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Articles 1 - 12 of 12
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
One Or None? Truth And Self-Transformation For Śaṅkara And Kamalaśīla, David Fiordalis
One Or None? Truth And Self-Transformation For Śaṅkara And Kamalaśīla, David Fiordalis
Faculty Publications
This article explores how two influential 8th-century Indian philosophers, Śaṅkara and Kamalaśīla, treat the threefold scheme of learning, reasoning, and meditation in their spiritual path philosophies. They have differing institutional and ontological commitments: the former, who helped establish Advaita Vedānta as the religious philosophy of an elite Hindu monastic tradition, affirms an unchanging “self” (ātman) identical to the “world-essence” (brahman); the latter, who played a significant role in the development of Buddhist monasticism in Tibet, denies both self and essence. Yet, they share a concern with questions of truth and the means by which someone could gain access to it, …
Buddhas And Body Language: The Literary Trope Of The Buddha's Smile, David Fiordalis
Buddhas And Body Language: The Literary Trope Of The Buddha's Smile, David Fiordalis
Faculty Publications
This essay explores how classical Buddhist literature, across a variety of traditional genres, portrays the wondrous smile of the Buddha. Despite its literary register, the Buddha’s smile is first and foremost a nonverbal gesture, and if we are to understand its significance, then we must employ a theoretical approach that treats it as such. Multimodality provides such an approach. While an emergent body of psychological research has argued that the smile is a universal human gesture connected to a rather limited set of emotional states like happiness, the recognition that smiles can be voluntary acts highlights the importance of situational …
Los Budas Y El Lenguaje Corporal: El Tropo Literario De La Sonrisa Del Buda, David Fiordalis
Los Budas Y El Lenguaje Corporal: El Tropo Literario De La Sonrisa Del Buda, David Fiordalis
Faculty Publications
Este ensayo explora cómo retrata la literatura budista clásica la sonrisa del Buda. La sonrisa del Buda es un gesto no verbal, y para entender su significado debemos emplear un enfoque teórico que la trate como tal. La multimodalidad puede proporcionar tal enfoque. Un conjunto emergente de investigación psicológica ha argumentado que la sonrisa es un gesto humano universal conectado a un grupo limitado de estados emocionales, pero reconocer que las sonrisas pueden ser actos voluntarios destaca la importancia del contexto situacional. Dado que la sonrisa del Buda nos llega desde un contexto histórico y cultural ajeno a la evidencia …
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 …
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 …
Arts: Fiction And Fiction Writers: The Americas, Rachel Norman
Arts: Fiction And Fiction Writers: The Americas, Rachel Norman
Faculty Publications
This essay by Rachel Norman, which originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures, discusses contemporary Muslim fiction published in the United States with a particular focus on three novels: Mojha Kahf's The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf, Laila Halaby's Once in a Promised Land, and Randa Jarrar's A Map of Home.
Androgyny/Hermaphroditism: Hebrew Bible, Jennifer J. Williams
Androgyny/Hermaphroditism: Hebrew Bible, Jennifer J. Williams
Faculty Publications
The Hebrew Bible lacks a term for androgyny or hermaphroditism. The term tumtumim, which identifies persons of indeterminate or “hidden” sex, appears later in rabbinic texts. Nevertheless, sexual fluidity, ambiguity, intersexed persons, and persons with a combination of masculine and feminine characteristics appear in the Genesis creation stories and prophetic texts. While gender transgression is relevant to the general discussion, this entry from The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Gender Studies: Oxford Biblical Studies Online focuses primarily on ancient understandings, namely those presented in the Hebrew Bible, of those of “both sexes.”
On Buddhism, Divination And The Worldly Arts: Textual Evidence From The Theravāda Tradition, David Fiordalis
On Buddhism, Divination And The Worldly Arts: Textual Evidence From The Theravāda Tradition, David Fiordalis
Faculty Publications
This essay attends to the sticky web of indigenous terminology concerning divination and other so-called “mundane” or “worldly” arts, focusing primarily upon Buddhist canonical texts preserved in Pāli, augmented by references to commentarial and exegetical literature. It asks: How have some Buddhists, as evinced in this canonical and exegetical literature, understood the broader category of “worldly arts,” which includes techniques we call divinatory? Are Buddhists discouraged from engaging with such practices, as has been commonly asserted? If so, then for whom, specifically, are such words of discouragement primarily meant? And why, specifically, are such practices discouraged? Are the penalties for …
The Buddha’S Great Miracle At Śrāvastī: A Translation From The Tibetan Mūlasarvāstivāda-Vinaya, David Fiordalis
The Buddha’S Great Miracle At Śrāvastī: A Translation From The Tibetan Mūlasarvāstivāda-Vinaya, David Fiordalis
Faculty Publications
This article offers an annotated translation of the story of the Buddha’s great miracle at Śrāvastī, as found in the Tibetan translation of the Mūlasarvāstivāda-vinaya. While miracles of the Buddha are many and various, the great miracle of Śrāvastī, one of the Buddha’s principal miracles, is almost the prototypical Buddhist miracle story, and the Mūlasarvāstivāda-vinaya contains a significant version of it. Yet of the many versions preserved in a variety of languages, this is one of the last to garner much scholarly attention. This article makes it more widely accessible to an interested audience, thereby contributing to the further …
Flirting With Conversion: Negotiating Researcher Non-Belief With Missionaries, Hillary K. Crane
Flirting With Conversion: Negotiating Researcher Non-Belief With Missionaries, Hillary K. Crane
Faculty Publications
This article discusses Crane’s research in a Taiwanese Buddhist monastery. Crane came to the field as a former Catholic, which provided a particular lens through which to perceive the phenomena she researched. Beyond the difficulties of having one's research interests misinterpreted by the community one is researching and the ambiguities that result from remaining open to conversion when studying religious communities, Crane examines the further difficulty confronted when researching religious personnel who have an interest in representing their religious ideals both to and through the researcher. The article examines Crane’s time in the Buddhist monastery and explores her personal ambivalence …
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 …
Miracles In Indian Buddhist Narratives And Doctrine, David V. Fiordalis
Miracles In Indian Buddhist Narratives And Doctrine, David V. Fiordalis
Faculty Publications
Despite the fact that scholars have recognized for a long time that Buddhist literature contains numerous marvelous and fantastic events, there have been reservations about the use of the word “miracle” in the context of Buddhism. This article addresses the notion of wonder and wonderment, and specifically miracles, in South and Southeast Asian Buddhist literature and traditions.