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This article focuses on women's place/space in Hong Kong with both deliberate attention to women's absence/presence in history and an aspiration to reinstall women's contribution to the place it deserves. Inspired by Derrida's dialectic between presence and absence, the author traces women's 'presence' through their deeds and voices from 'behind' and 'underneath' their historical 'absence.' As explained by Turner's liminality of religion as an 'in-between' space, the woman subject stretches her spatial map beyond the boundary of 'home.' Through their religious devotion, women cross from their 'designated' domestic confinement to the social and the private spheres, to the public sphere. The author draws on four women's cases, each from a religious tradition in Hong Kong--Christianity, Buddhism, Daoism, and Islam--to illustrate the various forms of negotiation they exercised in everyday life to find a subject in multiplicity. The gendered subject is never a monolithic essence but ever becoming. Keywords: Buddhist women, Chinese Muslim women, Daoist women, gender and religion, negotiated subject, Feminism starts with the women's place and asks why women have been comparatively unrecognized in history and society despite their vast contribution. Simone de Beauvoir addressed the question up-front through [...]

The categories of myth and history do not fit easily within Shinran's 'true essence of the Pure Land way.' Mythopoetic narratives in Shin Buddhism are circumscribed within the broader themes of teaching, practice, shinjin, and realization, which comprise that path. Pure Land narratives do not play the type of cosmogonic or etiological role accorded generally to myth. Some religious concerns associated with myth and history are addressed in Shinran's understanding of the dynamics of upaya. The retrieval of mythos in Shin Buddhism may yield a surplus of meaning in the realization of shinjin at the coalescence of myth and history. KEYWORDS: Amida Buddha, Dharmakara, History, Karma, Mahayana, Myth, Shinjin, Shinran, Shin Buddhism, upaya, INTRODUCTION Myth and history represent central categories of thought, faith, and life whether in seamless continuity or polar tension in many religious traditions throughout the world. I will suggest here [...]

In the field of interreligious dialogue, it is sometimes easier to find points of contact between the practical aspects of the major faith traditions, rather than focus on matters of philosophy or theology. This essay explores the possible commonality between monastic/religious life in Christianity and Buddhism as described in the foundation documents of the Franciscan and Theravada traditions. The particular focus will be the virtue (or vice, depending on one's perspective) of obedience. In Christian monastic tradition a common summary of the commitments made by a 'religious,' that is, a monk or nun, brother or sister, is the triple vow of poverty, chastity, and obedience (Latin: paupertas, castitas, and obedientia). These values are strongly represented in all Christian monastic rules. They were explicitly cited in the Rules of Saint Francis of Assisi (1182-1226). The question explored here is whether the practice of obedience as delineated in the Later Rule (the Regula Bullata, 1223) of St. Francis has any parallel in the Buddhist monastic code, known in the Theravada scriptural language of Pali as the Vinaya, and in the Dialogues of the Buddha, known as the Suttas. Areas to be explored include obedience to the teaching of the founders and their monastic rules, the process of reception into the monastic community, and the roles of preceptors, ministers, and spiritual guides. KEYWORDS: Obedience, friendship, vows, rule, vinaya, Theravada, Franciscan, friar, monk, bhikkhu, mendicant, preceptor, minister, INTRODUCTION Since the [Buddhist] monk, in essence, is a homeless, ascetic mendicant, the core of the higher ordination ceremony consists in taking the monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and homelessness. [...]

ABSTRACT Peter Feldmeier points to Vatican II's Nostra Aetate as a key turning point for Catholicism's posture toward the religious other. Here we find that God works in and through [...]

ABSTRACT This essay is a critical exploration of rhe basis of the Lotus Sutra-based interreligious thought of Rev. Niwano Nikkyo (1906-1999), founder of the Japanese Buddhist lay group Rissho Kosei-kai [...]

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8519.2009.01716.x Byline: SORAJ HONGLADAROM (1) Keywords: Buddhism; bioinformatics; genetics; individual; privacy Abstract: ABSTRACT Bioinformatics is a new field of study whose ethical implications involve a combination of bioethics, computer ethics and information ethics. This paper is an attempt to view some of these implications from the perspective of Buddhism. Privacy is a central concern in both computer/information ethics and bioethics, and with information technology being increasingly utilized to process biological and genetic data, the issue has become even more pronounced. Traditionally, privacy presupposes the individual self but as Buddhism does away with the ultimate conception of an individual self, it has to find a way to analyse and justify privacy that does not presuppose such a self. It does this through a pragmatic conception that does not depend on a positing of the substantial self, which is then found to be unnecessary for an effective protection of privacy. As it may be possible one day to link genetic data to individuals, the Buddhist conception perhaps offers a more flexible approach, as what is considered to be integral to an individual person is not fixed in objectivity but depends on convention. Author Affiliation: (1)Center for Ethics of Science and Technology and Department of Philosophy, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand Article note: Soraj Hongladarom, Center for Ethics of Science and Technology and Department of Philosophy, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand. Email: hsoraj@chula.ac.th

The term 'desire' is focused on and explained in terms of Buddhist teachings. The Buddha's teachings state 'Niskamakarmin' as one who acts without desire, unaffected by outcomes and free of joy and grief.

This essay attempts a paradigmatic comparison between the fourfold worldview of Hua-yen Buddhism and the postmodern philosophy of Jean-Francois Lyotard. Employing a tension between centripetal and centrifugal forces as a structural underpinning of these two philosophies, the essay illuminates the liberating nature of Hua-yen Buddhism and postmodern thought together with the shadow of skepticism involved in endorsing a vision for a poly-lingual existence. Despite human beings' desire for a totalitarian vision hidden in every aspect of our discourse, Hua-yen Buddhism and postmodern thought demand us to envision the world of the 'inconceivable' in which the diversity of existence raises its own voice beyond the regulating force of our society., Since the popularity of Derridean deconstruction in the 1970s and 1980s, logocentrism, or centrism to use a generic term, seems to have become a handy tool to criticise a science's [...]

[Recent Vatican documents affirm a unique salvific efficacy for the Catholic Church by establishing its representations of the Absolute as uniquely close to the Absolute. But what is the human problem necessitating salvation? Buddhist traditions have defined that problem as the human tendency to absolutize and cling to representations, in daily life and in religious reflection. The author traces the history of Buddhist perspectives on other religions in light of that central concern, concluding with a suggestion toward a Buddhist theology of religions that avoids relativism without privileging any particular representation of the Absolute.], SINCE THE TIME THAT Gautama the Buddha passed away (ca. fifth century B.C.E.), Buddhism has had no single institutional hierarchy with a leader at the top. (1) Most of the [...]

Buddhism is definitely supportive of pluralism as is proved by the fact that Buddhists are incredibly pluralistic themselves. Early on, in the history of Buddhism, one king had a dream [...]

A demonstration of 'debt to the mother' theme within the Mahaprajapati story is presented, to study the neglected aspect of the Buddhist tradition. In the patriarchal and patrilineal culture, indebtedness towards father has a recognized method of repayment while to ones mother is primitive, free floating in nature, which is well accounted for by Indian familial structure.

Focusing on Santaraksita's Tattvasamgraha and Kamalasila's Tattvasamgrahapanjika (both ca. 750-800), this dissertation examines the structures of reason and persuasion that the authors use to defend their understanding of a Buddha's [...]