The Making of Buddhist Modernism

Első borító
Oxford University Press, 2008. nov. 14. - 320 oldal
A great deal of Buddhist literature and scholarly writing about Buddhism of the past 150 years reflects, and indeed constructs, a historically unique modern Buddhism, even while purporting to represent ancient tradition, timeless teaching, or the "essentials" of Buddhism. This literature, Asian as well as Western, weaves together the strands of different traditions to create a novel hybrid that brings Buddhism into alignment with many of the ideologies and sensibilities of the post-Enlightenment West. In this book, David McMahan charts the development of this "Buddhist modernism." McMahan examines and analyzes a wide range of popular and scholarly writings produced by Buddhists around the globe. He focuses on ideological and imaginative encounters between Buddhism and modernity, for example in the realms of science, mythology, literature, art, psychology, and religious pluralism. He shows how certain themes cut across cultural and geographical contexts, and how this form of Buddhism has been created by multiple agents in a variety of times and places. His position is critical but empathetic: while he presents Buddhist modernism as a construction of numerous parties with varying interests, he does not reduce it to a mistake, a misrepresentation, or fabrication. Rather, he presents it as a complex historical process constituted by a variety of responses -- sometimes trivial, often profound -- to some of the most important concerns of the modern era.
 

Tartalomjegyzék

Note on Buddhist Terminology
The Spectrum of Tradition and Modernism
Buddhism and the Discourses of Modernity
Modernity and the Discourse of Scientific Buddhism
Art Spontaneity and
A Brief History of Interdependence
Meditation and Modernity
Mindfulness Literature and the Affirmation of Ordinary
From Modern to Postmodern?
Notes
Bibliography
Index

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David L. McMahan is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania. He is the author of Empty Vision: Metaphor and Visionary Imagery in Mahayana Buddhism and of articles on both Buddhism in South Asia and Buddhism and modernity.

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