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Reimagining Zen in a Secular Age
In Reimagining Zen in a Secular Age André van der Braak offers an account of the exciting but also problematic encounter between enchanted Japanese Zen Buddhism and secular Western modernity over the past century, using Charles Taylor’s magnum opus A Secular Age as an interpretative lens. As the tenuous compromises of various forms of “Zen modernism” are breaking down today, new imaginings of Zen are urgently needed that go beyond both a Romantic mystical Zen and a secular “mindfulness” Zen. As a Zen scholar-practitioner, André van der Braak shows that the Zen philosophy of the 13th century Zen master Dōgen offers much resources for new hermeneutical, embodied, non-instrumental and communal approaches to contemporary Zen theory and practice in the West.
The Making of American Buddhism
This volume looks at the intersection of race and religion in the United States before, during, and after World War II, when Nisei (second-generation) Japanese American Jodo Shinshu (or Shin) Buddhists reacted to the trauma of racial and religious discrimination.
The Revolution of Buddhist Modernism
Reacting to nineteenth-century forces of colonialism and globalization, Buddhist reformers across Asia strove to modernize Buddhist teachings, practices, and institutions. “Buddhist modernism” was typically characterized by disbelief in the supernatural, rejection of ritual, deinstitutionalization, and egalitarianism. The Revolution of Buddhist Modernism provides an account of the upheaval that took place within the world of Japanese Jōdo Shin (True Pure Land) Buddhism when scholar-priest Kiyozawa Manshi (1863–1903) initiated modernist reforms. Kiyozawa and his disciples, especially Soga Ryōjin and Kaneko Daiei, reenvisioned Pure Land teachings as a path to awakening in the present w...
Buddhism beyond Borders
Finalist for the 2015 ForeWord INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award in the Religion Category Buddhism beyond Borders provides a fresh consideration of Buddhism in the American context. It includes both theoretical discussions and case studies to highlight the tension between studies that locate Buddhist communities in regionally specific areas and those that highlight the translocal nature of an increasingly interconnected world. Whereas previous examinations of Buddhism in North America have assumed a more or less essentialized and homogeneous "American" culture, the essays in this volume offer a corrective, situating American Buddhist groups within the framework of globalized cultural flows, while exploring the effects of local forces. Contributors examine regionalism within American Buddhisms, Buddhist identity and ethnicity as academic typologies, Buddhist modernities, the secularization and hybridization of Buddhism, Buddhist fiction, and Buddhist controversies involving the Internet, among other issues.
The Punctuated Evolution of Civilisations
Investigating societal responses toward climate pulsations, this book explores environmental challenges through a timeframe of climate pulsations and response patterns in different civilizations. This “societal-climate-society” approach helps to establish the relationship between climate and civilization. It argues that history is a collection of repeated decisions toward challenges in different climate cycles. As an application of Darwinian evolutionary theory on human societies, Ellsworth Huntington’s theory of climate pulsation is modified and tailored to explain Samuel Huntington’s theory of the clash of civilizations, which discloses the invisible hand behind war and peace.
Chinese Pure Land Buddhism
Chinese Pure Land Buddhism: Understanding a Tradition of Practice is the first book in any western language to provide a comprehensive overview of Chinese Pure Land Buddhism. Even though Pure Land Buddhism was born in China and currently constitutes the dominant form of Buddhist practice there, it has previously received very little attention from western scholars. In this book, Charles B. Jones examines the reasons for the lack of scholarly attention and why the few past treatments of the topic missed many of its distinctive features. He argues that the Chinese Pure Land tradition, with its characteristic promise of rebirth in the Pure Land to even non-elite or undeserving practitioners, sh...
Decolonising the Study of Religion
Decolonising the Study of Religion analyses historical and contemporary discussions in the study of religion and Buddhism and critically investigates representations, possibilities, and challenges of a decolonial approach, addressing the important question: who owns Buddhism? The monograph offers a case-based perspective with which to examine the general study of religion, where new challenges require reflection and prospects for new directions. It focuses on Buddhism, one religion which has been studied in the West for centuries. Building on postcolonial theories and supplemented with a critical analysis of identity and postsecular engagement, the book offers new possibilities and challenge...
Zen Judaism
Contemporary Judaism is transforming, especially in America, from a community experience to more of a do-it-yourself religion focused on the individual self. In this book Christopher L. Schilling offers a critique of this transformation. Schilling discusses problematic aspects of Jewish mindfulness meditation, and the relationship between Judaism and psychedelics, proceeding to explore the science behind these developments and the implications they have for Judaism.
Journeys of Transformation
Compelling exploration of how journeys to a Buddhist culture changed 30 Western writers as they explored the meaning of 'no-self'.
For God and Country
Religion and nationalism are both powerful and important markers of individual identity, but the relationship between the two has been a source of considerable debate. Much, if not most, of the early work done in Nationalism Studies has been based, at least implicitly, on the idea that religion, as a genealogical carrier of identity, was displaced with the advent of secular modernity, which was caused by nationalism. Or, to put it another way, national identity, and its ideological manifestation nationalism, filled the void left in people’s self-identification as religion retreated in the face of modernity. Since at least the late 1990s, this view has been increasingly challenged by schola...
