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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Defining Choices Redefined: Heroic Life Narratives Of Taiwanese Buddhist Monastics, Hillary Crane
Defining Choices Redefined: Heroic Life Narratives Of Taiwanese Buddhist Monastics, Hillary Crane
Faculty Publications
The Taiwanese Buddhist monastics in this study confront negative stereotypes that dominate within their wider societal context, and they challenge these stereotypes by positing counter-narratives. After exploring the monastics’ interest in proselytizing both to me and to a wider audience as a context that influences the interview encounter, this chapter focuses on the monastics’ response to negative stereotypes and their endeavors to craft a new, positive image of monastics. I argue that they employ the heroic trope of the da zhangfu (大丈夫, ‘great man’) to reconceive as heroic the life choices they have made that wider Taiwanese society characterizes as …
Review Of John Whalen-Bridge, Tibet On Fire: Buddhism, Protest, And The Rhetoric Of Self-Immolation, Daniel S. Capper
Review Of John Whalen-Bridge, Tibet On Fire: Buddhism, Protest, And The Rhetoric Of Self-Immolation, Daniel S. Capper
Faculty Publications
Review of John Whalen-Bridge, Tibet on Fire: Buddhism, Protest, and the Rhetoric of Self-Immolation, in Journal of Contemporary Religion
Animism Among Western Buddhists, Daniel S. Capper
Animism Among Western Buddhists, Daniel S. Capper
Faculty Publications
Myriad instances of animist phenomena abound in the Buddhist world, but due to the outdated concepts of thinkers such as Edward Tylor, James George Frazer, and Melford Spiro, commonly scholars perceive this animism merely as the work of local religions, not as deriving from Buddhism itself. However, when one follows a number of contemporary scholars and employs a new, relational concept of animism that is based on respectful recognition of nonhuman personhoods, a different picture emerges. The works of Western Buddhists such as Stephanie Kaza, Philip Kapleau Roshi, and Gary Snyder express powerful senses of relational animism that arise specifically …
The Friendly Yeti, Daniel S. Capper
The Friendly Yeti, Daniel S. Capper
Faculty Publications
Most images of yetis in Western popular culture and scholarly literature portray them as secular, predatory monsters. These representations overlook important religious dimensions of yetis that are hidden in the current literature, so I take a new look at yetis in Tibetan religions in order to clarify our understanding of these legendary creatures. Following a phenomenological approach that sets aside the issue of the ontological existence of yetis, I examine texts, art, ritual, and folklore in order to propose four yeti personal ideal types: the Buddhist practitioner, the human religious ally, the friendly yeti, and the mountain deity yeti. These …
Resistance Through Transformation? The Meanings Of Gender Reversals In A Taiwanese Buddhist Monastery, Hillary Crane
Resistance Through Transformation? The Meanings Of Gender Reversals In A Taiwanese Buddhist Monastery, Hillary Crane
Faculty Publications
This chapter demonstrates that Taiwanese Buddhist nuns resist the limitations of traditional Han gender ideologies by drawing on opportunities offered within those traditional gender constructions—opportunities that allow them to define themselves in opposition to the limited female gender characteristics and roles they reject. Crane argues that we should not interpret these nuns' masculine identification simply as resisting dominant Han gender ideologies. Instead, the nuns embrace the traditional, sexist Han ideologies, even to the point of exaggeration—portraying women not only as dangerous to the spiritual cultivation of others, but also of limited spiritual ability. They define the negative characteristics of women …
Becoming A Nun, Becoming A Man: Taiwanese Buddhist Nuns’ Gender Transformation, Hillary Crane
Becoming A Nun, Becoming A Man: Taiwanese Buddhist Nuns’ Gender Transformation, Hillary Crane
Faculty Publications
This paper explores apparent contradictions in the gender identifications of Taiwanese Buddhist nuns. Because the texts and teachings of their tradition provide conflicting messages about women's spiritual abilities, the nuns create a complex gender cosmology as a means to accommodate textual contradictions without rejecting any textual statements. This strategy allows the nuns to assert that they have spiritual abilities equal to those of men without rejecting or contradicting textual statements that they do not. Without denying that they are women (and that they are therefore threatening to men) the nuns primarily identify with the male gender. Compartmentalizing and contextualizing gender …