Buddhist Studies Commons^™

Burma’S Mass Lay Meditation Movement : Buddhism And The Cultural Construction Of Power, Ingrit Jordt

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

Burma’s Mass Lay Meditation Movement: Buddhism and the Cultural Construction of Power describes a transformation in Buddhist practice in contemporary Burma. This revitalization movement has had real consequences for how the oppressive military junta, in power since the early 1960s, governs the country.
Drawing on more than ten years of extensive fieldwork in Burma, Ingrid Jordt explains how vipassanā meditation has brought about a change of worldview for millions of individuals, enabling them to think and act independently of the totalitarian regime. She addresses human rights as well as the relationship between politics and religion in a country in which …

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 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 …

Contesting Buddhisms On Conflicted Land: Sarvodaya Shramadana And Buddhist Peacemaking, Masumi Hayashi-Smith

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Buddhism in its various incarnations has both aided and hindered the peace processes in Sri Lanka. Sarvodaya Shramadana, a Buddhist development organization, stands out in the way it uses religion to promote peace through a more humanist interpretation of Buddhist teachings. While Sarvodaya's alternative approach toward the religion provides an optimistic space for promoting peace, its connections to and dependence on populism can also complicate its politics. This article argues that the most effective means of peace work can be found through the same channel of collective mobilization that hindered it, Buddhism.

Bhutan, Megan Adamson Sijapati

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Bhutan (formally the Kingdom of Bhutan) is a small, landlocked Buddhist constitutional monarchy in the eastern Himalayas, located between China's Tibetan autonomous region and India. Its terrain is largely mountainous, and its economy is based on agriculture and forestry. Bhutan's official national language is Dzongkha, and its multiethnic population, reported in the 2005 govrnment census to be approximately 681,000, is 75% Buddhist and 25% Hindu.

Nepal, Megan Adamson Sijapati

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Nepal is a democratic republic located along the southern region of the Himalayan range, bordering India to the south, west, and east and the Tibetan autonomous region of China to the north. Though a small country in geographic terms (approximately 54,362 square miles [1 mile = 1.6093 kilometers]), its population of approximately 29.5 million people is a complex and heterogeneous mix of both Indo-European and Tibeto-Burman ethnic groups and castes, each with distinct languages and religious and cultural traditions. [excerpt]

A Dharma School Lesson, Alice Murata

Counselor Education Emeritus Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Gender Equity And Human Rights, Karma Lekshe Tsomo Phd

Theology and Religious Studies: Faculty Scholarship

The religious traditions that help shape society’s attitudes toward women and also women’s attitudes toward themselves often send mixed messages. The world’s major religions—Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam—assert that women and men have equal potential, whether for liberation or in the sight of a higher being, but social realities reveal a stark contradiction between rhetoric and reality. Women continue to lack equal representation in social, political, and religious institutions. For many, the failure of the world’s religions to live up to their professed ideals not only exposes their lack of social responsiveness to the needs of human society but …

Buddhist Thoughts On The Battle For God: Is Fundamentalism A Good Reason To Ditch Religion?, Philip Novak

Collected Faculty Scholarship

"Not long ago I taught a seminar on science and religion that required three fo the most widely read gospels of the so-called new atheism: Richard Dawkin's The God Delusion, Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell, and Sam Harris's The End of Faith. As I read along, I found the Buddhist in myself in large agreement. after all, Gotama himself had been highly skeptical of the God-idea, involving as it often did an onmipotence he could not square with either the world's suffering or his belief in human freedom." ~ from the article

Buddhist Roles In Peacemaking : How Buddhism Can Contribute To Sustainable Peace, Ronald S. Green, Chanju Mun

Philosophy and Religious Studies

This volume is the fifth in a series about socially engaged Buddhism published by Blue Pine Books. The publisher adheres to high academic standards, requiring strict documentation of sources and coherence of ideas. Readers will find in these articles some of the best resources available for understanding socially engaged Buddhism and peacemaking. We live in a world of conflict. Even though theorists had believed scientific and technological advancement would end suffering, the applications of these developments had just as often perpetuated the problem. In contrast, Buddhism is widely thought of as a way of peace and tranquilly for individual practitioners. …

Buddhism, Apophasis, Truth, Mario D'Amato

Faculty Publications

In this paper I will offer some reflections on one instance of apophasis in a specific Mahāyāna Buddhist doctrinal treatise, known as the Madhyāntavibhāga (“Distinguishing the Middle from the Extremes,” ca. fourth century CE). I will attempt to formally distinguish such apophatic doctrines from doctrines of ineffability, and consider what apophatic doctrines might contribute to the impasse regarding “truth” which characterizes certain approaches to the comparative philosophy of religion. Since this paper is intended as a contribution to the comparative philosophy of religion, I will begin with a few remarks on the nature of that enterprise.

Buddhist Exploration Of Peace And Justice, Ronald S. Green, Chanju Mun

Philosophy and Religious Studies

Contains five speeches and twenty-three articles presented in the Fifth International Seminar on Buddhism and Leadership for Peace on the theme "Exploration of Ways to Put Buddhist Thought into Social Practice for Peace and Justice." The seminar was held under the joint auspice of Dae Won Sa Buddhist Temple of Hawaii and the Korean Buddhist Research Institute of Dongguk University, 1991.

Can All Beings Potentially Attain Awakening? Gotra-Theory In The Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra, Mario D'Amato

Faculty Publications

Given that for the MSA/Bh gotra is indicative of a sentient being’s soteriological potentiality, an important issue is whether gotra is able to be acquired by every sentient being or whether there are some beings who are excluded from ever acquiring a gotra; and furthermore if some beings are excluded, in what sense they are excluded . It will be necessary to understand these issues in order to address the question of whether, from the perspective of the MSA/Bh, all sentient beings can potentially attain awakening. And so I will begin by discussing the meanings of the term gotra in …

The Semiotics Of Signlessness: A Buddhist Doctrine Of Signs, Mario D'Amato

Faculty Publications

In this paper, I consider a Buddhist response to the issue of unlimited semiosis: In other words, I offer a Buddhist account of how unlimited semiosis should be understood. I do this by following the doctrine of signs offered in an Indian Buddhist text of the Mahamyamna from circa the fourth century CE, a text known as the Mahamyamnasutra m mlamD kamra (Ornament to the Scriptures of the Great Vehicle; hereafter, ‘the Ornament’). Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Buddhist semiotics, from both a historical and a philosophical point of view, is that in its theorizing of the semiotic process, …

Buddhist Commons In Asia, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Although nothing precisely like the modern nonprofit organization, voluntary association or foundation existed in Asia prior to the 20th century, there can be little doubt that some types of similar indigenous activities are found deep in the history of the many cultures of Asia. Buddhism, for example, has a long record of organized activity, beliefs about giving, and other evidences of what might be termed Buddhist philanthropy.

Buddhist Meditation And The Great Chain Of Being: Some Misgivings, Philip Novak

Collected Faculty Scholarship

"In his Buddhist Meditation, Edward Conze puts it plainly: 'Meditational practices constitute the very core of the Buddhist approach to life.'¹ To presume that the wisdom gained from mental culture is equally available to intellectual analysis, even of the highly refined and subtle, sort, is to presume that a job requiring a laser can be done equally will with a blowtorch. The Buddha's deepest insights are available to the intellect, and powerfully so, but it is only when those insights are discovered and absorbed, by a psyche made especially keen and receptive by long coursing in meditative …

Empty Willing: Contemplative Being-In-The-World In St. John Of The Cross And Dogen, Philip Novak

Collected Faculty Scholarship

"If persons on different sides of the glove were independently to discover that bodies fall at the rate of sixteen feet per second squared, this would be taken as evidence that they had learned something about nature -- about the world and how it works. We see something like this at work in the sadhanas (spiritual paths) of St. John and Dogen. Though the Christian saint and the Zen master are leaves on quite different trees, similarities between then [sic], qua contemplatives, exist at a level profound enough to encourage the exploration of common ground. Ultimately this common ground invites …

Dogen And Bankei And A Study Of The Soto Zen, Kazumitsu W. Kato

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

The reason I am writing this dissertation is to introduce another side of Zen, Soto, which is completely unknown in the Western world; and at the same time to bring Dogen's teaching to the attention of Western scholars, since it is famous in Japan as the most profound branch of the philosophy of Zen. Unfortunately, none of Dogen' s teaching has yet been translated into English except Masunaga's private publication given above. Therefore I am taking this opportunity to translate and to add a commentary of my own for the better understanding of Dogen as well as the historical survey …

Conceptions Of Formative Processes In Western Science And Eastern Philosophy, Glenn E. Kaufmann

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

The central theme of this paper concerns the way Eastern and Western (sometimes termed Oriental and Occidental) thought view the formation of the world; the means of arriving at these conclusions and the concepts or pre-conceived ideas upon which they are based. Western thought has been limited to views that have developed out of modern science, post-1500; they are mechanistic science, evolution, Whitehead's philosophy pertaining to God and modern physics. For the purpose of this paper, the emphasis in Eastern thought is placed on Mahayana Buddhism, especially the Madhyamika school of philosophy. In India it developed in contact with many …

A Relationship Between Eastern Thought And Western Psychotherapy : An Application Of Taoism And Zen To Client-Centered Therapy, Lloyd Saxton

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

This paper does not purport to be an examination of Zen or Taoism, but rather a view of certain aspects of Zen and Taoism, but rather a view of certain aspects of Zen and Taoism from the vantage point of contemporary psychology, to see if a metaphysic, a philosophical resting-place, might not be found for the admittedly pragmatic science of clinical psychology.

The questions the paper asks, then, and attempts to answer, are (1) can such a formulation be made, and (2) does psychotherapy conducted from this point of view move satisfactorily.

A Comparative Study Of The Prasada Complex And The Grace Of God, Jay R. Mccullough

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

A word or word group lifted from its context incurs the grave danger of a misunderstanding ranging from the greatest excess of analytical dismemberment to an overgenerous and all-inclusive synthesis which tends to rob it of any specific identity or meaning. Considered not only from within the body of textual material which may frame a particular word, but from the ground of these physical, mental and cultural needs which give it birth as well as the motivating force or forces which seem to endanger it, it may be possible to develop a better understanding of its varying harmonic nuances of …