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Buddhist Hagiography In Early Japan
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Book Synopsis Buddhist Hagiography in Early Japan by : Jonathan Morris Augustine
Download or read book Buddhist Hagiography in Early Japan written by Jonathan Morris Augustine and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-10-21 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hagiographies or idealized biographies which recount the lives of saints, bodhisattvas and other charismatic figures have been the meeting place for myth and experience. In medieval Europe, the 'lives of saints' were read during liturgical celebrations and the texts themselves were treated as sacred objects. In Japan, it was believed that those who read the biographies of lofty monks would acquire merit. Since hagiographies were written or compiled by 'believers', the line between fantasy and reality was often obscured. This study of the bodhisattva Gyoki - regarded as the monk who started the largest social welfare movement in Japan - illustrates how Japanese Buddhist hagiographers chose to regard a single monk's charitable activities as a miraculous achievement that shaped the course of Japanese history.
Book Synopsis Plotting the Prince by : Kevin Gray Carr
Download or read book Plotting the Prince written by Kevin Gray Carr and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2012-11-30 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plotting the Prince traces the development of conceptual maps of the world created through the telling of stories about Prince Shōtoku (573?–622?), an eminent statesman who is credited with founding Buddhism in Japan. It analyzes his place in the sacred landscape and the material relics of the cult of personality dedicated to him, focusing on the art created from the tenth to fourteenth centuries. The book asks not only who Shōtoku was, but also how images of his life served the needs of devotees in early medieval Japan. Even today Shōtoku evokes images of a half-real, half-mythical figure who embodied the highest political, social, and religious ideals. Taking up his story about four centuries after his death, this study traces the genesis and progression of Shōtoku’s sacred personas in art to illustrate their connection to major religious centers such as Shitenno-ji and Hōryū-ji. It argues that mapping and storytelling are sister acts—both structuring the world in subtle but compelling ways—that combined in visual narratives of Shōtoku’s life to shape conceptions of religious legitimacy, communal history, and sacred geography. Plotting the Prince introduces much new material and presents provocative interpretations that call upon art historians to rethink fundamental conceptions of narrative and cultic imagery. It offers social and political historians a textured look at the creation of communal identities on both local and state levels, scholars of religion a substantially new way of understanding key developments in doctrine and practice, and those studying the past in general a clear instance of visual hagiography taking precedence over the textual tradition.
Book Synopsis Explaining Pictures by : Ikumi Kaminishi
Download or read book Explaining Pictures written by Ikumi Kaminishi and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2006-02-28 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early Japanese Buddhism was patronized by the literate classes and remained a prerogative of the elite until the end of the twelfth century. With the fiscal and political decline of its aristocratic patrons, the Buddhist establishment turned increasingly to lay commoners for financial support, using paintings to accommodate its new, and often subliterate, audiences. One type of preaching, known as etoki (pictorial decipherment), helped bridge the worlds of esoteric Buddhism and lay practice and reveals much about the role of art in the context of didactic storytelling and proselytization. Beginning with the provocative claim that the popularization of Buddhism in the medieval period was a phenomenon of visual culture, Explaining Pictures reexamines the history (and historiography) of medieval Japanese Buddhism. With theoretical sophistication and a full appreciation of the power of imagery to convey and control religious meaning, it investigates a range of aspects of etoki, including the particularly active role of itinerant nuns, whose performances were especially edifying to female audiences, as well as the visual hagiography of the reputed founder of Japanese Buddhism, the pictorial projections of Buddhist paradise and hell, and the explanation, through visual imagery, of sacred mountains. Part One presents the social history of etoki as it appears in a broad variety of written sources from the tenth to fifteenth centuries and investigates how etoki helped establish the cult of Shotôku Taishi. Part Two covers the period between the late twelfth and fourteenth centuries with a focus on Pure Land Buddhist propaganda and its use in etoki practice. Etoki sermons on the Taima Mandala, the visual description of the Pure Land Buddhist canons, show how envisioning the land of bliss substitutes for meditative concentration to gain enlightenment. Ikumi Kaminishi next turns to the itinerant etoki proselytes and similar performing artists between the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries. These individuals preached on the road and through their missionary work reached out to commoners, turning etoki into an effective method of imparting religious beliefs and soliciting alms. In the late medieval period, audiences regarded itinerant preachers much like traveling artists and vendors, which has led modern scholars to conclude that etoki priests desecrated religious rituals. Kaminishi reconsiders this historiographical problem in relation to the social meaning of itinerant performing artists of the period. Finally, the she examines etoki’s effect on the popularization of sacred mountain worship (in particular Kumano and Tateyama)during the seventeen through nineteenth centuries. Chapters focus on the Kumano propaganda image used by nuns, how Christian religious imagery was exploited in seventeenth-century Buddhist propaganda, and the ways in which etoki campaigns made the remote Tateyama a popular pilgrimage site in early modern times. Explaining Pictures is an important groundbreaking work, the first book-length study devoted to the phenomenon of Buddhist art as religious propaganda and pictorial storytelling as a form of popular culture in medieval Japan. A truly interdisciplinary study, it suggests fruitful avenues of discussion between art historians and historians of Japanese Buddhism. Scholars and students with an interest in Japanese Buddhism, art, and social and cultural history will find its examination of significant issues fresh and stimulating. It will also find an appreciative audience among those concerned with the relationship between art and religion, the mechanics of proselytization, and Asian visual culture.
Book Synopsis Crisis in Early Religion by : Mait Kõiv
Download or read book Crisis in Early Religion written by Mait Kõiv and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-12-02 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion is closely linked to social development as it often serves as the ideological fundament of a society and one of the foremost expressions of its culture. The articles in this volume are devoted to the study of religious crisis in Anqituity and deal with these pheonomena in the Ancient Near East, Rome, Greece, China and India.
Book Synopsis Critical Readings on Pure Land Buddhism in Japan by : Galen Amstutz
Download or read book Critical Readings on Pure Land Buddhism in Japan written by Galen Amstutz and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-06-08 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pure Land was one of the main fields of mythopoesis and discourse among the Asian Buddhist traditions, and in Japan of central cultural importance from the Heian period right up to the present. The pieces reproduced in this set have been chosen as linchpin works accentuating the diversity and evolution of Pure Land Buddhism. These selections of previously published articles will serve as an essential starting-point for anyone interested in this perhaps underestimated area of Buddhist studies.
Book Synopsis A Cultural History of Japanese Buddhism by : William E. Deal
Download or read book A Cultural History of Japanese Buddhism written by William E. Deal and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-03-31 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Cultural History of Japanese Buddhism offers a comprehensive, nuanced, and chronological account of the evolution of Buddhist religion in Japan from the sixth century to the present day. Traces each period of Japanese history to reveal the complex and often controversial histories of Japanese Buddhists and their unfolding narratives Examines relevant social, political, and transcultural contexts, and places an emphasis on Japanese Buddhist discourses and material culture Addresses the increasing competition between Buddhist, Shinto, and Neo-Confucian world-views through to the mid-nineteenth century Informed by the most recent research, including the latest Japanese and Western scholarship Illustrates the richness and complexity of Japanese Buddhism as a lived religion, offering readers a glimpse into the development of this complex and often misunderstood tradition
Book Synopsis The Social Dimension of Shin Buddhism by : Ugo Dessì
Download or read book The Social Dimension of Shin Buddhism written by Ugo Dessì and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2010-08-23 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shin Buddhism (Jōdo Shinshū), although weakened in many ways by secularization, continues to be a stable presence in Japanese society, as is emblematically shown by the very symmetrical position of the Nishi (Honganji-ha) and the Higashi Honganji (Ōtani-ha) head temples in the center of Kyōto, and by the recent projects for their renovation. This book addresses the need for more academic research on Shin Buddhism, and is specifically directed at describing and analyzing distinctive social aspects of this religious tradition in historical and contemporary perspective. The contributions collected here cover a wide range of issues, including the intersection between Shin Buddhism and fields as diverse as politics, education, social movements, economy, culture and the media, social ethics, gender, and globalization.
Book Synopsis A Storied Sage by : Micah L. Auerback
Download or read book A Storied Sage written by Micah L. Auerback and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-12-07 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study traces the modern transformation of Japanese Buddhist concepts across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, specifically the notion of the historical Buddhai.e., the prince of ancient Indian descent who abandoned his wealth and power to become an awakened being. Since Buddhism arrived in Japan in the sixth century, the historical figure of the Buddha has repeatedly disappeared from view and returned, always in different forms and to different ends. Micah Auerback offers the first account of the changing fortunes of the Japanese Buddha, following the course of early modern and modern producers and consumers of both high and low culture, who found novel uses for the Buddha s story outside the confines of the Buddhist establishment. Auerback challenges the still-prevalent concept that Buddhism had grown ossified and irrelevant during Japan s early modernity, and complicates the image of Japanese Buddhism as a sui generis tradition within the Asian Buddhist world. Auerback also links the later Buddhist tradition in Japan to its roots on the Continent, and argues for the relevance of attention to narrative and the historical imagination in the study of Buddhist Asia more broadly conceived. And, Auerback engages the question of secularization by examining the after life of the Buddha in the hagiographic literature, demonstrating that the late Japanese Buddha did not, as is widely thought, fade into a ghost of its former self, but rather underwent a complete transformation and reincarnation. The book thus joins the larger discussion of secularization in modernity beyond Buddhism, Japanese religions, and the Asian continent."
Book Synopsis Experimental Buddhism by : John K. Nelson
Download or read book Experimental Buddhism written by John K. Nelson and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2013-10-31 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on ethnographic fieldwork and archival research, it is one of the first studies to give readers a sense of what is happening on the front lines as a growing number of Buddhist priests try to reboot their roles and traditions to gain greater significance in Japanese society. The book profiles innovative as well as controversial responses to the challenges facing Buddhist priests. From traditional activities (conducting memorial rituals; supporting residences for the elderly and infirm; providing relief for victims of natural disasters) to more creative ones (collaborating in suicide prevention efforts; holding symposia and concerts on temple precincts; speaking out against nuclear power following Japan’s 2011 earthquake; opening cafés, storefront temples, and pubs; even staging fashion shows with priests on the runway), more progressive members of Japan’s Buddhist clergy are trying to navigate a path leading towards renewed relevance in society. An additional challenge is to avoid alienating older patrons while trying to attract younger ones vital to the future of their temples. The work’s central theme of “experimental Buddhism”provides a fresh perspective to understand how priests and other individuals employ Buddhist traditions in selective and pragmatic ways. Using these inventive approaches during a time of crisis and transition for Japanese temple Buddhism, priests and practitioners from all denominations seek solutions that not only can revitalize their religious traditions but also influence society and their fellow citizens in positive ways.
Book Synopsis Buddhism and Law by : Rebecca Redwood French
Download or read book Buddhism and Law written by Rebecca Redwood French and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-28 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume challenges the concept of Buddhism as an apolitical religion without implications for law.
Book Synopsis Member States Versus the European Union by : Alan Littler
Download or read book Member States Versus the European Union written by Alan Littler and published by Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. This book was released on 2011-04-11 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National attempts to regulate gambling often run into conflict with the EU’s internal market. This book analyses the approaches taken at the national level against the requirements of EU law in addition to contextualizing a highly polarised debate.
Book Synopsis Genshin’s Ōjōyōshū and the Construction of Pure Land Discourse in Heian Japan by : Robert F. Rhodes
Download or read book Genshin’s Ōjōyōshū and the Construction of Pure Land Discourse in Heian Japan written by Robert F. Rhodes and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2017-06-30 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ōjōyōshū, written by the monk Genshin (942–1017), is one of the most important texts in the history of Japanese religions. It is the first comprehensive guide to the doctrine and practice of Pure Land Buddhism written in Japan and so played a pivotal role in establishing this form of Buddhism in the country. In Genshin’s Ōjōyōshū and the Construction of Pure Land Discourse in Heian Japan, the first book in English on the Ōjōyōshū in more than forty years, Robert F. Rhodes draws on the latest scholarship to shed new light on the text, its author, and the tumultuous age in which it was written. Rhodes begins by providing substantial discussion on the development of Pure Land Buddhism before the Ōjōyōshū’s appearance and a thorough account of Genshin’s life, the full details of which have never before been available in English. Japan in the tenth century was marked by far-reaching political, social, and economic change, all of which had a significant effect on religion, including the emergence of numerous new religious movements in Kyoto. Pure Land was the most popular of these, and the faith embraced by the Tendai scholar Genshin when he became disaffected with the growing factionalism at Enrakuji, Tendai’s central temple. A significant portion of Rhodes’ study is a wide-ranging examination of the Ōjōyōshū’s Pure Land teachings in which he describes and analyzes Genshin’s interpretations of Pure Land cosmology and nenbutsu practice. For Genshin the latter encompassed an extensive range of practices for focusing the mind on Amida Buddha—from the simple recitation of Namu Amidabutsu (“recitative nenbutsu”) to the advanced meditative practice of visualizing the buddha (“meditative nenbutsu”). According to the Ōjōyōshū, all of these are effective means for ensuring birth in Amida’s Pure Land. This impressively researched and updated treatment of the formative text in the Japanese Pure Land tradition will be welcomed by all scholars and students of Japanese religions. It also offers a fascinating window into Heian (794–1185) religious life, which will be of interest to anyone concerned with medieval Japan.
Book Synopsis Contemporary Japanese Architecture by : James Steele
Download or read book Contemporary Japanese Architecture written by James Steele and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-16 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary Japanese Architecture presents a clear and comprehensive overview of the historical and cultural framework that informs the work of all Japanese architects, as an introduction to an in-depth investigation of the challenges now occupying the contemporary designers who will be the leaders of the next generation. It separates out the young generation of Japanese architects from the crowded, distinguished, multi-generational field they seek to join, and investigates the topics that absorb them, and the critical issues they face within the new economic reality of Japan and a shifting global order. Salient points in the text are illustrated by beautiful, descriptive images provided by the architects and from the extensive collection of the author. By combining illustrations with timelines and graphics to explain complex ideas, the book is accessible to any student seeking to understand contemporary Japanese architecture.
Book Synopsis The Wind from Vulture Peak by : Stephen D. Miller
Download or read book The Wind from Vulture Peak written by Stephen D. Miller and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-30 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Seeking Sakyamuni by : Richard M. Jaffe
Download or read book Seeking Sakyamuni written by Richard M. Jaffe and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-05-20 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though fascinated with the land of their tradition’s birth, virtually no Japanese Buddhists visited the Indian subcontinent before the nineteenth century. In the richly illustrated Seeking Śākyamuni, Richard M. Jaffe reveals the experiences of the first Japanese Buddhists who traveled to South Asia in search of Buddhist knowledge beginning in 1873. Analyzing the impact of these voyages on Japanese conceptions of Buddhism, he argues that South Asia developed into a pivotal nexus for the development of twentieth-century Japanese Buddhism. Jaffe shows that Japan’s growing economic ties to the subcontinent following World War I fostered even more Japanese pilgrimage and study at Buddhism’s foundational sites. Tracking the Japanese travelers who returned home, as well as South Asians who visited Japan, Jaffe describes how the resulting flows of knowledge, personal connections, linguistic expertise, and material artifacts of South and Southeast Asian Buddhism instantiated the growing popular consciousness of Buddhism as a pan-Asian tradition—in the heart of Japan.
Book Synopsis Religions of Japan in Practice by : George J. Tanabe Jr.
Download or read book Religions of Japan in Practice written by George J. Tanabe Jr. and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 583 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This anthology reflects a range of Japanese religions in their complex, sometimes conflicting, diversity. In the tradition of the Princeton Readings in Religions series, the collection presents documents (legends and miracle tales, hagiographies, ritual prayers and ceremonies, sermons, reform treatises, doctrinal tracts, historical and ethnographic writings), most of which have been translated for the first time here, that serve to illuminate the mosaic of Japanese religions in practice. George Tanabe provides a lucid introduction to the "patterned confusion" of Japan's religious practices. He has ordered the anthology's forty-five readings under the categories of "Ethical Practices," "Ritual Practices," and "Institutional Practices," moving beyond the traditional classifications of chronology, religious traditions (Shinto, Confucianism, Buddhism, etc.), and sects, and illuminating the actual orientation of people who engage in religious practices. Within the anthology's three broad categories, subdivisions address the topics of social values, clerical and lay precepts, gods, spirits, rituals of realization, faith, court and emperor, sectarian founders, wizards, and heroes, orthopraxis and orthodoxy, and special places. Dating from the eighth through the twentieth centuries, the documents are revealed to be open to various and evolving interpretations, their meanings dependent not only on how they are placed in context but also on how individual researchers read them. Each text is preceded by an introductory explanation of the text's essence, written by its translator. Instructors and students will find these explications useful starting points for their encounters with the varied worlds of practice within which the texts interact with readers and changing contexts. Religions of Japan in Practice is a compendium of relationships between great minds and ordinary people, abstruse theories and mundane acts, natural and supernatural powers, altruism and self-interest, disappointment and hope, quiescence and war. It is an indispensable sourcebook for scholars, students, and general readers seeking engagement with the fertile "ordered disorder" of religious practice in Japan.
Book Synopsis Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Hagiographical Strategies by : Massimo A. Rondolino
Download or read book Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Hagiographical Strategies written by Massimo A. Rondolino and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-01-12 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the potential of conducting studies in comparative hagiology, through parallel literary and historical analyses of spiritual life writings pertaining to distinct religious contexts. In particular, it focuses on a comparative analysis of the early sources on the medieval Christian Saint Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) and the Tibetan Buddhist Milarepa (c. 1052-1135), up to and including the so-called ‘standard versions’ of their life stories written by Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (1221-1274) and Tsangnyön Heruka (1452-1507) respectively. The book thus demonstrates how in the social and religious contexts of both 1200s Italy and 1400s Tibet, narratives of the lives, deeds and teachings of two individuals recognized as spiritual champions were seen as the most effective means to promote spiritual, doctrinal and political agendas. Therefore, as well being highly relevant to those studying hagiographical sources, this book will be of interest to scholars working across the fields of religion and the comparative study of religious phenomena, as well as history and literature in the pre-modern period.
