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

Buddhism and Modernity
3
2 The Spectrum of Tradition and Modernism
27
3 Buddhism and the Discourses of Modernity
61
4 Modernity and the Discourse of Scientific Buddhism
89
Art Spontaneity and the Wellsprings of Nature
117
6 A Brief History of Interdependence
149
7 Meditation and Modernity
183
8 Mindfulness Literature and the Affirmation of Ordinary Life
215
9 From Modern to Postmodern?
241
Notes
267
Bibliography
277
Index
295
Copyright

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A szerzőről (2008)

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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