chimerically constructed commodities should be considered neither irrelevant nor an outrage—two common responses. Rather, they are important elements for understanding the development of any religious movement, including Buddhism in America (and maybe especially Buddhism in America).

An analysis of the meditation cushion industry in America and what it says about American Buddhism.

Scholars of Chinese Buddhism have given much attention to vilified foodstuffs such as meat and pungent vegetables and less attention to celebrated foods. While proscriptions are important for their role in constructing boundaries used in group identification, we should not overlook the celebration of particular foods such as congee (zhōu 粥).

The underlying idea of improving and extending through time (xiū 修) linked renovations and rituals. Managers viewed both as ways to renew the temple community, to protect temple buildings, and to pass liturgical and craft knowledge to future generations.

At all those locations stood former temples/shrines that gods and ghosts used to occupy but were demolished to make way for urban infrastructure. Despite repeated banning and purging of deities and temples, worshippers burn incense and paper money, make offerings, and become possessed in those places. The gods’ agency seems to be exercised even after their temples and bodies are destroyed.

What more protection do I need? What else could serve as my protection?

A journalist buys a bulletproof vest and travels to war zones in the Middle East to report. He learns what a bulletproof vest can and cannot do for you.

The primary flower used in traditional offerings in modern Sri Lanka is not actually the Sal flower but rather the flower of the Cannonball Tree.

This essay examines consumption patterns in various regions in [sic] the world during the Fin De Siècle, with an organization by region.

National identity was frequently an important context of consumer culture in the 1870–1914 period.

For many Chinese speakers in China and elsewhere, experiencing or connecting with matters of religion often includes mediation through or with material objects. Such mediation is readily accessible to larger and larger audiences and often occurs through the consumption of religious material goods, thanks also to media technologies and the Internet. In this article, the author seeks to complicate the notion that the production and consumption of novel Buddhist religious goods can be analyzed solely in terms of ‘market theory.’ While on the one hand the author shows that Buddhist technologies of salvation are historically associated with materiality, she also contends that the ‘aura’ of Buddhist-inspired modern religious goods is not so much effaced as it is reconfigured and transformed by technological mediations.

This was the genius of our ancestors, that by cutting off the light from this empty space they imparted to the world of shadows that formed there a quality of mystery and depth superior to that of any wall painting or ornament.

A meditation on what was lost when Japan rapidly modernized and traded in its traditional aesthetics for Western appliances.

For the komusō, the shakuha-chi was not just a musical instrument but a veritable Dharma instrument (hōki).

On the long history of new media being used by Mahāyāna Buddhists to “spread the Dharma.”

I offered eight fallen flowers to the stupa…

Gregory Schopen (among others) has pondered the lack of stupa-related rules in the Theravāda Vinaya and wondered if this might reflect a sectarian difference in stupa worship. This sutta from the Theravādan Vimāna Vatthu shows that they not only knew of this common practice, they celebrated it.

Cynthia wasn’t just any old mannequin from New York. This wasn’t even her first social event. By the time Jeanne’s mother-in-law met her, she had already attended balls, graced the front pages of magazines and appeared in Hollywood movies. Cynthia was a celebrity.

… although objects manufactured in factories for profit are not made or handled according to Buddhist tradition, the “aura” can be produced in different ways and at different points of an object’s life

Buddhists pray to the Laughing Buddha requesting for healthy living, good luck, wealth and prosperity; and the Laughing Buddha, as a symbol of motivation, inspires them.

A brief word on the ubiquitous “Laughing Buddha” statues which adorn Chinese establishments the world over.

… the alleged, extraordinary natures of such powerful relics and images compelled certain individuals to narrate and recount how they were found or made, where they traveled, and the various miracles they performed as a testament to their great power

But the Bodhisattva, unwilling to ask anyone for help, plucks up his courage, and goes out with his basket and cutting tool and cuts grass. He sells the grass and ekes out a meager living, giving what he can to those in need.