Interpreting Amida

Interpreting Amida PDF Author: Galen Amstutz
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791433102
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Examines the history of Japanese Pure Land Buddhism and how orientalist assumptions have caused the West to ignore this important tradition.

Interpreting Amida

Interpreting Amida PDF Author: Galen Dean Amstutz
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791433096
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Examines the history of Japanese Pure Land Buddhism and how orientalist assumptions have caused the West to ignore this important tradition.

Exile and Otherness

Exile and Otherness PDF Author: Ilana Maymind
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498574599
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 191

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Book Description
In Exile and Otherness: The Ethics of Shinran and Maimonides, Ilana Maymind argues that Shinran (1173–1263), the founder of True Pure Land Buddhism (Jodo Shinshu), and Maimonides (1138–1204), a Jewish philosopher, Torah scholar, and physician, were both deeply affected by their conditions of exile as shown in the construction of their ethics. By juxtaposing the exilic experiences of two contemporaries who are geographically and culturally separated and yet share some of the same concerns, this book expands the boundaries of Shin Buddhist studies and Jewish studies. It demonstrates that the integration into a new environment for Shinran and the creative mixture of cultures for Maimonides allowed them to view certain issues from the position of empathic outsiders. Maymind demonstrates that the biographical experiences of these two thinkers who exhibit sensitivity to the neglected and suffering others, resonate with conditions of exile and diasporic living in pluralistic societies that define the lives of many individuals, communities, and societies in the twenty-first century.

The Making of American Buddhism

The Making of American Buddhism PDF Author: Scott A. Mitchell
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197641563
Category : Buddhism
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
As of 2010, there were approximately 3-4 million Buddhists in the United States, and that figure is expected to grow significantly. Beyond the numbers, the influence of Buddhism can be felt throughout the culture, with many more people practicing meditation, for example, than claiming Buddhist identity. A century ago, this would have been unthinkable. So how did Buddhism come to claim such a significant place in the American cultural landscape? The Making of American Buddhism offers an answer, showing how in the years on either side of World War II second-generation Japanese American Buddhists laid claim to an American identity inclusive of their religious identity. In the process they-and their allies-created a place for Buddhism in America. These sons and daughters of Japanese immigrants-known as "Nisei," Japanese for "second-generation"-clustered around the Berkeley Bussei, a magazine published from 1939 to 1960. In the pages of the Bussei and elsewhere, these Nisei Buddhists argued that Buddhism was both what made them good Americans and what they had to contribute to America-a rational and scientific religion of peace. The Making of American Buddhism also details the behind-the-scenes labor that made Buddhist modernism possible. The Bussei was one among many projects that were embedded within Japanese American Buddhist communities and connected to national and transnational networks that shaped and allowed for the spread of modernist Buddhist ideas. In creating communities, publishing magazines, and hosting scholarly conventions and translation projects, Nisei Buddhists built the religious infrastructure that allowed the later Buddhist modernists, Beat poets, and white converts who are often credited with popularizing Buddhism to flourish. Nisei activists didn't invent American Buddhism, but they made it possible.

Myōe the Dreamkeeper

Myōe the Dreamkeeper PDF Author: George J. Tanabe, Jr.
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 1684172950
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
In the Kamakura period, Myoe Shonin (1173-1232) was a leader of Nara Buddhists who sought to revitalize traditional Buddhism in Japan. In his teaching, Myoe specially emphasized the value of the visions that could be achieved through meditation; and in his practice, he kept and occasionally illustrated a diary of his own visions and significant night dreams. The autograph copy of this remarkable document still exists, although some pages have been scattered among collectors. George J. Tanabe, Jr., here presents in English the most comprehensive compilation of the diary in any language. Moreover, his study of Myoe's life and teachings provides both a context within which the diary can be understood and a view of the often doctrinally contentious world of Kamakura Buddhism.

Language, Cognition, and Biblical Exegesis

Language, Cognition, and Biblical Exegesis PDF Author: Ronit Nikolsky
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350078123
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
What role do texts play in religious practice? What is the relationship between these texts and cognition? Are some texts more successful because they are better adapted to our cognitive structures? Why is biblical interpretation necessary, and what is the cognitive process behind it? This book considers such questions, and fills the gap in research on religious texts and narratives in the cognitive science of religion. The study of ancient religions and biblical studies are dominated by textual evidence. However, the cognitive science of religion is lacking significant research on the language and textual interpretation of this literature. This book presents a systematic attempt to redefine the interpretation of religious texts in a cognitive framework, providing concrete textual analysis on a broad selection of biblical passages. It explores the ways that cognitive approaches to language and textual interpretation expand the disciplines of the cognitive science of religion and biblical studies. This book brings together methodology from the cognitive sciences, linguistics, philology, biblical studies, and religious studies, to offer a new perspective for biblical studies and cognitive sciences. It presents a renewed vision of textual interpretation - one that aligns hermeneutical reflection with our cognitive capacities.

The Zen Poetry of DOGEN: Verses from the Mountain of Eternal Peace

The Zen Poetry of DOGEN: Verses from the Mountain of Eternal Peace PDF Author: STEVEN HEINE
Publisher: Fivestar
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 102

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Book Description
THIS VOLUME contains a complete translation of Dōgen's collection of thirty-one-syllable Japanese poetry, or waka, along with a translation of a representative selection of his Chinese verse, or kanshi. Although Dōgen is generally considered to be more of a philosopher than a poet, his verse has great value for several reasons. First, the poems, most of which were composed on the mountain peak of Eiheiji Temple (the Temple of Eternal Peace, as pictured on the front cover), are beautiful, displaying Dōgen's remarkable facility with language. Second, the Japanese and Chinese collections illuminate key aspects of his life and thought not revealed in his prose writings, including his trips to China and Kamakura, his feelings about Kyoto while living in Eiheiji in the northern provinces, and his feelings about death.

Three Mountains and Seven Rivers

Three Mountains and Seven Rivers PDF Author: Musashi Tachikawa
Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass Publ.
ISBN: 9788120824683
Category : Buddhism
Languages : en
Pages : 964

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Book Description
Three mountains and the seven rivers is a collection of 56 essays to felicitate the sixtieth birthday of Doctor Musashi Techikawa, Professor at Aichi gakuin University in Nagoya. This volume consist of thirteen Sections; (1) Ancient Geography, (2) Buddhism, (3) Madhyamika, (4) Iconography, (5) Jainism, (6) Logic, (7) Poetics, (9) Social Practice, (10) Tibetan Themes, (11) Vedanta and Mimamsa, (12) Samkhya and Yoga and (13) Tantrism. these saetions throw new light on enduring themes in Indian studies as well as raises fresh issues.

Immigrants to the Pure Land

Immigrants to the Pure Land PDF Author: Michihiro Ama
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824861043
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
Religious acculturation is typically seen as a one-way process: The dominant religious culture imposes certain behavioral patterns, ethical standards, social values, and organizational and legal requirements onto the immigrant religious tradition. In this view, American society is the active partner in the relationship, while the newly introduced tradition is the passive recipient being changed. Michihiro Ama’s investigation of the early period of Jodo Shinshu in Hawai‘i and the United States sets a new standard for investigating the processes of religious acculturation and a radically new way of thinking about these processes. Most studies of American religious history are conceptually grounded in a European perspectival position, regarding the U.S. as a continuation of trends and historical events that begin in Europe. Only recently have scholars begun to shift their perspectival locus to Asia. Ama’s use of materials spans the Pacific as he draws on never-before-studied archival works in Japan as well as the U.S. More important, Ama locates immigrant Jodo Shinshu at the interface of two expansionist nations. At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, both Japan and the U.S. were extending their realms of influence into the Pacific, where they came into contact—and eventually conflict—with one another. Jodo Shinshu in Hawai‘i and California was altered in relation to a changing Japan just as it was responding to changes in the U.S. Because Jodo Shinshu’s institutional history in the U.S. and the Pacific occurs at a contested interface, Ama defines its acculturation as a dual process of both "Japanization" and "Americanization." Immigrants to the Pure Land explores in detail the activities of individual Shin Buddhist ministers responsible for making specific decisions regarding the practice of Jodo Shinshu in local sanghas. By focusing so closely, Ama reveals the contestation of immigrant communities faced with discrimination and exploitation in their new homes and with changing messages from Japan. The strategies employed, whether accommodation to the dominant religious culture or assertion of identity, uncover the history of an American church in the making.

Understanding Religious Pluralism

Understanding Religious Pluralism PDF Author: Peter C. Phan
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1630874892
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Our contemporary world is fast becoming religiously diverse in a variety of ways. Thanks to globalization and migration, to mention only two current worldwide trends, people of diverse and sometimes mutually hostile faiths are now sharing neighborhoods and encountering one another's religious traditions on a daily basis. For scholars in religious studies and theology the issue to be examined is whether religious diversity is merely the result of historical development and social interaction, or whether it is inherent in the object of belief--part of the very structure of faith and our attempts to understand and express it. The essays in this volume range from explorations of the impact of religious diversity on religious studies to examples of interfaith encounter and dialogue, and current debates on Christian theology of religion. These essays examine not only the theoretical issues posed by religious pluralism to the study of religion and Christian theology but also concrete cases in which religious pluralism has been a bone of contention. Together, they open up new vistas for further conversation on the nature and development of religious pluralism.