Buddhist Encounters with Diversity

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald K. Swearer
Keyword(s):  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Singular Terms ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Buddhist Tradition ◽  
Japanese Buddhism

All singular terms for designating a religious tradition (e.g. Buddhism, Christianity) belie their multiplex diversity. Historically evolved, culturally embodied religious traditions are by their very nature dynamic, complex, and multilayered. Buddhism is no exception. The tripartite division that developed to encompass the historical breadth of the Buddhist tradition—Hinayana (Theravada), Mahayana, Tantrayana (Vajrayana)—merely suggests a diversity that includes perhaps hundreds if not thousands of different sects, subsects, and movements. Even broad historical-cultural distinctions such as Thai Buddhism or Japanese Buddhism fail to encompass differences in belief and practice interwoven into the textures of global Buddhisms. This chapter addresses the question of Buddhist encounters with diversity in terms of the tripartite division familiar to all Buddhist traditions, namely, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. While this model is shared by the varied forms of Buddhism, the ways in which it is embodied and expressed have been quite diverse.

Religion, Hybrid Forms, and Cultural Chauvinism in Japan

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-187
Author(s):  
Ugo Dessì
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Active Role ◽  
External Source ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Native Culture ◽  
Buddhist Tradition ◽  
Japanese Buddhism ◽  
Hybrid Forms ◽  
Cultural Chauvinism

Abstract This article analyzes a few selected case studies from different religious traditions in contemporary Japan to illustrate, first, the active role played by religion in Japan in the creation of hybrid forms and, secondly, the potentiality in two instances to promote cultural chauvinism. The topics explored here are Japanese Buddhism and the issue of human rights, Shintō’s self-representation as a ‘religion of the forest,’ and Kōfuku no Kagaku’s adoption of Theosophical themes. The discourse of human rights found in traditions such as Jōdo Shinshū, Jōdoshū, and Sōtōshū shows how this western idea is made to resonate with religious concepts from the Buddhist tradition, thus making possible a reshaping of local religious identities. While in this case the catalyst in the process is provided by an external source, the recent reshaping of Shintō as a ‘religion of the forest’ may be characterized as a glocalization leaning to ‘native’ sources, in which the ‘native’ religious tradition is subject to a creative reading following the worldwide growing awareness of ecology. Here a tendency to emphasize the superiority of the ‘native’ culture may also be noticed. However, as the case of Kōfuku no Kagaku’s adoption of various Theosophical themes illustrates, also glocalization leaning to external sources may be accompanied by forms of cultural chauvinism.

scholarly journals The Impact of Religious Atmosphere on Corporate Governance: An Empirical Study Based on the Number of Temples around Listed Companies

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. p11
Author(s):  
Kaikai Liu ◽  
Xinyi Wang ◽  
Jingjing Liang
Keyword(s):  
Corporate Governance ◽  
Empirical Study ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Listed Companies ◽  
Economic Behavior ◽  
Risk Averse ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Impact

Religious belief can affect individual’s behavior. It usually induces managers to be more risk averse, thereby mitigating the agency problem and positively influencing governance. This paper conducts an empirical study to analysis the effect of religious atmosphere on corporate governance. It could be figured out that strong religious atmosphere plays an active role in corporate governance. The stronger the influence of religious tradition on listed companies, the less likely the managers are to violate the rules. Through precepts and deeds, these religious traditions are passed on from generation to generation and have become a significant factor affecting human economic behavior.

Nones

2019 ◽  
pp. 140-162
Author(s):  
Tim Clydesdale ◽  
Kathleen Garces-Foley
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
National Study ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Popular Press ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Growing Population

Relying on in-depth interviews and the National Study of American Twentysomethings, this chapter describes the heterogeneous young adults who are religious unaffiliated. Known in the popular press as the Nones, most of these young adults were raised in a Christian religious tradition, which they now reject, but that does not mean they have no interest in religion. Some are anti-religious and many are disinterested, but others hold traditional beliefs in a personal God and in an afterlife while rejecting religious institutions. Still others create an eclectic spirituality that draws from many religious traditions. The chapter provides estimated proportions of Nones who are philosophical secularists, indifferent secularists, spiritual eclectics, and unaffiliated believers. This chapter examines the role of context in the fluid religious, spiritual, and secular identities of twentysomething Nones and reports on the values, behaviors, and confidence in social institutions of this growing population.

Buddhist philosophy, Japanese

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John C. Maraldo
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Buddhist Philosophy ◽  
Japanese Culture ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Cultural Complex ◽  
Buddhist Tradition ◽  
Japanese Buddhism ◽  
Confucian Philosophy ◽  
To Come

Buddhism transformed Japanese culture and in turn was transformed in Japan. Mahāyāna Buddhist thought entered Japan from the East Asian continent as part of a cultural complex that included written language, political institutions, formal iconography and Confucian literature. From its introduction in the sixth century through to the sixteenth century, Japanese Buddhism developed largely by incorporating Chinese Buddhism, accommodating indigenous beliefs and reconciling intersectarian disputes. During the isolationist Tokugawa Period (1600–1868), neo-Confucian philosophy and Dutch science challenged the virtual hegemony of Buddhist ways of thinking, but served more often as alternative and sometimes complementary models than as incompatible paradigms. Only since the reopening of Japan in 1868 has Japanese Buddhist thought seriously attempted to come to terms with early Indian Buddhism, Western thought and Christianity. Through the centuries, Buddhism gave the Japanese people a way to make sense of life and death, to explain the world and to seek liberation from suffering. When it engaged in theorizing, it did so in pursuit of religious fulfilment rather than of knowledge for its own sake. As an extension of its practical bent, Japanese Buddhist thought often tended to collapse differences between Buddhism and other forms of Japanese religiosity, between this phenomenal world and any absolute realm, and between the means and end of enlightenment. These tendencies are not Japanese in origin, but they extended further in Japan than in other Buddhist countries and partially define the character of Japanese Buddhist philosophy. In fact, the identity of ‘Japanese Buddhist philosophy’ blends with almost everything with which we would contrast it. As a development and modification of Chinese traditions, there is no one thing that is uniquely Japanese about it; as a Buddhist tradition, it is characteristically syncretistic, often assimilating Shintō and Confucian philosophy in both its doctrines and practices. Rituals, social practices, political institutions and artistic or literary expressions are as essential as philosophical ideas to Japanese Buddhism. Disputes about ideas often arose but were seldom settled by force of logical argument. One reason for this is that language was used not predominately in the service of logic but for the direct expression and actualization of reality. Disputants appealed to the authority of Buddhist sūtras because these scriptures were thought to manifest a direct understanding of reality. Further, as reality was thought to be all-inclusive, the better position in the dispute would be that which was more comprehensive rather than that which was more consistent but exclusive. Politics and practical consequences did play a role in the settling of disputes, but the ideal of harmony or conformity often prevailed. The development of Japanese Buddhist philosophy can thus be seen as the unfolding of major themes rather than a series of philosophical positions in dispute. These themes include the role of language in expressing truth; the non-dual nature of absolute and relative, universal and particular; the actualization of liberation in this world, life or body; the equality of beings; and the transcendent non-duality of good and evil.

Two Concepts of God

1966 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-240
Author(s):  
John Lachs
Keyword(s):  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Philosophical Theology ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
God Concepts ◽  
Scientific Curiosity ◽  
Concepts Of God ◽  
Theology Proper

Philosophers have long debated the question of the existence of God. This is one of many philosophical issues in which the motivation for inquiry has come more perhaps from the side of human feeling than from disinterested scientific curiosity. Powerful emotions appear to prompt thinkers to devote effort to the attempt to prove or disprove the existence of God. The urgency of this task has made some of these philosophers pay less than adequate heed to the concepts they employ. It appears to have escaped the attention of many of them that the word “God” does not have a single meaning either in religious language generally or in philosophical theology. It is obvious that one of the important ways in which religious traditions differ is in their conceptions of the Deity. But a considerable number of different God-concepts may be distinguished in the Judeo-Christian religious tradition itself, and not even in Christian theology proper is the word “God” free of ambiguity.

Buddhism and Shinto

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabio Rambelli
Keyword(s):  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Japanese Buddhism ◽  
Gradual Process ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
Beliefs And Attitudes ◽  
Strong Capacity

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.

Hinduism to Hindus in the Western Diaspora

2005 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 274-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arti Dhand
Keyword(s):  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
Religious Traditions

AbstractThis article reflects on some of the methodological issues pertaining to situations in which both instructor and students belong to the same religious tradition as that about which the course is taught. It is framed within questions of scholarly objectivity and privilege to represent religious traditions. In a political atmosphere in which it has become increasingly suspect for "Outsiders" to teach traditions that they do not personally confess, this article engages the reverse scenario: what pedagogical challenges confront the professor who is an "Insider" to the tradition she teaches?

scholarly journals Dynamics and Stability in the Encounters between Asian Buddhists and European Christians

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 1-43
Author(s):  
Stephen C. Berkwitz
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Buddhist Tradition ◽  
The Face ◽  
Patterns Of Interaction

The aim of this paper is to theorize broadly about how cultural encounters between Asian Buddhists and European Christians spurred various efforts to demarcate, systematize, and stabilize religious traditions. It focuses on the dynamics seen in Buddhist responses to contact situations from the sixteenth century onwards in Sri Lanka, Cambodia, and Japan in order to map out some patterns of interaction among these communities. Theories of cultural imitation and independence do not suffice to theorize interreligious encounters in these cases. Using select examples, this paper will contend that Asian Buddhists often responded to various kinds of European interventions by redefining and reimagining the Buddhist tradition in new ways in order to argue for its continued validity and to secure its stability in the face of external encounters and pressures.

scholarly journals Widzenie pustki a doświadczenie mistyczne – przypadek madhjamaki

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-96
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Jakubczak
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Mystical Experience ◽  
Mediterranean Area ◽  
Buddhist Studies ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Buddhist Tradition ◽  
The Mediterranean

Seeing of emptiness and mystical experience — the case of Madhyamaka: The problem of Buddhist religiosity is one of the most classic problems of Buddhist studies. A particular version of this issue is the search for mystical experience in Buddhism. This is due to the conviction that mystical experience is the essence of religious experience itself. The discovery of such an alleged experience fuels comparative speculations between Buddhism and the philosophical and religious traditions of the Mediterranean area. Madhyamaka is the Buddhist tradition which many researchers saw as the fulfillment of such mystical aspirations in Buddhism. In this paper I specify the standard parameters of mystical experience (non‑conceptuality, ineffability, paradoxicality, silence, oneness, fullness) and I conclude that they either cannot be applied to Madhyamaka or that the application is only illusory.

scholarly journals RELASI MITOS, DAN AGAMA SEBAGAI MEDIA PENINGKATAN EKONOMI PRODUKTIF DALAM TRADISI “TEBOKAN” DI DESA KALIPUTU KOTA KUDUS

INFERENSI ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 451
Author(s):  
Saifuddin Saifuddin
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Local Society ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Religious Behaviors ◽  
Clifford Geertz ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

“Tebokan” was the history of jenang production processes that was visualizedon cultural carnival. It was one of the place where the relationship of religious traditions and the myth of local society became a new spirit to increase the economy of the community. This research was based on interpretative perspective to religious behaviors such as done by Clifford Geertz. Therefore this research used qualitative method. This study found the cultural illustrations where the relationship of myth, religious tradition, and the social structure was able to activate spirit of productivity in the Kaliputu Society as a central of jenang Production in Kudus. Both of these systems of meaning were able to present three important spirits, those areinnovative, identity affirmation, and work ethic. 

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document