Encountering the Dharma

Encountering the Dharma PDF Author: Richard Hughes Seager
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520939042
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
This engaging, deeply personal book, illuminating the search for meaning in today’s world, offers a rare insider’s look at Soka Gakkai Buddhism, one of Japan’s most influential and controversial religious movements, and one that is experiencing explosive growth around the world. Unique for its multiethnic make-up, Gakkai Buddhists can be found in more than 100 countries from Japan to Brazil to the United States and Germany. In Encountering the Dharma, Richard Seager, an American professor of religion trying to come to terms with the death of his wife, travels to Japan in search of the spirit of the Soka Gakkai. This book tells of his journey toward understanding in a compelling narrative woven out of his observations, reflections, and interviews, including several rare one-on-one meetings with Soka Gakkai president Daisaku Ikeda. Along the way, Seager also explores broad-ranging controversies arising from the Soka Gakkai’s efforts to rebuild post-war Japan, its struggles with an ancient priesthood, and its motives for propagating Buddhism around the world. One turning point in his understanding comes as Ikeda and the Soka Gakkai strike an authentically Buddhist response to the events of September 11, 2001.

Encountering the Dharma

Encountering the Dharma PDF Author: Richard Hughes Seager
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520939042
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 278

Get Book

Book Description
This engaging, deeply personal book, illuminating the search for meaning in today’s world, offers a rare insider’s look at Soka Gakkai Buddhism, one of Japan’s most influential and controversial religious movements, and one that is experiencing explosive growth around the world. Unique for its multiethnic make-up, Gakkai Buddhists can be found in more than 100 countries from Japan to Brazil to the United States and Germany. In Encountering the Dharma, Richard Seager, an American professor of religion trying to come to terms with the death of his wife, travels to Japan in search of the spirit of the Soka Gakkai. This book tells of his journey toward understanding in a compelling narrative woven out of his observations, reflections, and interviews, including several rare one-on-one meetings with Soka Gakkai president Daisaku Ikeda. Along the way, Seager also explores broad-ranging controversies arising from the Soka Gakkai’s efforts to rebuild post-war Japan, its struggles with an ancient priesthood, and its motives for propagating Buddhism around the world. One turning point in his understanding comes as Ikeda and the Soka Gakkai strike an authentically Buddhist response to the events of September 11, 2001.

Dixie Dharma

Dixie Dharma PDF Author: Jeff Wilson
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 080786997X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Buddhism in the United States is often viewed in connection with practitioners in the Northeast and on the West Coast, but in fact, it has been spreading and evolving throughout the United States since the mid-nineteenth century. In Dixie Dharma, Jeff Wilson argues that region is crucial to understanding American Buddhism. Through the lens of a multidenominational Buddhist temple in Richmond, Virginia, Wilson explores how Buddhists are adapting to life in the conservative evangelical Christian culture of the South, and how traditional Southerners are adjusting to these newer members on the religious landscape. Introducing a host of overlooked characters, including Buddhist circuit riders, modernist Pure Land priests, and pluralistic Buddhists, Wilson shows how regional specificity manifests itself through such practices as meditation vigils to heal the wounds of the slave trade. He argues that southern Buddhists at once use bodily practices, iconography, and meditation tools to enact distinct sectarian identities even as they enjoy a creative hybridity.

Democracy’s Dharma

Democracy’s Dharma PDF Author: Richard Madsen
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520252284
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
This title explores the remarkable religious renaissance that has reformed, revitalized and renewed the practices of Buddhism and Daoism in Taiwan. Madsen connects these developments to Taiwan's transition to democracy and the burgeoning needs of its new middle classes.

Buddhist Encounters and Identities Across East Asia

Buddhist Encounters and Identities Across East Asia PDF Author: Ann Heirman
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004366156
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 453

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Book Description
Buddhist Encounters and Identities across East Asia offers a fascinating picture of the intricacies of regional and cross-regional networks and the complexity of Buddhist identities emerging across Asia.

New World Dharma

New World Dharma PDF Author: Trevor Carolan
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 143845984X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Interviews and profiles of spiritual and cultural figures influenced by Buddhism. Based on Trevor Carolan’s interviews, profiles, and essays from the past twenty years, this book offers a fascinating and intimate look at many of the Buddhist (and Buddhist-inspired) spiritual and cultural leaders who have shaped our time. Drawn from the global mosaic of the arts and humanities, environmentalism, and governance, Carolan’s collaborators include Buddhist teachers, poets, writers, activists, and even a politician. Readers will encounter Red Pine, Maxine Hong Kingston, Gary Snyder, Robert Aitken-Roshi, Jerry Brown, the Dalai Lama, Allen Ginsberg, along with many others. They explore engaged practice, East-West ethics, the role of dharma-influenced literature, Beat literature, social and political activism, and more. A rich resource for anyone interested in Buddhism, New World Dharma reveals a Buddhist consciousness responding to the challenge of rethinking what citizenship, community, and the sacred might mean in a global age. Canadian literary scholar and journalist Trevor Carolan is Assistant Professor of English at the University of the Fraser Valley near Vancouver. His books include Return to Stillness: Twenty Years with a Tai Chi Master.

Buddhism in America

Buddhism in America PDF Author: Richard Hughes Seager
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231159730
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
"This well-informed book provides a comprehensive survey of a variety of Buddhist traditions in the contemporary U.S. . . . [its] strength, apart from being a mine of information, is Seager's insistence on taking a historically informed and comparative perspective." - Religious Studies Review.

Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha

Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha PDF Author: Daniel Ingram
Publisher: Aeon Books
ISBN: 1780498152
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 715

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Book Description
The very idea that the teachings can be mastered will arouse controversy within Buddhist circles. Even so, Ingram insists that enlightenment is an attainable goal, once our fanciful notions of it are stripped away, and we have learned to use meditation as a method for examining reality rather than an opportunity to wallow in self-absorbed mind-noise. Ingram sets out concisely the difference between concentration-based and insight (vipassana) meditation; he provides example practices; and most importantly he presents detailed maps of the states of mind we are likely to encounter, and the stages we must negotiate as we move through clearly-defined cycles of insight. Its easy to feel overawed, at first, by Ingram's assurance and ease in the higher levels of consciousness, but consistently he writes as a down-to-earth and compassionate guide, and to the practitioner willing to commit themselves this is a glittering gift of a book.In this new edition of the bestselling book, the author rearranges, revises and expands upon the original material, as well as adding new sections that bring further clarity to his ideas.

Razor-Wire Dharma

Razor-Wire Dharma PDF Author: Calvin Malone
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0861719549
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Razor-Wire Dharma is an eloquent, enlightening, and utterly inspiring personal story how one man found Buddhism—and real, transformative meaning for his life—despite being in one of the world's harshest environments.

The Mirror of Dharma

The Mirror of Dharma PDF Author: Geshe Kelsang Gyatso
Publisher: Tharpa Publications Us
ISBN: 9781910368800
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book gives practical advice on how we can solve our daily problems of uncontrolled desire, anger and ignorance, and how to make our human life meaningful.

Making Friends with Death

Making Friends with Death PDF Author: Judith L. Lief
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 9780834822573
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
In Making Friends with Death, Buddhist teacher Judith Lief, who's drawn her inspiration from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, shows us that through the powerful combination of contemplation of death and mindfulness practice, we can change how we relate to death, enhance our appreciation of everyday life, and use our developing acceptance of our own vulnerability as a basis for opening to others. She also offers a series of guidelines to help us reconnect with dying persons, whether they are friends or family, clients or patients. Lief highlights the value of relating to the immediacy of death as an ongoing aspect of everyday life by offering readers a variety of practical methods that they can apply to their lives and work. These methods include: Simple mindfulness exercises for deepening awareness of moment-by-moment change Practices for cultivating loving-kindness Helpful slogans and guidelines for caregivers to use Making Friends with Death will enlighten anyone interested in coming to terms with their own mortality. More specifically, the contemplative approach presented here offers health professionals, students of death and dying, and people who are helping a dying friend or relative useful guidance and inspiration. It will show them how to ground their actions in awareness and compassion, so that the steps they take in dealing with pain and suffering will be more effective.