David L. McMahan
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195183276
- eISBN:
- 9780199870882
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195183276.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Buddhism
This book elucidates the complex cross-cultural genealogy of themes, ideas, and practices crucial to the creation of a new hybrid form of Buddhism that has emerged within the last 150 years. Buddhism ...
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This book elucidates the complex cross-cultural genealogy of themes, ideas, and practices crucial to the creation of a new hybrid form of Buddhism that has emerged within the last 150 years. Buddhism modernism is not just Buddhism that happens to exist in the modern world but a distinct form of Buddhism constituted by cross-fertilization with western ideas and practices. Using primarily examples that have shaped western articulations of Buddhism, the book shows how modern representations of Buddhism have not only changed the way the tradition is understood, but have also generated new forms of demythologized, detraditionalized, and deinstitutionalized Buddhism. The book creates a lineage of Buddhist modernism that includes liberal borrowing from scientific vocabulary in reformulations of Buddhist concepts of causality, interdependence, and meditation. It also draws upon Romantic and Transcendentalist conceptions of cosmology, creativity, spontaneity, and the interior depths of the human being. Additionally, Buddhist modernism reconfigures Buddhism as a kind of psychology or interior science, drawing both upon analytic psychology and current trends in neurobiology. In its novel approaches to meditation and mindfulness, as well as political activism, it draws heavily from western individualism, distinctively modern modes of world-affirmation, liberal political sensibilities, and modernist literary sources. The book also examines this uniquely modern Buddhism as it moves into postmodern iterations and enters the currents of global communication, media, and commerce.Less
This book elucidates the complex cross-cultural genealogy of themes, ideas, and practices crucial to the creation of a new hybrid form of Buddhism that has emerged within the last 150 years. Buddhism modernism is not just Buddhism that happens to exist in the modern world but a distinct form of Buddhism constituted by cross-fertilization with western ideas and practices. Using primarily examples that have shaped western articulations of Buddhism, the book shows how modern representations of Buddhism have not only changed the way the tradition is understood, but have also generated new forms of demythologized, detraditionalized, and deinstitutionalized Buddhism. The book creates a lineage of Buddhist modernism that includes liberal borrowing from scientific vocabulary in reformulations of Buddhist concepts of causality, interdependence, and meditation. It also draws upon Romantic and Transcendentalist conceptions of cosmology, creativity, spontaneity, and the interior depths of the human being. Additionally, Buddhist modernism reconfigures Buddhism as a kind of psychology or interior science, drawing both upon analytic psychology and current trends in neurobiology. In its novel approaches to meditation and mindfulness, as well as political activism, it draws heavily from western individualism, distinctively modern modes of world-affirmation, liberal political sensibilities, and modernist literary sources. The book also examines this uniquely modern Buddhism as it moves into postmodern iterations and enters the currents of global communication, media, and commerce.
Jeff Wilson
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195371932
- eISBN:
- 9780199870967
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195371932.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society, Buddhism
This chapter argues that ritual needs to be given greater attention in the historiography of American Buddhism. The popularity of mizuko kuyō points to a significant turn toward appreciation of ...
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This chapter argues that ritual needs to be given greater attention in the historiography of American Buddhism. The popularity of mizuko kuyō points to a significant turn toward appreciation of ritual in convert Zen since the 1980s, as women have taken a greater role in leadership and Zen’s own success has led to a diversification of views. Furthermore, ritual has always existed to a larger extent than previous studies acknowledged, but it was partially obscured by uncritical acceptance of Zen practitioners’ descriptions of normative practice. Future studies should try to focus on neglected areas that may bring this wider range of practices to light; possible foci include places, material culture, bodies, and emotions, all of which have been insufficiently accounted for in previous research.Less
This chapter argues that ritual needs to be given greater attention in the historiography of American Buddhism. The popularity of mizuko kuyō points to a significant turn toward appreciation of ritual in convert Zen since the 1980s, as women have taken a greater role in leadership and Zen’s own success has led to a diversification of views. Furthermore, ritual has always existed to a larger extent than previous studies acknowledged, but it was partially obscured by uncritical acceptance of Zen practitioners’ descriptions of normative practice. Future studies should try to focus on neglected areas that may bring this wider range of practices to light; possible foci include places, material culture, bodies, and emotions, all of which have been insufficiently accounted for in previous research.
David L. McMahan
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195183276
- eISBN:
- 9780199870882
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195183276.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Buddhism
What many Americans and Europeans understand by “Buddhism” is actually a hybrid of a number of Buddhist traditions that have cross-fertilized with the dominant discourses of western modernity, ...
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What many Americans and Europeans understand by “Buddhism” is actually a hybrid of a number of Buddhist traditions that have cross-fertilized with the dominant discourses of western modernity, especially those rooted in Enlightenment rationalism, Romanticism, and Protestant Christianity. The popular western picture of Buddhism is neither unambiguously “there“ in ancient Buddhist texts and lived traditions nor merely a fantasy of an educated elite population in the West, an image with no corresponding object. It is, rather, an actual new form of Buddhism that is the result of a process of modernization, westernization, reinterpretation, image-making, revitalization, and reform that has been taking place not only in the West but also in Asian countries for over a century.Less
What many Americans and Europeans understand by “Buddhism” is actually a hybrid of a number of Buddhist traditions that have cross-fertilized with the dominant discourses of western modernity, especially those rooted in Enlightenment rationalism, Romanticism, and Protestant Christianity. The popular western picture of Buddhism is neither unambiguously “there“ in ancient Buddhist texts and lived traditions nor merely a fantasy of an educated elite population in the West, an image with no corresponding object. It is, rather, an actual new form of Buddhism that is the result of a process of modernization, westernization, reinterpretation, image-making, revitalization, and reform that has been taking place not only in the West but also in Asian countries for over a century.
Jeff Wilson
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195371932
- eISBN:
- 9780199870967
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195371932.003.0008
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society, Buddhism
The postscript reviews the arguments and evidence of the preceding chapters and calls for a more comprehensive approach to studying the Americanization of Buddhism that includes both multiple ...
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The postscript reviews the arguments and evidence of the preceding chapters and calls for a more comprehensive approach to studying the Americanization of Buddhism that includes both multiple Buddhist communities and the contributions of non-Buddhists. It also points out how rituals need not be performed in order to have effects: imagining, learning about, or discussing rituals can in some cases be as important and effective as actual performance.Less
The postscript reviews the arguments and evidence of the preceding chapters and calls for a more comprehensive approach to studying the Americanization of Buddhism that includes both multiple Buddhist communities and the contributions of non-Buddhists. It also points out how rituals need not be performed in order to have effects: imagining, learning about, or discussing rituals can in some cases be as important and effective as actual performance.
Jeff Wilson
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195371932
- eISBN:
- 9780199870967
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195371932.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society, Buddhism
Americans from a wide variety of backgrounds have increasingly been appropriating the Japanese Buddhist ritual mizuko kuyō, which this book uses as a window into the complexity of the process of ...
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Americans from a wide variety of backgrounds have increasingly been appropriating the Japanese Buddhist ritual mizuko kuyō, which this book uses as a window into the complexity of the process of adapting Buddhism to a new culture. In Japan, mizuko kuyō is used by women after abortion or miscarriage to placate the fetal spirit and offer it assistance in the afterlife. In America, for Japanese-American Buddhists it can be a marker of sectarian affiliation, a method of generating funds, and a way to serve the wishes of newer Japanese immigrants. For converts to Zen, mizuko kuyō helps women deal with pregnancy loss, moving the ritual from pacification of angry ghosts to healing the wounded self. It thus demonstrates the reorientation that rituals undergo in new Buddhist communities while simultaneously pointing out a new turn toward affirmative ritual in convert meditation centers. Meanwhile, mizuko kuyō provides fresh ammunition for both sides of the American cultural war over abortion: pro-life interpreters present it as evidence that abortion is universally traumatizing, while pro-choice interpreters use it as proof that religious rather than legal means can effectively deal with negative post-abortion feelings. Beyond the battle lines, ordinary women and men seek a way to bring the two sides together through mizuko kuyō, while other (non-Buddhist) women have begun to perform their own private mizuko kuyō rituals and seek to bring knowledge of the ritual to others suffering after miscarriage or abortion.Less
Americans from a wide variety of backgrounds have increasingly been appropriating the Japanese Buddhist ritual mizuko kuyō, which this book uses as a window into the complexity of the process of adapting Buddhism to a new culture. In Japan, mizuko kuyō is used by women after abortion or miscarriage to placate the fetal spirit and offer it assistance in the afterlife. In America, for Japanese-American Buddhists it can be a marker of sectarian affiliation, a method of generating funds, and a way to serve the wishes of newer Japanese immigrants. For converts to Zen, mizuko kuyō helps women deal with pregnancy loss, moving the ritual from pacification of angry ghosts to healing the wounded self. It thus demonstrates the reorientation that rituals undergo in new Buddhist communities while simultaneously pointing out a new turn toward affirmative ritual in convert meditation centers. Meanwhile, mizuko kuyō provides fresh ammunition for both sides of the American cultural war over abortion: pro-life interpreters present it as evidence that abortion is universally traumatizing, while pro-choice interpreters use it as proof that religious rather than legal means can effectively deal with negative post-abortion feelings. Beyond the battle lines, ordinary women and men seek a way to bring the two sides together through mizuko kuyō, while other (non-Buddhist) women have begun to perform their own private mizuko kuyō rituals and seek to bring knowledge of the ritual to others suffering after miscarriage or abortion.
Jeff Wilson
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807835456
- eISBN:
- 9781469601816
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807869970_wilson.5
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
This chapter lays out a basic approach to studying regionalism in American Buddhism. It first provides a brief historiography of Buddhism in America and explains why American Buddhist regionalism has ...
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This chapter lays out a basic approach to studying regionalism in American Buddhism. It first provides a brief historiography of Buddhism in America and explains why American Buddhist regionalism has been overlooked in American religious studies. This chapter suggests five modes of investigation to provide better understanding of the Buddhist regions of the United States: (1) regional distribution patterns within American Buddhism, (2) impact of regions on Buddhism, (3) Buddhist impact on regions, (4) regional differences within the same Buddhist lineage, and (5) difference between built environments.Less
This chapter lays out a basic approach to studying regionalism in American Buddhism. It first provides a brief historiography of Buddhism in America and explains why American Buddhist regionalism has been overlooked in American religious studies. This chapter suggests five modes of investigation to provide better understanding of the Buddhist regions of the United States: (1) regional distribution patterns within American Buddhism, (2) impact of regions on Buddhism, (3) Buddhist impact on regions, (4) regional differences within the same Buddhist lineage, and (5) difference between built environments.
Thomas A. Tweed
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199931903
- eISBN:
- 9780199345779
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199931903.003.0008
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Beginning in the late nineteenth century and intensifying between the 1940s and 1960s, a complex transcultural process allowed decontextualized Buddhist beliefs, practices, and artifacts to circulate ...
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Beginning in the late nineteenth century and intensifying between the 1940s and 1960s, a complex transcultural process allowed decontextualized Buddhist beliefs, practices, and artifacts to circulate widely among Americans, especially those who did not themselves identify with Buddhist traditions. After the “Zen boom” of the 1950s, Buddhism during the Vietnam Era became associated with conflict and violence. Yet Buddhism's Asian and American popularisers managed to break that representational link, and the tradition emerged as a tolerant spiritual alternative and an adaptable cultural implement. Liberated from the constraints of precedent and released from tradition's inertial force, Buddhism could become almost anything in the transnational flow of representations. A proper discussion of American pluralism needs to assess not only the number of followers a religion accumulates but also its cultural impact. By that metric, Buddhism's influence has been so great since 1945 that one may fairly talk about the “Buddhification of America.”Less
Beginning in the late nineteenth century and intensifying between the 1940s and 1960s, a complex transcultural process allowed decontextualized Buddhist beliefs, practices, and artifacts to circulate widely among Americans, especially those who did not themselves identify with Buddhist traditions. After the “Zen boom” of the 1950s, Buddhism during the Vietnam Era became associated with conflict and violence. Yet Buddhism's Asian and American popularisers managed to break that representational link, and the tradition emerged as a tolerant spiritual alternative and an adaptable cultural implement. Liberated from the constraints of precedent and released from tradition's inertial force, Buddhism could become almost anything in the transnational flow of representations. A proper discussion of American pluralism needs to assess not only the number of followers a religion accumulates but also its cultural impact. By that metric, Buddhism's influence has been so great since 1945 that one may fairly talk about the “Buddhification of America.”
Jeff Wilson
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807835456
- eISBN:
- 9781469601816
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807869970_wilson
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
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 ...
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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. This book argues that region is crucial to understanding American Buddhism. Through the lens of a multidenominational Buddhist temple in Richmond, Virginia, it 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, the author 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.Less
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. This book argues that region is crucial to understanding American Buddhism. Through the lens of a multidenominational Buddhist temple in Richmond, Virginia, it 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, the author 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.
Jeff Wilson
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807835456
- eISBN:
- 9781469601816
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807869970_wilson.11
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
This book argues that people in different parts of America experience Buddhism through lenses and circumstances supplied by the surrounding culture, and Buddhism impacts how those people navigate ...
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This book argues that people in different parts of America experience Buddhism through lenses and circumstances supplied by the surrounding culture, and Buddhism impacts how those people navigate their regional culture. Its themes of pluralism and regionalism calls for attention to place (body, artifact, room, building, neighborhood, region) and movement in the study of American Buddhism. In this conclusion, final thoughts on American Buddhist places are presented. It also provides additional details for how regionalism can be explored in American Buddhism, including possibilities for future research.Less
This book argues that people in different parts of America experience Buddhism through lenses and circumstances supplied by the surrounding culture, and Buddhism impacts how those people navigate their regional culture. Its themes of pluralism and regionalism calls for attention to place (body, artifact, room, building, neighborhood, region) and movement in the study of American Buddhism. In this conclusion, final thoughts on American Buddhist places are presented. It also provides additional details for how regionalism can be explored in American Buddhism, including possibilities for future research.
Jaime Kucinskas
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- November 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190881818
- eISBN:
- 9780190881849
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190881818.003.0002
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Movements and Social Change, Sociology of Religion
This chapter introduces the historical cultural antecedents to the contemplative movement, showing that mindfulness builds upon the rhetoric and logics of prior religious liberal and spiritual ...
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This chapter introduces the historical cultural antecedents to the contemplative movement, showing that mindfulness builds upon the rhetoric and logics of prior religious liberal and spiritual thought in the United States. Americans were exposed to Buddhism, and its emphasis on cultivating inner spiritual life through solitude and reflection, in the mid-nineteenth century from the Transcendentalist literature of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. In the late nineteenth century, the Theosophists and the World’s Parliament of Religions meetings brought additional attention to Buddhism, aligning it with science. Interest in Zen and solitary, reflective Buddhist practices surged in the mid-twentieth century based on the influence of D. T. Suzuki, Alan Watts, and the politicized literature of the Beats. These romanticized portrayals of Buddhism were then more widely popularized with the countercultural movements of the 1960s and 1970s. The contemplatives built upon the work of these prior streams of Buddhist-inspired American spirituality.Less
This chapter introduces the historical cultural antecedents to the contemplative movement, showing that mindfulness builds upon the rhetoric and logics of prior religious liberal and spiritual thought in the United States. Americans were exposed to Buddhism, and its emphasis on cultivating inner spiritual life through solitude and reflection, in the mid-nineteenth century from the Transcendentalist literature of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. In the late nineteenth century, the Theosophists and the World’s Parliament of Religions meetings brought additional attention to Buddhism, aligning it with science. Interest in Zen and solitary, reflective Buddhist practices surged in the mid-twentieth century based on the influence of D. T. Suzuki, Alan Watts, and the politicized literature of the Beats. These romanticized portrayals of Buddhism were then more widely popularized with the countercultural movements of the 1960s and 1970s. The contemplatives built upon the work of these prior streams of Buddhist-inspired American spirituality.
Anne M. Blankenship
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781469629209
- eISBN:
- 9781469629223
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469629209.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
Incarcerated Christians frequently thanked God for giving them the strength to endure the incarceration and developed a variety of faith communities to provide additional support. The focus of ...
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Incarcerated Christians frequently thanked God for giving them the strength to endure the incarceration and developed a variety of faith communities to provide additional support. The focus of Chapter Four turns away from church leaders to examine how lay (non-ordained) Christians experienced camp life. Buddhists joined Protestants and Catholics to organize interfaith memorial services for Nikkei soldiers killed in action, while pacifists and others resisted the military draft. This chapter expands the book’s focus to highlight Christian youth culture at a camp in Arizona and the hardships at Tule Lake, where incarcerees attacked Japanese Christians for cooperating with camp officials. The roots of Asian American theologies began growing in the camps in response to this rejection and suffering.Less
Incarcerated Christians frequently thanked God for giving them the strength to endure the incarceration and developed a variety of faith communities to provide additional support. The focus of Chapter Four turns away from church leaders to examine how lay (non-ordained) Christians experienced camp life. Buddhists joined Protestants and Catholics to organize interfaith memorial services for Nikkei soldiers killed in action, while pacifists and others resisted the military draft. This chapter expands the book’s focus to highlight Christian youth culture at a camp in Arizona and the hardships at Tule Lake, where incarcerees attacked Japanese Christians for cooperating with camp officials. The roots of Asian American theologies began growing in the camps in response to this rejection and suffering.
