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Articles 1 - 30 of 43
Full-Text Articles in Buddhist Studies
A Century Of Critical Buddhism In Japan, James Mark Shields
A Century Of Critical Buddhism In Japan, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
This chapter introduces the central arguments of Critical Buddhism as a lens by which to view the course of “modern” Buddhism in Japan, particularly as it relates to politics. It traces philosophical and political precedents for Critical Buddhism in the context of Japanese modernity, by focusing on several progressive Buddhist figures movements from mid-Meiji through early Shōwa, including the New Buddhist Fellowship and the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism. I argue that previous attempts to centralize criticism as a basic Buddhist precept were unsuccessful in part do to an inability to distinguish the Buddhistic components of their thought and practice, …
Prolegomena To A Buddhist(Ic) Critique Of Capitalism, James Mark Shields
Prolegomena To A Buddhist(Ic) Critique Of Capitalism, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
Not even three decades removed from Francis Fukuyama’s post-Cold War proclamation of the “End of History,” the Western world is now undergoing a crisis of conscience – at the very least – with respect to both capitalism as an economic system and neoliberalism as its less-recognized but ever-present ideological foundation. The financial crisis of 2008, the subsequent Great Recession, the Occupy movement(s) of 2011, the 2016 challenge of self-styled Democratic Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination, and growing anxiety about the fate of the planet, particularly among the young, have opened up new avenues of critique, and brought …
Zen Internationalism, Zen Revolution: Inoue Shūten, Uchiyama Gudō And The Crisis Of (Zen) Buddhist Modernity In Late Meiji Japan, James Mark Shields
Zen Internationalism, Zen Revolution: Inoue Shūten, Uchiyama Gudō And The Crisis Of (Zen) Buddhist Modernity In Late Meiji Japan, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
In addition to the birth and development of “Imperial Way Zen,” late Meiji Japan witnessed the emergence of a number of young lay Buddhist scholars, priests and activists who attempted, with varying success, to reframe Buddhism along progressive and occasionally radical political lines. While it is true that groups such as the New Buddhist Fellowship (Shin Bukkyō Dōshikai, 1899–1915) were made up mainly of young men associated with the two branches of the Shin (True Pure Land) sect, several of its members did affiliate themselves with Zen, such as Suzuki Daisetsu (1870–1966) and Inoue Shūten (1880–1945). While the former’s work …
Buddhist Socialism In China, 1900–1930: A History And Appraisal, James Mark Shields
Buddhist Socialism In China, 1900–1930: A History And Appraisal, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
Although it is only in recent decades that scholars have begun to reconsider and problematize Buddhist conceptions of “freedom” and “agency,” the various thought traditions of Asian Buddhism have for some centuries struggled with questions related to the issue of “liberation,” along with its fundamental ontological, epistemological and ethical—if not economic and political—implications. With the development of Marxist thought in the mid to late nineteenth century, a new paradigm for thinking about freedom in relation to economics, history, identity and socio-political transformation found its way to Asia, where it soon confronted traditional religious interpretations of freedom as well as competing …
Zen And The Art Of Resistance: Some Preliminary Notes, James Mark Shields
Zen And The Art Of Resistance: Some Preliminary Notes, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
In the Western and oftentimes Asian imagination, Buddhism generally—and Zen more specifically—is understood as being resolutely disengaged, attaching itself to a form of awakening that is not only, as the classical phrase has it “beyond words and letters,” but in the modern summation by D. T. Suzuki, perfectly compatible with any and all forms of political and economic “dogmatism,” whether capitalist, communist, socialist, or fascist. Of course, as numerous scholars have shown over the past century, on the level of historical actuality, Buddhist and Zen teachers and institutions have long participated in (usually hegemonic) economic and political structures. The …
"Trading Western Suits For Monastic Robes" : Remaking Tibetan Buddhism In The Chinese Religious Revival, Jue Liang
Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Reflections On “To Study The Self Is To Forget The Self’: Zen Lessons On Ego And Leadership In Higher Education”, Jody Condit Fagan
Reflections On “To Study The Self Is To Forget The Self’: Zen Lessons On Ego And Leadership In Higher Education”, Jody Condit Fagan
Libraries
Stuart Lachs kindly wrote a response to my conference paper, “To study the self is to forget the self’: Zen lessons on ego and leadership in higher education” (Fagan, 2020), which led to a highly fruitful correspondence and an expansion on my thinking related to Zen, ego, and Zen practice in America today. Conversations with fellow practitioners and follow-up readings have also continued to shape my thinking. This response paper summarizes my reflections.
ポスト汎神論から超物質主義へ―鈴木大拙と新仏教―, James Mark Shields
ポスト汎神論から超物質主義へ―鈴木大拙と新仏教―, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
In modern Western thought, pantheism remains a powerful if controversial undercurrent. Recent re-evaluations of the work of Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) point to pantheism’s radical implications for metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and politics. Pantheism (Jp. hanshinron 汎神論) also has significant valence within Japanese Buddhist modernism, particularly in the work of scholars and lay activists who articulated the outlines of a New Buddhism (shin bukkyō 新仏教) from the 1880s through the 1940s. For these thinkers, pantheism provided a “middle way” between materialism and idealism, as well as between theism and atheism. In the postwar period, lapsed radical turned Buddhist Sano Manabu …
Gomyō And Kūkai In Early-Heian Intra-Buddhist Conversations, Ronald S. Green
Gomyō And Kūkai In Early-Heian Intra-Buddhist Conversations, Ronald S. Green
Philosophy and Religious Studies
This paper is about the relationship between the famous Japanese esoteric Buddhist Kūkai and the less-famous Gomyō, who you've probably never heard of but maybe should have. My paper responds to the work of two recent scholars, Fujii Jun, who says that Kūkai was a Sanron (Japanese Mādhyamika) priest, and Matsumoto Gyoyu, who speculates about the origins of and thinking behind certain passages in Kūkai's Jūjūshinron. The paper points to the intellectual significance for Kūkai of his close relationship with Gomyō and other Yogācāra scholars of his day, and how this is reflected in the Jūjūshinron and Kūkai's thought broadly. …
Zen Terror In Prewar Japan: Portrait Of An Assassin, Brian Victoria, James Shields
Zen Terror In Prewar Japan: Portrait Of An Assassin, Brian Victoria, James Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
No abstract provided.
Islam And Buddhism: The Arabian Prequel?, Anna Akasoy
Islam And Buddhism: The Arabian Prequel?, Anna Akasoy
Publications and Research
Conventionally, the first Muslim-Buddhist encounters are thought to have taken place in the context of the Arab-Muslim expansions into eastern Iran in the mid-seventh century, the conquest of Sind in 711 and the rise of the Islamic empire. However, several theories promoted in academic and popular circles claim that Buddhists or other Indians were present in western Arabia at the eve of Islam and thus shaped the religious environment in which Muhammad’s movement emerged. This article offers a critical survey of the most prominent arguments adduced to support this view and discusses the underlying attitudes to the Islamic tradition, understood …
Review: Melissa Anne-Marie Curley, Pure Land, Real World: Modern Buddhism, Japanese Leftists, And The Utopian Imagination, James Shields
Review: Melissa Anne-Marie Curley, Pure Land, Real World: Modern Buddhism, Japanese Leftists, And The Utopian Imagination, James Shields
Other Faculty Research and Publications
No abstract provided.
The Blind Arhat And The Old Baby: Liberation By Wisdom, The Dry-Insight Practitioner, And The Pairing Of Calm And Insight, David V. Fiordalis
The Blind Arhat And The Old Baby: Liberation By Wisdom, The Dry-Insight Practitioner, And The Pairing Of Calm And Insight, David V. Fiordalis
Faculty Publications
The distinction between “calm” (Pāli: samatha; Sanskrit: śamatha) and “insight” (P: vipassanā; Skt: vipaśyanā) is one of several ostensibly related dichotomies that have exerted a significant influence on classical and contemporary understandings of Buddhist practices, institutions, and history, as well as of the Buddhist path(s) to and conception(s) of awakening. However, scholars continue to debate whether Buddhists ever conceptualized two (or more) different paths or conceptions of this goal. Much of the debate has been based on the interpretation of doctrinal and theoretical materials. This essay takes as its starting point the concept of “liberation by …
“There Are No Dharmas Apart From The Dharma-Sphere”: Shakya Chokden’S Interpretation Of The Dharma-Sphere, Yaroslav Komarovski
“There Are No Dharmas Apart From The Dharma-Sphere”: Shakya Chokden’S Interpretation Of The Dharma-Sphere, Yaroslav Komarovski
Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications
As is well known to contemporary scholarship and demonstrated by the works contained in the present volume, the Tibetan term zhentong (gzhan stong, being empty of other) refers not to any one unanimous view or system of thought but to a wide variety of philosophical theories formed primarily in India and Tibet. Those theories are often contrasted with rival rangtong (rang stong, being empty of self)1 theories in their interpretations of reality, buddhahood, path, and other elements of the Buddhist worldiew. While many of those elements are equally open to the zhentong and rangtong interpretations, …
Sikh Self-Sacrifice And Religious Representation During World War I, John Soboslai
Sikh Self-Sacrifice And Religious Representation During World War I, John Soboslai
Department of Religion Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
This paper analyzes the ways Sikh constructions of sacrifice were created and employed to engender social change in the early twentieth century. Through an examination of letters written by Sikh soldiers serving in the British Indian Army during World War I and contemporary documents from within their global religious, legislative, and economic context, I argue that Sikhs mobilized conceptions of self-sacrifice in two distinct directions, both aiming at procuring greater political recognition and representation. Sikhs living outside the Indian subcontinent encouraged their fellows to rise up and throw off their colonial oppressors by recalling mythic moments of the past and …
Sikh Self-Sacrifice And Religious Representation During World War I, John Soboslai
Sikh Self-Sacrifice And Religious Representation During World War I, John Soboslai
Department of Religion Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
This paper analyzes the ways Sikh constructions of sacrifice were created and employed to engender social change in the early twentieth century. Through an examination of letters written by Sikh soldiers serving in the British Indian Army during World War I and contemporary documents from within their global religious, legislative, and economic context, I argue that Sikhs mobilized conceptions of self-sacrifice in two distinct directions, both aiming at procuring greater political recognition and representation. Sikhs living outside the Indian subcontinent encouraged their fellows to rise up and throw off their colonial oppressors by recalling mythic moments of the past and …
Religion And Genocide Nexuses: Bosnia As Case Study, Kate E. Temoney
Religion And Genocide Nexuses: Bosnia As Case Study, Kate E. Temoney
Department of Religion Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
Social scientists have been involved in systematic research on genocide for over forty years, yet an under-examined aspect of genocide literature is a sustained focus on the nexuses of religion and genocide, a lacuna that this article seeks to address. Four ways religion and genocide intersect are proposed, of which two will receive specific attention: (1) how religious rhetoric and (2) how religious individuals and institutions foment genocide. These two intersections are further nuanced by combining a Weberian method of typologies, the Durkheimian theory of collective violence, and empirical data in the form of rhetoric espoused by perpetrators and supporters …
Immanent Frames: Meiji New Buddhism And The 'Religious Secular', James Shields
Immanent Frames: Meiji New Buddhism And The 'Religious Secular', James Shields
Faculty Journal Articles
The secularization thesis, rooted in the idea that “modernity” brings with it the destruction—or, at least, the ruthless privatization—of religion, is clearly grounded in specific, often oversimplified, interpretations of Western historical developments since the eighteenth century. In this article, I use the case of the New Buddhist Fellowship (Shin Bukkyō Dōshikai 新仏教同志会) of the Meiji period (1868–1911) to query the category of the secular in the context of Japanese modernity. I argue that the New Buddhists, drawing on elements of classical and East Asian Buddhism as well as modern Western thought, promoted a resolutely social and this-worldly Buddhism that …
Commentary On Against Harmony, James Shields
Commentary On Against Harmony, James Shields
Other Faculty Research and Publications
No abstract provided.
Religion And The State: The Influence Of The Tokugawa On Religious Life, Thought, And Institutions, Savannah A. Labbe
Religion And The State: The Influence Of The Tokugawa On Religious Life, Thought, And Institutions, Savannah A. Labbe
Student Publications
This paper describes the influence of the Tokugawa government on religious life in Japan. It focuses on the religious traditions of Buddhism, Shintoism, and Neo-Confucianism and how the state used these religions to their advantage. The Tokugawa had strict control over all aspects of Japanese life including religion and this paper explores that.
The Extent Of The Christian Approach In Converting Chinese Buddhists Encountering Physical Or Spiritual Difficulties In Life, Ann Ge
Masters Theses
This research paper presents the results of a quantitative and qualitative survey of Chinese Christians from Buddhist backgrounds, with a special focus on the Christian response to life trials, since, in Buddhism, any spiritual or physical adversity tends to be attributed to bad Karma from one’s past. The biggest aim of the research is to investigate more effective ways of leading Chinese people to Christ. The survey focuses mainly on three aspects of the respondents’ conversion stories: (1) their backgrounds, (2) their life changes after conversion, and (3) their inter-religious perspectives. In terms of background, most of the respondents had …
The Scope And Limits Of Secular Buddhism: Watanabe Kaikyoku (1868–1912) And The Japanese New Buddhist 'Discovery Of Society', James Shields
The Scope And Limits Of Secular Buddhism: Watanabe Kaikyoku (1868–1912) And The Japanese New Buddhist 'Discovery Of Society', James Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
Although New Buddhism is a term sometimes employed to refer to the broad sweep of reform and modernization movements in Japanese Buddhist thought and practice beginning in the 1870s, the term shin bukkyō refers more specifically to a broadly influential movement of some two dozen young scholars and lay Buddhists active in the last decade of the Meiji period (1868–1912). Founded in February 1899 as Bukkyō Seito Dōshikai (Buddhist Pure Believers Fellowship or Buddhist Puritan Association), the group changed its name to Shin Bukkyō Dōshikai (New Buddhist Fellowship) in 1903. Notto Thelle refers to the NBF as “the most consistent …
Śākya Chokden, Yaroslav Komarovski
Śākya Chokden, Yaroslav Komarovski
Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications
During his long writing and teaching career, Śākya Chokden (1428-1507) developed a novel, and in many respects unusual approach to the key systems of Buddhist thought and practice. A recurrent theme given special attention in his numerous works is the question of the relationship between conflicting conceptual models of ultimate reality and the means of its realization on the one hand, and practical outcomes of utilizing those models in contemplative practice on the other. The position he articulates based on critical comparison of several Buddhist systems of thought and practice, is that despite their different, and often conflicting, conceptual approaches …
Peasant Revolts As Anti-Authoritarian Archetypes For Radical Buddhism In Modern Japan, James Shields
Peasant Revolts As Anti-Authoritarian Archetypes For Radical Buddhism In Modern Japan, James Shields
Faculty Journal Articles
The late Meiji period (1868-1912) witnessed the birth of various forms of “progressive” and “radical” Buddhism both within and beyond traditional Japanese Buddhist institutions. This paper examines several historical precedents for “Buddhist revolution” in East Asian—and particularly Japanese—peasant rebellions of the early modern period. I argue that these rebellions, or at least the received narratives of such, provided significant “root paradigms” for the thought and practice of early Buddhist socialists and radical Buddhists of early twentieth century Japan. Even if these narratives ended in “failure”—as, indeed, they often did—they can be understood as examples of what James White calls “expressionistic …
Opium Eaters: Buddhism As Revolutionary Politics, James Shields
Opium Eaters: Buddhism As Revolutionary Politics, James Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
There is no one, single answer to the question: What is or are ‘Buddhist politics’? Rather than seek general historical trends or broad tendencies, in this chapter I explore the meaning and implications of the modern, Western conception of ‘politics’ as understood in relation to key features of Buddhist doctrine. In particular, I pose the question of whether we might fruitfully conceive at least certain interpretations of Buddhism—or perhaps, of Dharma—as politics, rather than ‘religion’ or ‘philosophy.’ I argue that twentieth century progressive Buddhists Seno’o Girō (1889–1961) and B. R. Ambedkar (1891–1956) were not so much in conflict with …
A Feminist Perspective On The Lack Of Full Ordination For Burmese Buddhist Nuns, Darbee Nicole Hagerty
A Feminist Perspective On The Lack Of Full Ordination For Burmese Buddhist Nuns, Darbee Nicole Hagerty
FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This thesis examines the position of Buddhist nuns (thila-shins) in contemporary Burmese society. The Sangha, a branch of the Burmese state, has disallowed them from seeking full ordination as bhikkhunis. Based on interviews and observations conducted in Myanmar in June-July 2015, the thesis examines the current socioeconomic status of thila-shins using a transnational feminist framework. It argues that Burmese Buddhist nuns are not simply passive victims of a patriarchal structure, but agents and actors within their own spaces who have their own agendas. The central questions are: How do thila-shins understand their social, economic, and religious position? How does ordination …
East Asian Buddhism, Ronald S. Green
East Asian Buddhism, Ronald S. Green
Philosophy and Religious Studies
No abstract provided.
Buddhism (The Conversion Of Captain American: Buddhism And Postwar Us Popular Culture), James Shields
Buddhism (The Conversion Of Captain American: Buddhism And Postwar Us Popular Culture), James Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
No abstract provided.
KūKai's Epitaph For Master Huiguo: An Introduction And Translation, Ronald S. Green, Chanju Mun
KūKai's Epitaph For Master Huiguo: An Introduction And Translation, Ronald S. Green, Chanju Mun
Philosophy and Religious Studies
No abstract provided.
Xuanzang’S Text Of Bodhisattva Precepts, Ronald S. Green, Chanju Mun
Xuanzang’S Text Of Bodhisattva Precepts, Ronald S. Green, Chanju Mun
Philosophy and Religious Studies
A translation from the Chinese with annotations.