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Fabio Rambelli - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Buddhism and Shinto
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion, 2018Co-Authors: Fabio RambelliAbstract:Buddhism in Japan has long coexisted with native cults and beliefs, commonly known as Shinto. According to received understanding, Shinto (literally, in modern Japanese interpretation, “the way of the [Japanese] gods”) is the autochthonous religious tradition of Japan, whose origins date back to the beginning of the Japanese civilization. Its main features are an animistic belief in the sanctity of nature, shamanic practices, ancestor cults, respect for authority and communal value, and a strong capacity to integrate and homogenize foreign elements. This received understanding sees the history of Japanese Buddhism as a gradual process of “Japanization,” that is, of integration within Shinto beliefs and attitudes. This understanding, however, still broadly circulating in Japan and abroad in textbooks and popular media, has been questioned radically by scholarship in the past few decades. In fact, until approximately 150 years ago, Shinto (and local cults in general) was deeply connected to Japanese Buddhism: Buddhist authors were the first to write doctrines and tales about the Japanese local gods or Kami, and most shrines dedicated to the Kami used to belong to Buddhist temples or were in fact Buddhist temples themselves dedicated to the kami. Kami were normally understood as avatars (Japanese, gongen) of buddhas, bodhisattvas, and other Buddhist divinities; some very popular kami even today, include Hachiman, who was evoked or discovered (if not created) by Buddhist monks, and Daikokuten and Benzaiten, two Buddhist deities from India (their Sanskrit names are, respectively, Mahākāla, the male counterpart of the goddess Kālī, and Sarasvatī, a water goddess). This situation of symbiosis, in which the Buddhist component was always at the top of the religious institutions’ hierarchy, also generated a number of conflicts that erupted in 1868, when the government decided to “separate” Shinto from Buddhism (shinbutsu bunri), an operation that resulted in the destruction of thousands of Buddhist temples and countless texts, images, and other artifacts, and, ultimately, in the creation of two separate religions. Any historical study of Shinto must therefore attempt to reconstruct this premodern situation of symbiosis and conflict.
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a buddhist theory of semiotics signs ontology and salvation in japanese esoteric Buddhism
2013Co-Authors: Fabio RambelliAbstract:Preface: Semiotics and Buddhism 1. The Episteme of Japanese Esoteric Buddhism 2. Semiotics and Ontology: A Pansemiotic Universe 3. Mantra and Siddham: Esoteric Linguistics and Grammatology 4. The Semantic System of Esoteric Buddhism 5. Mandala and the Representation of Reality 6. Semiotic Soteriology 7. Conclusion: Buddhist Semiurgy Bibliography Index
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71. Shintō and Esoteric Buddhism
Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in East Asia, 2011Co-Authors: Fabio RambelliAbstract:A central aspect of Buddhism and a key factor in its successful diffusion is its facility to interact with preexisting religious traditions. In general, Buddhism attempts to create a specific cultural space for itself by interacting with native cults in several ways. This resulted not only in the development of forms of religious but also and especially of specific and original intellectual systems and ritual procedures that would characterize Buddhism and differentiate it from other traditions. Compared with other forms of Buddhism, tantric Buddhism tended to give local deities a more active and important role, elevating several of them to the highest ranks in its pantheon. The tantric discourses about the kami are generally known as Ryōbu Shintō or Shingon Shintō. The systematic and sustained attempts to integrate "local deities" into the Buddhist system produced an independent, and gradually non-Buddhist, discourse on local cults that became increasingly nativistic in character. Keywords: kami ; local deities; Ryōbu Shintō; Shingon Shintō; tantric Buddhism
Zhang Shu-jun - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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On Buddhism and Zen Buddhism of Zheng Banqiao
Journal of Yueyang Vocational and Technical College, 2011Co-Authors: Zhang Shu-junAbstract:Mr.Zheng Banqiao is not only superb in painting and calligraphy,rich in academic thinking,and the rim of his Buddhism and Zen Buddhist thought has also been paid attention to widespread.He was pleased to visit Buddhist temple,made friends with Buddhists,but he did not join into Buddhism,he propagated Buddhism.In particular,he advocated Taoist thought,but he also wanted to do something for people as a hero.Of course,in Zheng Banqiao's thought,Confucianism and Zen Buddhism are still dominant
Tim Graf - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Introduction: Zen and Popular Culture
Journal of Global Buddhism, 2015Co-Authors: Inken Prohl, Tim GrafAbstract:The contributors to this special issue participated in a workshop on Zen and popular and material culture convened at Heidelberg University in 2012. We aimed to understand the global potentials of contemporary Zen Buddhism, as well as the challenges Buddhist institutions are facing in the course of Zen's shifting role in the religious marketplace. This transformation of "Zen" is rooted in Buddhist reform efforts and movements in late nineteenth-century Meiji Japan, when government officials frequently and increasingly criticized Buddhism as a product of decline and degeneration. Anti-Buddhist riots in Japan resulted in the destruction of Buddhist temples, statues, and ritual objects in a movement that is known as haibutsu kishaku ("abolish Buddhism and destroy Shakyamuni") (Ketelaar, 1990). The persistent academic discourse on early modern (Edo Period) Buddhist decadence that developed in the context of Meiji Japan (1868-1912) was directly connected to responses to this movement, which extended well into the 1870s, as well as to inter- and intra-sectarian Buddhist criticism in Japan (Klautau, 2008). Both Asian and Western reformers sought to develop a new Buddhism that was compatible with Western concepts of modernity, rationality, and the natural sciences (Sharf, 1993; McMahan, 2008).1Literature on Zen Buddhism by D. T. Suzuki and other authors found recognition in the West during the first half of the twentieth century, but it was only after the 1950s that Zen Buddhist practice found a wider audience outside Japan (Fields, 1992; Offermanns, 2002). Transformations of Zen Buddhism occurred in the process of its translation and transfer to the West. "Zen" came to be known as an epitome of religious experience (Sharf, 1998) with a particular emphasis on meditation (Sharf, 1995; Borup, 2004; McMahan, 2008). Shunryu Suzuki's role in popularizing Zen Buddhist practices in the United States can be compared with Taisen Deshimaru's efforts in Europe. Both were pioneers of "Zen" in the West and served as teachers or initiators of numerous Zen Buddhist groups, networks, and institutions. This global spread of Zen Buddhism (see Rocha, 2006 for Zen in Brazil) emerged along with the spread of ritual sitting ( zazen; see Faure, 1991), understood as meditation, which became the best-known Zen practice in the modern world. Across the globe, sitting in silence continues to fascinate individuals in their search for enlightenment and a spiritual self, a temporary release from stress, and the desire for well-being and healing. It is within this context that Zen Buddhist practice spread beyond Buddhist institutions and groups into therapeutic, wellness, and healthcare programs.This special issue seeks to contribute to recent research on contemporary Buddhism and the ways in which "Zen" was shaped to negotiate modern concepts of religion, spirituality, and individual identity. However, questions remain as to how this transformation of Buddhism has altered forms of social and cultural organization in the West and in Japan. Further empirical proof is needed, notably when it comes to answering if the re-import and re-invention of modern and transculturally shaped concepts of "Zen" have a lasting impact on practitioners and their self -understanding in Japan today. "Global Zen" is not representative of Buddhism as practiced at the great majority of Zen Buddhist temples in Japan, which are primarily concerned with rituals and death (Covell, 2005; Rowe, 2011; Nelson, 2013). Modern and transculturally shaped concepts of "Zen," however, continue to float and be transformed within and beyond institutionalized religion in Japan, as shown by the case studies presented in this volume. Zen appears in global brands, in commercials, in books and lifestyle magazines, some of which promote Zen as a way of transforming and optimizing the self, while others depict Zen as an everyday down-to-earth practice beyond zazen, and notably as a marker for cultural and sectarian identity. …
Vladimir Tikhonov - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Buddhism and Violence: Militarism and Buddhism in Modern Asia
2012Co-Authors: Vladimir Tikhonov, Torkel BrekkeAbstract:Introduction: Dialectics of Violence and Non-Violence: Buddhism and Other Religions Vladimir Tikhonov Part I: Nationalism and Militarism in Modern Asian Buddhisms 1. Sinhala Ethno-nationalisms and Militarization in Sri Lanka Mahinda Deegalle 2. Military Temples and Saffron-Robed Soldiers: Securing Buddhism in Southern Thailand Marte Nilsen 3. Reconsidering the Historiography of Modern Korean Buddhism: Nationalism and Identity of the Chogye Order of Korean Buddhism Cho Sungtaek Part II: Militarism and the Buddhist Monks 4. The Thai Buddhist Monk as Representation of the Nation and Target of Violence Michael Jerryson 5. Canonical Ambiguity and Differential Practices: Buddhism and Militarism in Contemporary Sri Lanka Iselin Frydenlund 6. The Monks and the Hmong: The Special Relationship between the Chao Fa and the Tham Krabok Buddhist Temple in Saraburi Province, Thailand Ian Baird 7. A Closer Look at Zen at War: The Battlefield Chaplaincy of Shaku Soen in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) Micah Auerback Part III: Buddhist Justifications for Peace and Militarism 8. The Justification of Violence in Thai Buddhism Suwanna Satha-Anand 9. Buddhism and the Justification of War with Focus on Chinese Buddhist History Xue Yu 10. Anti-War and Peace Movements among Japanese Buddhists after the Second World War Kawase Takaya translated by Micah L. Auerback 11. Violent Buddhism - Korean Buddhists and the Pacific War, 1937-1945 Vladimir Tikhonov Conclusion Torkel Brekke Notes on Contributors Notes Index
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Introduction Han Yongun: From Social-Darwinism To Socialism With A Buddhist Face
Selected Writings of Han Yongun, 2008Co-Authors: Vladimir Tikhonov, Owen MillerAbstract:This introductory chapter of the book titled Selected Writings of Han Yongun: From Social Darwinism to 'Socialism with a Buddhist Face' presents the first part of Han Yongun's life story as a perfect illustration of both the deepening crisis in social and political life during the last decades of Korea's Chosŏn Dynasty (1392-1910), and the deep ambiguities and uncertainties of the chaotic period of Korea's transition to modernity. Buddhism was both the religion of the liberal, egalitarian, modern present, and more than that the utopian 'great unity' of the future. The heightened popularity of socialism in 1920s Korea influenced the Buddhist community too. However, the socio-economic ethos of early Buddhism provided ample evidence for claims about the socialist nature of Buddha's teaching. On the Reformation of Korean Buddhism was mainly based on a Social Darwinism-tinged reading of contemporary capitalism as a society driven by the competition for profit. Keywords: buddhist face; Han Yongun; reformation of Korean Buddhism ; Social Darwinism; socialism
Mark Siderits - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Buddhism as philosophy an introduction
2017Co-Authors: Mark SideritsAbstract:Contents: Preface Buddhism as philosophy? Early Buddhism: basic teachings Non-self: empty persons Buddhist ethics A Nyaya interlude Abhidharma: the metaphysics of empty persons The rise of Mahayana Yogacara: impressions-only and the denial of physical objects Madhyamaka: the doctrine of emptiness The school of Dinnaga: Buddhist epistemology. Index.
