New Books In Buddhist Studies

In this important contribution to both the study of South Asian Buddhism as well the burgeoning field of Buddhist modernity, Anne Blackburn‘s Locations of Buddhism: Colonialism and Modernity in Sri Lanka (The University of Chicago Press, 2010) discusses the life and times of the Sri Lankan Buddhist monk Hikkaduve.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Americanists have long employed a trope of regionalism to better understand American religions, beliefs, and practices. As many of us know, either by academic study or, more often, personal experience, the United States feels different in New England as compared to the Midwest, the West Coast, or the Deep South. Regional variations on culture play an important role in shaping our identities and informing our religious practices. Scholars of American Buddhism, however, have been slow to recognize the importance of this trope in how they study Buddhism in the United States. In his new book, Dixie Dharma: Inside a Buddhist Temple in the American South (University of North Carolina Press, 2012), Jeff Wilson approaches his subject with just this sort of regional gaze. How is Buddhism fundamentally different in the American South as opposed to the West Coast where the majority of ethnographic surveys to date have been done? How do Buddhist negotiate their minority religious status in an overwhelmingly Evangelical C

In this episode, we talk with Prof. Hank Glassman who’s written a new book titled The Face of Jizo : Image and Cult in Medieval Japanese Buddhism (University of Hawaii Press, 2012). Jizo is a Buddhist Bodhisattva whose presence has become ubiquitous throughout Japan as the protector of travelers, women, and children and childbirth. Historically, though, he has also been closely associated with death and is known as the protector of the six realms of rebirth. In some accounts, this bodhisattva is also conflated with King Yama, the lord of the hell realms, and it according to his mythology, Jizo has vowed now to enter full awakening until all the hell realms have been emptied of suffering sentient beings. Prof. Glassman’s book is the culmination of decades of interest and research on the cult of Jizo . He is interested in how Jizo came to take such a prominent place in Japanese Buddhism and religious life and practice. His book is extremely well written and accessible, conveying through numerous s

When most people think of Buddhism they begin to imagine a lone monk in the forest or a serene rock garden. The world of ghosts, amulets, and magic are usually from their mind. They may even feel some aversion to the notion that the meditative calm of monks from the East could have anything to do with these superstitious ideas and practices. Justin Thomas McDaniel, associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, challenges many of theses preconceived ideas about what constitutes the substance of modern Buddhism in Thailand. In his new book, The Lovelorn Ghost and the Magical Monk: Practicing Buddhism in Modern Thailand (Columbia University Press, 2011), McDaniel begins his journey of contemporary Buddhism at one of the regular funerals for our lovelorn ghost (Mae Nak). Despite the compelling nature of this scene, as a skilled linguist and practicing scholar-monk for many years, McDaniel never imagined that he would be examining the supernatural world of ghost stor

There is a lot of ritual involved in Buddhist practice. As more and more North Americans are discovering Buddhism, they are engaging in more and more Buddhist ritual, despite a general aversion many North Americans have to ritualized behavior. Dr. Patricia Campbell‘s new book, Knowing Body, Moving Mind: Ritualizing and Learning at Two Buddhist Centers (Oxford University Press, 2011), presents an ethnographic survey of two Toronto-based meditation centers and explores the ways in which Buddhists and Buddhist sympathizers engage in Buddhist ritual. Obviously, ritual theory plays an important role in her book as a methodology for analyzing these Buddhist communities; but Dr. Campbell also takes note of the process of embodied learning and how engaging in ritualized behavior affectively changes practitioners. How we come to learn about Buddhism happens not only through the cognitive acquisition of knowledge, but through the process of ritualized practiced. The book is a great contribution to the growing fie

Charles Prebish is among the most prominent scholars of American Buddhism. He has been a pioneer in studying the forms that Buddhist tradition has taken in the United States. Now retired, he has written this unusual new book, An American Buddhist Life: Memoirs of a Modern Dharma Pioneer (Sumeru Press, 2011). The book tells the story of Prebish’s role in bringing the field of American Buddhism to prominence. The difficulties he faced in establishing American Buddhism as a legitimate field of study, and in trying to be recognized as a “scholar-practitioner,” will resonate with up-and-coming scholars trying to carve out a new niche for their scholarship. The book is filled with anecdotes about recognized authorities in Buddhist studies, providing a uniquely personal window into the development of the field in the late 20th century and beyond.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on “New Books in Buddhist Studies” we’ll be going to hell and back with Bryan Cuevas in a discussion of his new book Travels in the Netherworld: Buddhist Popular Narratives of Death and the Afterlife in Tibet(Oxford University Press, 2008). Common in Tibetan Buddhism is the story of the delok, a person who has died, traveled to the afterlife, and returned to the land of living with some message or moral to share. Delok come from all walks of life–laypersons, lamas, and monks–all figure in these stories. And what they share is a detailed and personal account of their deaths, their journeys to various Buddhist hells and suffering beings they encounter there, and a meeting with the Lord of Death, Yama, who judges their karmic action. Invariably, Yama tells the delok that she or he should return to the living and be a more compassionate, generous, and devoted Buddhist. These morality tales tell us much about religious belief and practice in pre-modern Tibet. But Prof. Cuevas&#

For many Asian and Western Buddhists today, Buddhism means meditation and an embrace of the world’s interdependence. But that’s not what it meant to Buddhists in the past; most of them never meditated and often saw interdependence (or dependent origination) as something fearful to be escaped. Many scholars, especially recently, have told this story of the transition from pre-modern to modern Buddhism, but often with no other purpose than to dismiss modern Buddhism as inauthentic, a departure from the “real” Buddhism of ritual chanting and sacred relics. David McMahan‘s book The Making of Buddhist Modernism (Oxford University Press, 2008) tells the story of Buddhist modernism in a balanced way, one that acknowledges its novelty yet remains sympathetic to its concerns and interests. McMahan, who is a professor of religious studies at Franklin and Marshall College, theorizes not only Buddhism but also modernity. Using Charles Taylor’s account of modern life, he explores the fo

Scholars have long been fascinated by the Kamakura era (1185-1333) of Japanese history, a period that saw the emergence of many distinctively Japanese forms of Buddhism. And while a lot of this attention overshadows other equally important periods of Japanese Buddhist history, there is still much to be learned. Take the Buddhist convent known as Hokkeji, located in the old capitol of Nara. Founded in the eighth century, the complex fell into decline and was all but forgotten for centuries before reemerging in the Kamakura period as an important pilgrimage site and as the location of a reestablished monastic order for women. This is the subject of Lori Meeks’ wonderful new book, Hokkeji and the Reemergence of Female Monastic Orders in Premodern Japan (University of Hawaii Press, 2010). Prof. Meeks questions some of the assumptions and biases of previous scholarship on women in Japanese Buddhism and explores the multivalent ways that Buddhist women were able to assert their autonomy and agency in what is

The 20th-century Chinese philosopher Mou Zongsan is relatively little known in the West, but has been greatly influential in Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China, as well as influencing Confucian studies in North America. His work helped revive Confucianism at a time when many thought it dead. Yet at the same time, Mou devoted significant scholarly time and effort to writing about Buddhism. Why? Jason Clower‘s The Unlikely Buddhologist: Tiantai Buddhism in Mou Zongsan’s New Confucianism (Brill, 2010) attempts to explain why Mou thought Confucians could benefit from the study of Buddhism. In this interview, he explains Mou’s interest in Buddhism, and demonstrates to us why the study of Chinese Buddhism and Confucianism are inseparable. Jason Clower is an assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies at California State University, Chico.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New media technology changes culture. And when it comes to religion, new technology changes the way people think and practice their traditions. And while we usually think of technology as some new gadget or machine, there was a time when the written word itself was a new technology, and this had a profound impact how Buddhism was practiced in South and South East Asia. This is the subject of Daniel Veidlinger‘s new book, Spreading the Dhamma: Writing, Orality, and Textual Transmission in Buddhist Northern Thailand (University of Hawaii Press, 2006). In today’s interview, the inaugural show for the New Books in Buddhist Studies channel of the New Books Network, we talk with Prof. Veidlinger about his book and the way some other books changed Buddhism in Thailand. The “other books” we’ll be talking about, of course, are the books of the Buddhist canon, a collection of texts that when printed today runs some 15,000 pages. A millennia ago, however, these texts were carved into palm l