Buddhism in Academia
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How the Western academy has attempted to digest Buddhism.
Caution! Under Construction
Please be aware that this tag is still under construction and as such is missing information and may be changed or removed at any time. For all the content under consideration for this tag, see the “Buddhism in Academia” folder on Google Drive.
Table of Contents
Books (2)
Readings (75)
Featured:
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⭐ Recommended
… the discontinuity [with premodern forms of Buddhism] that the modernists emphasize is just that, an emphasis—it is less an observation than it is an ideologically motivated construction
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The discourse concerning Buddhist modernism has carried with it a subtle claim that so-called “modern” Buddhists are not really “Buddhists” at all; they are tainted by Western culture, philosophy, and religion, and as such are peripheral to the study of the “authentic Buddhism” that resides in a more “traditional” Asia.
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⭐ Recommended
Holmes Welch (1921–1981) is a towering figure in the study of Buddhism whose [1960s] trilogy on modern Chinese Buddhism stood as the definitive work on the topic for decades and remains a touchstone today. In many ways, Welch appears ahead of its time. Yet an investigation of Welch’s papers makes clear that his work can only be fully understood in the context of the Cold War, for it was not only shaped by but also served the American struggle against Communism.
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The article begins by reviewing the literature on museums and the sacred. It discusses the lack of concern historically for religion in museums, noting how sacred objects have tended to be ‘secularized’ in exhibitionary contexts. It then examines the Buddhism display at the World Museum Liverpool, part of the permanent World Cultures gallery which opened in 2005, with its reconstructions of a shrine, an altar and a protective chapel — this is a museological environment which deliberately evokes the atmosphere of a temple.
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We provide our audience, in fact, with a variety of mirrors. This is the service of scholarship.
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Some academic scholars of Buddhism, who also practice Buddhism, are exploring new ways to serve both the critical interests of the modern academy and the constructive needs of their Buddhist communities…
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⭐ Recommended
… how to interpret Buddhist Sanskrit texts in such a way as to avoid unnecessary bastardization of the English language, while still performing the scholarly task of making available the meaning of such texts to the scholarly community
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What started as a reasoned debate on funding turned, halfway through the 1890s, into something more conspiratorial.
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The paper argues for the suitability, or at least acceptability, of a translation style which I call jolie laide, i.e. a rendering which is not necessarily exquisite in its aesthetic quality but is as faithful as possible to the original and perfectly intelligible in the target language. This is not a mechanical process, and in order to meet these standards, the translator should allow for flexibility and make full use of the critical apparatus. I do not rule out, however, other rendering strategies, and the last part of my contribution illustrates the possibility of having jolies laides side by side with free translations. The article also contains an appendix on Dao’an’s‘five [points of permissible] deviation from the original and three [points which should remain] unchanged’ and Xuanzang’s‘five types [of Indic words which should] not be translated’.
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Information about Buddhism was scarce and vague at best in the West until the beginning of the nineteenth century. The first Orientalists studying Indian sources had to rely on Hindu texts written in Sanskrit which portrayed the Buddha as an avatra of the Hindu god Viṣṇu. The situation changed with the discovery of the Pāli texts from Sri Lanka through scholars like George Turnour and the decipherment of the Aśokan inscriptions through James Prinsep by which the historical dimension of the religion became evident. The final confirmation of the historicity of the Buddha and the religion founded by him was taken, however, from the records of Chinese Buddhist travellers (Faxian, Xuanzang, Yijing) who had visited the major sacred places of Buddhism in India and collected other information about the history of the religion. This paper will discuss the first Western translations of these travelogues and their reception in the scholarly discourse of the period and will suggest that the historical turn to which it led had a strong impact on the study and reception of Buddhism-in a way the start of Buddhist Studies as a discipline.
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Lamotte’s argument led to various debates that gave rise to a wide array of hypotheses on who the author of Dà Zhìdù Lùn could have been. The theory that Dà Zhìdù Lùn could have been a text not (or not only) written by Nāgārjuna reached Chinese Buddhist monks and scholars as well, including the monk Yìnshùn (1906-2005). This paper will show the impact of Western scholarship on East Asian Buddhism, highlight the (pluri)directionality of knowledge.
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While mindfulness is a growing field of research, divergent and conflated meanings are limiting deeper interdisciplinary research. Interventions designed in one practice context may not be useful in other contexts because meaning is not transferred between settings. This review clarifies the various research domains that study mindfulness and the conceptual and operational definitions in each domain.
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the present article discusses the difficulties of defining mindfulness, delineates the proper scope of research into mindfulness practices, and explicates crucial methodological issues for interpreting results from investigations of mindfulness.
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For many scholars who found themselves disenchanted with the romantisized and/or rationalized versions of Buddhism that once dominated the field, the discovery of relic and image worship was the smoking gun that provided irrefutable evidence that Buddhists are not bourgeois rationalists after all. The worship of relics exemplified the newfound otherness of Buddhism, for it would seem to involve the sanctification of that which is utterly profane and loathsome—the corporeal remains of the dead.
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It is possible that Hilditch asked Chinese residents in Manchester to assist him with the services but had been rejected, but their omission is more likely down to the fact he wanted to cement his status as the authority of the temple. By donning Chinese robes, Hilditch added a heightened sense of reality to the display than would have been created if he had worn English clothes, while simultaneously increasing his supposed authority; he played both museum guide and Buddhist Priest.
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It is often overlooked that in Buddhism fact is interwoven with value, while in science they are still further apart. This makes the claims about the compatibility of the two systems somewhat naive, and explains why recently the “dialogue” takes the form of neuroscientific research of meditation: work that hardly changes or challenges the foundations of science.
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The first part of the paper examines the role of the Buddhist canon in research and in teaching, the trend towards non-canonical sources, and the current affection for contemporary practice. As a textual scholar who works with canonical texts, I intend to point to some risks that are, in my view, inherent in that general trend.
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Japanese Buddhology today is highly specialized, placing great emphasis on intense textual studies.
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The most frequently co-occurring keywords were meditation, depression, stress, and anxiety. Co-citation analysis of the early period (1966–2015) revealed how scholarly work on spiritual themes inspired early mindfulness research. Recent trends (2016–2021) revealed a rising interest in mechanisms and moderators, long-term meditators, neuroscientific studies, and smartphone/online delivery of interventions.
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The essay connects the field of Buddhist studies to a larger conversation in the field of global education, arguing that Buddhist studies travel courses must interrogate concepts of global citizenship, address the legacies of colonialism, and teach the principles of ethical travel, in addition to introducing students to the living traditions of global Buddhism.
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Insider input through home nurture, teaching materials, teacher expertise, insider input and pedagogy had already been applied to good effect in the classroom. However, in the areas of the Agreed Syllabuses for Religious Education, school ethos and national representation input was found lacking or skewed toward ‘convert’ Buddhist expectations, while the voice of the more numerous ‘migrant’ Buddhist community remained relatively unheard.
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Whatever happened to “Engaged Buddhism”? Twenty years after a flurry of publication placing this global movement firmly on the map, enthusiasm for the term itself appears to have evaporated. I attempt to reconstruct what happened: scholars turned away from the concept for its reproducing colonialist understandings of traditional Buddhism as essentially world-rejecting, and they developed alternate discourses for describing Buddhist actors’ multifarious social and political engagements, especially in contemporary Asia.
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As a primary focus, “Historical” appeared in every answer, but in only three cases was it listed as the sole focus (10%). It was found in combination most often with “Textual” (61%) and “Anthropological” (42%). “Contemporary” appeared only eleven times (36%) and “linguistic” seven (23%).
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This study evaluated the effectiveness of a Mahayana Buddhist teaching- and group-based intervention, the Awareness Training Program (ATP), which is textually aligned to a Mahayana Sūtra so that its theory and practice are coherent. The ATP aims to alleviate stress by enhancing participant’s compassion and wisdom of nonattachment. Middle-aged working adults (n = 122) in Hong Kong participated in this randomized waiting-list controlled trial. Self-reported psychological questionnaires were used to assess the participants’ level of stress (PSS), sense of coherence (SOC), psychological well-being (GHQ), and nonattachment (NAS) at pretest, posttest, and 3 months later. The data showed significant improvements in the intervention group over the controls for all outcome measures at posttest and 3 months later. A mediation analysis demonstrated that nonattachment mediated both the treatment and the maintenance effects for all outcome variables.
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…all claims for the compatibility of Buddhism and science are nonsense…
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After reviewing 17,801 citations, we included 47 trials with 3,320 participants. Mindfulness meditation programs had moderate evidence to improve anxiety at 8 weeks; depression at 8 weeks and 3–6 months and pain, and low evidence to improve stress/distress and mental health-related quality of life.
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One could, of course, dismiss this as a misunderstanding of what real Buddhism is, but then one would probably have to jettison most of the history of Buddhism in Japan as wrongheaded delusion as well. The cost is considerable.
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Buddhists scholar-practitioners have two major responsibilities vis-à-vis our students: 1) encourage students to “sympathetically understand” the tradition and 2) develop some critical perspective on a tradition with its lengthy history, multiplicity of sectarian forms, and great diversity of ways in which the religion has had and continues to have impact on culture, art, politics, and so forth.
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Currently, mindfulness is most often assessed [by psychologists] with self-report questionnaires. Although additional work is required, mindfulness questionnaires have reasonable psychometric properties and are making important contributions …
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