Prescribing the Dharma

Prescribing the Dharma
Author: Ira Helderman
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2019-02-08
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1469648539

Interest in the psychotherapeutic capacity of Buddhist teachings and practices is widely evident in the popular imagination. News media routinely report on the neuropsychological study of Buddhist meditation and applications of mindfulness practices in settings including corporate offices, the U.S. military, and university health centers. However, as Ira Helderman shows, curious investigators have studied the psychological dimensions of Buddhist doctrine for well over a century, stretching back to William James and Carl Jung. These activities have shaped both the mental health field and Buddhist practice throughout the United States. This is the first comprehensive study of the surprisingly diverse ways that psychotherapists have related to Buddhist traditions. Through extensive fieldwork and in-depth interviews with clinicians, many of whom have been formative to the therapeutic use of Buddhist practices, Helderman gives voice to the psychotherapists themselves. He focuses on how they understand key categories such as religion and science. Some are invested in maintaining a hard border between religion and psychotherapy as a biomedical discipline. Others speak of a religious-secular binary that they mean to disrupt. Helderman finds that psychotherapists' approaches to Buddhist traditions are molded by how they define what is and is not religious, demonstrating how central these concepts are in contemporary American culture.

Dixie Dharma

Dixie Dharma
Author: Jeff Wilson
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2012-04-16
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 080786997X

Buddhism in the United States is often viewed in connection with practitioners in the Northeast and on the West Coast, but in fact, it has been spreading and evolving throughout the United States since the mid-nineteenth century. In Dixie Dharma, Jeff Wilson argues that region is crucial to understanding American Buddhism. Through the lens of a multidenominational Buddhist temple in Richmond, Virginia, Wilson explores how Buddhists are adapting to life in the conservative evangelical Christian culture of the South, and how traditional Southerners are adjusting to these newer members on the religious landscape. Introducing a host of overlooked characters, including Buddhist circuit riders, modernist Pure Land priests, and pluralistic Buddhists, Wilson shows how regional specificity manifests itself through such practices as meditation vigils to heal the wounds of the slave trade. He argues that southern Buddhists at once use bodily practices, iconography, and meditation tools to enact distinct sectarian identities even as they enjoy a creative hybridity.

American Dharma

American Dharma
Author: Ann Gleig
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 375
Release: 2019-02-26
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0300245041

The past couple of decades have witnessed Buddhist communities both continuing the modernization of Buddhism and questioning some of its limitations. In this fascinating portrait of a rapidly changing religious landscape, Ann Gleig illuminates the aspirations and struggles of younger North American Buddhists during a period she identifies as a distinct stage in the assimilation of Buddhism to the West. She observes both the emergence of new innovative forms of deinstitutionalized Buddhism that blur the boundaries between the religious and secular, and a revalorization of traditional elements of Buddhism such as ethics and community that were discarded in the modernization process. Based on extensive ethnographic and textual research, the book ranges from mindfulness debates in the Vipassana network to the sex scandals in American Zen, while exploring issues around racial diversity and social justice, the impact of new technologies, and generational differences between baby boomer, Gen X, and millennial teachers.

Dharma and Ecology of Hindu Communities

Dharma and Ecology of Hindu Communities
Author: Pankaj Jain
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2016-04-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1317151607

In Indic religious traditions, a number of rituals and myths exist in which the environment is revered. Despite this nature worship in India, its natural resources are under heavy pressure with its growing economy and exploding population. This has led several scholars to raise questions about the role religious communities can play in environmentalism. Does nature worship inspire Hindus to act in an environmentally conscious way? This book explores the above questions with three communities, the Swadhyaya movement, the Bishnoi, and the Bhil communities. Presenting the texts of Bishnois, their environmental history, and their contemporary activism; investigating the Swadhyaya movement from an ecological perspective; and exploring the Bhil communities and their Sacred Groves, this book applies a non-Western hermeneutical model to interpret the religious traditions of Indic communities. With a foreword by Roger S Gottlieb.

Dharma and Halacha

Dharma and Halacha
Author: Ithamar Theodor
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2018-08-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1498512801

In recent decades there has been a rising interest among scholars of Hinduism and Judaism in engaging in the comparative studies of these ancient traditions. Academic interests have also been inspired by the rise of interreligious dialogue by the respective religious leaders. Dharma and Halacha: Comparative Studies in Hindu-Jewish Philosophy and Religion represents a significant contribution to this emerging field, offering an examination of a wide range of topics and a rich diversity of perspectives and methodologies within each tradition, and underscoring significant affinities in textual practices, ritual purity, sacrifice, ethics and theology. Dharma refers to a Hindu term indicating law, duty, religion, morality, justice and order, and the collective body of Dharma is called Dharma-shastra. Halacha is the Hebrew term designating the Jewish spiritual path, comprising the collective body of Jewish religious laws, ethics and rituals. Although there are strong parallels between Hinduism and Judaism in topics such as textual practices and mystical experience, the link between these two religious systems, i.e. Dharma and Halacha, is especially compelling and provides a framework for the comparative study of these two traditions. The book begins with an introduction to Hindu-Jewish comparative studies and recent interreligious encounters. Part I of the book titled “Ritual and Sacrifice,” encompasses the themes of sacrifice, holiness, and worship. Part II titled "Ethics," is devoted to comparing ethical systems in both traditions, highlighting the manifold ways in which the sacred is embodied in the mundane. Part III of the book titled "Theology," addresses common themes and phenomena in spiritual leadership, as well as textual metaphors for mystical and visionary experiences in Hinduism and Judaism. The epilogue offers a retrospective on Hindu-Jewish encounters, mapping historic as well as contemporary academic initiatives and collaborations.

In Defense of Dharma

In Defense of Dharma
Author: Tessa J. Bartholomeusz
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2005-07-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 113578857X

This is the first book to examine war and violence in Sri Lanka through the lens of cross-cultural studies on just-war tradition and theory. An important contribution to the understanding of the power of religion to create both peace and war.

Facts and Values

Facts and Values
Author: M.C. Doeser
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9400944543

The answer to philosophical questions will often depend on the position one takes regarding the fact-value problem. It is, therefore, not surprising that, in the tradition of western philosophy, the past 200 years or so record an animated discussion of it. In the present collection the debate is continued by representatives of various "schools" in contemporary western thought. A number of philosophers from non-western cultures, too, enter into it. The contributions do not all reflect on the same theme, nor do they use the same approach. Essays written by philosophers sympathetic to the analytical tradition are followed by reflections on the part of those inspired by phe nomenology. A third group of contributions is by non-western thinkers, who are more likely to approach the problem in terms of culture. Their engage ment with the issue clearly shows, among other things, that it is almost exclusively in the western tradition that the fact-value distinction is often understood as an outright dichotomy. The occasion for the publication of this collection is Dr. Cornelis Anthonie van Peursen's retirement as Professor of Philosophy. This year he leaves the Free University, Amsterdam; until 1982 he was professor at the University of Leyden as well. In the Netherlands and beyond he has become known for his concern with constructive comparison of diverging philosophical trends and the cross-cultural fertilization of thought. Characteristic of his career are his efforts to render the results of academic philosophizing understand able to a broader audience.