Buddhist Studies Commons^™

What Can Buddhist Artistic Traditions Learn From Christian Iconography, Jotipālo Bhikkhu

Obsculta

The three images included come from the author’s year-long residency at the Collegeville Institute.

Seeing Like The Buddha: Enlightenment Through Film, Skyler Osburn

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Francisca Cho's Seeing Like the Buddha: Enlightenment through Film.

Theravāda “Missionary Activity”: Exploring The Secular Features Of Socio-Politics And Ethics, Christopher Scott Brugh

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The purpose of this thesis is to comprehensively explore Theravāda missionary activity. The philological, textual, theoretical, and ethnographic methods used to investigate the historical, sociopolitical, religious, and ethical aspects of early Theravāda, the U.S. Vipassanā (Insight) meditation movement, and modern Burmese Theravāda revealed nuanced meanings in the descriptions of these adherents’ endeavors with respect to proselytizing, converting, and the concept of missionary religions. By exploring the secular features that contributed to their religious appearances, a more developed contextualization of Theravāda “activity” reshapes understandings of the larger concept of missionary religions. I argue that what has been maintained in the ...

"Lucky" Charms, Bailey Swanson

Christian Studies Class Publications

Within Shinto and Buddhist folklore, many amulets deemed worthy of reverence have been discovered and used frequently. There are many forms of worship in the Japanese community - including portable, home, or shrine veneration. The omamori, Maneki-Neko (Beckoning Cat), ema, Omikuji, and numerous sacred animals are treated as sacred talisman, or as we may call them "lucky charms".

How Hugging Mom Teaches Me The Meaning Of Love And Perhaps Beyond, Ethan Trinh

The Journal of Faith, Education, and Community

Hugging mom is unconventional in a traditional Vietnamese family. I write this piece to articulate my thoughts to describe different ways to look at the meanings of hugging. During my writing process, I use a walking meditation as a Buddhist practice to calm my mind so that I can see my true self and a clearer picture of different layers of the act of hugging. I believe hegemonic gender roles and patriarchy happen everywhere in the world, not particularly in Vietnam. I do not plan to devalue my home country’s cultural values in this paper. This is not the ...

Recapture, Transparency, Negation And A Logic For The Catuṣkoṭi, Adrian Kreutz

Comparative Philosophy

The recent literature on Nāgārjuna’s catuṣkoṭi centres around Jay Garfield’s (2009) and Graham Priest’s (2010) interpretation. It is an open discussion to what extent their interpretation is an adequate model of the logic for the catuskoti, and the Mūla-madhyamaka-kārikā. Priest and Garfield try to make sense of the contradictions within the catuskoti by appeal to a series of lattices – orderings of truth-values, supposed to model the path to enlightenment. They use Anderson & Belnaps's (1975) framework of First Degree Entailment. Cotnoir (2015) has argued that the lattices of Priest and Garfield cannot ...

An Investigation Of The Relationship Between Prince ShōToku’S ShōMangyō-Gisho And Two Dunhuang Buddhist Manuscripts: A Debate Over Originality And Canonical Value, Mark Dennis

Manuscript Studies

This article investigates the relationship between two manuscript fragments discovered in Dunhuang, China referred to as Nai 93 and Tama 24, and the Shōmangyō-gisho, a Buddhist text written in classical Chinese attributed to Japan’s Prince Shōtoku (574-622). Shōtoku is remembered in Japanese history as the country’s first patriarch of Buddhism, revered for his patronage of the nascent faith and his great erudition. His studies under a Korean Buddhist monk led, according to early historical texts, to his composing the Shōmangyō-gisho and two other Buddhist commentaries that have been greatly valued throughout Japanese Buddhist history.

But the discovery of ...

Chang (Beer): A Social Marker, Ritual Tool, And Multivalent Symbol In Tibetan Buddhism, Kayla J. Jenkins

MSU Graduate Theses

In this thesis, I analyze the use of beer (Tib. chang) in Tibetan tantric Buddhism and emphasize its importance for studying themes of purity and pollution, meaning, and power in this context. In doing so, I argue that beer functions as a social marker and influences gender dynamics in Tibet. Beer also functions as a religious ritual tool for transactions of power. Lastly, beer is present as a multivalent symbol in Tibetan tantric songs and stories, useful as both a negative and positive metaphor for qualities or states of mind. As something that informs social, religious, and literary worlds within ...

Soka Gakkai’S Human Revolution: The Rise Of A Mimetic Nation In Modern Japan, Levi Mclaughlin

UH Press Book Previews

Soka Gakkai is Japan’s largest and most influential new religious organization: It claims more than 8 million Japanese households and close to 2 million members in 192 countries and territories. The religion is best known for its affiliated political party, Komeito (the Clean Government Party), which comprises part of the ruling coalition in Japan’s National Diet, and it exerts considerable influence in education, media, finance, and other key areas.

Levi McLaughlin’s comprehensive account of Soka Gakkai draws on nearly two decades of archival research and non-member fieldwork to account for its institutional development beyond Buddhism and suggest ...

Perpetual Change: Moving Beyond Object Dependent Identity, Lucas Waggoner

Access*: Interdisciplinary Journal of Student Research and Scholarship

In this paper, I disassemble classical notions of identity, and propose a new mode of identity-creation through change itself. While static characteristics or categories are traditionally utilized in forming identities, the existence of change creates problems for maintaining them. Rather than continue following that same pattern of category formation, I argue that flux, and a history of changes a thing or being has undergone, can contain innately a sense of identity. I use the science fiction of Octavia Butler, the works of the Presocratic philosophers, Timothy Morton’s ecological philosophy, the communicative philosophy of Martin Buber, the writings of Hannah ...

The Benefits Of Past-Life Regression And Reincarnation, Taylor-Jo Russo

Student Publications

Reincarnation, or the belief in rebirth, is a fascinating belief that many cultures and different groups of people choose to subscribe to. While it typically accompanies various religions, the idea of reincarnation can be presented in other ways as well, such as regression therapy. Past-life regression therapy involves being hypnotized and recalling previous lives, memories, and information possible through levels of incarnations. Many therapists, psychologists, and even laymen attempt to use past-life regression therapy as a useful tool in overcoming anxieties, fears, dealing with every day concerns, and understanding phenomena. “Maintaining a critical eye but also an open mind. In ...

From Indra’S Net To Internet: Communication, Technology, And The Evolution Of Buddhist Ideas, Daniel Veidlinger

UH Press Book Previews

In this sweeping and ambitious intellectual history, Daniel Veidlinger traces the affinity between Buddhist ideas and communications media back to the efflorescence of Buddhism in the Axial Age of the mid-first millennium BCE. He uses both communications theory and the idea of convergent evolution to show how Buddhism arose in the largely urban milieu of Axial Age northeastern India and spread rapidly along the transportation and trading nodes of the Silk Road, where it appealed to merchants and traders from a variety of backgrounds. Throughout, he compares early phases of Buddhism with contemporary developments in which rapid changes in patterns ...

Buddhist Law In Burma: A History Of Dhammasattha Texts And Jurisprudence, 1250–1850, D. Christian Lammerts

UH Press Book Previews

Burma and neighboring areas of Southeast Asia comprise the only region of the world to have developed a written corpus of Buddhist law claiming jurisdiction over all members of society. Yet in contrast with the extensive scholarship on Islamic and Hindu law, this tradition of Buddhist law has been largely overlooked. In fact, it is commonplace to read that Buddhism gave rise to no law aside from the vinaya, or monastic law. In Buddhist Law in Burma, D. Christian Lammerts upends this misperception and provides an intellectual and literary history of the dynamic jurisprudence of the dhammasattha legal genre between ...

Review Of Buddhism & Political Theory By Matthew J. Moore, Charles W. Wright

The Journal of Social Encounters

Buddhism & Political Theory, by Matthew J. Moore, proposes to extract a political theory from the Pali language texts of the Buddhist religious tradition that is palatable to Western academic sensibilities so that it might be ushered into the company of contemporary political and ethical philosophy. "Let me introduce you," the book in essence says to the world of Western philosophy, "to a long overlooked, unusual, and interesting perspective on political and ethical theory that you really ought to include in your conversations."

Sin In Tiantai Buddhism And Christianity: A Comparison Between Chih-I And Pope Gregory I, Wangyu Tang

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Buddhism and Christianity are two of the major religions in the world. This paper is going to compare sin in Medieval Tiantai Buddhism with Medieval Catholicism, with examples of Chih-i (Zhiyi) and Gregory’s teaching on sin. This article investigates sin from the aspects of pride, greed and sources of sin, cardinal sins, and practice of contemplation in the two religions. The two religions share common ground in the question of sin, yet there are differences in the source of sins and the definition of cardinal sins. In addition, the teachings of Chih-i and Gregory the Great on the practice ...

From The Mountains To The Cities: A History Of Buddhist Propagation In Modern Korea, Mark A. Nathan

UH Press Book Previews

At the start of the twentieth century, the Korean Buddhist tradition was arguably at the lowest point in its 1,500-year history in the peninsula. Discriminatory policies and punitive measures imposed on the monastic community during the Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910) had severely weakened Buddhist institutions. Prior to 1895, monastics were prohibited by law from freely entering major cities and remained isolated in the mountains where most of the surviving temples and monasteries were located. In the coming decades, profound changes in Korean society and politics would present the Buddhist community with new opportunities to pursue meaningful reform. The central ...

Land, Power, And The Sacred: The Estate System In Medieval Japan, Janet R. Goodwin, Joan R. Piggott

UH Press Book Previews

Landed estates (shōen) produced much of the material wealth supporting all levels of late classical and medieval Japanese society. During the tenth through sixteenth centuries, estates served as sites of de facto government, trade network nodes, developing agricultural technology, and centers of religious practice and ritual. Although mostly farmland, many yielded nonagricultural products, including lumber, salt, fish, and silk, and provided livelihoods for craftsmen, seafarers, peddlers, and performers, as well as for cultivators. By the twelfth century, an estate “system” permeated much of the Japanese archipelago. This volume examines the system from three perspectives: the land itself; the power derived ...

Reaching Thai Buddhists And Those With A Background In Thai Buddhist Beliefs, Warren A. Shipton, Jared Wright, Tonya Wright, Nilubon Srisai

Journal of Adventist Mission Studies

"One of the greatest challenges for those working across cultures is to understand the unique features of the host culture and the dominant religious beliefs and practices found in the society represented. If this is to be done acceptably, the written and spoken language must be mastered and personal friendships formed with community members. Much damage has been done by Western missionaries arriving with preconceived ideas on evangelism taken from their home country and with an attitude of being holders of superior knowledge in many areas of thought beyond that held by the host culture. Catholic missionary activity has been ...

Critical Contextualization: Case Studies From Cambodia, Bruce L. Bauer

Journal of Adventist Mission Studies

"Those of us involved in world mission must be at the forefront to encourage local people to develop local expressions of their faith. When I hear people rejoice about the fact that regardless of where they travel in the world the Sabbath school and church service order of worship, the songs sung, and the way of doing church is the same, I do not rejoice, I groan. For that means that the foreign visitor is comfortable, but how about the local people? Are they comfortable with the often foreignness of Adventist worship? We can and must do better to allow ...

Thai Contextualized Art, Greg Whitsett, Amy Whitsett

Journal of Adventist Mission Studies

"In the 1980s, a set of four murals depicting four specific and unique Adventist teachings and beliefs was commissioned by Pastor Clifton Maberly who was serving as a missionary in Thailand. His goal was to have these events depicted in a medium familiar to local Thai buddhists so they could wrestle with the new concepts without being distracted by Western art styles. His hope was that if Jesus, Satan and the angels could be depicted using characters similar to those already familiar to the Thai, the viewer would be better able to focus on and understand the truth portrayed in ...