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Articles 1 - 30 of 51
Full-Text Articles in Buddhist Studies
Sangha: Displacement And Memory In Nikkei Dena, Isabella Rae Uriu
Sangha: Displacement And Memory In Nikkei Dena, Isabella Rae Uriu
Honors Theses
Sangha: Displacement and Memory in Nikkei Dena explores how layered displacements have shaped the Nikkei (Japanese-American) community in Altadena and Pasadena (Dena), CA, and how Nikkei resist forces of displacement and ‘unbelonging’ through cultural practice, community care, and memory-work at the Pasadena Buddhist Temple. This thesis argues that these practices of place-making build belonging and sustain the Nikkei community across displacement; particularly, the forced removal and incarceration of people of Japanese ancestry during World War II, freeway displacement during the mid-century, and most recently, the 2025 Eaton Fire, which has displaced tens of thousands of Denans, including a small, but …
A Buddhist Critique Of Harmony, James Mark Shields
A Buddhist Critique Of Harmony, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
No abstract provided.
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 …
From Post-Pantheism To Trans-Materialism: D. T. Suzuki And New Buddhism, James Mark Shields
From Post-Pantheism To Trans-Materialism: D. T. Suzuki And New Buddhism, 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 …
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.
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 …
Review: André Van Der Braak, Reimagining Zen In A Secular Age: Charles Taylor And Zen Buddhism In The West., James Mark Shields
Review: André Van Der Braak, Reimagining Zen In A Secular Age: Charles Taylor And Zen Buddhism In The West., James Mark Shields
Other Faculty Research and Publications
No abstract provided.
Case Study: Religion, Socialism And Secularization In Modern Japan: The New Buddhist Fellowship, James Mark Shields
Case Study: Religion, Socialism And Secularization In Modern Japan: The New Buddhist Fellowship, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
No abstract provided.
“Publishing Goals Of Hanseikai Zasshi” (1887) And “Living The Pure Life” (1887). Translations With Introduction And Commentary, James Mark Shields
“Publishing Goals Of Hanseikai Zasshi” (1887) And “Living The Pure Life” (1887). Translations With Introduction And Commentary, James Mark Shields
Other Faculty Research and Publications
No abstract provided.
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 …
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 …
Creative Nothingness: Dada As Art, Politics And Religion In Interwar Japan, James Mark Shields
Creative Nothingness: Dada As Art, Politics And Religion In Interwar Japan, James Mark Shields
Faculty Journal Articles
The decades immediately following the Meiji Restoration of 1868 saw Japan rapidly develop as a “modern” nation — replete with industrial technology, a powerful and sophisticated military, a burgeoning capitalist economy, a broad based educational system, and, by the early twentieth century, a massive influx of contemporary Western political, philosophical, literary and artistic ideals, including socialism, anarchism, and nearly all variations of avant-garde art and aesthetics. By the end of the Meiji period, however, with the crackdown on leftist activities in the wake of the High Treason Incident (1910–1911) and the slow but steady accretion of Japanese imperialist ideology through …
Foreword To Brian Victoria, Zen Terror: Portrait Of An Assassin, James Mark Shields
Foreword To Brian Victoria, Zen Terror: Portrait Of An Assassin, James Mark Shields
Other Faculty Research and Publications
No abstract provided.
Zen Terror In Prewar Japan: Portrait Of An Assassin, Brian Victoria, James Mark Shields
Zen Terror In Prewar Japan: Portrait Of An Assassin, Brian Victoria, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
No abstract provided.
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.
Osvobození Jako Revoluční Praxe: Opĕtovné Promyšlení Buddhistického Materialism, James Mark Shields
Osvobození Jako Revoluční Praxe: Opĕtovné Promyšlení Buddhistického Materialism, James Mark Shields
Faculty Journal Articles
In this article, first published in English in the Journal of Buddhist Ethics 20 (2013), pp. 461–99, James Mark Shields analyzes the possibilities and problems of a “Buddhist materialism” constructed along Marxian lines, by focusing in particular on Buddhist and Marxist conceptions of “liberation.” Although it is only in recent decades that scholars have begun to reconsider and problematize Buddhist conceptions of “free- dom” and “agency,” the thought traditions of Asian Buddhism have for many centuries struggled with questions related to the issue of “liberation”—along with its fundamental ontological, epistemological and ethical implications. With the development of Marxist thought in …
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.
Essay: “My Life In Buddhist Studies", James Mark Shields
Essay: “My Life In Buddhist Studies", James Mark Shields
Other Faculty Research and Publications
No abstract provided.
After The Fall: Tsuji Zennosuke And The Creation Of Bukkyōshugi Kokushi, James Mark Shields
After The Fall: Tsuji Zennosuke And The Creation Of Bukkyōshugi Kokushi, James Mark Shields
Faculty Journal Articles
Tsuji Zennosuke 辻善之助 (1877–1955), the dominant figure in Buddhist historical scholarship in Japan from the 1930s until the mid-1950s, is known to have employed a broad range of sources in order to provide a comprehensive analysis of his subject. This essay examines Tsuji’s conception of Buddhist history in relation to the emer- gence of both National Historical Studies (kokushigaku 国史学) and so-called State Shintō (kokka shintō 国家神道) and argues against the image of Tsuji as an “objec- tive historian” resistant to nationalist trends in historical scholarship. In fact, Tsuji was involved in the creation of an alternative, “Buddhistic” national history, …
Buddhist Economics: Problems And Possibilities, James Mark Shields
Buddhist Economics: Problems And Possibilities, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
No abstract provided.
Future Perfect: Tolstoy And The Structures Of Agrarian Buddhist Utopianism In Taishō Japan, James Mark Shields
Future Perfect: Tolstoy And The Structures Of Agrarian Buddhist Utopianism In Taishō Japan, James Mark Shields
Faculty Journal Articles
This study focuses on the role played by the work of Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) in shaping socialism and agrarian-Buddhist utopianism in Japan. As Japanese translations of Tolstoy’s fiction and philosophy, and accounts of his life became more available at the end of the 19th century, his ideas on the individual, religion, society, and politics had a tremendous impact on the generation coming of age in the 1900s and his popularity grew among young intellectuals. One important legacy of Tolstoy in Japan is his particular concern with the peasantry and agricultural reform. Among those inspired by Tolstoy and the narodniki lifestyle, …
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 …
Commentary On Against Harmony, James Mark Shields
Commentary On Against Harmony, James Mark Shields
Other Faculty Research and Publications
No abstract provided.
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 …
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 (The Conversion Of Captain American: Buddhism And Postwar Us Popular Culture), James Mark Shields
Buddhism (The Conversion Of Captain American: Buddhism And Postwar Us Popular Culture), James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
No abstract provided.