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This study will propose that Thich Nhat Hanh's (TNH) teaching possesses a powerful capability to propose a viable wisdom path/spirituality to people in today's secularized world, particularly, those who self-identify as SBNR (Spiritual but not Religious), 'Dones' (given up on religion), or 'Nones' (no religious affiliation). This capability stems principally from TNH's stated commitment to renew and refresh Buddhism by making it simple and practical in daily life while disavowing inordinate attachment to any doctrine, ideology, or teaching, an attitude that TNH considered idolatrous. TNH's way seems to be compatible with the widespread contemporary Western disillusionment with institutional religion that is ironically accompanied by a renewed quest for a meaningful spirituality. KEYWORDS: Thich Nhat Hanh, spirituality, secular, spiritual but not religious, religion of life, Don Cupitt, Roger Walsh, transconventional religion, religion as practice, INTRODUCTION: THICH NHAT HANH 'S WAY AS A VIABLE SPIRITUAL PATH FOR A SECULAR AGE The main point of this paper, simply put, is the following: Thich Nhat Hanh's (henceforward, [...]

What can Buddhism offer contemporary religious understandings of King Lear? Shakespeare's great wisdom play has been viewed, more often than not, as pessimistic, even nihilistic, in its tragic rendering of the human condition. A Buddhist perspective challenges the premises of such a bleak reading by offering profound insight into how suffering gives rise to compassion, empathy and wisdom, rather than despair. Focusing particularly on the enigmatic spirituality and moral function of Edgar, this article illuminates his character through the revered teachings of a classic Indian text of Mahayana Buddhism, Shantideva's Way of the Bodhisattva. Edgar appears in the heroic light of a bodhisattva, an enlightened being who seeks to alleviate the suffering of others. His journey exemplifies the human potential for moral transformation, selflessness and universal love in his responsiveness to the suffering of others who wander in a samsaric world of ignorance, attachment and aversion. Keywords: bodhisattva, Buddhism, compassion, Edgar, emptiness, King Lear, nothing, Shakespeare, Shantideva, Gloucester: Now, good sir, what are you? Edgar: A most poor man, made tame to fortune's blows, Who by the art of known and feeling sorrows Am pregnant to good [...]

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. [...]

This article responds to recent calls to consider how religion is defined and deployed in and about Myanmar. Discussing local Pentecostal efforts to evangelise to Buddhists in contemporary Yangon, it presents the encounter with the religious other as one ground from which definitions of religion might emerge. I show that, by taking up new opportunities to share the gospel, believers entered into a long conversation between Christianity and Buddhism dating back to the colonial period. Tracing the different definitions of religion that this conversation generates, and attuning to the dissonances between them, might offer alternate ways for approaching what gets termed the religious and the secular in the study of Myanmar., To observe Myanmar's recent history is to be reminded that definitions are far from neutral. Who gets to define a concept is a question frequently caught up with workings of [...]

This article examines colonial secularism in Burma through a history of the built environment of Rangoon. The creation of the colonial city in the 1850s as an ordered grid of ethnic neighbourhoods and established religions served as a pedagogy of the secular, teaching its population to internalise religious difference. And yet, against this secular vision in brick and pavement there were exceptional spaces that enacted alternative visions. The Thayettaw monastic complex began as home for the diverse displaced ethnic monasteries of the pre-colonial town, but it soon defied the boundaries of colonial rule. Its practice of Buddhism became a mechanism for mobility, interaction, and interconnection., Much of the recent scholarly literature on Buddhism in Myanmar has focused on how people have drawn upon Buddhist discourses and transformed practices to respond to the changing conditions of [...]

Global Catholicism and Mobilities in Southeast Asia In their introduction to Buddhist and Islamic Networks in Southern Asia: Comparative Perspectives, R. Michael Feener and Anne M. Blackburn propose that the [...]

Based on fieldwork conducted among the Buddhist population living in Rakhine State, Myanmar, between 2005 and 2011, this article elucidates how people deal with health and illness and related uncertainties by relying on a multiplicity of conceptions and practices associated with Buddhism, astrology, spirit cults, as well as indigenous and Western medicine. This article unpacks this plurality to show how different components contribute to the healing process in complementary and yet hierarchical ways which hold to a nexus of political, social, medical, economic, cosmological, biological, and environmental factors. It also questions the boundaries between the religious and medical, Buddhist and non-Buddhist, worldly and otherworldly, and natural and supernatural., Asked about how to prevent illness and other unpleasant events, most Buddhist villagers living in the Thandwe area, in Rakhine State, Myanmar, respond: 'practising dana, thila, bawana', that is, making [...]

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 [...]

This article looks at the recent re-emergence of religiously inspired charitable organizations (RICOs) within Chinese society. Operating in an emergent religious marketplace, within a recently rehabilitated charitable sector, RICOs occupy a liminal position juxtaposed between the religious and secular. This article explores the ways in which the 'Home' (a Buddhist RICO based in southwest China) and the 'Center' (a Catholic RICO based in northeast China) make use of the ambiguity this provides to take on the role of what Hakan Yavuz calls 'opportunity spaces,' operating as 'social sites and vehicles for activism and the dissemination of meaning, identity, and cultural codes' (Yavuz 2003, ix) within wider society. Specifically, this article explores the ways that they draw on the material--objects, space, the body, and sensory perception--as a means of identity formation and in asserting religious authority in their quest to gain recognition in contemporary Chinese society. KEYWORDS: RICOs--charity--China--HIV/AIDS--Theravada Buddhism--Catholicism--religious authority, Following years of being overlooked in both academic and development discourses, the work of faith-based organisations (FBOs) re-emerged as a focus of considerable research and policy interest after secular agencies [...]

As a first-year student at Georgetown University, Abhichana Naiyapatana went to the Jesuit Values Panel, a discussion held by the school's campus chaplains. The chaplains represented 'all major religious traditions,' [...]

This research note discusses the challenges of post-disaster filmmaking and introduces two short films about religious responses to the 11 March 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster in Japan that were produced to accompany this special issue. The first clip presents perspectives on the cherry blossom festival at Jonenji, a Pure Land Buddhist temple that functioned as an evacuation center in the tsunami-stricken city of Kesennuma. Volunteers started the festival in 2012, and it has since grown into a major annual event that, besides commemorating the tragic events of 3.11, provides an important opportunity for recreation. The second vignette examines the training of rinsho shukyoshi, literally 'clinical religious specialists,' or 'interfaith chaplains,' at Tohoku University in Sendai. As the video shows, this program, which comprises a distinctive collaboration of religious and nonreligious aid providers, has contributed to a shifting image of religion in Japan's public sphere. Instructors and students may find the audiovisual component useful in discussing different intersections of religion and relief in contemporary Japan and as a means of exploring practical and theoretical dimensions of religious responses to disaster. The vignettes can be streamed or downloaded for free from Vimeo. Vignette One (Jonenji): https://vimeo.com/141396760 and Vignette Two (Interfaith Chaplains): https://vimeo.com/141380269. KEYWORDS: Buddhism--Japan--disaster relief--spiritual care--rinsho shukyoshi--3.11--festival--recreation--film, A ZIGZAG of laundered bed sheets, shirts, and pants hanging out to dry obstructed my view of Jonenji when I first entered the temple's driveway in early May 2011. Eight [...]

The Second Vatican Council cautioned regarding the increasing secularization of Western societies that the greatest error of our age is the separation between faith and life. Through its history of the kingdoms of Buddhism and Hinduism, 350 years of Western colonization and growth of Islam, Indonesia claims to place religion in high regard. Citizens are obligated to proclaim one of the six recognized religions. All schools allocate four hours of religious teaching weekly. Critics doubt that the teaching of religion in schools will help solve problems. Corruption is rampant and ethnic-religious conflicts are increasing despite the people's claim as a religious nation. The challenge, then, is to integrate religious and character education into the core as well as hidden curriculum and teach students to nurture their faith and moral sense throughout their schooling. This essay explores how religious and character education in the school curriculum endeavors to prepare young people to enhance their intellectual capabilities and form them to be people of faith and character., INDONESIA AT A CROSSROADS Twenty-five years is a brief time in the history of human civilization. Yet, as the Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies finds it worthy to be thinking of [...]

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

Modern-day China is home to diverse but strictly regulated religions, surveyed here to provide accurate information about their historical and cultural backgrounds and current practices as context for reports in [...]

This paper examines the emergence of a distinctly 'modern' style of history and some of its uses as applied to Buddhism by Buddhist scholars within the early Meiji Period (late nineteenth century) in Japan. After a discussion of the importance of 'area studies' in the formation of conceptions germane to history as practiced in Japan, the paper proposes a new category of the 'non-modern' as a means to counter the historiographical dominance of modern categories in the formation of the historical discipline, especially as formulated in Japanese studies. As a case study, the emergence of the discourse dealing with the quest for the historical Buddha is examined. By showing the methods and accomplishments of modernist historians, and the concomitant slippage of non-modern categories in their work, this paper sketches a method of analysis particularly applicable to the intersection of religion and history.

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.

PROLOGUE When I was assigned the topic of love and sex (and I decided to add lust/desire as the link between the two), I immediately consulted with a number of [...]

Consumerism is such an ingrained part of our culture, it is paradoxically difficult to avoid and easy to ignore. Sometimes it seems like the water we modern fish swim in. [...]

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 [...]

The ethic of non-violence in the Pali Vinaya and Nikayas indicates that the object of the ethic is humans, animals, and plants, thus suggesting that plants are considered living and sentient in the early Buddhist tradition. Recent work by Lambert Schmithausen, however, demonstrates that there are a diversity of views in the Buddhist tradition. This article explores the evidence in the Vinaya and Nikayas on this subject, concluding that plants have one sense, that of 'touch', and that plants comprise the 'stable, or non-moving' category of living beings., THE QUESTION OF WHETHER PLANTS are considered living and sentient beings in Pali Buddhism is brought to the fore by early Buddhist teachings on non-violence. In discussions of the Patimokkha, [...]

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 [...]