Torkel Brekke
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- January 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780199252367
- eISBN:
- 9780191602047
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/019925236X.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Anagarika Dharmapala was the most important reformer of Buddhism in Sri Lanka in the 19th century. He espoused a Protestant Buddhism that blurred the traditional roles of monk and layman. It ...
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Anagarika Dharmapala was the most important reformer of Buddhism in Sri Lanka in the 19th century. He espoused a Protestant Buddhism that blurred the traditional roles of monk and layman. It advocated right of lay people to engage in the high soteriological religion, and to strive for nirvana. One of his foremost legacies is inventing the role of the Anagarika, the person between the order of monks and the laity.Less
Anagarika Dharmapala was the most important reformer of Buddhism in Sri Lanka in the 19th century. He espoused a Protestant Buddhism that blurred the traditional roles of monk and layman. It advocated right of lay people to engage in the high soteriological religion, and to strive for nirvana. One of his foremost legacies is inventing the role of the Anagarika, the person between the order of monks and the laity.
Torkel Brekke
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- January 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780199252367
- eISBN:
- 9780191602047
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/019925236X.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Anagarika Dharmapala applied his new ideas on Buddhism by attempting to take over Buddhist sites in India, particularly Bodh Gaya. Buddhists had a special historical connection with Eastern India ...
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Anagarika Dharmapala applied his new ideas on Buddhism by attempting to take over Buddhist sites in India, particularly Bodh Gaya. Buddhists had a special historical connection with Eastern India because this was where Buddha reached enlightenment and founded his religion. Dharmapala believed that the identity of Buddhist Sri Lanka was defined by its ties to the symbolic centre of their religion, which lay in the heart of India — the Bodh Gaya. His long struggle to gain control over Bodh Gaya was a struggle to define Buddhist identity for himself and the Sinhalese nation in relation to their symbolic centre.Less
Anagarika Dharmapala applied his new ideas on Buddhism by attempting to take over Buddhist sites in India, particularly Bodh Gaya. Buddhists had a special historical connection with Eastern India because this was where Buddha reached enlightenment and founded his religion. Dharmapala believed that the identity of Buddhist Sri Lanka was defined by its ties to the symbolic centre of their religion, which lay in the heart of India — the Bodh Gaya. His long struggle to gain control over Bodh Gaya was a struggle to define Buddhist identity for himself and the Sinhalese nation in relation to their symbolic centre.
Steven Kemper
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780226199078
- eISBN:
- 9780226199108
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226199108.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Buddhism
This book locates Anagarika Dharmapala in the context of a historical moment where nationalisms pulled people in one direction and universalisms in another. Most accounts of his life emphasize the ...
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This book locates Anagarika Dharmapala in the context of a historical moment where nationalisms pulled people in one direction and universalisms in another. Most accounts of his life emphasize the nationalist side, where he is portrayed as the man who revived Buddhism in the island, saved the Sinhala people from deracination, and invented a Buddhist modernity. The great majority of his adult life spent abroad and his feelings about home and exile are overlooked. The entrée to those self-understandings is the diaries and notebooks he maintained while traveling around the world several times and sojourning in Kolkata, London, and Colombo. Looking at Dharmapala’s life abroad does more than add a huge amount of material to what we know of his life. Drawing on 36 diaries and 50 odd notebooks provides a way to rethink Dharmapala’s life work, making older interpretations problematic. Instead of rationalizing behavior and making religion modern, Dharmapala sought to restore traditional institutions such as the Buddhist monkhood. He was much more interested in civilizing villagers than making Protestant Buddhists of them. The Buddhism that he himself practiced and explicated in his diaries and the Maha Bodhi was anything but Protestant, and influenced by both Theosophy and its appropriation of South Asian mysticism. On Kemper’s interpretation Dharmapala becomes less a social reformer and more a world renouncer, with implications for his role as the man said to have laicized the religion by elevating the role of the Buddhist laity and leading the monkhood into the public sphere.Less
This book locates Anagarika Dharmapala in the context of a historical moment where nationalisms pulled people in one direction and universalisms in another. Most accounts of his life emphasize the nationalist side, where he is portrayed as the man who revived Buddhism in the island, saved the Sinhala people from deracination, and invented a Buddhist modernity. The great majority of his adult life spent abroad and his feelings about home and exile are overlooked. The entrée to those self-understandings is the diaries and notebooks he maintained while traveling around the world several times and sojourning in Kolkata, London, and Colombo. Looking at Dharmapala’s life abroad does more than add a huge amount of material to what we know of his life. Drawing on 36 diaries and 50 odd notebooks provides a way to rethink Dharmapala’s life work, making older interpretations problematic. Instead of rationalizing behavior and making religion modern, Dharmapala sought to restore traditional institutions such as the Buddhist monkhood. He was much more interested in civilizing villagers than making Protestant Buddhists of them. The Buddhism that he himself practiced and explicated in his diaries and the Maha Bodhi was anything but Protestant, and influenced by both Theosophy and its appropriation of South Asian mysticism. On Kemper’s interpretation Dharmapala becomes less a social reformer and more a world renouncer, with implications for his role as the man said to have laicized the religion by elevating the role of the Buddhist laity and leading the monkhood into the public sphere.
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/9780195183276.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Buddhism
This chapter shows, with attention to the social, political, and polemical contexts of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the ways Buddhists and Buddhist sympathizers attempted to align Buddhism ...
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This chapter shows, with attention to the social, political, and polemical contexts of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the ways Buddhists and Buddhist sympathizers attempted to align Buddhism with scientific rationalism. A discourse of scientific Buddhism emerged in the context of two intertwined crises: the Victorian crisis of faith in the West and the crisis of colonialism and western hegemony in Asia. In Ceylon, Anagarika Dharmapala promoted the image of Buddhism as scientific to counter denigrations of Buddhism by colonialists and missionaries and to assert its superiority to Christianity. Paul Carus, who through science had lost his faith in traditional Christianity, presented Buddhism as a part of a triumphal vision of science that would eventually lead to a universal “religion of science.” Henry Steel Olcott saw Buddhism as representing an “occult science” aligned with Theosophy and spiritualism.Less
This chapter shows, with attention to the social, political, and polemical contexts of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the ways Buddhists and Buddhist sympathizers attempted to align Buddhism with scientific rationalism. A discourse of scientific Buddhism emerged in the context of two intertwined crises: the Victorian crisis of faith in the West and the crisis of colonialism and western hegemony in Asia. In Ceylon, Anagarika Dharmapala promoted the image of Buddhism as scientific to counter denigrations of Buddhism by colonialists and missionaries and to assert its superiority to Christianity. Paul Carus, who through science had lost his faith in traditional Christianity, presented Buddhism as a part of a triumphal vision of science that would eventually lead to a universal “religion of science.” Henry Steel Olcott saw Buddhism as representing an “occult science” aligned with Theosophy and spiritualism.
Alicia Turner
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780190073084
- eISBN:
- 9780190073114
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190073084.003.0010
- Subject:
- Religion, Buddhism
In late 1909, the Sinhalese Buddhist activist Anagarika Dharmapala hosted the Irish Buddhist monk U Dhammaloka on a controversial tour of Ceylon (Sri Lanka). This tour is well-documented from many ...
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In late 1909, the Sinhalese Buddhist activist Anagarika Dharmapala hosted the Irish Buddhist monk U Dhammaloka on a controversial tour of Ceylon (Sri Lanka). This tour is well-documented from many different perspectives: Dharmapala’s private diaries, his newspaper Sinhala Bauddhaya, the hostile colonial and missionary press, and transcriptions of Dhammaloka’s preaching. This chapter shows backstage tension between Dhammaloka and his hosts as they followed a punishing schedule of events drawing large audiences across Ceylon; conflict with Christians who wrote against the tour, attempted to disrupt it, and sought government intervention; and the actions of police and government. Dhammaloka’s abrupt departure from Ceylon appears as the culmination of these conflicts. The chapter offers a detailed insight into the day-to-day workings of contentious religious politics during the Buddhist revival.Less
In late 1909, the Sinhalese Buddhist activist Anagarika Dharmapala hosted the Irish Buddhist monk U Dhammaloka on a controversial tour of Ceylon (Sri Lanka). This tour is well-documented from many different perspectives: Dharmapala’s private diaries, his newspaper Sinhala Bauddhaya, the hostile colonial and missionary press, and transcriptions of Dhammaloka’s preaching. This chapter shows backstage tension between Dhammaloka and his hosts as they followed a punishing schedule of events drawing large audiences across Ceylon; conflict with Christians who wrote against the tour, attempted to disrupt it, and sought government intervention; and the actions of police and government. Dhammaloka’s abrupt departure from Ceylon appears as the culmination of these conflicts. The chapter offers a detailed insight into the day-to-day workings of contentious religious politics during the Buddhist revival.
Ira Helderman
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781469648521
- eISBN:
- 9781469648545
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469648521.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
This chapter describes clinicians’ filtering religion approaches to Buddhist traditions. Contemporary psychotherapists often express a prodigious enthusiasm about neuroscientific research purporting ...
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This chapter describes clinicians’ filtering religion approaches to Buddhist traditions. Contemporary psychotherapists often express a prodigious enthusiasm about neuroscientific research purporting to prove the healing potential of Buddhist practices. Here scientific experimentation is seen as filtering away the taint of the religious or as leaving only a religious essence that is compatible with science – a “filtered religion” akin to filtered coffee. The seeds of filtering religion approaches lie in the work of early psychologists of religion like William James and James Bisset Pratt who also sought to filter Buddhist teachings through the high-technology psychologies of their own day in a search for new therapeutic religious forms (epitomized by “mind-cure” and James’ “religion of healthy-mindedness”). Today, experimental research design is applied to Buddhist meditation and Christian petitionary prayer practices alike in order to validate their so-called secular biomedical use. The chapter thus concludes that therapists’ filtering religion approaches to Buddhist traditions destabilize religion/secular binaries even as they submit the religious to the scientific or biomedical.Less
This chapter describes clinicians’ filtering religion approaches to Buddhist traditions. Contemporary psychotherapists often express a prodigious enthusiasm about neuroscientific research purporting to prove the healing potential of Buddhist practices. Here scientific experimentation is seen as filtering away the taint of the religious or as leaving only a religious essence that is compatible with science – a “filtered religion” akin to filtered coffee. The seeds of filtering religion approaches lie in the work of early psychologists of religion like William James and James Bisset Pratt who also sought to filter Buddhist teachings through the high-technology psychologies of their own day in a search for new therapeutic religious forms (epitomized by “mind-cure” and James’ “religion of healthy-mindedness”). Today, experimental research design is applied to Buddhist meditation and Christian petitionary prayer practices alike in order to validate their so-called secular biomedical use. The chapter thus concludes that therapists’ filtering religion approaches to Buddhist traditions destabilize religion/secular binaries even as they submit the religious to the scientific or biomedical.