Buddhism
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A Systemic History of the Middle Way
Robert M. Ellis, Iain McGilchrist
Systemic history is an approach to explaining the past, that tries to maximize our understanding of context. Unlike most history, it does not do this by just narrating a chain of causal relationships for a given group through time. Instead, it shows how simpler systems become more complex over ti...
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Nikāya Buddhism and Early Chan
While it has long been acknowledged that Chan differs in many ways from more mainstream forms of Buddhism, recent scholarship has also resulted in an increasing awareness of the originality of early Buddhist teachings found in the Nikāyas and their distinctiveness from the later...
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Buddhist Monks and the Politics of Lanka's Civil War
The war in Sri Lanka was violent and costly in human and material terms. This was one of the longest wars in modern South Asia. Often referred to as an 'ethnic' conflict between the majority Sinhalas and the minority Tamils, the war had a profound religious dimension. The majority of Sinhala Buddhis...
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Japanese Buddhist Pilgrimage
Japanese Buddhist Pilgrimage explores the ritual practice of "circulatory pilgrimages" - the visiting of many temples in a numbered sequence. Every year, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims travel such temple routes, seeking peace of mind, health and wellbeing for themselves and others as the benefits...
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Lay Buddhism and Spirituality
Early issues of The Eastern Buddhist contain short translations from various Buddhist texts, some of them quite important and all of considerable interest. Since they are set unobtrusively between modern statements and arguments about the nature of Buddhism, and in any case are difficult to locate,...
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A Student's Guide to the History and Philosophy of Yoga
The word yoga conjures up in the minds of many Westerners images of people performing exercises and adopting unusual, contortive postures. Such exercises and postures do have a place within the practice of yoga, but it is much more than that. Indeed, the early literature on yoga describes and define...
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Buddhist Temples of Kyoto and Kamakura
Beatrice Lane Suzuki (1878-1939) was an extremely well informed and sensitive expositor of Mahayana Buddhism. As the American wife of the influential Zen Buddhist Suzuki Daisetsu, she lived in Japan for many years, becoming very familiar with the leading temples of various Buddhist schools-especiall...
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Buddhism and Ireland
Ireland and Buddhism have a long history. Shaped by colonialism, contested borders, religious wars, empire and massive diasporas, Irish people have encountered Asian Buddhism in many ways over 14 centuries. From the thrill of travellers' tales in far-off lands to a religious alternative to Christian...
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Interactions with Japanese Buddhism
In the early twentieth century, The Eastern Buddhist journal pioneered the presentation of Buddhism to the west and encouraged the west's engagement in interpretation. This interactive process increased dramatically in the post-war period, when dialogue between Buddhist and Christian thought began t...
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How Buddhism Acquired a Soul on the Way to China
How Buddhism Acquired a Soul on the Way to China tells the story of the spread of Buddhist religious thinking and practice from India to China and how, along the way, a religion was changed. While Indian Buddhists had constructed their ideas of self by means of empiricism, anti-Brahmanism and analyt...