Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Western Buddhism'
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1
Eddy, Glenys. "Western Buddhist experience the journey from encounter to committment in two forms of western Buddhism /." Connect to full text, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/2227.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sydney, 2007.Title from title screen (viewed 26 March 2008). Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Dept. of Studies in Religion, Faculty of Arts. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print form.
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Eddy, Glenys. "Western Buddhist Experience: The Journey From Encounter to Commitment in Two Forms of Western Buddhism." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/2227.
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This thesis explores the nature of the socialization and commitment process in the Western Buddhist context, by investigating the experiences of practitioners affiliated with two Buddhist Centres: the Theravadin Blue Mountains Insight Meditation Centre and the Gelugpa Tibetan Vajrayana Institute. Commitment by participants is based on the recognition that, through the application of the beliefs and practices of the new religion, self-transformation has occurred. It follows a process of religious experimentation in which the claims of a religious reality are experientially validated against inner understandings and convictions, which themselves become clearer as a result of experimental participation in religious activity. Functionally, the adopted worldview is seen to frame personal experience in a manner that renders it more meaningful. Meditative experience and its interpretation according to doctrine must be applicable to the improvement of the quality of lived experience. It must be relevant to current living, and ethically sustainable. Substantively, commitment is conditional upon accepting and succesfully employing: the three marks of samsaric existence, duhkha, anitya and anatman (Skt) as an interpretive framework for lived reality. In this the three groups of the Eight-fold Path, sila/ethics, samadhi/concentration, and prajna/wisdom provide a strategy for negotiating lived experience in the light of meditation techniques, specific to each Buddhist orientation, by which to apply doctrinal principles in one’s own transformation. Two theoretical approaches are found to have explanatory power for understanding the stages of intensifying interaction that lead to commitment in both Western Buddhist contexts. Lofland and Skonovd’s Experimental Motif models the method of entry into and exploration of a Buddhist Centre’s shared reality. Data from participant observation and interview demonstrates this approach to be facilitated by the organizational and teaching activities of the two Western Buddhist Centres, and to be taken by the participants who eventually become adherents. Individuals take an actively experimental attitude toward the new group’s activities, withholding judgment while testing the group’s doctrinal position, practices, and expected experiential outcomes against their own values and life experience. In an environment of minimal social pressure, transformation of belief is gradual over a period of from months to years. Deeper understanding of the nature of the commitment process is provided by viewing it in terms of religious resocialization, involving the reframing of one’s understanding of reality and sense-of-self within a new worldview. The transition from seekerhood to commitment occurs through a process of socialization, the stages of which are found to be engagement and apprehension, comprehension, and commitment. Apprehension is the understanding of core Buddhist notions. Comprehension occurs through learning how various aspects of the worldview form a coherent meaning-system, and through application of the Buddhist principles to the improvement of one’s own life circumstances. It necessitates understanding of the fundamental relationships between doctrine, practice, and experience. Commitment to the group’s outlook and objectives occurs when these are adopted as one’s orientation to reality, and as one’s strategy for negotiating a lived experience that is both efficacious and ethically sustainable. It is also maintained that sustained commitment is conditional upon continuing validation of that experience.
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Eddy, Glenys. "Western Buddhist Experience: The Journey From Encounter to Commitment in Two Forms of Western Buddhism." Arts, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/2227.
Full textAbstract:
Doctor of PhilosophyThis thesis explores the nature of the socialization and commitment process in the Western Buddhist context, by investigating the experiences of practitioners affiliated with two Buddhist Centres: the Theravadin Blue Mountains Insight Meditation Centre and the Gelugpa Tibetan Vajrayana Institute. Commitment by participants is based on the recognition that, through the application of the beliefs and practices of the new religion, self-transformation has occurred. It follows a process of religious experimentation in which the claims of a religious reality are experientially validated against inner understandings and convictions, which themselves become clearer as a result of experimental participation in religious activity. Functionally, the adopted worldview is seen to frame personal experience in a manner that renders it more meaningful. Meditative experience and its interpretation according to doctrine must be applicable to the improvement of the quality of lived experience. It must be relevant to current living, and ethically sustainable. Substantively, commitment is conditional upon accepting and succesfully employing: the three marks of samsaric existence, duhkha, anitya and anatman (Skt) as an interpretive framework for lived reality. In this the three groups of the Eight-fold Path, sila/ethics, samadhi/concentration, and prajna/wisdom provide a strategy for negotiating lived experience in the light of meditation techniques, specific to each Buddhist orientation, by which to apply doctrinal principles in one’s own transformation. Two theoretical approaches are found to have explanatory power for understanding the stages of intensifying interaction that lead to commitment in both Western Buddhist contexts. Lofland and Skonovd’s Experimental Motif models the method of entry into and exploration of a Buddhist Centre’s shared reality. Data from participant observation and interview demonstrates this approach to be facilitated by the organizational and teaching activities of the two Western Buddhist Centres, and to be taken by the participants who eventually become adherents. Individuals take an actively experimental attitude toward the new group’s activities, withholding judgment while testing the group’s doctrinal position, practices, and expected experiential outcomes against their own values and life experience. In an environment of minimal social pressure, transformation of belief is gradual over a period of from months to years. Deeper understanding of the nature of the commitment process is provided by viewing it in terms of religious resocialization, involving the reframing of one’s understanding of reality and sense-of-self within a new worldview. The transition from seekerhood to commitment occurs through a process of socialization, the stages of which are found to be engagement and apprehension, comprehension, and commitment. Apprehension is the understanding of core Buddhist notions. Comprehension occurs through learning how various aspects of the worldview form a coherent meaning-system, and through application of the Buddhist principles to the improvement of one’s own life circumstances. It necessitates understanding of the fundamental relationships between doctrine, practice, and experience. Commitment to the group’s outlook and objectives occurs when these are adopted as one’s orientation to reality, and as one’s strategy for negotiating a lived experience that is both efficacious and ethically sustainable. It is also maintained that sustained commitment is conditional upon continuing validation of that experience.
4
Kotas, Frederic John. "Ojoden : accounts of rebirth in the pure land /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 1987. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/11074.
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Henry, Philip Michael. "Socially engaged Buddhism in the UK : adaptation and development within Western Buddhism." Thesis, University of Liverpool, 2008. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.504227.
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Socially Engaged Buddhism (SEB) in the UK forms part of a diverse and complex Buddhist picture. Concerned with developing Buddhist solutions to social, political and ecological problems it had its genesis in the movements against nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War in the 1960s. It holds with the notion of engagement in caring and service, in social and environmental protest and analysis, in non-violence as a creative way of overcoming conflicts, and in `right livelihood' and other initiatives which prefigure a society of the future. Engaged Buddhism has transformed the soteriological emphasis of more traditional forms of Buddhist thought to programs of social, political, and economic transformation. The spiritual emphasis on Buddhist practices such as meditation continues to be at the heart of many forms of engaged Buddhism, but, to apply a term Evelyn Underhill coined many years ago in her study of mysticism, it is a "practical spirituality, " one in which the transformation of society takes equal precedence with the transformation of the individual. Both textual and anthropological studies of Buddhism, have often presented it as stereotypically 'other-worldly' (Weber 1958/62), lacking in social engagement. This study adopts an inductive investigation that will test empirically the `this-worldly', `other-worldly' dichotomy, through the relationship of Buddhists to their social settings. This implies a continuity versus discontinuity debate at stake in this discussion, suggesting the possibility of a continuous (traditional) view, which asserts `all Buddhism is engaged' (Nhat Hanh 1987), or that SEB is in some sense `a new phenomenon' (Queen, 2000: 1) and thereby is a break with tradition. The lack of empirical scholarly research, however,h as left only the voices of academics talking to each other within the framework of the debate. This study sets out to remedy that situation, by presenting an empirically based extensive case study analysis and survey of five New Buddhist organisations, who are socially engaged in a variety of ways. This thesis aims to locate Socially Engaged Buddhism in the UK and place it within an emerging `Western Buddhism' examining its adaptation and development and discerning the significance and impact of SEB on the British Buddhist landscape in order to characterise the phenomenon and its relationships to the wider British Buddhist world, and academic discourse
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au, Aung Myint@correctiveservices wa gov, and Aung Myint. "Theravada Treatment and Psychotherapy: An Ecological Integration of Buddhist Tripartite Practice and Western Rational Analysis." Murdoch University, 2007. http://wwwlib.murdoch.edu.au/adt/browse/view/adt-MU20071130.121741.
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An assertion that psychotherapy is an independent science and a self-authority on human mind and behaviour has uprooted its connection with philosophy and religion. In practice, the scientist-practitioner model of psychotherapy, a seemingly dualistic model, prefers determinism of science to free will of choice in humans.
In particular, the model does not see reason and emotion as co-conditioning causes of human behaviour and suffering within the interdependent aggregates of self, other, and environment. Instead, it argues for wrong reasoning as the cause of emotional suffering.
In Western thought, such narrative began at the arrival of scripted language and abstract thought in Greek antiquity that has led psychotherapy to think ignorantly that emotions are un-reasonable therefore they are irrational. Only rational thinking can effectively remove un-reasonable emotions.
This belief creates confusion between rational theory and rational method of studying change in emotion because of the belief that science cannot objectively measure emotions. As a result, rational epistemologies that are ignorant of moral and metaphysical issues in human experience have multiplied. These epistemologies not only construct an unchanging rational identity, but also uphold the status of permanent self-authority.
Fortunately, recent developmental psychology and cognitive neuroscience research have quashed such ideas of permanent self-identity and authority.
Buddhist theory of Interdependent Arising and Conditional Relations sees such identity and authority as arisen together with deluded emotional desires of greed and hatred.
These desires co-condition interdependent states of personal feeling and perception (metaphysics), conceptual thinking and consciousness (epistemology) and formation of (moral) emotion and action within the context of self other-environment matrix. Moral choices particularly highlight the intentional or the Aristotelian final cause of action derived from healthy desires by valued meaning makings and interpretations.
Theravada formulation aims to end unhealthy desires and develop the healthy ones within the matrix including the client-clinician-therapeutic environment contexts.
Theravada treatment guides a tripartite approach of practicing empathic ethics, penetrating focus and reflective understanding, which integrates ecologically with Western rational analysis. It also allows scientific method of studying change in emotion by applying the theory of defective desires.
In addition, interdependent dimensions of thinking and feeling understood from Theravada perspective present a framework for developing theory and treatment of self disorders.
Thus, Theravada treatment not only allows scientific method of studying change in emotion and provides an interdependent theory and treatment but also ecologically integrates with Western rational analysis. Moreover, Theravada approach offers an open framework for further development of theoretical and treatment models of psychopathology classified under Western nomenclature.
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Smith, Sharon Elizabeth. "Buddhism, diversity and 'race' : multiculturalism and Western convert Buddhist movements in East London : a qualitative study." Thesis, Goldsmiths College (University of London), 2008. http://research.gold.ac.uk/2553/.
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This study considers the development of convert Buddhism in multicultural environments. Its focus is on the encounters of people of colour (defined for the purposes of this study as people of African, Asian and Caribbean descent) with Western convert Buddhist movements, which tend to be predominantly white and middle-class. The study uses an ethnographic case study approach informed by feminist epistemologies. The case-studies are of two of the largest Western convert Buddhist movements in the UK – the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (FWBO) and Soka Gakkai International-UK (SGI-UK) – and focus on their branches in the multicultural inner-city location of East London. The findings suggest that most Buddhists of colour in these movements come from the second generation of the diaspora. For the FWBO, there is an apparently hegemonic discourse of middle-class whiteness that people of colour and working class members of this movement have to negotiate as part of their involvement. In contrast, for SGI-UK, the ethos is one of a moral cosmopolitanism that encourages intercultural dialogue thus facilitating the involvement of a considerably more multicultural and international following. People of colour find that their practices of the techniques of the self provided by each movement enable them to feel more empowered in relation to their quotidian experience of racisms and racialisation, as well as encouraging them in a more anti-essentialist approach to identity that sees it as fluid and contingent. To date, there has been little discussion of how Western Buddhism is developing in multiethnic and multicultural contexts, even though the West has long been a space of significant ethnic and cultural diversity arising largely from processes of colonialism and imperialism. This study therefore develops a new line of enquiry for consideration in studies seeking to illuminate the issue of how Buddhism is being translated in the West.
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Moran, Peter Kevin. "Buddhism observed : western travelers, Tibetan exiles, and the culture of Dharma in Kathmandu /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/6522.
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Sonam, Tenzin, and Tenzin Sonam. "Buddhism at Crossroads: A Case Study of Six Tibetan Buddhist Monks Navigating the Intersection of Buddhist Theology and Western Science." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/624305.
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Recent effort to teach Western science in the Tibetan Buddhist monasteries has drawn interest both within and outside the quarters of these monasteries. This novel and historic move of bringing Western science in a traditional monastic community began around year 2000 at the behest of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism. Despite the novelty of this effort, the literature in science education about learners from non-Western communities suggests various "cognitive conflicts" experienced by these non-Western learners due to fundamental difference in the worldview of the two knowledge traditions. Hence, in this research focuses on how six Tibetan Buddhist monks were situating/reconciling the scientific concepts like the theory of evolution into their traditional Buddhist worldview. The monks who participated in this study were engaged in a further study science at a university in the U.S. for two years. Using case study approach, the participants were interviewed individually and in groups over the two-year period.
The findings revealed that although the monks scored highly on their acceptance of evolution on the Measurement of Acceptance of Theory of Evolution (MATE) survey, however in the follow-up individual and focus group interviews, certain conflicts as well as agreement between the theory of evolution and their Buddhist beliefs were revealed. The monks experienced conflicts over concepts within evolution such as common ancestry, human evolution, and origin of life, and in reconciling the Buddhist and scientific notion of life. The conflicts were analyzed using the theory of collateral learning and was found that the monks engaged in different kinds of collateral learning, which is the degree of interaction and resolution of conflicting schemas. The different collateral learning of the monks was correlated to the concepts within evolution and has no correlation to the monks’ years in secular school, science learning or their proficiency of English language.
This study has indicted that the Tibetan Buddhist monks also experience certain cognitive conflict when situating Western scientific concepts into their Buddhist worldview as suggested by research of science learners from other non-Western societies. By explicating how the monks make sense of scientific theories like the theory of evolution as an exemplar, I hope to inform the current effort to establish science education in the monastery to develop curricula that would result in meaningful science teaching and learning, and also sensitive to needs and the cultural survival of the monastics.
10
Rees, Gethin Powell. "Buddhism and donation : rock-cut monasteries of the Western Ghats." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2011. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/252222.
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Restrepo, Mariana. "Transmission, Legitimation, and Adaptation: A Study of Western Lamas in the Construction of ‘American Tibetan Buddhism’." FIU Digital Commons, 2013. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/822.
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This thesis presents a study of the role of western lamas within Tibetan Buddhism in America, arguing that the role of the lama is as an influential and central aspect in the development and transformation of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition in the west. This thesis argues how western lamas holding a position of authority act as a catalyst of change within their group and in the overall process of change and adaptation of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition in America, creating what may become ‘American Tibetan Buddhism.’ Three relevant areas regarding the role of the lama within the transforming tradition are identified: 1) the basis of authority of the lama, or how authority is obtained; 2) the use of such authority as a tool for change; and 3) transmission of the teachings and lineage.
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Bubna-Litic, David C. "Opening a dialogical space between Buddhism and economics the relationship between insight and action /." View thesis, 2007. http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/39749.
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Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Western Sydney, 2007.A thesis submitted to the University of Western Sydney, College of Arts, School of Education, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Includes bibliographical references.
13
Myint, Aung. "Theravada treatment and psychotherapy: an ecological integration of Buddhist tripartite practice and Western rational analysis." Thesis, Myint, Aung (2007) Theravada treatment and psychotherapy: an ecological integration of Buddhist tripartite practice and Western rational analysis. PhD thesis, Murdoch University, 2007. https://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/218/.
Full textAbstract:
An assertion that psychotherapy is an independent science and a self-authority on human mind and behaviour has uprooted its connection with philosophy and religion. In practice, the scientist-practitioner model of psychotherapy, a seemingly dualistic model, prefers determinism of science to free will of choice in humans.
In particular, the model does not see reason and emotion as co-conditioning causes of human behaviour and suffering within the interdependent aggregates of self, other, and environment. Instead, it argues for wrong reasoning as the cause of emotional suffering.
In Western thought, such narrative began at the arrival of scripted language and abstract thought in Greek antiquity that has led psychotherapy to think ignorantly that emotions are un-reasonable therefore they are irrational. Only rational thinking can effectively remove un-reasonable emotions.
This belief creates confusion between rational theory and rational method of studying change in emotion because of the belief that science cannot objectively measure emotions. As a result, rational epistemologies that are ignorant of moral and metaphysical issues in human experience have multiplied. These epistemologies not only construct an unchanging rational identity, but also uphold the status of permanent self-authority.
Fortunately, recent developmental psychology and cognitive neuroscience research have quashed such ideas of permanent self-identity and authority.
Buddhist theory of Interdependent Arising and Conditional Relations sees such identity and authority as arisen together with deluded emotional desires of greed and hatred.
These desires co-condition interdependent states of personal feeling and perception (metaphysics), conceptual thinking and consciousness (epistemology) and formation of (moral) emotion and action within the context of self-other-environment matrix. Moral choices particularly highlight the intentional or the Aristotelian final cause of action derived from healthy desires by valued meaning makings and interpretations.
Theravada formulation aims to end unhealthy desires and develop the healthy ones within the matrix including the client-clinician-therapeutic environment contexts.
Theravada treatment guides a tripartite approach of practicing empathic ethics, penetrating focus and reflective understanding, which integrates ecologically with Western rational analysis. It also allows scientific method of studying change in emotion by applying the theory of defective desires.
In addition, interdependent dimensions of thinking and feeling understood from Theravada perspective present a framework for developing theory and treatment of self disorders.
Thus, Theravada treatment not only allows scientific method of studying change in emotion and provides an interdependent theory and treatment but also ecologically integrates with Western rational analysis. Moreover, Theravada approach offers an open framework for further development of theoretical and treatment models of psychopathology classified under Western nomenclature.
14
Myint, Aung. "Theravada treatment and psychotherapy : an ecological integration of Buddhist tripartite practice and Western rational analysis /." Myint, Aung (2007) Theravada treatment and psychotherapy: an ecological integration of Buddhist tripartite practice and Western rational analysis. PhD thesis, Murdoch University, 2007. http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/218/.
Full textAbstract:
An assertion that psychotherapy is an independent science and a self-authority on human mind and behaviour has uprooted its connection with philosophy and religion. In practice, the scientist-practitioner model of psychotherapy, a seemingly dualistic model, prefers determinism of science to free will of choice in humans.
In particular, the model does not see reason and emotion as co-conditioning causes of human behaviour and suffering within the interdependent aggregates of self, other, and environment. Instead, it argues for wrong reasoning as the cause of emotional suffering.
In Western thought, such narrative began at the arrival of scripted language and abstract thought in Greek antiquity that has led psychotherapy to think ignorantly that emotions are un-reasonable therefore they are irrational. Only rational thinking can effectively remove un-reasonable emotions.
This belief creates confusion between rational theory and rational method of studying change in emotion because of the belief that science cannot objectively measure emotions. As a result, rational epistemologies that are ignorant of moral and metaphysical issues in human experience have multiplied. These epistemologies not only construct an unchanging rational identity, but also uphold the status of permanent self-authority.
Fortunately, recent developmental psychology and cognitive neuroscience research have quashed such ideas of permanent self-identity and authority.
Buddhist theory of Interdependent Arising and Conditional Relations sees such identity and authority as arisen together with deluded emotional desires of greed and hatred.
These desires co-condition interdependent states of personal feeling and perception (metaphysics), conceptual thinking and consciousness (epistemology) and formation of (moral) emotion and action within the context of self-other-environment matrix. Moral choices particularly highlight the intentional or the Aristotelian final cause of action derived from healthy desires by valued meaning makings and interpretations.
Theravada formulation aims to end unhealthy desires and develop the healthy ones within the matrix including the client-clinician-therapeutic environment contexts.
Theravada treatment guides a tripartite approach of practicing empathic ethics, penetrating focus and reflective understanding, which integrates ecologically with Western rational analysis. It also allows scientific method of studying change in emotion by applying the theory of defective desires.
In addition, interdependent dimensions of thinking and feeling understood from Theravada perspective present a framework for developing theory and treatment of self disorders.
Thus, Theravada treatment not only allows scientific method of studying change in emotion and provides an interdependent theory and treatment but also ecologically integrates with Western rational analysis. Moreover, Theravada approach offers an open framework for further development of theoretical and treatment models of psychopathology classified under Western nomenclature.
15
Kishimoto, Masashi. "Tracing the Development of Japanese Choral Tradition, and the Influence of Buddhism and Western Music." Diss., North Dakota State University, 2012. https://hdl.handle.net/10365/26861.
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This research deals with the origin and development of Japanese choral music emphasizing Japanese folk tunes. The process of how modern styles of Japanese choral music evolved is rather complicated, and has been greatly influenced by the paralleled development of society, tradition, culture, language, politics, and religion. In order to truly understand the essence and evolution of traditional Japanese music, it is crucial to recognize the cultural influences that make up Japanese history. In the late fifth century, Japan started to absorb new music from mainland Asia into its own culture. This led to the development of new musical ideas, laying the groundwork for musical traditions that defined Japanese culture for years to come. Both mainland Asia and Europe introduced strong religious influences (Buddhism and Christianity, respectively). However, it was not until the radical influence of European music in the 19th century merged with traditional Japanese folk song and created the modern synthesis of the form. This research aims to discuss how the different aspects of both Eastern and Western music, more specifically their unique rhythms, scales, chords and harmonies, evolved and now coexist within Japanese culture and music. Choral works based on Japanese folk tunes are used to assess specific developmental influences.
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Bubna-Litic, David C. "Opening a dialogical space between Buddhism and economics : the relationship between insight and action." Thesis, View thesis, 2007. http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/39749.
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This interdisciplinary study explores the dialogical space between Buddhism and economics grounded upon an empirical examination of the lived experience of western Buddhist teachers. The goal of Buddhist practice is enlightenment, a powerfully liberating and transformative understanding in which the ordinary sense of self is extinguished. There is a variety of claims made by Buddhist traditions regarding enlightenment, and little agreement as to its exact nature; most Buddhist traditions, however, regard the self as having no essential basis. This view contrasts sharply with those of contemporary economic thought. Modern economic thinking has generally seen Buddhism as one of many religions, and has resisted taking its claims seriously. At the heart of this divide lies a hermeneutic barrier that is not simply between East and West, but has its roots in modernity, which maintains a separation of humans from nature, a distinction between knowledge and power, and a distrust of human subjective experience. By engaging in a dialogical approach, this study attempts to bridge this divide. It builds on experiential corroboration of Buddhist conceptions of self, based on semi-structured interviews of 34 western Buddhist teachers, to critically examine their experiences of insight into the nature of self, its impact on their relationships with others and nature, and its impact on their decisions about everyday economic activities. The purpose is twofold: to examine the nature of realisation experientially and to explore its transformative potential with a view to unfolding implications for economic action. The findings clarify many traditional Buddhist understandings, challenge and validate previous interpretations, and suggest an embodied rather than transcendent view of consciousness and spirituality. The implications for economic thought include a new conception of the economic individual (homooeconomicus), recognising the old conception as based on a misplaced idea of concreteness of self; a new epistemology which incorporates a phenomenological appreciation of life; and a new perspective of agency as the mindful embodiment of a seamless interconnection between consciousness and the social and natural world.
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Cefus, Jon M. "THE DISINTEGRATION OF THE SELF: HOW EASTERN THOUGHT HAS INFLUENCED WESTERN PSYCHOLOGY." Kent State University Honors College / OhioLINK, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ksuhonors1305028856.
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Efurd, David S. "Early Buddhist Caves of Western India CA. Second Century BCE through the Third Century CE: Core Elements, Functions, and Buddhist Practices." The Ohio State University, 2008. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1210983943.
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Hsiau, Chang-Ding. "A Judaeo-Christian theological comparison of the concept of the 'self' in western Cartesianism and Zen Buddhism." Thesis, University of Aberdeen, 1994. http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk/R?func=search-advanced-go&find_code1=WSN&request1=AAIU067032.
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The overall plan of the thesis is to present a theological understanding of holistic personhood in relation to the Zenist monistic and the Cartesian dualistic treatments of selfhood. The focus of the study is to analyze the Zenist religious view of the self as unthinking nothingness and the Cartesian philosophical interpretation of the self as thinking substance, Zenist meditation representing a classical stance of Chinese intuitivism and Cartesian meditation of Western rationalism. Common to both approaches to the realization of personal identity is their mentalist-individualist paradigm which does not adequately account for the unity of experience of embodied personhood. In contrast with the 'I un/think therefore I am' of Zen and Cartesianism is the 'I commune therefore I am' of the biblical tradition. Through this communitarian model derived from the Judaeo-Christian biblical tradition, the thesis points towards a possible resolution of the quandary brought about by Cartesian and Zen 'meditational' conceptions of personhood.
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Foiera, Manuela. "The translation and domestication of an oriental religion into a western Catholic country : the case of Soka Gakkai in Italy." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2007. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/2403/.
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This thesis is premised on the fundamental notion of religious translation as a process of interpretation and adaptation that arises out of a complex iinguistic and cultural interplay. Its aim is to examine the types of interpretative problems one encounters as a society deeply rooted in Biblical and Christian practices struggles to integrate the rituals and formulae of Buddhism. As part of a cultural system, the translation of a religion cannot be explored in a vacuum, but needs to be viewed in the mutual interdependence with other elements of such system. Starting from Giambattista Vico's hypothesis that 'whenever men can form no idea of distant and unknown things, they judge them by what is familiar and at hand' (1744) this thesis aims to look at the interplay of local and foreign traditions in the translation and domestication of a Japanese new religious movement, Soka Gakkai, that has migrated from East to West. Through the notion of 'cultural repertoire', i.e. the aggregate of options utilized by a group of people for the organization of life', this work explores the extent in which Catholicism in Italy has influenced the formation of both religious sense and religious vocabulary. It will be argued that in Italy, the translation of an entire set of Japanese key-concepts pertaining to the sphere of religion has been measured on the yardstick of Christian vocabulary, and thus influenced by the search of 'perfect equivalences'. This operation has, in time, secured the successful dissemination of Soka Gakkai in the territory. At the same time, however, the overlap of Catholic and Buddhists practices has given rise to a peculiar form of hybrid religion that can be defined as 'Catho- Buddhism'.
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Shajahan, Naomi Sharin. "Tibetan Buddhism and Feminism in an In-between Space: A Creative-Critical Autoethnography in a Non-Western Woman’s Voice." Thesis, Shajahan Naomi, Sharin (2017) Tibetan Buddhism and Feminism in an In-between Space: A Creative-Critical Autoethnography in a Non-Western Woman’s Voice. PhD thesis, Murdoch University, 2017. https://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/40739/.
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As a religion and spiritual practice, Tibetan Buddhism is focused on training the mind to achieve inner tranquility, peace, and compassion. On the other hand, the feminist goal is to liberate women from patriarchal oppression. The possibility for exploring new feminist experiences through Tibetan Buddhist practice calls for a deeper conversation between feminism and Tibetan Buddhism on the basis of real life experiences, heterogeneity, particularity, differences and human conditions. The existing scholarly conversation between feminism and Tibetan Buddhism tends to be grounded in the perspective of Western women. Non-Western women like me have remained almost silent in expressing their reality through feminist-Buddhist lenses. My thesis presents the voice, representations, and experience of a non-Western woman through a creative-critical autoethnography. As a non-Western woman I found that without an epistemic disobedience to colonial aspects of knowledge I cannot speak in the academic area where Eurocentric and masculine approaches dominate in producing knowledge. Taking an arts-based and bricolage approach, I have expressed an epistemic disobedience to this hegemony through performative uses of images, story telling, archetypes, “fictocriticism”, and performative writing. Through this alternative paths, I explored how Tibetan Buddhism and feminism interact in an in-between space where the categories, binaries, cultural dichotomy and identities become fluid and non-dual. This is a space of multiplicity and ambivalence, a space that cannot be completely captured or defined; but can be demonstrated, articulated and interpreted. This in-between space gives birth to more open-ended questions, thoughts and possibilities for an enriched ongoing conversation between feminism and Tibetan Buddhism.
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Terrana, Alec M. "(De)psychologizing Shangri-La: Recognizing and Reconsidering C.G. Jung's Role in the Construction of Tibetan Buddhism in the Western Imagination." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2014. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_theses/117.
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Popular literature on Tibetan Buddhism often overemphasizes the psychological dimension of the religion's beliefs and practices. This misrepresentative portrayal is largely traceable to the writings of the psychoanalyst C.G. Jung. By employing distinctly psychological terminology and interpretive strategies in his analyses of the Tibetan Book of the Dead and mandala symbolism, Jung helped to establish precedents that were adopted in subsequent analyses of the religion. Imposing a psychological lens on Tibetan Buddhism obscures other essential elements of the tradition, such as cosmology, physiology, and ritualism, thereby silencing the voices of Tibetans in analyses of their own practices. Jung's imposition of his own voice in place of that of Tibetans has commonly been criticized as an act of intellectually imperializing Orientalism that furthers Jung's personal aims of solidifying his system of analytical psychology. This thesis supports and demonstrates the validity of that critique through close analyses of Jung's commentaries on Tibetan Buddhism.
However, Jung’s psychoanalytic perspective and qualifying comments found elsewhere in his corpus ultimately contextualize his commentaries and reveal that his writings on Tibetan Buddhism should not be treated as shedding light on the religion. Rather, they offer an additional lens for understanding analytical psychology. Furthermore, Jung's perspective as a psychoanalyst demonstrates the inherent instability of Orientalist epistemology that attempts to make sense of Eastern cultures on Western terms. Derridean deconstruction of Jung's commentaries reveals that the laws of psychoanalysis subvert those of Orientalism, thus allowing us to undermine the Orientalist episteme in which Jung writes and creates the possibility for appropriating foreign cultural content differently
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Thorpe, Josh. "Here hear my recent compositions in a context of philosophy and western 20th century experimental art /." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2000. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp01/MQ59209.pdf.
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Lobas, V. "Interest to the eastern philosophy: names and borders of the search." Thesis, ТОВ "Планета – Принт", 2019. http://repository.kpi.kharkov.ua/handle/KhPI-Press/48165.
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Yamo, Pittaya. "Learner engagement in a collectivistic culture: A study of massive open online courses (MOOCs) in Thailand." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2021. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/212451/1/Pittaya_Yamo_Thesis.pdf.
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This study examines MOOC learning environment situated within the Thai cultural context and Thai cultural dimensions (Hofstede, 1997). The study draws on connectivist theory to conduct a qualitative study to investigate the four dimensions of learner engagement: behavioural, cognitive, emotional, and social engagement in online MOOC learning. Data were collected from three selected Thai MOOCs through semi-structured interviews with three instructors and 30 students. Results indicate that while instructors excluded themselves from cultural engagement within the online learning environment, learners were considered objects to adapt to institutional culture and cultural engagement was a mere additive to the pedagogy.
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Bianchi, Maria Alessandra. "Contextes, institution, intersubjectivité dans le processus de conversion à un groupe religieux minoritaire : l'exemple du bouddhisme dzogchen." Thesis, Aix-Marseille, 2016. http://www.theses.fr/2016AIXM1017.
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Comment se fait le processus de conversion de certains acteurs sociaux occidentaux au bouddhisme dzogchen ? Afin de répondre à ce questionnement, cette étude, qui repose sur une méthodologie qualitative, a été menée auprès des groupes français et italiens de deux réseaux associatifs : la communauté dzogchen Internationale et Rigpa. Elle s’inscrit dans le courant de la sociologie compréhensive et cherche à rompre avec l’idée selon laquelle la conversion est une affaire exclusivement individuelle ou une expérience soudaine. En effet, cette recherche met en lumière les dynamiques relationnelles et processuelles qui permettent d’appréhender ce fait de conversion. Dans un contexte marqué par l’occidentalisation du bouddhisme et par les transformations du paysage religieux contemporain, la conversion au dzogchen s’opère, tout d’abord, par l’action « missionnaire » de certains agents, représentants d’une institution née de la routinisation du charisme du « maître ». Mais la conversion de l’acteur résulte également d’une adéquation aux propositions institutionnelles, qui entraîne l’acquisition d’un nouveau récit, d’une nouvelle manière de gérer ses émotions et prévoit la mobilisation de certains dispositifs rituels. Ce processus d’apprentissage a notamment lieu lors d’interactions intersubjectives entre les pratiquants dzogchen eux-mêmes et, entre les pratiquants dzogchen et les représentants de l’institution tibétaine. Ainsi, l’exemple des groupements dzogchen nous permet de mettre en valeur la dimension relationnelle de cette forme de religiosité, qui offre à l’individu qui se convertit des espaces de socialisation propres à une communitasHow does the conversion processes of certain western social actors to Dzogchen Buddhism work ? In order to answer such question, this study, carried out using qualitative research method, was conducted among French and Italian groups of two association networks: the International Dzogchen Community and Rigpa. This research is in line with the field of comprehensive sociology and tries to break away from the idea according to which conversion is solely an individual matter or a sudden experience. In fact, this research highlights the relational and procedural dynamics that allow the understanding of this type of conversion. In a context characterized by the westernization of Buddhism and by the transformations of the contemporary religious landscape, Dzogchen conversion results from two factors. First of all, conversion is an outcome of the “missionary” action of certain agents, representatives of an institution born from the routinization of the “master’s” charisma. The second less observed factor is how the conversion of a social actor results also from the adoption of institutional proposals, which leads to the acquisition of a new narrative, a new way of managing emotions and takes into account the involvement of certain rituals. This process of learning happens especially during intersubjective interactions between Dzogchen practitioners amongst themselves as well as between Dzogchen practitioners and representatives of the Tibetan institution. Therefore, through the example of such Dzogchen group we are able to highlight the relational dimension of this kind of religion, which provides the individual who converts with some socialization spaces proper to a communitas
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Pearce, Laura Elizabeth Pearce. "Recording the West: Central Asia in Xuanzang’s Great Tang Dynasty Record of the Western Regions." The Ohio State University, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1515139237769597.
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Drage, Matthew Nicholas. "'Universal Dharma' : authority, experience and metaphysics in the transmission of mindfulness-based stress reduction." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2018. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/277712.
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Cathcart, Noel C. "Development and application of trans-subjective therapy for older persons." Thesis, View thesis View thesis, 2002. http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/813.
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This thesis contends that older persons, whose mental capabilities remain intact, are capable of expanding their conscious awareness; they have not necessarily passed their prime as they begin the process of retiring. They may be showing a worn and weakened package but this does not mean they cannot live a fulfilling life. This is the reason for the development of a new form of therapy, called 'Trans-subjective Therapy', because it combines the objective and the subjective with the trans-personal, or unconscious levels of consciousness. Trans-subjective therapy connects the various systems of objectivity, subjectivity, and the transpersonal, or unconscious, so that the client can be facilitated into clearer, deeper understanding of themselves and others, and expand their conscious awareness in a wholesome, fulfilling manner. This thesis describes development and testing of this new therapeutic approach, which is designed specifically to enable older persons to experience more fulfilling and aware lives. Although building on existing therapeutic modalities, this new formulation is unique in that every feature of its design was selected, developed and tested with the specific needs of older persons in mind. This approach emphasises the personal responsibility of the client to expand his/her conscious awareness in the direction of personal choice. This has particular application to the needs of older persons, most of whom are at a stage in life where meaning and purpose have either become clarified or a sense of meaninglessness and resentment dominates their lives. Quotes from the transcripts of the author's testing of this approach with 12 individuals who undertook training in this methodology have been used throughout the text to illustrate the application of this approach. Its effectiveness is inferred from the manner in which each person in this group has expressed him/herself at a level of consciousness freely chosen and individually experienced in a manner that will be novel or completely new to the person involved.
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Bellarsi, Franca. "Confessions of a Western buddhist "Mirror-Mind": Allen Ginsberg as a Poet of the Buddhist "Void"." Doctoral thesis, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/211366.
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Seevers, Kiel J. "A comparative look at karma and determinism." Kent State University / OhioLINK, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1414434790.
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Whillis, Daniel Patrick. "Postsecular awakening : vision and commitment in a Western Buddhist community." Thesis, University of Bristol, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.566829.
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This thesis presents a sustained engagement with the notion of postsecularism. While increasingly influential, this idea remains conceptually underdeveloped and empirically untested. The interpretation developed herein explores postsecularism as an ethos of awakening to the persistence of certain widely purported anxieties of the secular age, and to the possibility of their transcendence. On this understanding 'postsecularism' signifies something genuinely distinctive: irreducible to either the 'revival' or the 'privatization' of religion, or to the perpetuation of secularization. Whether or not it will thrive as a conceptual contribution remains to be seen, but what of its traction for developing forms of spiritual vision and commitment in an era of 'fragilized' meanings and identities? An exploration of 'Modern' or 'Western' Buddhism - traditionally the religion of 'awakening' - is particularly suited to such an enquiry. The Triratna Buddhist Community (formerly the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order) provides a pertinent case, given its overtly adaptive approach to Western modernity but continued emphasis on community. Fieldwork was carried out at one of its major urban centres - the Bristol Buddhist Centre. Twenty-five in-depth interviews were conducted with individuals who were typically moving from largely secular positions, into various levels of engagement with Buddhism, ranging from relative beginners to ordained Order Members. The theoretical and empirical analysis of the thesis moves beyond the popular paradigm of 'self- spirituality' and explores the significance of social practices on changing sensibilities of the self. Buddhism is found to provide a context for the embodied, collective learning of praxes - both emotional and cognitive - that gradually loosen attachment to certain central principles/anxieties of the secular age (e.g., rationalist suspicion, possessive individualism, and ethical emotivism). It thereby opens up space for the emergence of 'practical faith,' identity commitment, and resolute engagement with ethical values, pursued according to a principle of 'exemplification' rather than 'proselytisation.' Transformation is typically gradual, often disjointed, and involves the negotiation of considerable ambivalences, but does tend in a coherent and essentially postsecular direction. It is therefore argued that contemporary Buddhism can provide a useful, working example of postsecularism, the wider social significance of which nevertheless remains an open question.
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Errington, Elizabeth. "The western discovery of the art of Gandhara and the finds of Jamalgarhi." Thesis, SOAS, University of London, 1987. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.262251.
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Dmitrieva, Victoria. "The legend of Shambhala in Eastern and Western interpretations /." Thesis, McGill University, 1997. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=28260.
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The legend of Shambhala incorporated in the Tibetan Canon, has been one of the favourite motives of Tibetan Buddhism throughout the centuries. High lamas and laity alike venerated the legend connecting their innermost aspirations with it. For some it represents a mystical millennial country revealing itself only to the chosen ones, while others perceive it as a symbol of the hidden treasures of the mind. This way or the other, the legend of Shambhala remains a living belief for many. The present hardships of Tibet made the legend with its leitmotif of future victory of Buddhism, especially viable.When the legend reached the West in the beginning of this century, it inspired many westerners including political leaders, and acquired diverse and innovative interpretations.
Conveying the ever cherished human dream of a better world beyond ours, the legend of Shambhala proved to be a ubiquitous symbol surpassing its original Buddhist framework.
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Efurd, David. "Early Buddhist caves of western India ca. second century BCE through the third century CE core elements, functions, and Buddhist practices /." Columbus, Ohio : Ohio State University, 2008. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=osu1210983943.
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Niculescu, Mira. "Les juifs bouddhistes. Individualisme, bricolage et frontières dans la globalisation religieuse." Thesis, Paris Sciences et Lettres (ComUE), 2018. http://www.theses.fr/2018PSLEH184.
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L’intégration aussi soudaine que réussie du bouddhisme en Occident au XXe siècle a entraîné dans son sillage l’apparition d’une nouvelle figure du croire à trait d’union : les « juifs bouddhistes ». Dans le contexte actuel de l’individualisation du croire et de la globalisation du religieux, cette constellation de postures individuelles se revendiquant à la fois du judaïsme et du bouddhisme témoigne des produits créatifs de l’émergence d’un bouddhisme occidental.Connu principalement aux États-Unis sous le label de « jubu », où selon les estimations, de 6 à 30% des pratiquants bouddhistes occidentaux seraient d’origine juive, le phénomène des juifs dans le bouddhisme est pourtant un phénomène global. Comment s’exprime-t-il en France et en Angleterre, deux autres pôles essentiels de la diaspora juive et du bouddhisme en Occident ? Comment comprendre le succès du bouddhisme en Israël aujourd’hui ? Pourquoi les juifs deviennent-ils bouddhistes, et comment articulent-ils ce choix croyant avec leur identité juive ?Le phénomène des juifs bouddhiste, souvent décrit comme un phénomène post-Shoah, est d’abord un produit de la modernité juive ashkénaze post-Lumières. Dans cette recherche, à partir d’une sociologie croisée de la réception du bouddhisme et de celle des trajectoires croyantes individuelles basée sur une enquête ethnographique longitudinale multisituée conduite entre 2008 et 2018 et composée d’entretiens et d’analyse de récits de vie de pratiquants et enseignants bouddhistes d’origine juive aux États-Unis, en Angleterre, en France et en Israël, je tenterai de dresser un panorama comparatif et diachronique du phénomène des juifs bouddhistes visant à mettre en lumière ses tendances globales, ses particularités locales, et son évolution depuis la contre-culture des années soixante. Parce qu’elle refuse le terme de conversion et s’exprime sous la forme de bricolages identitaires ou croyants, la posture de juif bouddhiste témoigne des liens entre l’individualisme religieux et le groupe, et demande de repenser le concept de syncrétisme dans le contexte de la globalisation religieuse contemporaineIn the wake of the introduction of Buddhism in the West in the XXth century, as sudden as successful, a new hyphenated religious posture has emerged: the “Jewish Buddhists”. In the current context of religious individualism and globalization, this constellation of individual stances claiming to be both Jewish and Buddhist is one of the creative outcomes of the emergence of a Western Buddhism. Mostly known in the states under the label “jubu”, where an estimate of 6 to 30% of the Western Buddhist practitioners would be of Jewish descent, the phenomenon of Jews in Buddhism is however a global phenomenon. How does it play in France and in England, two other essential loci of the Jewish diaspora and of Western Buddhism? How to account for the success of Buddhism in Israel today? Why do Jews become Buddhists, and how do they articulate this choice with their Jewish identity?The phenomenon of the Jewish Buddhists, mostly known as a post-Shoah phenomenon, is first and foremost a product of the post-Enlightenment Jewish Ashkenazi modernity. In this research, combining a sociology of the reception of Buddhism and of individual religious trajectories based on interviews and life-narrative analysis collected via a multisite longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2008 and 2018 between the United States, England, France and Israel, I will attempt to offer a comparative, diachronic panorama of the phenomenon of the Jewish Buddhists, aiming at shedding light on its global tendencies, its local specificities, and its evolution, from the Counter-Culture of the sixties till today.Because it rejects the term « conversion » and expresses itself under the shape of bricolages of identity and belief, the posture of Jewish Buddhist highlights the connections between religious individualism and the group, and calls for rethinking the concept of syncretism in the context of the contemporary religious globalization
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Black, Thierry. "Away from the Abyss: Borgesian Translation Reconsidered through Buddhist Philosophy." Thèse, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/26244.
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The English-language translations of Jorge Luis Borges’s Spanish-language works undertaken by the author and Norman Di Giovanni went above and beyond what is generally perceived as acceptable in traditional Western practices. Their work, together with Borges’s thoughts on translation itself, garnered criticism from within Western Translation Studies for its rejection of the status of the original text and the blurring of the distinction between author and translator.
Yet the pair’s actions and Borges’s views on translation cease to appear scandalous under the light of Buddhist philosophy, particularly through the use of the Buddhist principles that all phenomena are impermanent and interdependent. This thesis will seek to use these ideas to legitimize the actions of Borges and Di Giovanni.
To do so, it will trace the history of opposing and convergent theories from Western philosophy and describe our Buddhist concepts in detail. In order to better understand Borges, it will examine the array of philosophies that influenced the writer and how they both align themselves and differ from Buddhist ideas. This thesis will end by directly applying impermanence and interdependence to the translation practices of Borges and Di Giovanni and considering what potential effect legitimacy for such practices would have on translation overall.
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Yap, Key-chong. "Western wisdom in the mind's eye of a westernized Chinese Lay Buddhist : the thought of Chang Tung-sun (1886-1962)." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1991. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.315943.
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Inaba, Keishin. "A comparative study of altruism in new religious movements with special reference to the Jesus Army and the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order." Thesis, King's College London (University of London), 2000. https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/a-comparative-study-of-altruism-in-new-religious-movements-with-special-reference-to-the-jesus-army-and-the-friends-of-the-western-buddhist-order(247c18d7-9bfc-47e7-a444-6065eedeaebc).html.
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Harlow, Sage. "Giving voice to the extra-normal self with the extra-normal voice: Improvised exploration through the realms of shamanic chaos magick, insight meditation and gender performance." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2019. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/2210.
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This thesis documents practice-led research exploring the intersections of, and tensions between, improvised invocation ritual within a chaos magick paradigm and Buddhist insight meditation. I explore the extra-normal self—those aspects of consciousness not usually present, or not usually accessible, in day-to-day life—by mean of improvised ritual work with the extra-normal voice and seek to maintain a Buddhist ‘witness’ consciousness throughout these explorations. I also explore the tensions between politics, aesthetics and spiritual practice; in particular, queer and trans politics, a timbre-centred vocal aesthetics and chaos magick, shamanic and Buddhist spiritual practices. This work constitutes part of a larger project of attempting to secularise and democratise spiritual practice greatly influenced by Sam Harris’ book Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion (2014) and to some extent from chaos magick, some iterations of which strive to ‘free’ the western esoteric tradition from its religious trappings. I also take cues from Hakim Bey (1985) as one of the few anarchist writers who sees spiritual practice as profoundly important and not at odds with anarchism. I make use of a ‘radical agnosticism’ (Wilson, 1977) in my practice, privileging subjective experience and critical engagement over the search for an objective truth. I take an autoethnographic approach to this project with a focus on process rather than outcome, with the final project consisting of a description of these approaches and their value (and limitations), accompanied by selected musical examples (recordings).
The thesis also explores a practice that functions as a navigation away from the normative, phallogocentric western esoteric tradition taking cues from feminism, trans and queer politics as well as anarchism. My improvised possession rituals seek to give voice to aspects of the extra-normal self and/or spirits or demons. The different Belief Systems used in this work frame these experiences in different language. My practice strives to accept ‘whatever arises’ (a meditation term) with compassion—whatever their ontological status.
The main text of this thesis consists of three sections: Improvising Theory, Workings and Scores. The first section presents some of my thinking through concepts and theoretical paradigms that I have engaged with over the last few years of my research. I explore the illusion of free will, the intersection of gender and timbre theory and the use of the cut-up technique in chaos magick generally and my practice specifically. The second section of the thesis presents in-depth discussion of some of the explicit ritual performances and recordings that I have explored over the course of the research. This section explore more fully concepts central to my practice such as the interweaving of insight meditation and improvised ritual work. I present reflections on my explorations of dada ‘anti-magick’ ritual which critiques the normative, phallogocentric western esoteric tradition, taking cues from feminism, trans and queer politics as well as anarchisms. This culminates in an exploration of the concept of ‘True Shamanic Black Metal’—a tongue-in-cheek gesture towards a serious exploration of rhythm inspired by my understanding of shamanic drumming, particularly from Tuva, Mongolia and Korea, merged with an interest in extreme metal traditions, particularly black metal. I explore what shamanic black metal might sound like, centring the discussion around the album I recorded in 2017 invocations of unknown entities. The third section of this thesis presents thoughts on playing scores and on writing scores. I explore scores as open invitations to explore either extra-normal states of consciousness or particular aesthetic or ethical interests.
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"Women's ritual in China: Jiezhu (receiving Buddhist prayer beads) peformed by menopausal women in Ninghua, Western Fhjian." Thesis, 2007. http://library.cuhk.edu.hk/record=b6074473.
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Amituofo recitation is the chanting of the phrase "namo Amituofo , which is a rite commonly used among Buddhists for the attainment of merit. However, the attained merits would be nullified if the initiate gets pregnant after she has done Jiezhu. This has much to do with taboos related to female sexuality. Women always have a marginalized status as the supposedly "weaker" gender having a lower social position. The association of female bodily discharges with defilement further discredits their status. Jiezhu in effect reinforces the idea of "defilement" attributed to the female body. The shame that the women feel with the male-defined negative female bodily image affirms the patriarchal hegemony.Based on historical, textual and field studies, this thesis examines a women-oriented initiation rite called Jiezhu. Jiezhu, a once-in-a-lifetime rite of passage, is performed by menopausal women in Ninghua, Western Fujian, China.
However, ritualistic acts provide therapeutic healing. The Jiezhu woman has to go through a stage in which she has to handle the change of her role and identity as a life-giver (mothering) with the end of her procreative cycle. The ritual provides both private and public meanings to the woman and helps her relieve the physical and mental difficulties that she faces in her menopausal stage.
It is believed in the villages of Ninghua that when a woman reaches her menopausal age, she has to do Jiezhu, without which, her Amituofo recitation (nianfo) would not be efficacious. In other words, Jiezhu, as a pre-requisite for Amituofo recitation, is at the same time a purification rite.
Jiezhu appropriates the woman into a new phase of being by first providing private meanings to her. Ritualistic acts can bridge memory and imagination. The ritual program allows the woman to go back and forth the past, the present and the future. Jiezhu dramatically juxtaposes girlhood and mature womanhood, reenacts her wedding and rehearses her future funeral. Death and rebirth symbols abound. In Jiezhu, the woman "witnesses" her own funerary rites to ensure abundant personal possessions are burned for her to receive in the underworld after her death. The woman acquires spiritual strength to ease off from her menopausal stress and to allay the fears of the approach of death. Jiezhu and Amituofo recitation make up a twin tool they use to ensure a more fortunate rebirth.
Second, Jiezhu gives social meanings. The woman is given a new identity. She is now eligible for Amituofo recitation and becomes a member of the nianfo community. As social inferiority can be compensated for by a show of lavishness, Jiezhu as an expensive event creates symbolic capital. Jiezhu has become a symbol of prestige and resources that in part enhances the status of the women.
The women are also able to express their power within the limits of their traditional politics. The woman's contributions as a wife and a mother are valued and celebrated in the Jiezhu ceremony. The youthful, bright and colourful gift items given by the married daughter display a defiant tone against the association of Jiezhu with old age. Jiezhu celebrates an oft-neglected life crisis of women.
To conclude, Jiezhu on the one hand "traditionalizes", and on the other hand, as a strategic mode of action, challenges traditions through religious and social empowerment. Jiezhu preserves the established order but it also facilitates transformation in the initiate. The two dynamics of ritual are not antithetical; they produce and contend with each other.
Cheung, Tak Ching Neky.
"September 2007."
Adviser: Chi Tim Lai.
Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-08, Section: A, page: 3178.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2007.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 390-406).
Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Abstracts in English and Chinese.
School code: 1307.
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Snook, Kathryn. "The mandalas of Tibetan Buddhism and western psychotherapy." Thesis, 2009. http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/976671/1/MR67111.pdf.
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Several Western psychotherapeutic practices have incorporated the use of the mandala into their diagnostic and healing practices. Often, references to the Tibetan Buddhist mandala as being a sort of mandala prototype are found in the writing of Jungian psychoanalysts, art therapists and self-help instructors. This is especially intriguing given that Jungian psychotherapy is based upon the idea of a "Self" and the achievement of self-realization, whereas the inherent existence of any such "Self" is denied in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, with the mandala being employed to aid in this realization. Ultimately, this thesis brings together Tibetan Buddhist and Western psychotherapeutic scholarship regarding the mandala in an effort to determine how these two contexts conflict and/or conform to one another, and to shed light on how they may be reconciled despite their differences.
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Trotter, Colleen Shirley. "Buddhism as therapy: the instrumentalisation of mindfulness in Western Psychotherapy." Diss., 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/25697.
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This dissertation explores the integration of Buddhism and the practice of mindfulness into Western psychotherapy, starting with a sketch of the cultural and historical factors that shaped the beginnings of these institutions, and gives consideration to some of the major themes that have influenced the development of both psychotherapy and Buddhism which have given rise to the current proliferation of interest in Buddhism and mindfulness in the West.
A secondary objective is to give voice to the obstacles, criticisms and
concerns that have challenged the integration of Buddhism in the West,
particularly in the amplification of mindfulness practices, which in having been appropriated into Western culture, have met with consumerism, competition and a culture of narcissism, all of which have subjected the practice of mindfulness to commodification and commercialisation.
A revisiting of the original practices of Theravāda Vipassanā meditation to gain a deeper understanding of its original practices opens discussion around how Buddhism could then be selectively adapted, modified and reinterpreted to fit in with mainstream Western psychology, not as a religion, or as a philosophy, but rather as psychotherapy with a defined model and categorisation within a
constructivist postmodernist epistemology.
A third objective is to critically explore a detailed application of mindfulness as it is currently being applied alongside existing Western psychotherapy to ascertain its true efficacy in a clinical therapeutic context.
Finally this dissertation highlights the need to move beyond the Eurocentrism in psychoanalysis by the automatic, unquestioning pathologising and marginalisation of religion and spirituality on the one hand; to the other of Orientocentrism as deification and idealisation of religion and the spiritual quest, on the other hand.Religious Studies and Arabic
M.A. (Religious Studies)
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Honzík, Jan. "Buddhismus na Západě. Česká republika." Doctoral thesis, 2014. http://www.nusl.cz/ntk/nusl-342264.
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UNIVERZITA KARLOVA V PRAZE Fakulta humanitních studií Katedra Obecné antropologie Mgr. Jan Honzík BUDDHISMUS NA ZÁPADĚ ČESKÁ REPUBLIKA Disertační práce Školitel práce: PhDr. Jiří Holba, Ph.D. Praha 2014 Abstract This paper discusses Buddhism in the Czech Republic. It deals with Buddhism as a complex phenomenon consisiting of philosophical, religious, socio-cultural, psychological and ethical planes. These categories are related to the basic structures of human existence and therefore are subject to a science of humanity - anthropology. In this sense, the paper is presented as anthropological work. The first chapter, entitled "Buddhism from Buddha to the present" introduces the major Buddhist schools, their common resources, basic teachings, characteristics, specifics and development. Furthermore, the chapter describes the process of Buddhism establishing in the West up to the present and explores the fundamental features of contemporary Western Buddhism. The second chapter, entitled "Buddhism in the Czech Republic" deals with the history of Buddhism in the Czech Republic and maps the current Czech Buddhist scene. It provides an overview of Czech Buddhist groups, centers and charitable initiatives, looking into their values, practices, methods, regular activities and their relationship to the Buddhist...
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Weiss, Aleš. "Buddhismus v židovských náboženských textech 18.-21. století." Doctoral thesis, 2021. http://www.nusl.cz/ntk/nusl-438379.
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This dissertation analyzes Jewish religious views of Buddhism in a broad historical perspective, from the end of 18th century down to the present. Through an analysis of Jewish religious texts, it shows the ways Buddhism has been contextualized and tries to uncover Buddhism's role in modern Judaism. From these texts Buddhism emerges as 1) a tool of polemics and self-definition, 2) a form of spirituality fully compatible with Judaism, and 3) a competitor of Judaism, endangering its social and ideological integrity. While Jewish religious views of Christianity and Islam have been dealt with extensively in the academic literature, the role of Buddhism in various forms of modern Judaism has been either completely overlooked or at best reduced to the JUBU phenomenon. This dissertation aims to help fill this gap.
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ŠTARKOVÁ, Iva. "Konverze od křesťanství k buddhismu." Master's thesis, 2010. http://www.nusl.cz/ntk/nusl-51434.
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My work is about expanding of Buddhism to the Western world and its current situation there. One chapter is about Buddhism in Czech Republic, in its history and current form. Last chapter of the Theoretical part outlines reasons, why some people from countries with Christian tradition converts to Buddhism. In practical part of my work, there are several interviews with people, which are or were practising Buddhism. Interviews follow their motivations in interest with Buddhism and also their opinions on Christianity. Sceond part of practical part are my comments on interviews and summary of respondets statements.
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Swanepoel, Elizabeth. "The female quest for enlightenment: Compassion and patience in transforming gender bias in Tibetan Buddhism, with specific reference to Western Tibetan Buddhist nuns and Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo." Thesis, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/2263/31631.
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This thesis investigates the nature of gender bias in Tibetan Buddhism and the specific role Western Tibetan Buddhist nuns have played in transforming such prejudice. The afore-mentioned gender bias pertains particularly to the unavailability of full ordination (bhikshuni ordination) for nuns in the Tibetan tradition. The research highlights the specific contribution made by Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, a British woman and currently the most senior Tibetan Buddhist nun. Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo attained fame for spending twelve years meditating in a cave in the Himalayas, and for her statement that she intends to attain enlightenment in a female body. She is also the founder and abbess of a Tibetan Buddhist nunnery Dongyu Gatsal Ling in India. Tenzin Palmo is particularly outspoken in her efforts to transform gender bias within the ranks of Tibetan Buddhism, and serves as an inspiration to countless lay and monastic Buddhist women worldwide. The researcher postulates that gender equality has not yet been attained within Tibetan Buddhism. Androcentric record keeping, certain misogynistic meditation practices, and cumbersome decision making processes within the Tibetan ecclesiastic system have maintained gender bias within its institution, despite His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s efforts to assist in the transformation of monastic attitudes. The Dalai Lama, spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism and one of its most learned scholars, has made his position clear as far back as 2007 when he expressed his full support for the establishment of the Bhikshuni Sangha in the Tibetan tradition. Two years earlier, in 2005, he had already urged Western bhikshunis to become more involved in the issue of full ordination in Tibetan Buddhism. Western nuns in particular have therefore played a leading role in their attempts to transform gender bias in a true Buddhist spirit of patience and compassion. His Holiness the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa has been equally outspoken on the issue. In 2010 in Bodhgaya, India, he made a commitment in front of an international audience to ordaining women as bhikshunis, and stated unequivocally that he was prepared to ordain these women himself. However, he did caution against expecting quick results, asking the audience to have patience. In conclusion the thesis suggests that despite a favourable doctrinal attitude to women, ambiguity still characterises the Tibetan Buddhist approach towards females. There is tension between an underground tradition of highly accomplished female practitioners and the institutional preference for male practitioners. Institutionalised gender bias in Tibetan Buddhism therefore has no sound doctrinal basis in view of the fact that the Tibetan Buddhist pantheon is rife with female Buddhas, goddesses, dakinis, and other highly spiritual and enlightened women. Present times are characterised, especially in the West, by accomplished female academics and Tibetan Buddhist teachers, as well as prominent nuns. The yogini-tantras furthermore attest to the reverence and honour the male should afford to the female. Gender hierarchy and male dominance cause untold suffering and pain, especially devastating for female monastics, and is therefore both contradictory to Buddhist principles and to the norms of a progressive society.Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2013.
Biblical and Religious Studies
unrestricted
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Barua, Bijoy P. "Western education and modernization in a Buddhist village of Bangladesh : a case study of the Barua community." 2004. http://link.library.utoronto.ca/eir/EIRdetail.cfm?Resources__ID=80098&T=F.
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Fitzpatrick, Ruth. "Avoiding the stain of religion : attitudes toward social engagement amongst Australian Tibetan Buddhists." Thesis, 2014. http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/uws:29756.
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This thesis explores the attitudes of Australian practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism to Buddhist social engagement, or, as it is generally referred to, Engaged Buddhism. Social engagement has frequently been cited as a defining characteristic of Western Buddhism possibly because much that has been written on Engaged Buddhism has showcased Engaged Buddhist organisations and highly visible leaders of Buddhist social engagement. Few studies however have investigated what significance Engaged Buddhism holds for less prominent contemporary Buddhists. I therefore set out to explore these themes further through fieldwork-based research by conducting in-depth interviews with Australian practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism. My inquiry began with identifying how Australian Tibetan Buddhists related to the concepts and practices of Engaged Buddhism, but as the project developed, and unexpected attitudes emerged, I increasingly sought to examine how their attitudes toward Buddhist social engagement were informed by contemporary social and cultural concerns. What specific socio-cultural worldviews shape the way that Australian Tibetan Buddhists see Buddhist social engagement? What do participants’ attitudes toward Buddhist social engagement suggest about the direction of Buddhist acculturation in Australia in the twenty-first century? And indirectly, what does it say about Australian culture, its relation to religion and religious engagement in the public sphere? Beyond understanding processes of Buddhist acculturation in Australia, the topic of Buddhist social engagement provides a lens to consider central issues within the sociology of religion today; debates about the privatisation and deprivatisation of religion and more generally theories about secularisation and desecularisation. Engaged Buddhism, explicit in its very name, advocates a public role for Buddhism—a push to use Buddhism as a moral and frequently political resource for social improvement in the public domain. While the Engaged Buddhist movements documented in scholarly works represent a clear example of this, was there evidence of a similar trend amongst Australian Tibetan Buddhists? In carrying out this research I have identified a typology of four distinct approaches toward Buddhist social engagement. Reflecting the values that inform them, I have described these as: secularist, neoconservatist, romanticist and reformist. Though the influences of reformism, romanticism, and neoconservatism were evident in my research, secularism emerged as the most significant underlying worldview shaping attitudes toward Buddhist social engagement; it underlies all the categories. The secularism that participants accommodate to in their approach toward Buddhist social engagement reflects a form of political secularism, one that suggests that controversial religious and existential orientations should be bracketed from public discourse and political life. The influence of this form of secularism induced caution, ambivalence and resistance toward Buddhist social engagement amongst participants. Given the widespread adoption of this approach I suggested that, in method rather than principle, participants work to maintain the ‘secularist truce’; a secularist contract that guarantees religious freedom yet bans religion from the public sphere by relegating it to the private realm. This suggests that, secularism, while ‘allowing’ multiple religions to coexist, significantly frames and constrains participants’ attitudes and approaches to Buddhist social engagement. Given these findings my thesis presents the need to reconsider the widespread assumption that Buddhist social engagement is strongly supported or adhered to by the majority of Western Buddhists. Furthermore my research indicates that secularism continues to be a dominant intellectual background in Australian culture, significantly influencing perceptions of religion, particularly attitudes toward religiously motivated social engagement. It affirms anthropologist Charles Hirschkind’s claim that, ‘the secular is the water we swim in’; or at least suggests that Australian Tibetan Buddhists believe it best to swim with the secular current in the way they approach Buddhist social engagement, thus keeping Buddhism free from the ‘stain of religion’.
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Lac, Andrew. "A Kantian reading of Buddhist community." Thesis, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/1959.7/uws:51613.
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Keiji Nishitani, in his lectures On Buddhism (1982), argues that Buddhism is lacking a theory of Buddhist community. He believes that a historical consciousness and a social ethics are required for a theory of Buddhist community. German philosopher Immanuel Kant argues that a theory of religious community should contain an idea of an invisible church and an expression of a visible church. This is his theory of the church. This thesis will conduct a comparative analysis to see if Kant's notions of the invisible and visible church can express the essential components to a theory of Buddhist community. This paper finds that universal communicability is a requirement for a theory of Buddhist community to express itself as a visible church. Only when a religious community has universal communicably can it appeal to the unlearned and to those who can convince themselves of the moral truth of religion. Only in this sense, can a religious community be called a universal religion and become publicly accessible for it appeals to every kind of person. Overall, this thesis is fruitful in gaining a cross-cultural philosophical dialogue into the basis of a theory of religious community. This dialogue shows much promise of expressing the role of religious scripture and tradition, for the individual’s religious experience confirms what reason already knows to be the moral law of the heart.