Tokyo—An Irish Burmese Monk in Imperial Japan

2020 ◽  
pp. 85-100
Author(s):  
Alicia Turner
Keyword(s):  
Religious Politics ◽  
World Religions ◽  
Buddhist Monk ◽  
Buddhist Practice ◽  
Imperial Japan ◽  
Significant Figures ◽  
Jodo Shinshu

In 1902 the Irish Buddhist monk U Dhammaloka left Burma for Tokyo, hoping to take part in a planned sequel to the Chicago World’s Parliament of Religions of 1893. Although the event did not take place, Dhammaloka was involved in the formation of the International Young Men’s Buddhist Association (IYMBA), based in a Jodo Shinshu university. The chapter explores this event and Dhammaloka’s other activities in Japan, locating them within wider Japanese religious politics. While his anti-Christian polemic was at odds with the ecumenical “world religions” frame of his hosts, and he found himself at odds with or dismissed by various significant figures, he came away from the experience dedicated to an international Buddhist practice, which he would in fact promote more effectively than the IYMBA proved capable of doing.

A Controversial Tour of Ceylon

2020 ◽  
pp. 197-222
Author(s):  
Alicia Turner
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Government Intervention ◽  
Religious Politics ◽  
Buddhist Monk ◽  
Insight Into

In late 1909, the Sinhalese Buddhist activist Anagarika Dharmapala hosted the Irish Buddhist monk U Dhammaloka on a controversial tour of Ceylon (Sri Lanka). This tour is well-documented from many different perspectives: Dharmapala’s private diaries, his newspaper Sinhala Bauddhaya, the hostile colonial and missionary press, and transcriptions of Dhammaloka’s preaching. This chapter shows backstage tension between Dhammaloka and his hosts as they followed a punishing schedule of events drawing large audiences across Ceylon; conflict with Christians who wrote against the tour, attempted to disrupt it, and sought government intervention; and the actions of police and government. Dhammaloka’s abrupt departure from Ceylon appears as the culmination of these conflicts. The chapter offers a detailed insight into the day-to-day workings of contentious religious politics during the Buddhist revival.

Saichō’s Tendai

2016 ◽  
pp. 128-144
Author(s):  
Paul L. Swanson ◽  
Brook Ziporyn
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Perspective ◽  
Buddhist Monk ◽  
Basic Assumptions ◽  
Japanese Buddhism ◽  
Buddhist Practice ◽  
Lotus Sutra ◽  
Living Things ◽  
Mahāyāna Buddhism ◽  
The One ◽  
Lasting Influence

Saichō (767–822) was a Japanese Buddhist monk who transmitted the Chinese Tiantai tradition as well as other aspects of Mahāyāna Buddhism to found the Japanese Tendai school. His endorsement of universal Buddhahood (Buddha-nature) on the basis of the one-vehicle teaching of the Lotus Sutra and the establishment of Mahāyāna precepts based on an altruistic bodhisattva spirit, to replace the detailed precepts of the traditional Vinaya, had a lasting influence on the basic assumptions of Japanese Buddhism. His legacy includes later developments in the radically nondual interpretation of “original enlightenment” to mean that all living things are enlightened just as they are. The second part of this chapter explores some of the crucial ambiguities and implications of this idea in its original Chinese and Japanese Buddhist contexts and in general philosophical perspective as they pertain to perennial issues of Buddhist practice as well as to general ethical and epistemological concerns.

Jōdo Shinshū in the UK

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Louella Matsunaga
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Population ◽  
European Context ◽  
Buddhist Practice ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Jodo Shinshu

Abstract This article outlines the history of Jōdo Shinshū in the UK, and asks why it has remained little known there despite being one of the largest schools of Buddhism in Japan, with sizable overseas branches in the Americas. I argue that this is due, at least in part, to the absence of a settled Japanese migrant population in Europe, in contrast to the Americas, where Jōdo Shinshū has been sustained historically by its ethnic Japanese base, although this has changed somewhat in recent years. Another important factor is the unfamiliarity of “other power” Buddhism in Europe. With its emphasis on reliance on Amida Buddha, rather than more familiar forms of Buddhist practice like seated silent meditation, Jōdo Shinshū challenges popular conceptions of Buddhism outside Asia, and this may affect its appeal in a European context.

Language and Meaning in the Age of Modernism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James McElvenny
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Vienna Circle ◽  
Bertrand Russell ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Personal Connection ◽  
International Language ◽  
Academic Philosophy ◽  
Significant Figures ◽  
Basic English ◽  
And Linguistics

This book is a historical study of influential currents in the philosophy of language and linguistics of the first half of the twentieth century, explored from the perspective of the English scholar C. K. Ogden (1889–1957). Although no ‘Great Man’ in his own right, Ogden had a personal connection, reflected in his work, to several of the most significant figures of the age. The background to the ideas espoused in Ogden’s book The Meaning of Meaning, co-authored with I.A. Richards (1893–1979), is examined in detail, along with the application of these ideas in his international language project Basic English. A richly interlaced network of connections is revealed between early analytic philosophy, semiotics and linguistics, all inevitably shaped by the contemporary cultural and political environment. In particular, significant interaction is shown between Ogden’s ideas, the varying versions of ‘logical atomism’ of Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) and Ludwig Wittgensten (1889–1951), Victoria Lady Welby’s (1837–1912) ‘significs’, and the philosophy and political activism of Otto Neurath (1882–1945) and Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) of the Vienna Circle. Amid these interactions emerges a previously little known mutual exchange between the academic philosophy and linguistics of the period and the practically oriented efforts of the international language movement.

World Christianity, ‘World Religions’ and the Challenge of Insider Movements

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-103
Author(s):  
Christian J. Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Religious Studies ◽  
World Religion ◽  
World Religions ◽  
Historical Series ◽  
Enlightenment Project ◽  
World Christianity ◽  
Other World ◽  
Religious Systems ◽  
The One ◽  
Insider Movements

While studies in World Christianity have frequently referred to Christianity as a ‘world religion’, this article argues that such a category is problematic. Insider movements directly challenge the category, since they are movements of faith in Jesus that fall within another ‘world religion’ altogether – usually Islam or Hinduism. Rather than being an oddity of the mission frontier, insider movements expose ambiguities already present in World Christianity studies concerning the concept of ‘religion’ and how we understand the unity of the World Christian movement. The article first examines distortions that occur when religion is referred to on the one hand as localised practices which can be reoriented and taken up into World Christianity and, on the other hand, as ‘world religion’, where Christianity is sharply discontinuous with other world systems. Second, the article draws from the field of religious studies, where several writers have argued that the scholarly ‘world religion’ category originates from a European Enlightenment project whose modernist assumptions are now questionable. Third, the particular challenge of insider movements is expanded on – their use of non-Christian cultural-religious systems as spaces for Christ worship, and their redrawing of assumed Christian boundaries. Finally, the article sketches out two principles for understanding Christianity's unity in a way that takes into account the religious (1) as a historical series of cultural-religious transmissions and receptions of the Christian message, which emanates from margins like those being crossed by insider movements, and (2) as a religiously syncretic process of change that occurs with Christ as the prime authority.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document