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Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism
The issue of sinification—the manner and extent to which Buddhism and Chinese culture were transformed through their mutual encounter and dialogue—has dominated the study of Chinese Buddhism for much of the past century. Robert Sharf opens this important and far-reaching book by raising a host of historical and hermeneutical problems with the encounter paradigm and the master narrative on which it is based. Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism is, among other things, an extended reflection on the theoretical foundations and conceptual categories that undergird the study of medieval Chinese Buddhism. Sharf draws his argument in part from a meticulous historical, philological, and philoso...
Living Images
The essays in this volume focus on the historical, institutional, and ritual context of a number of Japanese Buddhist paintings, sculptures, calligraphies, and relics?some celebrated, others long overlooked.
Religious Experience
Many regard religious experience as the essence of religion, arguing that narratives might be created and rituals invented but that these are always secondary to the original experience itself. However, the concept of "experience" has come under increasing fire from a range of critics and theorists. This Reader presents writings from both those who assume the existence and possible universality of religious experience and those who question the very rhetoric of "experience". Bringing together both classic and contemporary writings, the Reader showcases differing disciplinary approaches to the study of religious experience: philosophy, literary and cultural theory, history, psychology, anthro...
Curators of the Buddha
A critical history of the study of Buddhism in the West, incorporating insights of colonial and post-colonial cultural studies. Social, political and cultural conditions that have shaped the course of Buddhist studies are discussed.
What Can't Be Said
This multi-authored monograph argues that the use of paradox and contradictions, in contrast to in typical Western thought, can deepen rather than disprove philosophical thought and discussion. Here the authors apply this view to East Asian philosophy, examining two classical Daoist texts, the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi, and the trajectory of Buddhism in East Asia, including the San Lun, Tiantai, Chan, and Zen traditions, culminating with the Kyoto school of philosophy in the twentieth century. The work ultimately concludes that contradictory positions illuminate deeper understandings of inconsistencies in reality and in the world.
Critical Terms for Religious Studies
A century that began with modernism sweeping across Europe is ending with a remarkable resurgence of religious beliefs and practices throughout the world. Wherever one looks today, from headlines about political turmoil in the Middle East to pop music and videos, one cannot escape the pivotal role of religious beliefs and practices in shaping selves, societies, and cultures. Following in the very successful tradition of Critical Terms for Literary Studies and Critical Terms for Art History, this book attempts to provide a revitalized, self-aware vocabulary with which this bewildering religious diversity can be accurately described and responsibly discussed. Leading scholars working in a vari...
Buddhahood Embodied
Provides many new translations of original texts formative of Mahayana concepts of Enlightenment and resolves the 1200-year-old controversy between Indian and Tibetan views of the meaning of buddhahood.
The Birth of Insight
Insight meditation, which claims to offer practitioners a chance to escape all suffering by perceiving the true nature of reality, is one of the most popular forms of meditation today. The Theravada Buddhist cultures of South and Southeast Asia often see it as the Buddha’s most important gift to humanity. In the first book to examine how this practice came to play such a dominant—and relatively recent—role in Buddhism, Erik Braun takes readers to Burma, revealing that Burmese Buddhists in the colonial period were pioneers in making insight meditation indispensable to modern Buddhism. Braun focuses on the Burmese monk Ledi Sayadaw, a pivotal architect of modern insight meditation, and e...
Prescribing the Dharma
Interest in the psychotherapeutic capacity of Buddhist teachings and practices is widely evident in the popular imagination. News media routinely report on the neuropsychological study of Buddhist meditation and applications of mindfulness practices in settings including corporate offices, the U.S. military, and university health centers. However, as Ira Helderman shows, curious investigators have studied the psychological dimensions of Buddhist doctrine for well over a century, stretching back to William James and Carl Jung. These activities have shaped both the mental health field and Buddhist practice throughout the United States. This is the first comprehensive study of the surprisingly ...
India in the Chinese Imagination
In this collection of original essays, leading Asian studies scholars take a new look at the way the Chinese conceived of India in their literature, art, and religious thought in the premodern era.
