Buddhism, Beauty, and Virtue

The chapter challenges hyperbolic claims about the centrality of appreciation of beauty to Buddhism. Within the texts, attitudes are more mixed, except for a form of 'inner beauty' - the beauty found in the expression of virtues or wisdom in forms of bodily comportment. Inner beauty is a stable presence throughout Buddhist history, practices, and art

The Faculty Notebook, October 2009

The Faculty Notebook is published periodically by the Office of the Provost at Gettysburg College to bring to the attention of the campus community accomplishments and activities of academic interest. Faculty are encouraged to submit materials for consideration for publication to the Associate Provost for Faculty Development. Copies of this publication are available at the Office of the Provost

Context and change in Japanese music

Although Japan is often portrayed as culturally and ethnically highly homogeneous, its music culture has long been extremely diverse, especially so with modernization and globalization. Thus we begin by problematizing the term ‘Japanese music’. We then aim to provide broad historical, cultural and theoretical contexts within which to understand the subsequent genre-specific chapters, by introducing a range of cross-cutting topics, issues and research perspectives - for example: Japan’s interactions with other cultures throughout history; sociocultural contexts of each genre, including issues of patronage, audiences, class and gender; social structures and mechanisms of transmission; music theory in Japan; aesthetic concepts; and research culture. We conclude with a view into the musical future, considering the impact of educational policies, globalization and so forth

The Buddha’s Voice: Ritual Sound And Sensory Experience In Medieval Chinese Religious Practice

This dissertation explores Buddhist chanting practices in mainly the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE), showing that they were more than just one part of ritual practice: chanting could also be a type of music, an educational tool, a means for manipulating the supernatural, and a cure and cause of illness. Previous studies of chanting practices in Chinese Buddhism have addressed histories of transmission, doctrinal approaches, and made efforts to preserve melodies through notation. However, they do not necessarily capture how individuals who engaged in chanting experienced this practice. Therefore this dissertation aims to investigate this experience through accounts found in hagiography, miracle tales, and other Buddhist materials. In studying chanting from this perspective, we can see how local and individual experiences, goals, and needs interacted with practices, and how these practices operated within Chinese Buddhist communities. Furthermore, we can understand how and when these understandings and practices were informed by scripture, and when they were not, through how individuals performed, listened to, and promoted them

On the market: Consumption and material culture in modern Chinese Buddhism

For many Chinese speakers in China and elsewhere, experiencing or connecting with matters of religion often includes mediation through or with material objects. Such mediation is readily accessible to larger and larger audiences and often occurs through the consumption of religious material goods, thanks also to media technologies and the Internet. In this article, the author seeks to complicate the notion that the production and consumption of novel Buddhist religious goods can be analyzed solely in terms of 'market theory.' While on the one hand the author shows that Buddhist technologies of salvation are historically associated with materiality, she also contends that the 'aura' of Buddhist-inspired modern religious goods - in the spirit of Walter Benjamin's essay 'On Some Motifs in Baudelaire' (1939) - is not so much effaced as it is reconfigured and transformed by technological mediations. © 2011 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

Charismatic Communications: The Intimate Publics of Chinese Buddhism

I argue here that, secularization and state control aside, there has been in recent years a definite resurgence of interest in Buddhist practice in China (Fisher, 2014; Tarocco 2011, 2017). While other have examined its vital role in the production of national modernity and the institutions of the state, my analysis primarily tracks the work Buddhism performs within the everyday realms of media and technology. In looking at how Chuanxi’s charisma is at works in the intimate connections between Buddhism and technology at Huiri Temple, I follow David Palmer definition of charisma as a “relationship based on the expectation of the extraordinary, which stimulates and empowers collective behaviour” (Palmer 2008: 70). Although the mediation of religion in China is nothing new, only recently is the relationship between religion and mass media being more thoroughly discussed (Travagnin 2017; Clart 2016; Tarocco 2017). Outside of China, several scholars have analysed contemporary environments characterized by networked forms of electronic and digital communication and of religion and the age of media (de Vries and Weber 2002), radio evangelism (Hoover 1988), religious video games (Campbell and Grieve 2014) to understand how religious practice shapes and is shaped by mass media. By examining the spheres of pious self-making and social imaginary that are opened up by Buddhist technoculture, I suggest that deep-rooted attitudes towards the circulation of knowledge and charisma inform the current recuperation of monastic ideals and the production of digital “dharma treasures” (fabao 法宝). These are key to establishing and maintaining local, trans-regional, and international networks of online and offline followers. As James Taylor has remarked for Thai Buddhism, new articulations of Chinese Buddhism are “significantly implicated in local-global historical and sociocultural contexts” (2015: 219)

Spirituality as a Process within the School Curriculum.

Spiritual education concerns the quality of our thinking about ourselves, our relationships, our sense of worth and identity, and our sense of well-being. All curriculum subjects can contribute to this search for meaning. Religious education and the act of worship can contribute but are in practice very problematic if dogma inhibits open reflection. No one tradition of spirituality should be promoted since spirituality is a process. The world faiths provide starting points, but life provides more. The human spirit may be finite or eternal; but we are concerned with the here and now and education should promote open qualitative questioning. * First published in 2003 in Prospero: A Journal of New Thinking for Education vol 9, no 1, pp.12-18. This version has been revised