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- Faculty Contributions to Books (9)
- Comparative Philosophy (6)
- Other Faculty Research and Publications (4)
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- Philosophy and Religious Studies (2)
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- Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications (1)
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- Research Collection School of Social Sciences (1)
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- The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University (1)
- The Qualitative Report (1)
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Imagination And The Self: A Cross-Cultural And Cross-Disciplinary Study, Qianyi Qin
Imagination And The Self: A Cross-Cultural And Cross-Disciplinary Study, Qianyi Qin
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This dissertation is an interdisciplinary investigation of the imagination and the self that engages with cognitive science, philosophy of mind, Buddhism, ethical theories, and a variety of perspectives from Asian and Western philosophy. I address the following questions in three interrelated chapters. First, what does it mean for the self to appear in imagination? In Chapter 1, against certain narrow understandings of the self in philosophy of language, I build a multidimensional model of the self in imaginative experiences to capture the rich phenomenology, drawing on empirical findings on memory and imagination. Second, can the self be removed from imagination? …
A Buddhist Critique Of Harmony, James Mark Shields
A Buddhist Critique Of Harmony, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
No abstract provided.
Merit Transference And The Paradox Of Merit Inflation, Matthew Hammerton
Merit Transference And The Paradox Of Merit Inflation, Matthew Hammerton
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Many religious traditions and ethical systems hold that individuals accrue merit through their good intentions, acts, and character, and demerit through their bad intentions, acts, and character. This merit and demerit, accumulated by individuals throughout their lives, gives each person a kind of ethical “score” that can determine what they deserve, and influence whether good or bad things happen to them (e.g., divine punishments and rewards, a favourable or unfavourable rebirth, etc.). In some traditions (most notably Buddhism, but also to a limited extent in Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity), “merit transference” is a feature of these merit-based ethical systems. This …
A Summoned Life: Vocation In The Analects, Teng-Kuan Ng
A Summoned Life: Vocation In The Analects, Teng-Kuan Ng
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
This article explores the concept of vocation in the Analects. While most treatmentsof vocation focus on the Christian tradition, and while Confucian thought is oftenviewed as categorically nontheistic, Robert Merrihew Adams’s Finite and InfiniteGoods (1999) presents an illuminating comparative framework for tracing outKongzi’s religious ethical vision of how persons think, act, and feel when graspedby a sense of divine calling. I argue that in the Analects a vocation is compositelyconceived as: (1) a special divine imperative to an individual or a community (2) tolove particular goods within one’s actual circumstances (3) with nonconsequentialist,noncompetitive, and potentially counter-cultural commitment (4) such that …
Epicurus And The Buddha On Desire, Andrew Alwood
Epicurus And The Buddha On Desire, Andrew Alwood
Comparative Philosophy
The philosophies of Epicurus and the Buddha aim to free us from suffering by helping us to recognize how ignorance and delusion lead us to pursue harmful desires. Since the problem lies in our attitudes, the solution is to change our attitudes. Like doctors healing the sick, they offer therapeutic practical advice, to remove the groundless opinions and the unhealthy desires that cause suffering. Although various misconceptions may lead us to conceive of these two thinkers as quite different with respect to values and ethics, there are remarkable similarities. Indeed, their practical advice for how to live has the same …
Autoethnographic Action Research As A Contemplative Practice: Awareness And Transformation Of Inner And Outer Selves, Jiju Varghese, Bal Chandra Luitel, Niroj Dahal
Autoethnographic Action Research As A Contemplative Practice: Awareness And Transformation Of Inner And Outer Selves, Jiju Varghese, Bal Chandra Luitel, Niroj Dahal
The Qualitative Report
Contemplation as a spiritual practice has taken various forms across different religious traditions and regions worldwide. Over the years, various contemplative practices have evolved and become popular even outside religious traditions to promote the well-being of all for inner and outer selves’ transformation. In education, many scholars worldwide have expounded on the benefits of contemplative practices in the classroom for students and teachers. Contemplative practices have penetrated research practices in the form of contemplative inquiry considering performative, philosophical, and artistic transformations, where researchers enter into a deep, thoughtful, and reflective introspective journey to see the connection between what is seen …
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, …
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 …
Foreword To Martin Kovan, A Buddhist Theory Of Killing: A Philosophical Exposition, James Mark Shields, Dan Cozort
Foreword To Martin Kovan, A Buddhist Theory Of Killing: A Philosophical Exposition, James Mark Shields, Dan Cozort
Other Faculty Research and Publications
No abstract provided.
An Argument For Sensuous Revolution And Its Manifestation In The Food System, Anna Smith
An Argument For Sensuous Revolution And Its Manifestation In The Food System, Anna Smith
Honors Theses
In this food system, we witness issues such as health disparities, social injustice, and environmental injustice, which all flow within one another. When seeking to address such issues it is essential to recognize their inherent interconnectedness and root causes; otherwise, intended solutions can perpetuate the issues they aim to solve when they do not encompass full-seeing. The greatest barrier to full-seeing is disconnection with experience, which occurs when what we are experiencing is obscured by static conceptions. This inhibition of holistic understanding, when occurring through such limited perspectives, makes solving issues such as health disparities, social injustice, and environmental injustice …
Buddhist Ethics As A Path: A Defense Of Normative Gradualism, Javier S. Hidalgo
Buddhist Ethics As A Path: A Defense Of Normative Gradualism, Javier S. Hidalgo
Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications
This essay defends a new interpretation of Buddhist ethics: normative gradualism. According to normative gradualism, what we have normative reason to do depends on our stage along the Buddhist spiritual path. The essay shows how normative gradualism can justify distinctive features of Buddhist ethics and reconcile consequentialist and eudaimonistic interpretations of Buddhist moral thought.
Creolizing Modern Buddhism: A Reply To Yarran Hominh & A. Minh Nguyen, Evan Thompson
Creolizing Modern Buddhism: A Reply To Yarran Hominh & A. Minh Nguyen, Evan Thompson
Comparative Philosophy
In reply to Hominh and Nguyen, I argue that “creolizing” methods in the study and practice of Buddhism should not be opposed to historicist and contextualist modes of investigation and understanding. Rather, historicism and contextualism can and should inform creolizing approaches.
Cosmopolitanism, Creolization, And Non-Exceptionalist Buddhist Modernisms: On Evan Thompson’S Why I Am Not A Buddhist, Yarran Hominh, A. Minh Nguyen
Cosmopolitanism, Creolization, And Non-Exceptionalist Buddhist Modernisms: On Evan Thompson’S Why I Am Not A Buddhist, Yarran Hominh, A. Minh Nguyen
Comparative Philosophy
In his recent book, Why I Am Not a Buddhist, Evan Thompson argues that inter-tradition or cross-cultural philosophical dialogue ought to be governed by cosmopolitan conversational norms that do not subsume any one tradition’s deep commitments under those of any other tradition, but rather bring those commitments into the discussion so that they can be challenged and defended. He argues on this basis for the application of a deeply contextualist and historicist interpretive methodology to Buddhist texts, concepts, and theories in dialogue with philosophy and contemporary cognitive sciences. Buddhist modernism, in eschewing that deeply contextualist and historicist methodology, falls …
Three Buddhist Distinctions Of Great Consequence For Cross-Cultural Philosophy Of Personal Identity, Antoine Panaïoti
Three Buddhist Distinctions Of Great Consequence For Cross-Cultural Philosophy Of Personal Identity, Antoine Panaïoti
Comparative Philosophy
This paper seeks to lay down the theoretical groundwork for the emergence of holistic cross-cultural philosophical investigations of personal identity ¾ investigations that approach the theoretical, phenomenological, psychological, and practical-ethical dimensions of selfhood as indissociable. My strategy is to discuss three closely connected conceptual distinctions that the Buddhist approach to personal identity urges us to draw, and a lucid understanding of which is essential for the emergence of appropriately comprehensive and thus genuinely cosmopolitan discussions at the cross-road between Western and Buddhist philosophical traditions. The first, primary distinction is that between the “visceral sense of self” (VSS) and the “substance …
In Search Of Buddhist Virtue: A Case For A Pluralist-Gradualist Moral Philosophy, Oren Hanner
In Search Of Buddhist Virtue: A Case For A Pluralist-Gradualist Moral Philosophy, Oren Hanner
Comparative Philosophy
Classical presentations of the Buddhist path prescribe the cultivation of various good qualities that are necessary for spiritual progress, from mindfulness (sati) and loving-kindness (metta) to faith (saddhā) and wisdom (paññā). Examining the way in which such qualities are described and classified in early Buddhism—with special reference to their treatment in the Visuddhimagga (Path of Purification) by the fifth-century Buddhist thinker Buddhaghosa—the present article employs a comparative method in order to identify the Buddhist catalog of virtues. The first part sketches the characteristics of virtue as analyzed by neo-Aristotelian theories. …
A Literary Analysis Of The Origin Of Human Embryonic Stem Cells, Its Advancements, Philosophical, Ethical, Sociocultural, And Political Aspects; An Investigation Of The Underlying Attributes That Affect One’S Views On Hesc Research To Resolve Turkey And Brazil’S Hesc Policy, Religious, And Cultural Conflicts, Haleema Shamsuddin
Honors Scholars Collaborative Projects
Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) are cells derived from 5-day human embryos and are self-renewing cell lines that change into any type of cell in the body, a trait called pluripotency. hESCs have almost unlimited clinical and medical research potential. Despite the great therapeutic promise of hESC research, it comes with a controversial ethical debate due to its involvement with the destruction of the human embryo. The central argument revolves around the question of whether or not these human embryos should be ascribed equal moral status to fully developed humans. This thesis aims to analyze the origin and advancements of …
The Long-Haul: Buddhist Educational Strategies To Strengthen Students’ Resilience For Lifelong Personal Transformation And Positive Community Change, Namdrol Miranda Adams, Kevin Kecskes
The Long-Haul: Buddhist Educational Strategies To Strengthen Students’ Resilience For Lifelong Personal Transformation And Positive Community Change, Namdrol Miranda Adams, Kevin Kecskes
Public Administration Faculty Publications and Presentations
For decades, community engagement scholars have built a robust body of knowledge that explores multiple facets of the higher education community engagement domain. More recently, scholars and practitioners from mainly Christian affiliated faith-based institutions have begun to investigate the complex inner world of community-engaged students’ meaning-making and spiritual development. While most of this fascinating cross-domain effort has been primarily based on “Western” influenced Judeo-Christian traditions, this study explores service-learning/community engagement themes, approaches, rationale, and strategies from an “Eastern” perspective based on the rich tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. This case study research focuses on curricular approaches, influences, and impacts of Buddhist …
Skeptical Buddhism As Provenance And Project, James Mark Shields
Skeptical Buddhism As Provenance And Project, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
The past century and a half has seen various attempts in both Asia and the West to reform or re-conceptualize Buddhism by adding a simple, often provocative, qualifier. This paper examines some of the links between “secular,” “critical,” “sceptical,” and “radical” Buddhism in order to ascertain possibilities in thinking Buddhism anew as a 21st-century “project” with philosophical, ethical, and political resonance. In particular, I am motivated by the question of whether “sceptical” Buddhism can coexist with Buddhist praxis, conceived as an engaged response to the suffering of sentient beings in a globalized and neoliberal industrial capitalist world order. Let …
Carrying Buddha Into The Streets: Buddhist Socialist Thought In Meiji Japan, James Mark Shields
Carrying Buddha Into The Streets: Buddhist Socialist Thought In Meiji Japan, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
No abstract provided.
Review: Melissa Anne-Marie Curley, Pure Land, Real World: Modern Buddhism, Japanese Leftists, And The Utopian Imagination, James Mark Shields
Review: Melissa Anne-Marie Curley, Pure Land, Real World: Modern Buddhism, Japanese Leftists, And The Utopian Imagination, James Mark Shields
Other Faculty Research and Publications
No abstract provided.
Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender
Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender
Student Theses 2015-Present
This paper aims to shed light on the dissonance caused by the superimposition of Dominant Human Systems on Natural Systems. I highlight the synthetic nature of Dominant Human Systems as egoic and linguistic phenomenon manufactured by a mere portion of the human population, which renders them inherently oppressive unto peoples and landscapes whose wisdom were barred from the design process. In pursuing a radical pragmatic approach to mending the simultaneous oppression and destruction of the human being and the earth, I highlight the necessity of minimizing entropic chaos caused by excess energy expenditure, an essential feature of systems that aim …
Immanent Frames: Meiji New Buddhism And The 'Religious Secular', James Mark Shields
Immanent Frames: Meiji New Buddhism And The 'Religious Secular', James Mark 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 …
The Scope And Limits Of Secular Buddhism: Watanabe Kaikyoku (1868–1912) And The Japanese New Buddhist 'Discovery Of Society', James Mark Shields
The Scope And Limits Of Secular Buddhism: Watanabe Kaikyoku (1868–1912) And The Japanese New Buddhist 'Discovery Of Society', James Mark 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 …
Kuiji’S Analysis Of Individual Capacities For Enlightenment: Philosophical Foundations Of His Chinese Yogācāra Buddhist Tradition, Ronald S. Green
Kuiji’S Analysis Of Individual Capacities For Enlightenment: Philosophical Foundations Of His Chinese Yogācāra Buddhist Tradition, Ronald S. Green
Philosophy and Religious Studies
According to Mahāyāna Buddhism as seen in the Lotus Sūtra and many other Buddhist texts revered in Chinese and other East Asian traditions, the Buddha used his insight into each individual’s capacity for understanding, to tailor his teachings about how they should proceed toward overcoming suffering. For this reason, the Buddha is sometimes called the Great Physician, having the ability to diagnose an individual’s case and prescribe a specific remedy. This is the Buddha’s skillful means or skill-in-means (upāya), his expertise in crafting a personal plan for liberation. Thus, the overall ethical imperative is the same regardless of an individual’s …
Where Does The Cetanic Break Take Place? Weakness Of Will In Śāntideva’S Bodhicaryāvatāra, Stephen E. Harris
Where Does The Cetanic Break Take Place? Weakness Of Will In Śāntideva’S Bodhicaryāvatāra, Stephen E. Harris
Comparative Philosophy
This article explores the role of weakness of will (akrasia) in the Indian Buddhist tradition, and in particular within Śāntideva’s Introduction to the Practice of Awakening (Bodhicaryāvatāra). In agreement with Jay Garfield, I argue that there are important differences between Aristotle’s account of akrasia and Buddhist moral psychology. Nevertheless, taking a more expanded conception of weakness of will, as is frequently done in contemporary work, allows us to draw significant connections with the pluralistic account of psychological conflict found in Buddhist texts. I demonstrate this by showing how Amélie Rorty’s expanded treatment of akrasia as including …
Peasant Revolts As Anti-Authoritarian Archetypes For Radical Buddhism In Modern Japan, James Mark Shields
Peasant Revolts As Anti-Authoritarian Archetypes For Radical Buddhism In Modern Japan, James Mark 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 Mark Shields
Opium Eaters: Buddhism As Revolutionary Politics, James Mark 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 …
Buddhism, Confucianism, And Western Conceptions Of Personal Autonomy, Joshua Sias
Buddhism, Confucianism, And Western Conceptions Of Personal Autonomy, Joshua Sias
The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University
The contemporary conversation surrounding personal autonomy theory is primarily concerned with discussing autonomy in relation to western liberal conceptions of individualism, society, and other elements surrounding modern understandings of personal autonomy. An outsider reviewing the modern discourse over personal autonomy theory may be led to believe that either those within the conversation are simply indifferent to the exclusion of eastern philosophical notions relevant to self-government (and self-determination), or that eastern classical models are incapable of offering much to the discussion of personal autonomy. The following paper is aimed at addressing common components of the modern discussion over personal autonomy theory …
Seno'o Giro: Life And Thought Of A Radical Buddhist, James Mark Shields
Seno'o Giro: Life And Thought Of A Radical Buddhist, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
No abstract provided.
Acting Wide Awake: Attention And The Ethics Of Emotion, Jacob Davis
Acting Wide Awake: Attention And The Ethics Of Emotion, Jacob Davis
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
In cases where two human cultures disagree over fundamental ethical values, metaethical questions about what could make one or the other position correct arise with great force. Philosophers committed to naturalistically plausible accounts of ethics have offered little hope of adjudicating such conflicts, leading some to embrace moral relativism. In my dissertation, I develop an empirically grounded response to moral relativism by turning away from debates over which action types are right and wrong and focusing instead on shared features of human emotional motivation. On my account, being motivated by ill-will is ethically bad (if it is), just because human …