India, China or Japan, what Jains, Daoists, Hindus or Sikhs considered to be a "sin" was neither one thing, nor exactly what the Abrahamic traditions meant by the term. "Sins"could be both undesireable behavior and unacceptable thoughts. In different contexts, at different times and places, a sin might be a ritual infraction or a violation of a rule of law; it could be a moral failing or a wrong belief. However defined, sins were considered so grave a hindrance to spiritual perfection, so profound a threat to the social order, that the search for their remedies through rituals of expiation, pilgrimage, confession, recitation of spells, or philosophical reflection, was one of the central quests of the religions studied here.
Going Forth
In its role as a scriptural charter, vinaya has justified widely dissimilar approaches to religious life as Buddhist orders in different times and places have interpreted it in contradictory ways. In the resulting tension between scripture and practice, certain kinds of ceremonial issues (such as those involving lineage, seniority, initiation, purification, repentance, visualization, vows, ordination) acquire profound social, psychological, doctrinal, and soteriological significance in Buddhism. Going Forth focuses on these issues over a wide sweep of history—from early fifth-century China to modern Japan—to provide readers with a rich overview of the intersection of doctrinal, ritual, a...
Dear Santa
From a full-sized hockey rink to earplugs for blocking out his little sister, Jimmy Dobbins wants a lot of things for Christmas. This hilarious series of his letters to Santa record his outrageous requests and ultimate change of heart. Full color.
Selected Works of D.T. Suzuki, Volume II
"Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki is considered a key figure in the introduction of Buddhism to the non-Asian world. Many in the West encountered Buddhism for the very first time through his writings and teaching, and for nearly a century his work and legacy havecontributed to the ongoing religious and cultural interchange between Japan and the rest of the world, particularly the United States and Europe. As an early and influential representative of Zen Buddhism outside of Japan, Suzuki shaped the global conversation about the nature of religious practice for much of the twentieth century. This is the first of a multivolume series gathering the full range of Suzuki's writings. Volume 1 (Zen) present...
Hokkeji and the Reemergence of Female Monastic Orders in Premodern Japan
Hokkeji, an ancient Nara temple that once stood at the apex of a state convent network established by Queen-Consort Komyo (701–760), possesses a history that in some ways is bigger than itself. Its development is emblematic of larger patterns in the history of female monasticism in Japan. In Hokkeji and the Reemergence of Female Monastic Orders in Premodern Japan, Lori Meeks explores the revival of Japan’s most famous convent, an institution that had endured some four hundred years of decline following its establishment. With the help of the Ritsu (Vinaya)-revivalist priest Eison (1201–1290), privately professed women who had taken up residence at Hokkeji succeeded in reestablishing a ...
Adding Flesh to Bones
This collection of seventeen essays situates modern Shin Buddhist thinker Kiyozawa Manshi (1863–1903) and his new form of spirituality, Seishinshugi, in the broader context of Buddhism and religious thought in modern Japan. The work highlights several factors that led to the development of Kiyozawa’s ideas and demonstrates the broad influence that he and his disciples had, putting in relief both the events that led Kiyozawa to set forth his unique formulation of a modern Shin Buddhist religiosity in Seishinshugi and the ways in which those ideas became a force that shaped a large part of Japan’s religious landscape well past the middle of the twentieth century. The book is made up of h...
Critical Readings on Pure Land Buddhism in Japan
Pure Land was one of the main fields of mythopoesis and discourse among the Asian Buddhist traditions, and in Japan of central cultural importance from the Heian period right up to the present. However, its range, inconsistency, variability, and complexity have tended to be misevaluated. The pieces reproduced in this set, organized both chronologically and thematically, have been chosen as linchpin works accentuating the diversity of what evolved under this heading of Buddhism. Special attention is given to the traps into which Western observers may fall, the role of the large True Pure Land (Jōdoshinshū) school, and the richness of Tokugawa and twentieth-century developments. These selections of previously published articles will serve as an essential starting point for anyone interested in this perhaps underestimated area of Buddhist studies.
