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An idealized view of the lifestyle of a Buddhist monk might be described according to the doctrinal demand for emotional detachment and, ultimately, the cessation of all desire. Yet monks are also enjoined to practice compassion, a powerful emotion and equally lofty ideal, and live with every other human feeling—love, hate, jealousy, ambition—while relating to other monks and the lay community. In this important ethnography of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, Jeffrey Samuels takes an unprecedented look at how emotion determines and influences the commitments that laypeople and monastics make to each other and to the Buddhist religion in general. By focusing on "multimoment" histories, Samuels high...
Winner of the Henry J. Benda Prize sponsored by the Association for Asian Studies Gathering Leaves and Lifting Words examines modern and premodern Buddhist monastic education traditions in Laos and Thailand. Through five centuries of adaptation and reinterpretation of sacred texts and commentaries, Justin McDaniel traces curricular variations in Buddhist oral and written education that reflect a wide array of community goals and values. He depicts Buddhism as a series of overlapping processes, bringing fresh attention to the continuities of Theravada monastic communities that have endured despite regional and linguistic variations. Incorporating both primary and secondary sources from Thaila...
Edited by Vanessa R. Sasson, Little Buddhas brings together a wide range of scholarship and expertise to address the question of what role children have played in Buddhist literature, in particular historical contexts, and their role in specific Buddhist contexts today.
The Buddha left his home and family and enjoined his followers to go forth and "become homeless." With a traditionally celibate clergy, Asian Buddhism is often regarded as a world-renouncing religion inimical to family life. This edited volume counters this view, showing how Asian Buddhists in a wide range of historical and geographical circumstances relate as kin to their biological families and to the religious families they join. Using contemporary and historical case studies as well as textual examples, contributors explore how Asian Buddhists invoke family ties in the intentional communities they create and use them to establish religious authority and guard religious privilege. The language of family and lineage emerges as central to a variety of South and East Asian Buddhist contexts. With an interdisciplinary, Pan-Asian approach, Family in Buddhism challenges received wisdom in religious studies and offers new ways to think about family and society.
Written by one of the world's leading authorities on image-based methods this is the first book to investigate, in depth, the use of photographs and photo images in research. Using real world case studies and over 40 images it explains the conceptual and methodological approaches needed to study photographs and images.
How do you deal with your fears? Or do you? Are you one of the multitudes of persons whose fears do the dealing? Have you ever taken the trouble to get to know the most common and yet, perhaps, the least understood animal emotion? Take a little trip through these pages. You may find that fear isn't quite the enemy imagined. You may find that it's actually a valuable companion that requires proper exercise... not exorcism. Kurt Vonnegut wrote, "We are what we pretend to be". Could it really be that simple? If we pretend to be unafraid, could our fears just melt away? As one of the leading writers of the Victorian era, Mary Ann Evans (more widely known as George Eliot), is often credited with once having said, "It is never too late to be who you might have been." What will you pretend to be?Paperback available from LULU.com.
Visual Research Methods: Image, Society, and Representation addresses the growing question in social research of how to critically incorporate visual data and visual methodologies in ways that expand and enhance the researcher′s repertoire for understanding and teaching about the social world. Editor Gregory C. Stanczak crisscrosses disciplines in ways that highlight the multiple manifestations of this newer interdisciplinary trend. Beyond methodological interests, the rich diversity of subject matter provides this volume′s pedagogical punch. Key Features Provides a valuable framework for classroom use and comparative analysis: Organized around three themes in visual research—methodolo...
Though traditionally regarded as a peaceful religion, Buddhism has a dark side. On multiple occasions over the past fifteen centuries, Buddhist leaders have sanctioned violence, and even war. The eight essays in this book focus on a variety of Buddhist traditions, from antiquity to the present, and show that Buddhist organizations have used religious images and rhetoric to support military conquest throughout history. Buddhist soldiers in sixth century China were given the illustrious status of Bodhisattva after killing their adversaries. In seventeenth century Tibet, the Fifth Dalai Lama endorsed a Mongol ruler's killing of his rivals. And in modern-day Thailand, Buddhist soldiers carry out their duties undercover, as fully ordained monks armed with guns. Buddhist Warfare demonstrates that the discourse on religion and violence, usually applied to Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, can no longer exclude Buddhist traditions. The book examines Buddhist military action in Tibet, China, Korea, Japan, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, and shows that even the most unlikely and allegedly pacifist religious traditions are susceptible to the violent tendencies of man.