Buddhist Studies Research Articles

A Study on the Digital Literacy Skill, its Role and Impact among Faculty Members and Research Scholars in Pali and Buddhist Studies in Various Indian Universities

A Study on the Digital Literacy Skill, its Role and Impact among Faculty Members and Research Scholars in Pali and Buddhist Studies in Various Indian Universities

A Comparative Perspective of “Engaged Buddhism” and “Renjian Fojiao” (“Humanistic Buddhism”) in Chinese Speaking Discourse: Exclusivism, Inclusivism, or Pragmatism?

The two modern concepts, “Engaged Buddhism” and renjian fojiao 人間佛教, with the variety of its English translations (such as “Humanistic Buddhism”), were developed and discussed with and without reference to each other over several decades. This article raises the question of how “Engaged Buddhism” has been portrayed in the Chinese-speaking world. It therefore reflects on a hybrid conceptual history and distinguishes between “concept-unaffected” and “concept-affected” (“concept-affirming”, “concept-negating”, and “concept-corresponding”) positionings in the Buddhist world, as well as a “concept-distancing” and “concept-processing” scholarship of Buddhist studies. The concept of “Engaged Buddhism” has been rendered with various Chinese terms in mainland China and Taiwan, e.g., “rushi fojiao” 入世佛教 (Buddhism that Enters the World), “canyu fojiao” 參與佛教 (Participatory Buddhism), and “zuoyi fojiao” 左翼佛教 (Left-Wing Buddhism). As can be seen from a rich body of sources, its discussion among Chinese-speaking Buddhists and scholars increased over the past twenty years and has been strongly characterized by comparisons with “renjian fojiao”, which can lead to different currents, such as exclusivism, inclusivism, and pragmatism.

Wayward Distractions: Ornament, Emotion, Zombies and the Study of Buddhism in Thailand by Justin Thomas McDaniel. Singapore: NUS Press, 2021. 292 pages. Paperback, $36.00 SGD, ISBN: 978-9813251502.

Wayward Distractions: Ornament, Emotion, Zombies and the Study of Buddhism in Thailand by Justin Thomas McDaniel. Singapore: NUS Press, 2021. 292 pages. Paperback, $36.00 SGD, ISBN: 978-9813251502.

Digital Archives of Buddhist Cultural Heritage on the Eastern Silk Road: Status and Utilization in Dunhuang, Turfan, and Kucha

The advancement of digital humanities in the 21st century has significantly enhanced the importance of digital archives in Buddhist art research. The digitization of the extensive and geographically diverse Buddhist cultural heritage along the eastern Silk Road has greatly improved the efficiency and accessibility of scholarly research. This paper examines seminal digital archives initiatives pertaining to the region's Buddhist legacy.Notable examples analyzed in this study include the International Dunhuang Project (IDP); the Database of Medieval Chinese Texts, a collaborative effort between Belgium's Ghent University Centre for Buddhist Studies and Taiwan's Chung-Hwa Institute of Buddhist Studies; the Digital Silk Road projects at Japan's Tōyō Bunko and Ryukoku University; the Dunhuang Academy's Dunhuang Documents Database and Digital Dunhuang platform; and Germany's Turfan Archive and Buddhist Murals of Kucha Archive. These digital archives offer access to high-resolution images and rare materials, encompassing Buddhist scriptures, Dunhuang manuscripts, paintings, and sculptures.These digital archives are crucial for art historical research, contributing to the understanding of original contexts, meanings, and religious functions through the virtual reunification of dispersed artworks. Moreover, these digital archives transcend time and space constraints, facilitating comprehensive research, aiding in cultural heritage preservation, and increasing public accessibility. As these digital repositories continue to expand and interconnect, they are poised to deepen our understanding of Silk Road Buddhist art, paving the way for innovative research approaches and promoting international scholarly cooperation.

Application of E-textual research in Chinese Buddhist studies

This article attempts to introduce the emerging research method of E-textual research into the study of Chinese Buddhism. By outlining the origin and significance of E-textual research, it explores the potential of this endeavour. The application of E-textual research in the field of Buddhism is discussed to clarify its scope and operational procedures. The article also addresses the limitations of E-textual research, stemming from its inherent constraints and the impact of other emerging technologies. E-textual research is not merely a passing trend but offers further avenues for exploration, representing a novel approach for Buddhist studies to engage with new materials and questions in the digital age.Contribution: This article introduces the emerging research method of E-textual research into the study of Chinese Buddhism, outlining its background, operational procedures, existing limitations and future prospects. E-textual research is presented as a new method for addressing new materials and questions in the digital age.

‘Bodhisattva Bodies’: Early Twentieth Century Indian Influences on Modern Japanese Buddhist Art

The first decade of the twentieth century marked a turning point for Japanese Buddhism. With the introduction of Western academia, Buddhist scholars began to uncover the history of Buddhism, and through their efforts, they discovered India as the birthplace of Buddhism. As India began to grow in importance for Japanese Buddhist circles, one unexpected area to receive the most influence was Japanese Buddhist art, especially in the representation of human figures. Some artists began to insert Indian female figures into their art, not only to add a sense of exoticism but also to experiment with novel iconographies that might modernize Buddhist art. One example included the combination of Indian and Japanese female traits to create a culturally fluid figure that highlighted the cultural connection between Japan and India. Other artists were more attracted to “Indianizing” the Buddha in paintings to create more historically authentic art, drawing references from both Indian art and observations of local people. In this paper, I highlight how developments in Buddhist studies in Japan led to a re-establishment of Indo–Japanese relationships. Furthermore, I examine how the attraction towards India for Japanese artists motivated them to travel abroad and seek inspiration to modernize Buddhist art in Japan.

Analysis of lecturers’ role in forming classroom interaction among students: A case study at Smaratungga Buddhist Study College

The importance of classroom interaction in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) instruction is occasionally lost on educators. The interaction in the classroom is crucial to assimilating and embracing the target language. As a result of successful information transfer from the teacher to the students, good contact can lead to an increase in students' language acquisition. Because the focus of the classroom interaction study is on how interlocutors make meaning of one another's contributions, the findings can be used as a diagnostic tool to identify issues with discourse management and crucial occurrences that learners confront. Researchers used qualitative methods, including discourse analysis and case studies. Smaratungga Buddhist College Study College was conducted this investigation. The researchers anticipate that learners will be motivated and inspired by the interactional situation. This study focuses on how the teacher creates interaction in the classroom. The success of all outcomes depends on how well students interact. Researchers agree with their actions while they are interacting with the teacher or one another.

"Perhaps I'm Not a Global Citizen but a Global Listener Now": The Ethics of Study Abroad in Buddhist Spaces

The study of global Buddhism through a study abroad encounter presents invaluable opportunities for teachers and students at liberal arts institutions to contemplate the conundrum of global citizenship, a standard aim of liberal education in North America. When studying abroad, students become viscerally aware of their own positionality, which is reflected back to them constantly as they move through the social and cultural landscapes of Buddhist Asia. This reflection leaves them eager to raise, to the level of critical thinking, what is quite literally an embodied experience of difference and privilege. The essay connects the field of Buddhist studies to a larger conversation in the field of global education, arguing that Buddhist studies travel courses must interrogate concepts of global citizenship, address the legacies of colonialism, and teach the principles of ethical travel, in addition to introducing students to the living traditions of global Buddhism.

The Contents Are the Vessel: Snod bcud Beyond Nature

Reflecting on the implications of Dipesh Chakrabarty's "The Climate of History" for a critical Buddhist Studies of/for the Anthropocene, this article introduces a seven-hundred-years-old reflection among Inner Asian Buddhist scholastics about the perspectival tangle of worlds and beings. Rooted in canonical Indian Abhidharma literature and then the Tibetan Pakpa Chökyi Lodrö's didactic compositions meant for the princelings of the 13th century Mongolian Empire, Tibetan and Mongolian authors have long considered the ontological and epistemic nature of environments, beings, and perceiving minds in relation. Tracing an intellectual history leading into the Mongolian revolutionary period and Tibetan refugee diaspora in the twentieth century, this article shows that Inner Asian Buddhist have never been burdened by the tyranny of Nature and Culture, whose conceptual blurring in the Anthropocene Chakrabarty cites as imperiling the Humanities. Let the Humanities, as such, die. Finding resonances with earlier perspectival constructions of nature in the work of Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th century father of ecological studies, as well as critiques of nature/nurture in body and disability studies, this article argues for using Inner Asian perspectives as new methodological resources in the ruins of liberal humanism and the normative human sciences.

The History of the Myeongjin School (1906–1910): A Critical Examination of Korean Buddhism’s First Modern Educational Institution within the Pre-Colonial Context

During the operation of the Myeongjin School, it not only employed many leading Buddhist progressives, but graduated key Buddhist reformers. Overcoming conservative opposition within the Korean Buddhist community, during its brief operation the Myeongjin School would open dozens of branches at temples throughout Korea, prompting a proliferating modern education throughout its Buddhist community. Over the century, the institute founded as the Myeongjin School suffered repeated closures during Korea’s Japanese Annexation only to emerge from the Korean War as Dongguk University Seoul. As Korea’s oldest and largest Buddhist university, Dongguk has produced over 350,000 graduates and, despite transitioning to a more secular approach to education, it remains a leading center for monastic education, Buddhist studies, and intellectual culture. This article examines, in detail, the origins, founding, and operation of the Myeongjin School within the dynamic political and religious context of Korea’s early modern period, in addition to the school’s impact, subsequent history, and legacy.

Between Wine and Tea: A Discussion Based on Master Taixu’s Use of Dual Imagery

The imagery of wine and tea is important in classical and modern Chinese poetry, with an intricate relationship between the two especially evident in the work of Taixu 太虛 (1890–1947), a prominent poet–monk in 20th-century China. Taixu’s attitude toward wine—a drink that is deeply rooted in Chinese culture—evolves significantly over time, from initial approval to eventual condemnation due to its detrimental effects on both personal health and society. Nevertheless, it continues to feature prominently in his poetry. The same is true of tea, which Taixu often uses to evoke either Buddhist study or his own healthy lifestyle. This article explores this and other complex meanings in Taixu’s poems, such as his association of wine with knights and tea with hermits. It also discusses how he achieves a delicate balance between the two beverages, sometimes employing both types of imagery in a single poem—a literary innovation that helped to establish his reputation as a central figure in modern Chinese poetry.

The “Kammatthan Buddhist Tradition” of Mainland Southeast Asia: Where Do We Stand?

This review article explores the distinctive Tai–Khmer Buddhist tradition of meditation, so-called kammaṭṭhān(a) or yogāvacar(a) tradition in recent literature, initially identified by T.W. Rhys Davids in the late 19th century. French scholars like F. Bizot and British scholar K. Crosby have continued to study this tradition, revealing its unique practices and vernacular literature in mainland Southeast Asia. Crosby’s recent work, Esoteric Theravada: The Story of the Forgotten Meditation Tradition of Southeast Asia (2020), is critically examined in this study. The analysis assesses her new findings, discusses her sources, and offers reflections to enhance understanding within contemporary Buddhist studies.

Comparative Study on Shimwon’s Comparative Buddhist Studies: Via N. Luhmann

Comparative Study on Shimwon’s Comparative Buddhist Studies: Via N. Luhmann

The Dichotomy of Ekāyana in the Satipaṭṭhānasutta: Inclusive or Exclusive Meaning

This paper presents the ambiguity of the term ekāyana in the Satipaṭṭhānasutta in the light of inclusivism and exclusivism perspectives. Ekāyana is a familiar term in Buddhist Studies and Satipaṭṭhānasutta is a well well-known text in the Theravada insight meditation cycle. Ekāyana can be rendered in various ways according to the subjectivity and interpretation of each translator; thus, the term is ambiguous. This paper highlights the problem of Buddhist translation studies through analytical studies on several translations of the term. According to comparative analytical studies on different translations of ekāyana in the Satipaṭṭhānasutta, the researcher finds that interpretivism in translation is inevitable because finding the real meaning of a Buddhist term is an impossible task. Understandably, a translator of Buddhist texts imposes his interpretations when translating from ancient times until the present.

Local Cure, Global Chant: Performing Theravadic Awakening in the Footsteps of the Ledi Sayadaw

Abstract This article takes as its starting point a repertoire of protective texts and practices articulated as ritual therapeutics in the early twentieth century by the well-known Burmese scholar-monk, the Ledi Sayadaw. Through an exploration of meditation-practice, meditation-teaching, and meditation-performance contexts in postcolonial Burma and India, I demonstrate the ways in which such texts and practices were adapted and refigured within the teaching models of two important twentieth-century Vipassanā meditation masters, Sayagyi U Ba Khin and S. N. Goenka. I argue that these protective texts and practices are constitutive aspects of the meditation modalities developed by these two teachers. I conclude with an exploration of the history of the Black American theologian and student of U Ba Khin, Leon E. Wright. In reflecting on Wright’s case, I consider the ways in which modern scholarly practices within Buddhist (modernism) studies continue to participate in the erasure of historically marginalized worlds and persons.

Buddhist Studies in the United States: New Turns and Future Directions

Buddhist Studies in the United States: New Turns and Future Directions

Curators of Global Buddhism: A Critical Genealogy and Decolonial Reading of Contemporary Curatorial Practices in Buddhist Studies

Abstract This article offers the first critical genealogy of scholarship on the category of “global Buddhism” and its related literature. The category was first theorized around the turn of the millennium and has since been used in multiple publications, yet in all this scholarship, there is no clear definition, classification, or critical evaluation of the term. This article, therefore, details the different histories, taxonomies, and examples associated with global Buddhism, the relationship between power and knowledge in such representations, and clarifies what, if anything, any of this has to do with the category of “religion,” a question whose critical dimensions have been ignored by scholars on the topic thus far. Since the category rose to prominence alongside a series of others like “Buddhist Modernism,” “postmodern Buddhism,” and “global religion,” the article also draws attention to the curatorial practices that inform the academic study of Buddhism and religion and critiques the remnants of colonialism, orientalism, and universalism still operative in late capitalist scholarship. Theoretically, the article is informed by critical theory from the study of religion and Decolonial thought. Overall, it suggests deep ties between global Buddhism and what Anibal Quijano calls the coloniality of power but also suggests critical ways to employ the category going forward.

Hubungan antara Organisasi BEM dengan perilaku Pro-Sosial Mahasiswa STIAB Smaratungga

Membership and active involvement in BEM provides students with the opportunity to grow their leadership talents, supervise teams, and oversee ventures that benefit students and the surrounding campus community. In addition, BEM plays a role in supporting a code of ethics, integrity, and responsibility in its members, thereby shaping student behavior in a way that is achieved. This investigation uses quantitative techniques, using a correlational research design, to ascertain and examine the relationship between the BEM organizational entity and students' prosocial attitudes. at STIAB Smaratungga. The results obtained from data analysis reveal an affirmative correlation between BEM membership and students' prosocial behavior, with the regression equation strengthening this relationship. Therefore, these findings strengthen the idea that involvement in BEM has the capacity to shape students' prosocial behavior at the Smaratungga College of Buddhist Studies (STIAB), which in turn can have a beneficial influence on the campus environment and society in general.

Life Cycle Rites in Worldview System of Buryat People (Material from Archive of S. P. Baldaev)

The significance of this study lies in the necessity of conducting a scientific analysis of folklore and ethnographic materials collected by one of the first folklorists in ethnic Buryatia, S. P. Baldaev. The analysis was carried out on texts recorded in the Transbaikal and Pre-Baikal regions, which relate to the rituals of the Buryat life cycle, including wedding rituals, childbirth rituals, and initiation rituals. These rituals had a fundamental influence on the formation of the worldview of traditional Buryat society. It is emphasized that the life cycle rituals clearly differentiated gender and age responsibilities and regulated interpersonal relationships within the family. Folklore and ethnographic data preserved in the Center for Eastern Manuscripts and Xylographs of the Institute of Mongolian Studies, Buddhist Studies, and Tibetology of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences are introduced into scientific circulation. The results of the study will contribute to enriching the Buryat understanding of the world order with new facts and historical materials, which are relevant both for academic science and for contemporary society, which has a demand for the revival of traditional values.

Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS Buddhist studies grants

Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS Buddhist studies grants