Buddhism and Sexuality

Buddhism ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Langenberg
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Sexual Expression ◽  
Buddhist Ethics ◽  
Ancient India ◽  
Root Cause ◽  
Early Buddhism ◽  
High Regard ◽  
New Research ◽  
Tantra Yoga ◽  
Historical Detail

Because of its high regard for celibate monasticism and incisive critique of desire as a root cause of suffering, Buddhism is widely assumed to be a sex-negative religion. In fact, as a growing body of scholarship has demonstrated, the sexual landscape of Buddhist traditions across time and place is varied, complex, and at times transgressive. The beginnings of Buddhism and sexuality as a research subfield can arguably be traced to the 1998 publication of Bernard Faure’s The Red Thread, a work that attempts to identity major themes and lines of tension in Buddhists’ imaginative encounters with, efforts to discipline, and philosophical understandings of human sexuality. Faure’s monograph was, however, preceded by L. P. N. Perera study of sexuality in ancient Buddhist India (Sexuality in Ancient India); see Perera 1993, cited under Seminal Monographs), Miranda Shaw’s monograph on women and Tantra (Passionate Enlightenment); see Shaw 1994, cited under Sexuality in Indo-Tibetan Tantra), and Liz Wilson’s book on disgust and the female body in early Buddhism (Charming Cadavers); see Wilson 1996, cited under Seminal Monographs). Since Faure, specialists in various Asian traditions have focused on sexuality with ever increasing levels of historical detail and theoretical sophistication. Examples include Sarah Jacoby’s work, Love and Liberation (Jacoby 2014, cited under Seminal Monographs), Richard Jaffe’s monograph, Neither Monk nor Layman (Jaffe 2001, cited under Non-celibate Monasticisms), John Power’s 2009 book A Bull of a Man (Powers 2009, cited under Seminal Monographs), and José Ignacio Cabezón’s Sexuality and Classical South Asian Buddhism (Cabezón 2017, cited under Seminal Monographs). In the meantime, scholars of tantra, yoga, and consort traditions such as Holly Gayley, David Gray, Janet Gyatso, and Christian Wedemeyer have moved past the orientalist judgements of early Indology and the phenomenology of Mircea Eliade in their treatments of Tantric sexuality; advances in Vinaya studies by Shayne Clarke, Alice Collett, Anālayo, and others have deepened understanding of early monastic negotiations with Indian sexual concepts and social mores; and queer and LGBT studies by Richard Corless and Hsiao-lan Hu have generated new research angles. The subfield of Buddhist ethics has also produced a small literature on Buddhist sexual ethics to complement its already substantial work on related topics like human rights and abortion. Additionally, specialists in Buddhist modernisms such as Ann Gleig and Stephanie Kaza have enriched the literature on Buddhism and sexuality by addressing issues such as sexual expression, sexual identity, and sexual abuse in contemporary Buddhist communities in the West.

scholarly journals Mobile Worlds: Choice at the Intersection of Demographic and Environmental Change

2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 245-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon Barnett ◽  
W. Neil Adger
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Size Composition ◽  
Capabilities Approach ◽  
Environmental Risks ◽  
Limits To Growth ◽  
Sustainable Solutions ◽  
Root Cause ◽  
Integrate Analysis ◽  
Individual Decisions ◽  
New Research

Research on environmental change has often focused on changes in population as a significant driver of unsustainability and environmental degradation. Demographic pessimism and limited engagement with demographic realities underpin many arguments concerning limits to growth, environmental refugees, and environment-related conflicts. Re-engagement between demographic and environmental sciences has led to greater understanding of the interactions between the size, composition, and distribution of populations and exposure to environmental risks and contributions to environmental burdens. We review the results of this renewed and far more nuanced research frontier, focusing in particular on the way demographic trends affect exposure, sensitivity, and adaptation to environmental change. New research has explained how migration systems interact with environmental challenges in individual decisions and in globally aggregate flows. Here we integrate analysis on demographic and environmental risks that often share a root cause in limited social freedoms and opportunities. We argue for a capabilities approach to promoting sustainable solutions for a more mobile world.

scholarly journals Foreword

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-6
Author(s):  
Andrej BEKEŠ
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Chinese Language ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Research Perspective ◽  
Politeness Strategies ◽  
Transfer Strategies ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
New Research ◽  
Asian Languages

With this volume, Acta Linguistica Asiatica is entering its 3rd year. After the second half of last year, focusing on research in “Lexicography of Japanese as a Second/Foreign Language” we begin this year with selection of papers covering various perspectives and languages, from South Asian Languages, via Indian subcontinent and China all the way to Japan.The first paper, by Pritha CHANDRA and Anindita SAHOO, entitled Passives in South Asian Languages, discusses continuum of passive constructions, spreading over three language families , Indo-Aryan (Oriya), Dravidian (Malayalam) and Austro-Asiatic (Kharia), and forming a kind of sprachbund, based on a generalized notion of passive. This approach also shows that Tibeto-Burman languages such as Meitei and Ao also can be said to have passives.The second paper, by Kalyanamalini SAHOO, entitled Politeness Strategies in Odia, discusses the conceptual basis for politnesess strategies in Odia (spelled also Oriya as in the first paper), pointing out inadequacy of Brown and Levinson’s model of politness, and proposing a new, “community of practice” based model of politeness for Odia.The next two papers deal with neologisms in Chinese language. LIN Ming-chang in his paper A New Perspective on the Creation of Neologisms focuses on the language user’s psychological requirements for devising neologisms, and therefore proposes a new research perspective towards the reasons for devising neologisms. Mateja PETROVČIČ in her paper The Fifth Milestone in the Development of Chinese Language investigates the structure and features of neologisms in the last century. The author suggests that the widening gap between rich and poor should be considered as the fifth milestone for changes in Chinese language.In the fifth paper, We Have It too: A Strategy Which Helps to Grasp the Japanese Writing System for Students from Outside of the Chinese Character Cultural Zone, the author, Andrej BEKEŠ, argues for employment of analogy transfer strategies to help beginner learners of Japanese to overcome cognitive and affecctive blocade when facing the complexities of Japanese writing system.

Plato and yoga

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Bussanich
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
The Self ◽  
Early Buddhism ◽  
Inner Self ◽  
States Of Knowledge ◽  
Transcendent Wisdom

Plato, classical Vedanta, Yoga and early Buddhism all promote - on the basis of homologies between cosmos and inner self - cognitive and affective practices that remove external accretions to the self and the delusion and suffering they bring, thereby seeking to achieve transcendent wisdom and liberation from the cycle of births and deaths. There is evidence in the Platonic dialogues for analogies to South Asian meditative praxis. This raises the question of whether the highest states of knowledge in Plato are conceptual, or whether there is anything in Plato corresponding to the interdependence, in South Asian yoga, of intellectual insight and non-cognitive 'cessative' meditations.

scholarly journals Corporate Bodies in Early South Asian Buddhism: Some Relics and Their Sponsors According to Epigraphy

Religions ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew D. Milligan
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Historical Records ◽  
Widespread Distribution ◽  
The People ◽  
Early Buddhism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
The Buddha ◽  
Corporeal Body ◽  
Over Time

Some of the earliest South Asian Buddhist historical records pertain to the enshrinement of relics, some of which were linked to the Buddha and others associated with prominent monastic teachers and their pupils. Who were the people primarily responsible for these enshrinements? How did the social status of these people represent Buddhism as a burgeoning institution? This paper utilizes early Prakrit inscriptions from India and Sri Lanka to reconsider who was interested in enshrining these relics and what, if any, connection they made have had with each other. Traditional accounts of reliquary enshrinement suggest that king Aśoka began the enterprise of setting up the Buddha’s corporeal body for worship but his own inscriptions cast doubt as to the importance he may have placed in the construction of stūpa-s and the widespread distribution of relics. Instead, as evidenced in epigraphy, inclusive corporations of individuals may have instigated, or, at the very least, became the torchbearers for, reliquary enshrinement as a salvific enterprise. Such corporations comprised of monastics as well as non-monastics and seemed to increasingly become more managerial over time. Eventually, culminating at places like Sanchi, the enshrinement of the corporeal remains of regionally famous monks partially supplanted the corporeal remains of the Buddha. Those interested in funding this new endeavor were corporations of relatives, monastic brethren, and others who were likely friends and immediate acquaintances. In the end, the social and corporate collectivity of early Buddhism may have outshined some textual monastic ideals of social isolation as it pertained to the planning, carrying out, and physical enshrinement of corporeal remains for worship, thus evoking an inclusive sentiment with the monastic institution rather than disassociation.

scholarly journals The Elephant's Footprint: An Ancient Indian Logic Diagram

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 56-61
Author(s):  
Dominik Wujastyk
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Indian Logic ◽  
Ancient India ◽  
Venn Diagrams ◽  
South Asian Literature ◽  
Logic Diagram ◽  
Ethical Concept ◽  
History Of ◽  
Seminal Article

A seminal article by Margaret Baron, published in 1969, explored the history of set diagrams (Venn diagrams). However, Baron did not look beyond the evidence of European sources. This article presents evidence of a literary simile from ancient India that exemplifies the idea of a larger circle including within it many smaller circles, each circle standing for an ethical concept. The simile – an elephant's footprint enclosing the footprints of smaller animals – first appears in the Buddhist Canon, and it was used occasionally in South Asian literature through the following millennia until the eighteenth century. I argue that the Elephant's Foot simile can be added to Baron’s catalogue of historical cases where ancient authors were using language that implied a simple concept of logical sets.

Buddhist Ethics

1969 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Bastow
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Buddhist Ethics ◽  
Early Buddhism ◽  
Canonical Texts ◽  
The Way

The canonical texts of Early Buddhism describe and explain a way to achieve a goal. What the goal is is not immediately clear; many different descriptions are given of it, and these descriptions can be variously interpreted. It is to some extent easier to find out what is the way to achieve the goal; the texts contain frequently repeated lists of stages on this Way. The best way of starting a consideration of the nature of the goal and its moral status is to examine the most important of these lists.

scholarly journals An exploration of bioactive peptides: My collaboration with Ervin G. Erdös

2018 ◽  
Vol 293 (21) ◽  
pp. 7907-7915 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rajko Igić
Keyword(s):  
Bioactive Peptides ◽  
Research Direction ◽  
The United States ◽  
Biologically Active ◽  
Active Peptides ◽  
Biologically Active Peptides ◽  
High Regard ◽  
Personal Qualities ◽  
New Research ◽  
Historical Sketch

This paper provides a brief historical sketch of the science of biologically active peptides. It also offers the story of how Ervin G. Erdös, a pioneer in the study of metabolism of various peptides, influenced me through collaborations that span many years. I worked in Dr. Erdös's research laboratories in Oklahoma City, Dallas, and Chicago, and we shared research interests through visits across the Atlantic between the former Yugoslavia and the United States. Among other findings, we discovered angiotensin-converting enzyme in the retina, which opened up a new research direction for many scientists interested in serious ocular diseases. This tribute to my mentor paints a portrait of a man who, in addition to his dedication to science and his seminal discoveries about the metabolism of peptides, took the time to invest in training many young scientists. His fine personal qualities explain why all of those who worked with him hold him in such high regard.

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