Figures of Buddhist Modernity in Asia - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0824858549 ISBN 13: 9780824858544

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press, 2016

Synopsis

This book introduces contemporary Buddhists from across Asia and from various walks of life. Eschewing traditional hagiographies, the editors have collected sixty-six profiles of individuals who would be excluded from most Buddhist histories and ethnographies. In addition to monks and nuns, readers will encounter artists, psychologists, social workers, part-time priests, healers, and librarians as well as charlatans, hucksters, profiteers, and rabble-rousers―all whose lives reflect changes in modern Buddhism even as they themselves shape the course of these changes.

The editors and contributors are fundamentally concerned with how individual Buddhists make meaning and display this understanding to others. Some practitioners profiled look to the past, lamenting the transformations Buddhism has undergone in recent times, while others embrace these. Some have adopted a “new asceticism,” while others are eager to explore different religious traditions as they think about their own ways of being Buddhist. Arranging the profiles according to these themes―looking backward, forward, inward, and outward―reveals the value of studying individual Buddhists and their idiosyncratic religious backgrounds and attitudes, thus highlighting the diversity of approaches to the practice and study of Buddhism in Asia today. Students and teachers will welcome sections on further readings and additional tables of contents that organize the profiles thematically, as well as by tradition (Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana), region, and country.

About this title

About the Authors

Jeffrey Samuels is professor of religious studies at Western Kentucky University.

Justin Thomas McDaniel is professor of Buddhist studies and chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Mark Michael Rowe is associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies, McMaster University.

Jane E. Caple is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow at the University of Copenhagen.

Jane M. Ferguson is associate professor of anthropology and Southeast Asian history at the Australian National University.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0824858549
• ISBN 13: 9780824858544
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240
• Editor: Samuels Jeffrey, McDaniel Justin Thomas, Rowe Mark Michael