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History of Religions of Eastern Origins Commons™
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- Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion (14)
- East Asian Languages and Societies (12)
- Philosophy (9)
- Ethics and Political Philosophy (8)
- Ethics in Religion (6)
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- Japanese Studies (6)
- Asian History (5)
- History (5)
- Buddhist Studies (4)
- History of Religion (4)
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- Buddhism (4)
- Marxism (4)
- Buddhist ethics (2)
- Critical Buddhism (2)
- Radical Buddhism (2)
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- Radical politics (2)
- Religion (2)
- Religion and politics (2)
- Revolution (2)
- Seno'o Girō (2)
- Socialism (2)
- "Darakuron" (1)
- "Nihon bunka shikan" (1)
- "social Buddhism" (1)
- Agrarianism (1)
- Aidagara (1)
- Anarchism (1)
- Belief (1)
- Betweenness (1)
- Buddhism and politics (1)
- Buddhist materialism (1)
- Buddhist modernism (1)
- Buddhist reform (1)
- Burai-ha (1)
- China (1)
- Cordoba (1)
- Cultural integration (1)
- Decadence (1)
- Emptiness (1)
- Engaged Buddhism (1)
Articles 1 - 16 of 16
Full-Text Articles in History of Religions of Eastern Origins
Patterns Of Integration: A Network Perspective On Popular Religious Connections In China’S Lower Yangzi, 1150–1350, Song Chen
Faculty Journal Articles
The spread of cults from their original homelands in the Song dynasty (960–1279) created crisscrossing ties between local communities and fostered social and cultural integration in Chinese society that transcended class and geographic boundaries. Scholars have produced numerous case studies on these translocal cults and their implications, but the pattern of connections across space created by these cults is yet to be explored. Using the data collected from local gazetteers that have survived from the Southern Song and Yuan dynasties, this article takes a bird’s‑eye view of the spatial distribution of popular cults in China’s Lower Yangzi region between 1150 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Introduction To Against Harmony: Radical Buddhism In Thought And Practice, James Mark Shields
Introduction To Against Harmony: Radical Buddhism In Thought And Practice, James Mark Shields
Faculty Journal Articles
No abstract provided.
Zen And The Art Of Treason: Radical Buddhism In Meiji Era (1868–1912) Japan, James Mark Shields
Zen And The Art Of Treason: Radical Buddhism In Meiji Era (1868–1912) Japan, James Mark Shields
Faculty Journal Articles
In the early decades of the twentieth century, as Japanese society became engulfed in war and increasing nationalism, the majority of Buddhist leaders and institutions capitulated to the status quo. At the same time, there was a stream of ‘resistance’ among a few Buddhist figures, both priests and laity. These instances of progressive and ‘radical Buddhism’ had roots in late Edo-period peasant revolts, the lingering discourse of early Meiji period liberalism, trends within Buddhist reform and modernisation and the emergence in the first decade of the twentieth century of radical political thought, including various forms of socialism and anarchism. This …
Liberation As Revolutionary Praxis: Rethinking Buddhism Materialism, James Mark Shields
Liberation As Revolutionary Praxis: Rethinking Buddhism Materialism, James Mark Shields
Faculty Journal Articles
While it is only in recent decades that scholars have begun to reconsider and problematize Buddhist conceptions of “freedom” 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 the mid to late nineteenth century, a new paradigm for thinking about freedom in relation to history, identity and social change found its way to Asia, and confronted traditional religious interpretations of freedom as well as competing Western ones. In the past century, several attempts …
Radical Buddhism, Then And Now: Prospects Of A Paradox, James Mark Shields
Radical Buddhism, Then And Now: Prospects Of A Paradox, James Mark Shields
Faculty Journal Articles
No abstract provided.
A Blueprint For Buddhist Revolution: The Radical Buddhism Of Seno’O Girō (1889–1961) And The Youth League For Revitalizing Buddhism, James Mark Shields
A Blueprint For Buddhist Revolution: The Radical Buddhism Of Seno’O Girō (1889–1961) And The Youth League For Revitalizing Buddhism, James Mark Shields
Faculty Journal Articles
In the early decades of the twentieth century, as Japanese society became engulfed in war and increasing nationalism, the majority of Buddhist leaders and institutions capitulated to the status quo. One notable exception to this trend, however, was the Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei (Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism), founded on 5 April 1931. Led by Nichiren Buddhist layman Seno’o Girō and made up of young social activists who were critical of capitalism, internationalist in outlook, and committed to a pan-sectarian and humanist form of Buddhism that would work for social justice and world peace, the league’s motto was “carry the …
Smashing The Mirror Of Yamato: Sakaguchi Ango, Decadence & A Postmetaphysical Buddhist Critique Of Culture, James Mark Shields
Smashing The Mirror Of Yamato: Sakaguchi Ango, Decadence & A Postmetaphysical Buddhist Critique Of Culture, James Mark Shields
Faculty Journal Articles
This article focuses on several key philosophical themes in the criticism of Sakaguchi Ango (1906–1955), one of postwar Japan’s most influential and controversial writers. Associated with the underground Kasutori culture as well as the Burai-ha of Tamura Taijirō (1911–1983), Oda Sakunosuke (1913–1947) and Dazai Osamu (1909–1948), Ango gained fame for two provocative essays on the theme of daraku or “decadence”—Darakuron and Zoku darakuron—pubished in 1946, in the wake of Japan’s traumatic defeat and the beginnings of the Allied Occupation. Less well-known is the fact that Ango spent his student years studying classical Buddhist texts in Sanskrit, Pali and …
The Pursuit Of Tangible Happiness: Religion And Politics In A Japanese New, New Religion, James Mark Shields
The Pursuit Of Tangible Happiness: Religion And Politics In A Japanese New, New Religion, James Mark Shields
Faculty Journal Articles
The decline of traditional religions in Japan in the past century, and especially since the end of World War Two, has led to an explosion of so-called “new religions” (shin shūkyō 新宗教), many of which have made forays into the political realm. The best known—and most controversial—example of a “political” new religion is Sōka Gakkai 創価学会, a lay Buddhist movement originally associated with the Nichiren sect that in the 1960s gave birth to a new political party, Komeitō 公明党 (lit., Clean Government Party), which in the past several decades has emerged as the third most popular party in Japan (as …
Beyond Belief: Japanese Approaches To The Meaning Of Religion, James Mark Shields
Beyond Belief: Japanese Approaches To The Meaning Of Religion, James Mark Shields
Faculty Journal Articles
For several centuries, Japanese scholars have argued that their nation’s culture—including its language, religion and ways of thinking—is somehow unique. The darker side of this rhetoric, sometimes known by the English term “Japanism” (nihon-jinron), played no small role in the nationalist fervor of the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While much of the so-called “ideology of Japanese uniqueness” can be dismissed, in terms of the Japanese approach to “religion,” there may be something to it. This paper highlights some distinctive—if not entirely unique—features of the way religion has been categorized and understood in Japanese tradition, contrasting these with Western (i.e., …
The Art Of Aidagara: Ethics, Aesthetics, And The Quest For An Ontology Of Social Existence In Watsuji Tetsurō’S Rinrigaku, James Mark Shields
The Art Of Aidagara: Ethics, Aesthetics, And The Quest For An Ontology Of Social Existence In Watsuji Tetsurō’S Rinrigaku, James Mark Shields
Faculty Journal Articles
This paper provides an analysis of the key term aidagara (“betweenness”) in the philosophical ethics of Watsuji Tetsurō (1889-1960), in response to and in light of the recent movement in Japanese Buddhist studies known as “Critical Buddhism.” The Critical Buddhist call for a turn away from “topical” or intuitionist thinking and towards (properly Buddhist) “critical” thinking, while problematic in its bipolarity, raises the important issue of the place of “reason” versus “intuition” in Japanese Buddhist ethics. In this paper, a comparison of Watsuji’s “ontological quest” with that of Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), Watsuji’s primary Western source and foil, is followed by …
Parameters Of Reform And Unification In Modern Japanese Buddhist Thought: Murakami Senshō And Critical Buddhism, James Mark Shields
Parameters Of Reform And Unification In Modern Japanese Buddhist Thought: Murakami Senshō And Critical Buddhism, James Mark Shields
Faculty Journal Articles
Reform is a word that, one might easily say, characterizes more than any other the history and development of Buddhism. Yet, it must also be said that reform movements in East Asian Buddhism have often taken on another goal—harmony or unification; that is, a desire not only to reconstruct a more worthy form of Buddhism, but to simultaneously bring together all existing forms under a single banner, in theory if not in practice. This paper explores some of the tensions between the desire for reform and the quest for harmony in modern Japanese Buddhism thought, by comparing two developments: the …
Córdoban Discourses: A Drama Of Interreligious Dialogue, James Mark Shields
Córdoban Discourses: A Drama Of Interreligious Dialogue, James Mark Shields
Faculty Journal Articles
SETTING: Cordoba, Spain, 1135 CE, 29th year of the reign of ‘Ali “amir al-muslimin,” second king of the Berber Almoravid dynasty, rulers of Moorish Spain from 1071 to 1147. Cordoba, the capital of Andalus and the center of the Almoravid holdings in Spain, is a bustling cosmopolitan center, a crossroads for Europe and the Middle East, and the meeting-point of three religious traditions. Most significantly, Cordoba at this time is the hub of European intellectual activity. From the square—itself impressively large and surrounded by a massive collonade, the regularity and ordered beauty of which typifies the Moorish taste for symmetry …