Buddhist Studies Commons^™

Attitudes Toward Death: How Buddhist Teachings Help A Person Cope With Death Anxiety And Accept Death, Abigail Michaud

Mindfulness Studies Theses

Death attitudes are an evolving field of study that continues to expand due to its universal relevance. Clinical and psychological research emphasize how these personal attitudes greatly impact a person’s life and death and are rooted in one’s unique perspective of death and the dying process. This paper provides an in-depth examination of two death attitudes: death acceptance and death anxiety. The two attitudes are complex and shift throughout a person’s lifetime depending on many personal factors, including culture, religion, and age. The paper reveals that death acceptance positively effects a person’s life and promotes greater quality of life, while …

Buddhist Error Theory, Javier S. Hidalgo

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Few philosophers have systematically examined what Buddhist commitments imply for metaethics. In this paper, I explore the status of normative reasons in Buddhist philosophy. I argue that Buddhist commitments entail an error theory about normative reasons. But I also make the case that this is a defensible position. I show that the Buddhist argument for error theory is plausible and that Buddhist error theory can overcome key objections, such as the objections that Buddhist error theory is incoherent, self-defeating, unbelievable, and incompatible with prominent schools of Buddhist philosophy. Furthermore, I argue that Buddhist error theorists can accommodate Buddhist ethical commitments …

The Conclusion In Which Nothingness Is Concluded, Marissa Rimes

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Samuel Johnson’s The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia is ironically most often classified as an “oriental philosophic tale,” but is rarely analyzed from the point of view of oriental philosophy. Although Buddhism’s ambiguities, inwardness, and nothingness, provoke anxiety in Western critique, Johnson’s The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia does something unique from eighteenth-century British thought in that it disavows this Buddaphobia by actively employing a similar line of thought. Through the lens of a Buddhist framework many of the text’s renownedly gloomy implications, in regard to its circular structure and inconclusiveness, are freed from the great sludge of …

Tathāgatagarbha And Ātman: Self Where There Is No-Self, Aaron Alexander Laughlin

IdeaFest: Interdisciplinary Journal of Creative Works and Research from Cal Poly Humboldt

No abstract provided.

Chang (Beer): A Social Marker, Ritual Tool, And Multivalent Symbol In Tibetan Buddhism, Kayla J. Jenkins

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

In this thesis, I analyze the use of beer (Tib. chang) in Tibetan tantric Buddhism and emphasize its importance for studying themes of purity and pollution, meaning, and power in this context. In doing so, I argue that beer functions as a social marker and influences gender dynamics in Tibet. Beer also functions as a religious ritual tool for transactions of power. Lastly, beer is present as a multivalent symbol in Tibetan tantric songs and stories, useful as both a negative and positive metaphor for qualities or states of mind. As something that informs social, religious, and literary worlds within …

Representation Of Caṇḍālas In The Jātakas, Chandrabhan P. Yadav

Articles

Excerpt:

"Out of 547 Jātaka stories, eight describe the caṇḍālas.1 Out of these eight stories, half contain passing references about this social class, but at least four are stories where the protagonists themselves are caṇḍālas. In those four stories which are centred around this class, three are comparatively longer stories, including the famous Mātaṅga-Jātaka (No. 497). These are probably the most elaborate descriptions of this social group from the early historic period. Since the Mātaṅga-Jātaka is more elaborate and complex than the other stories and needs to be discussed separately, I will only discuss the rest of the seven stories …

Theravāda “Missionary Activity”: Exploring The Secular Features Of Socio-Politics And Ethics, Christopher Scott Brugh

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The purpose of this thesis is to comprehensively explore Theravāda missionary activity. The philological, textual, theoretical, and ethnographic methods used to investigate the historical, sociopolitical, religious, and ethical aspects of early Theravāda, the U.S. Vipassanā (Insight) meditation movement, and modern Burmese Theravāda revealed nuanced meanings in the descriptions of these adherents’ endeavors with respect to proselytizing, converting, and the concept of missionary religions. By exploring the secular features that contributed to their religious appearances, a more developed contextualization of Theravāda “activity” reshapes understandings of the larger concept of missionary religions. I argue that what has been maintained in the establishment …

A State Of Impermanence: Buddhism, Liberalism, And The Problem Of Politics, Cory Michael Sukala

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the relationship of Buddhist political thought and liberal political thought at the level of first principles. I will examine the tension created by the Buddhist view of political life as instrumental and secondary to man's being as a function of the transition of the Buddhist world into the sphere of Western political life, which views the role of politics as primary to man's nature. In Part I, this will be accomplished through a consideration of the origins of political life and the foundation of the political state in each tradition as viewed through the themes of human …

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 …

How Hugging Mom Teaches Me The Meaning Of Love And Perhaps Beyond, Ethan Trinh

The Journal of Faith, Education, and Community

Hugging mom is unconventional in a traditional Vietnamese family. I write this piece to articulate my thoughts to describe different ways to look at the meanings of hugging. During my writing process, I use a walking meditation as a Buddhist practice to calm my mind so that I can see my true self and a clearer picture of different layers of the act of hugging. I believe hegemonic gender roles and patriarchy happen everywhere in the world, not particularly in Vietnam. I do not plan to devalue my home country’s cultural values in this paper. This is not the purpose …

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

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 …

Sin In Tiantai Buddhism And Christianity: A Comparison Between Chih-I And Pope Gregory I, Wangyu Tang

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Buddhism and Christianity are two of the major religions in the world. This paper is going to compare sin in Medieval Tiantai Buddhism with Medieval Catholicism, with examples of Chih-i (Zhiyi) and Gregory’s teaching on sin. This article investigates sin from the aspects of pride, greed and sources of sin, cardinal sins, and practice of contemplation in the two religions. The two religions share common ground in the question of sin, yet there are differences in the source of sins and the definition of cardinal sins. In addition, the teachings of Chih-i and Gregory the Great on the practice of …

Critical Contextualization: Case Studies From Cambodia, Bruce L. Bauer

Journal of Adventist Mission Studies

"Those of us involved in world mission must be at the forefront to encourage local people to develop local expressions of their faith. When I hear people rejoice about the fact that regardless of where they travel in the world the Sabbath school and church service order of worship, the songs sung, and the way of doing church is the same, I do not rejoice, I groan. For that means that the foreign visitor is comfortable, but how about the local people? Are they comfortable with the often foreignness of Adventist worship? We can and must do better to allow …

Reaching Thai Buddhists And Those With A Background In Thai Buddhist Beliefs, Warren A. Shipton, Jared Wright, Tonya Wright, Nilubon Srisai

Journal of Adventist Mission Studies

"One of the greatest challenges for those working across cultures is to understand the unique features of the host culture and the dominant religious beliefs and practices found in the society represented. If this is to be done acceptably, the written and spoken language must be mastered and personal friendships formed with community members. Much damage has been done by Western missionaries arriving with preconceived ideas on evangelism taken from their home country and with an attitude of being holders of superior knowledge in many areas of thought beyond that held by the host culture. Catholic missionary activity has been …

Buddhist Economics: Problems And Possibilities, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

No abstract provided.

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

Review Of Seeing Like The Buddha. Enlightenment Through Film By Francisca Cho, Ronald S. Green

Philosophy and Religious Studies

No abstract provided.

Latina/O Conversion And Miracle-Seeking At A Buddhist Temple, Stephen M. Cherry, Kemal Budak, Aida I. Ramos

Faculty Publications - Department of Sociology

The growing diversification of the US Latino religious’ experiences calls for scholarly attention beyond Protestant or Catholic categories. This study begins to answer this call. Using interview data with 26 Latinos collected over 2 years of observation at the True Lama Meditation Center (TLMC) in Houston, Texas, we describe how Latinos who convert to Buddhism or actively attend the temple while also continuing to attend Christian services (both Catholic and Protestant) see themselves and understand their religious identities and practices. We then explore the reasons for their conversion or changes in religious identities and practices through various theoretical lens. Although …

Countering Untouchability: The Stories Of Mātaṅga, Chandrabhan P. Yadav

Articles

Excerpt:

"In the Jātakas we get description of the Caṇḍālas which is rare as far as traces about this class from the early Indian past is concerned. In around eight stories we get description of the Caṇḍālas.1 Amongst those the Mātaṅ gaJātaka (No.497) is the most important story because of its sheer description which is comparatively more elaborate than the other stories. In this essay I shall not only be examining this particular story to see the everyday lives of the Caṇḍālas in the early historic period, but most importantly, I shall also be exploring those processes through which these …

Sensory Dots, No-Self, And Stream-Entry: The Significance Of Buddhist Contemplative Development For Transpersonal Studies, Charles D. Laughlin

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Based on the author’s nearly 50 years of meditation, it is observed that as a given alternative state is accessed and used over the span of years, experiences and capacities within that state are not merely static but may themselves shift as a practitioner develops neuropsychologically. An ethnographer using a substance within the context of a cultural practice may gain helpful direct insights into that cultural practice, but the researcher may fail to realize that the state attained by a novice may be substantively different from that gained by an elder or shaman with years of experience in the practice. …

The Shingon Ajikan, Meditation On The Syllable ‘A’: An Analysis Of Components And Development, Ronald S. Green

Philosophy and Religious Studies

This paper examines what has been described as the most basic and essential element of Kūkai’s (774-835) religio-philosophical system (Yamasaki 1988:190), meditation on the Sanskrit syllable ‘A’. According to Shingon Buddhist tradition, Kūkai introduced the meditation on the syllable ‘A’ (hereafter referred to as the Ajikan) into Japan in the early 9th century, at the time he transmitted the Shingon Dharma to that country from China. Materials clearly showing the origin and development of the Ajikan before Kūkai’s time have either not been discovered or have not been analyzed in relationship to the Ajikan. Indeed, some researchers have argued that …

The Last 100 Years At Beijing’S Tanzhe Buddhist Temple In Light Of Modern China’S Political And Religious Upheavals, Yuxi Yan

Senior Theses

In the last hundred years China has undergone massive cultural upheavals. In politics, the old imperial system gave way to Nationalism, then to strict Communism, and recently to a more moderated Communism that is trying to find a balance between state-controlled and free-market economies.

The cry, “destroy temples to build schools,” was first heard in 1898 as various forms of traditional Chinese religion were opposed by new agendas of modernization. For the next hundred years China witnessed what many historians believe to be the severest attack on religion in history. Ian Johnson writes: “Even before the Communist takeover in 1949, …

Buddhism And Women-The Dhamma Has No Gender, Chand R. Sirimanne

Journal of International Women's Studies

The increasing influence and relevance of Buddhism in a global society have given rise to a vibrant and evolving movement, particularly in the West, loosely called Socially Engaged Buddhism. Today many look to Buddhism for an answer to one of the most crucial issues of all time—eradicating discrimination against women. There is general agreement that Buddhism does not have a reformist agenda or an explicit feminist theory. This paper explores this issue from a Theravāda Buddhist perspective using the scriptures as well as recent work by Western scholars conceding that there are deep seated patriarchal and even misogynistic elements reflected …

Zen Noir Vis-À-Vis Myers-Briggs Personality Typology: Semiotic Multivalency As Grounds For Dialog, Edward J. Godfrey

Journal of Religion & Film

Marc Rosenbush’s film, Zen Noir (2004) is at first glance a Buddhist film wherein a troubled detective finds himself at a Zen temple with a murder to solve. But upon further investigation, it becomes evident that the film can also be understood in terms of Myers-Briggs personality typology, which is an extension of the personology and depth psychology of C.G. Jung. This suggests a multivalency which allows the imagery of the film to be interpreted in two different ways; as both suggesting Zen enlightenment and Jungian individuation. To assist with this comparison, this paper introduces the Ten Ox-Herding Paintings of …

The Unintended Legacy Of Hellenism: The Development And Dissemination Of The Buddha Image, Chukyi Kyaping

History Honors Papers

This paper traces the development and evolution of the Buddha image from the first century CE in Gandhara to the fifth century CE in Luoyang, China and discusses the circumstances that allowed the image to adapt to different cultural environments. The emergence of the Buddha image marked a significant shift in the perception of the Buddha himself, through which Buddhism had effectively transformed from a philosophy into a religion.

Due to the syncretic nature of the Gandhari region, the Buddha image incorporated elements from multiple cultures, most notably from the Hellenistic artistic tradition. The dissemination of the Buddha image, traced …

Prayers Of Resistance: Kalymyk Women's Covert Buddhist Practice, Karma Lekshe Tsomo Phd

Theology and Religious Studies: Faculty Scholarship

Throughout decades of Soviet repression of religion and into modern times, groups of Buddhist women known as babushki matsik, or ‘‘group of old women precept holders’’ have covertly engaged in Buddhist practices in Kalmykia, following the Tibetan tantric tradition. Located to the northwest of the Caspian Sea, the Kalmyk Republic of the Russian Federation is the only region of Europe with a predominantly Buddhist population. For centuries, the region has been the site of repeated migrations, shifting political and military alliances, and Russian Orthodox conversion efforts. The devastating period of forced relocation and exile in Siberia between 1943 and 1957 …

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 …

Theravada Buddhism, Identity, And Cultural Continuity In Jinghong, Xishuangbanna, James H. Granderson

Student Publications

This ethnographic field study focuses upon the relationship between the urban Jinghong and surrounding rural Dai population of lay people, as well as a few individuals from other ethnic groups, and Theravada Buddhism. Specifically, I observed how Theravada Buddhism and Dai ethnic culture are continued through the monastic system and the lay community that supports that system. I also observed how individuals balance living modern and urban lifestyles while also incorporating Theravada Buddhism into their daily lives. Both of these involved observing the relationship between Theravada monastics in city and rural temples and common people in daily life, as well …

Ancient Magic And Modern Accessories: Developments In The Omamori Phenomenon, Eric Teixeira Mendes

Masters Theses

This thesis offers an examination of modern Japanese amulets, called omamori, distributed by Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines throughout Japan. As amulets, these objects are meant to be carried by a person at all times in which they wish to receive the benefits that an omamori is said to offer. In modern times, in addition to being a religious object, these amulets have become accessories for cell-phones, bags, purses, and automobiles. Said to protect people from accidents, disease, loneliness, failure, computer viruses, among many other things, these objects are one of the few material aspects of religion that are a …