The Social Organization of Zen Practice

The Social Organization of Zen Practice
Author: David L. Preston
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 204
Release: 1988-06-24
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780521350006

This book, first published in 1998, provides both a first-hand account and a theoretical analysis of the way an American Zen community works.

Zen Awakening and Society

Zen Awakening and Society
Author: Christopher Ives
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 193
Release: 1992-06-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1349114944

Zen Buddhism has traditionally focused on monastic practice and the artistic expression of awakening (satori) but has paid little explicit attention to social ethics. This book considers the relationship between Zen and social ethics.

The Social Self in Zen and American Pragmatism

The Social Self in Zen and American Pragmatism
Author: Steve Odin
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 504
Release: 1996-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780791424926

This is the first book on East-West comparative thought to critically analyze the Zen Buddhist model of self in modern Japanese philosophy from the standpoint of American pragmatism.

The Oxford Handbook of Buddhist Practice

The Oxford Handbook of Buddhist Practice
Author: Kevin Trainor
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 689
Release: 2022
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0190632925

"This Handbook provides a state-of-the-art exploration of several key dynamics in current studies of the Buddhist tradition with a focus on practice. Embodiment, materiality, emotion, and gender shape the way most Buddhists engage with their traditions, in contrast to popular representations of Buddhism as spiritual, disembodied, and largely devoid of ritual. This volume highlights how practice often represents a fluid, dynamic, and strategic means of defining identity and negotiating the challenges of everyday life. Essays explore the transformational aims of practices that require practitioners to move, gesture, and emote in prescribed ways, including the ways that scholars' own embodied practices are integral to their research methodology. The chapters are written by acknowledged experts in their respective subject areas and taken together offer an overview of current thinking in the field. The volume is of particular value to scholars who seek an orientation to current perspectives on important conceptual, theoretical, and methodological concerns that are shaping the field in areas outside their primary expertise. The inclusion of substantial, up-to-date bibliographies also makes the volume an important guide to current scholarship"--

Becoming Buddhist

Becoming Buddhist
Author: Glenys Eddy
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 153
Release: 2012-02-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1441144641

What does it mean to be a Western Buddhist? For the predominantly Anglo-Australian affiliates of two Western Buddhist centres in Australia, the author proposes an answer to this question, and finds support for it from interviews and her own participant-observation experience.Practitioners' prior experiences of experimentation with spiritual groups and practices-and their experiences of participation, practice and self-transformation-are examined with respect to their roles in practitioners' appropriation of the Buddhist worldview, and their subsequent commitment to the path to enlightenment.Religious commitment is experienced as a decision-point, itself the effect of the individual's experimental immersion in the Centre's activities.During this time the claims of the Buddhist worldview are tested against personal experience and convictions. Using rich ethnographic data and Lofland and Skonovd's experimental conversion motif as a model for theorizing the stages of involvement leading to commitment, the author demonstrates that this study has a wider application to our understanding of the role of alternative religions in western contexts.

The Oxford Handbook of Meditation

The Oxford Handbook of Meditation
Author: Miguel Farias
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 1038
Release: 2021-10-21
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0192536389

Meditation techniques, including mindfulness, have become popular wellbeing practices and the scientific study of their effects has recently turned 50 years old. But how much do we know about them: what were they developed for and by whom? How similar or different are they, how effective can they be in changing our minds and biology, what are their social and ethical implications? The Oxford Handbook of Meditation is the most comprehensive volume published on meditation, written in accessible language by world-leading experts on the science and history of these techniques. It covers the development of meditation across the world and the varieties of its practices and experiences. It includes approaches from various disciplines, including psychology, neuroscience, history, anthropology, and sociology and it explores its potential for therapeutic and social change, as well as unusual or negative effects. Edited by practitioner-researchers, this book is the ultimate guide for all interested in meditation, including teachers, clinicians, therapists, researchers, or anyone who would like to learn more about this topic.

American Buddhism

American Buddhism
Author: Christopher Queen
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2013-10-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1136830332

This is the first scholarly treatment of the emergence of American Buddhist Studies as a significant research field. Until now, few investigators have turned their attention to the interpretive challenge posed by the presence of all the traditional lineages of Asian Buddhism in a consciously multicultural society. Nor have scholars considered the place of their own contributions as writers, teachers, and practising Buddhists in this unfolding saga. In thirteen chapters and a critical introduction to the field, the book treats issues such as Asian American Buddhist identity, the new Buddhism, Buddhism and American culture, and the scholar's place in American Buddhist Studies. The volume offers complete lists of dissertations and theses on American Buddhism and North American dissertations and theses on topics related to Buddhism since 1892.

Women Living Zen

Women Living Zen
Author: Paula Kane Robinson Arai
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 266
Release: 1999-08-26
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 019512393X

Although many Buddhists have made concessions to contradictory religious and social expectations during the twentieth century, these Zen nuns spent much of the century advancing their traditional monastic values by fighting for and winning reforms of the sect's misogynist regulations."--BOOK JACKET.

Buddhism in America

Buddhism in America
Author: Richard Hughes Seager
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2012-07-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0231504373

Over the past half century in America, Buddhism has grown from a transplanted philosophy to a full-fledged religious movement, rich in its own practices, leaders, adherents, and institutions. Long favored as an essential guide to this history, Buddhism in America covers the three major groups that shape the tradition—an emerging Asian immigrant population, native-born converts, and old-line Asian American Buddhists—and their distinct, yet spiritually connected efforts to remake Buddhism in a Western context. This edition updates existing text and adds three new essays on contemporary developments in American Buddhism, particularly the aging of the baby boom population and its effect on American Buddhism's modern character. New material includes revised information on the full range of communities profiled in the first edition; an added study of a second generation of young, Euro-American leaders and teachers; an accessible look at the increasing importance of meditation and neurobiological research; and a provocative consideration of the mindfulness movement in American culture. The volume maintains its detailed account of South and East Asian influences on American Buddhist practices, as well as instances of interreligious dialogue, socially activist Buddhism, and complex gender roles within the community. Introductory chapters describe Buddhism's arrival in America with the nineteenth-century transcendentalists and rapid spread with the Beat poets of the 1950s. The volume now concludes with a frank assessment of the challenges and prospects of American Buddhism in the twenty-first century.

Buddhist Studies from India to America

Buddhist Studies from India to America
Author: Damien Keown
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2006-01-16
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1134196326

Charles Prebish is Professor of Buddhism, Pennsylvania State University, US – a leading international scholar and co-founder of what is now the ‘Buddhism section’ of the American Academy of Religion, and served an additional term on the steering committee. Prebish is well known in N. America, and this book should attract readers in the region The author of the book, (Damien Keown), and Charles Prebish are editors of the Critical Studies in Buddhism series published by Routledge. Contributors are well-known international scholars whose participation guarantees that the academic quality of the work is high and the standard even throughout