Pure Land Buddhism in Modern Japanese Culture

Pure Land Buddhism in Modern Japanese Culture PDF Author: Elisabetta Porcu
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047443055
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
Focusing on one of the most influential religious traditions in Japan, Pure Land Buddhism, this book offers a survey of its impact on mainstream forms of art in modern and contemporary Japan

Pure Land Buddhism in Modern Japanese Culture

Pure Land Buddhism in Modern Japanese Culture PDF Author: Elisabetta Porcu
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047443055
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 275

Get Book

Book Description
Focusing on one of the most influential religious traditions in Japan, Pure Land Buddhism, this book offers a survey of its impact on mainstream forms of art in modern and contemporary Japan

Interpreting Amida

Interpreting Amida PDF Author: Galen Amstutz
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791494829
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Pure Land Buddhism was the largest traditional religion in Japan. It had an enormous impact on Japanese culture and was among the first forms of Buddhism encountered by Western culture. Not only has it been neglected in modern descriptions of Japan, but it also has been relatively ignored by Buddhist studies. The author shows that Pure Land Buddhism, despite a Mahayana Buddhist philosophical basis, has paralleled the social and political qualities associated with the Judeo-Christian tradition. It has variously been threatening to mainstream Westerners, uninteresting to Westerners seeking the exotic, and disagreeable to cultural brokers on all sides who want to depict Japanese culture as radically opposed to the West. The faulty appreciation of Pure Land Buddhism is one of the leading world examples of a counterproductive orientalism that restricts rather than improves cross-cultural communication.

Critical Readings on Pure Land Buddhism in Japan

Critical Readings on Pure Land Buddhism in Japan PDF Author: Galen Amstutz
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004401512
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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Book Description
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. The pieces reproduced in this set have been chosen as linchpin works accentuating the diversity and evolution of Pure Land Buddhism. These selections of previously published articles will serve as an essential starting-point for anyone interested in this perhaps underestimated area of Buddhist studies.

Japanese Culture

Japanese Culture PDF Author: Roger J. Davies
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 1462918832
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
Japanese Culture: The Religious and Philosophical Foundations takes readers on a thoroughly researched and extremely readable journey through Japan's cultural history. This much-anticipated sequel to Roger Davies's best-selling The Japanese Mind provides a comprehensive overview of the religion and philosophy of Japan. This cultural history of Japan explains the diverse cultural traditions that underlie modern Japan and offers readers deep insights into Japanese manners and etiquette. Davies begins with an investigation of the origins of the Japanese, followed by an analysis of the most important approaches used by scholars to describe the essential elements of Japanese culture. From there, each chapter focuses on one of the formative elements: Shintoism, Buddhism, Taoism, Zen, Confucianism, and Western influences in the modern era. Each chapter is concluded with extensive endnotes along with thought-provoking discussion activities, making this volume ideal for individual readers and for classroom instruction. Anyone interested in pursuing a deeper understanding of this complex and fascinating nation will find Davies's work an invaluable resource.

Pure Land, Real World

Pure Land, Real World PDF Author: Melissa Anne-Marie Curley
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 082485778X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
For close to a thousand years Amida’s Pure Land, a paradise of perfect ease and equality, was the most powerful image of shared happiness circulating in the Japanese imagination. In the late nineteenth century, some Buddhist thinkers sought to reinterpret the Pure Land in ways that would allow it speak to modern Japan. Their efforts succeeded in ways they could not have predicted. During the war years, economist Kawakami Hajime, philosopher Miki Kiyoshi, and historian Ienaga Saburō—left-leaning thinkers with no special training in doctrinal studies and no strong connection to any Buddhist institution—seized upon modernized images of Shinran in exile and a transcendent Western Paradise to resist the demands of a state that was bearing down on its citizens with increasing force. Pure Land, Real World treats the religious thought of these three major figures in English for the first time. Kawakami turned to religion after being imprisoned for his involvement with the Japanese Communist Party, borrowing the Shinshū image of the two truths to assert that Buddhist law and Marxist social science should reinforce each other, like the two wings of a bird. Miki, a member of the Kyoto School who went from prison to the crown prince’s think tank and back again, identified Shinran’s religion as belonging to the proletariat: For him, following Shinran and working toward building a buddha land on earth were akin to realizing social revolution. And Ienaga’s understanding of the Pure Land—as the crystallization of a logic of negation that undermined every real power structure—fueled his battle against the state censorship system, just as he believed it had enabled Shinran to confront the world’s suffering head on. Such readings of the Pure Land tradition are idiosyncratic—perhaps even heretical—but they hum with the same vibrancy that characterized medieval Pure Land belief. Innovative and refreshingly accessible, Pure Land, Real World shows that the Pure Land tradition informed twentieth-century Japanese thought in profound and surprising ways and suggests that it might do the same for twenty-first-century thinkers. The critical power of Pure Land utopianism has yet to be exhausted.

A Cultural History of Japanese Buddhism

A Cultural History of Japanese Buddhism PDF Author: William E. Deal
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1405167017
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
A Cultural History of Japanese Buddhism offers a comprehensive, nuanced, and chronological account of the evolution of Buddhist religion in Japan from the sixth century to the present day. Traces each period of Japanese history to reveal the complex and often controversial histories of Japanese Buddhists and their unfolding narratives Examines relevant social, political, and transcultural contexts, and places an emphasis on Japanese Buddhist discourses and material culture Addresses the increasing competition between Buddhist, Shinto, and Neo-Confucian world-views through to the mid-nineteenth century Informed by the most recent research, including the latest Japanese and Western scholarship Illustrates the richness and complexity of Japanese Buddhism as a lived religion, offering readers a glimpse into the development of this complex and often misunderstood tradition

The Lotus Sutra in Japanese Culture

The Lotus Sutra in Japanese Culture PDF Author: George Joji Tanabe
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824811983
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description


The Japanese Mind

The Japanese Mind PDF Author: Charles A. Moore
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824800772
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
A collection of essays that provide insight into Japanese culture. This book is a great buy for anyone interested in Japan.

Popular Buddhism in Japan

Popular Buddhism in Japan PDF Author: Esben Andreasen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134249225
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
With a foreword by Prof. Alfred Bloom. This completely new study of Japanese Shin Buddhism offers a valuable combination of historical development, carefully selected readings with commentaries and illustrations. Widely welcomed both for its scope as course work reader and as a general introduction to the subject.

Selected Works of D.T. Suzuki, Volume II

Selected Works of D.T. Suzuki, Volume II PDF Author: Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520959620
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki was a key figure in the introduction of Buddhism to the non-Asian world. Many outside Japan encountered Buddhism for the first time through his writings and teaching, and for nearly a century his work and legacy have contributed to the ongoing religious and cultural interchange between Japan and the rest of the world, particularly the United States and Europe. This second volume of Selected Works of D. T. Suzuki brings together Suzuki’s writings on Pure Land Buddhism. At the center of the Pure Land tradition is the Buddha Amida and his miraculous realm known as paradise or "the land of bliss," where sentient beings should aspire to be born in their next life and where liberation and enlightenment are assured. Suzuki, by highlighting certain themes in Pure Land Buddhism and deemphasizing others, shifted its focus from a future, otherworldly goal to religious experience in the present, wherein one realizes the nonduality between the Buddha and oneself and between paradise and this world. An introduction by James C. Dobbins analyzes Suzuki’s cogent, distinctive, and thought-provoking interpretations, which helped stimulate new understandings of Pure Land Buddhism quite different from traditional doctrine.