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Author: Ian Harris Publisher: University of Hawaii Press ISBN: 0824865774 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 258
Book Description
This pioneering study of the fate of Buddhism during the communist period in Cambodia puts a human face on a dark period in Cambodia’s history. It is the first sustained analysis of the widely held assumption that the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot had a centralized plan to liquidate the entire monastic order. Based on a thorough analysis of interview transcripts and a large body of contemporary manuscript material, it offers a nuanced view that attempts to move beyond the horrific monastic death toll and fully evaluate the damage to the Buddhist sangha under Democratic Kampuchea. Compelling evidence exists to suggest that Khmer Rouge leaders were determined to hunt down senior members of the pre-1975 ecclesiastical hierarchy, but other factors also worked against the Buddhist order. Buddhism in a Dark Age outlines a three-phase process in the Khmer Rouge treatment of Buddhism: bureaucratic interference and obstruction, explicit harassment, and finally the elimination of the obdurate and those close to the previous Lon Nol regime. The establishment of a separate revolutionary form of sangha administration constituted the bureaucratic phase. The harassment of monks, both individually and en masse, was partially due to the uprooting of the traditional monastic economy in which lay people were discouraged from feeding economically unproductive monks. Younger members of the order were disrobed and forced into marriage or military service. The final act in the tragedy of Buddhism under the Khmer Rouge was the execution of those monks and senior ecclesiastics who resisted. It was difficult for institutional Buddhism to survive the conditions encountered during the decade under study here. Prince Sihanouk’s overthrow in 1970 marked the end of Buddhism as the central axis around which all other aspects of Cambodian existence revolved and made sense. And under Pol Pot the lay population was strongly discouraged from providing its necessary material support. The book concludes with a discussion of the slow re-establishment and official supervision of the Buddhist order during the People’s Republic of Kampuchea period.
Author: Ian Harris Publisher: University of Hawaii Press ISBN: 0824865774 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 258
Book Description
This pioneering study of the fate of Buddhism during the communist period in Cambodia puts a human face on a dark period in Cambodia’s history. It is the first sustained analysis of the widely held assumption that the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot had a centralized plan to liquidate the entire monastic order. Based on a thorough analysis of interview transcripts and a large body of contemporary manuscript material, it offers a nuanced view that attempts to move beyond the horrific monastic death toll and fully evaluate the damage to the Buddhist sangha under Democratic Kampuchea. Compelling evidence exists to suggest that Khmer Rouge leaders were determined to hunt down senior members of the pre-1975 ecclesiastical hierarchy, but other factors also worked against the Buddhist order. Buddhism in a Dark Age outlines a three-phase process in the Khmer Rouge treatment of Buddhism: bureaucratic interference and obstruction, explicit harassment, and finally the elimination of the obdurate and those close to the previous Lon Nol regime. The establishment of a separate revolutionary form of sangha administration constituted the bureaucratic phase. The harassment of monks, both individually and en masse, was partially due to the uprooting of the traditional monastic economy in which lay people were discouraged from feeding economically unproductive monks. Younger members of the order were disrobed and forced into marriage or military service. The final act in the tragedy of Buddhism under the Khmer Rouge was the execution of those monks and senior ecclesiastics who resisted. It was difficult for institutional Buddhism to survive the conditions encountered during the decade under study here. Prince Sihanouk’s overthrow in 1970 marked the end of Buddhism as the central axis around which all other aspects of Cambodian existence revolved and made sense. And under Pol Pot the lay population was strongly discouraged from providing its necessary material support. The book concludes with a discussion of the slow re-establishment and official supervision of the Buddhist order during the People’s Republic of Kampuchea period.
Author: Stephen M. Barr Publisher: iUniverse ISBN: 0595144349 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 134
Book Description
Our future can turn out in one of several ways, and it is humanity that must make the decision of which one it will be. Only one will be truly to mankind's advantage. Why this is so is the thrust of Our Ending Dark Age. Its premise is that when humans began using tools, we began to separate from nature. The long process of going from nature to separating from nature is our Dark Age, or Age of Adjustment. Mankind's best future is that wherein he is completely separate from nature. Why this is so is analyzed in Our Ending Dark Age as humankind's biology, psychology, evolution, economics, education, entrepreneurship and society are examined. This is done using the platform of history as the tie that holds all of these seemingly divergent subjects together. The role religion and opinion play in deciding the course of civilization is examined. The reader is then taken on an excursion that begins with the cellular basis of human anatomy, the meaning of Soul and Spirit, and traces history from our hunter-gatherer days to the magnificent future that awaits us if we put our minds to it.
Author: Matthew T. Kapstein Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0195348508 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 337
Book Description
This book explores the Buddhist role in the formation of Tibetan religious thought and identity. In three major sections, the author examines Tibet's eighth-century conversion, sources of dispute within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, and the continuing revelation of the teaching in both doctrine and myth.
Author: Graham Rooth Publisher: ISBS ISBN: 9781845192518 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 388
Book Description
Provides comprehensive coverage of the key concepts employed by Gu non and interprets the less familiar terms from Sanskrit, Hebrew and Arabic. The text makes extensive use of extracts from Gu non's original work. Graham Rooth is the translator of the bestselling The Light of Zen in the West, incorporating The Supreme Doctrine and The Realization of the Self, by Hubert Benoit. Ren Gu non is a major figure for anyone who recognizes a need to rediscover the spiritual roots from which Western society has become so comprehensively alienated. Immersing himself in the search for spiritual truth, he chose Islam as the vehicle for his spiritual life. Settling in Egypt, he clarified and deepened our understanding of the teachings of traditional metaphysics, his central message being that there is at the source of all humanity's traditions a 'Primordial Tradition' - a Universal Metaphysics which sets out the principles that underlie this Tradition. The truths it embodies are universal and unchanging, and form part of a unified body of higher knowledge which transcends the multiplicity of religious dogmas and philosophical systems that abound in Western society. He wrote about the need to transcend the formal and emotional aspect of religion in order to prepare ourselves for an understanding of 'pure metaphysics'. He explained how traditional societies achieved this, exploring the symbols used, in order to help individuals forward to levels of understanding which are otherwise inaccessible to minds blinkered by the limitations of the currently prevailing Western approach to existence and its meaning. This book provides an overview of Gu non's work. It is arranged in four parts each of which provides extracts that express his views directly and commentaries that summarize or paraphrase his written work. The objective is to allow Gu non to speak for himself rather than produce a critique of his ideas. Part One, Religion and the Primordial Tradition, explores Gu non's ideas about the nature of the primordial Tradition or 'Perennial Philosophy' and the part it would play in a traditional society. It sets out his views on the major religions and how they are related to the primordial Tradition. There are sections on the monotheistic religions and the oriental religions. The largest section deals with Vedantic Hinduism, reflecting the dominant and enduring role that this played in the development of Gu non's ideas. Part Two, The Spiritual Journey and the Integral Being, focuses on the quest for enlightenment and the means of achieving it, with an emphasis on the role of initiation and transmission. It examines the difference between 'realization' and salvation. It explores the spiritual quest in the light of Gu non's theory of the integral being and its multiple states, which postulates that the human state is one aspect only of innumerable different states comprising the totality of a single being. Part Three, Western Society and the Growth of Modernity, presents Gu non's critique of contemporary Western society in terms of its historical development and current worldview. It highlights the spiritual dangers that confront the West and examines the processes and attitudes symptomatic of its spiritual decline. It provides an overview of Gu non's ideas about subjects ranging across the sciences, the humanities, philosophy and psychology. The section on philosophy draws together many of Gu non's ideas about the nature of manifestation and ultimate reality. Part Four, Symbolism, explores the significance Gu non attached to the history and meaning of the symbols shared by all the great traditions. It summarizes his thoughts on the nature of symbolism, how it achieves its effects and its particular significance to the spiritual life. Many examples are provided from the natural world, the animal kingdom and human acti
Author: Mark W. McGinnis Publisher: Shambhala Publications ISBN: 0834826011 Category : Juvenile Fiction Languages : en Pages : 112
Book Description
Around the beginning of the common era, Indian Buddhists began to collect fables, or jataka tales, illuminating various human virtues and foibles—from kindness, cooperation, loyalty and self-discipline on the one hand to greed, pride, foolishness, and treachery on the other. Instead of populating these stories with people, they cast the animals of their immediate environment in the leading roles—which may have given the tales a universal appeal that helped them travel around the world, surfacing in the Middle East as Aesop's fables and in various other guises throughout East and Southeast Asia, Africa, Russia, and Europe. Author and painter Mark McGinnis has collected over forty of these hallowed popular tales and retold them in vividly poetic yet accessible language, their original Buddhist messages firmly intact. Each story is accompanied with a beautifully rendered full-color painting, making this an equally attractive book for children and adults, whether Buddhist or not, who love fine stories about their fellow wise (and foolish) creatures.
Author: Ian Harris Publisher: University of Hawaii Press ISBN: 0824861760 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 369
Book Description
The study of Cambodian religion has long been hampered by a lack of easily accessible scholarship. This impressive new work by Ian Harris thus fills a major gap and offers English-language scholars a booklength, up-to-date treatment of the religious aspects of Cambodian culture. Beginning with a coherent history of the presence of religion in the country from its inception to the present day, the book goes on to furnish insights into the distinctive nature of Cambodia's important yet overlooked manifestation of Theravada Buddhist tradition and to show how it reestablished itself following almost total annihilation during the Pol Pot period. Historical sections cover the dominant role of tantric Mahayana concepts and rituals under the last great king of Angkor, Jayavarman VII (1181–c. 1220); the rise of Theravada traditions after the collapse of the Angkorian civilization; the impact of foreign influences on the development of the nineteenth-century monastic order; and politicized Buddhism and the Buddhist contribution to an emerging sense of Khmer nationhood. The Buddhism practiced in Cambodia has much in common with parallel traditions in Thailand and Sri Lanka, yet there are also significant differences. The book concentrates on these and illustrates how a distinctly Cambodian Theravada developed by accommodating itself to premodern Khmer modes of thought. Following the overthrow of Prince Sihanouk in 1970, Cambodia slid rapidly into disorder and violence. Later chapters chart the elimination of institutional Buddhism under the Khmer Rouge and its gradual reemergence after Pol Pot, the restoration of the monastic order's prerevolutionary institutional forms, and the emergence of contemporary Buddhist groupings.
Author: Miguel Farias Publisher: Watkins Media Limited ISBN: 1786782863 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 321
Book Description
Millions of people meditate daily but can meditative practices really make us ‘better’ people? In The Buddha Pill, pioneering psychologists Dr Miguel Farias and Catherine Wikholm put meditation and mindfulness under the microscope. Separating fact from fiction, they reveal what scientific research – including their groundbreaking study on yoga and meditation with prisoners – tells us about the benefits and limitations of these techniques for improving our lives. As well as illuminating the potential, the authors argue that these practices may have unexpected consequences, and that peace and happiness may not always be the end result. Offering a compelling examination of research on transcendental meditation to recent brain-imaging studies on the effects of mindfulness and yoga, and with fascinating contributions from spiritual teachers and therapists, Farias and Wikholm weave together a unique story about the science and the delusions of personal change.
Author: Ann Heirman Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 9004158308 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 485
Book Description
This book unravels some of the complex factors that allowed or hampered the presence of (certain aspects of) Buddhism in the regions to the north and the east of India, such as Central Asia, China, Tibet, Mongolia, or Korea.
Author: Ian Harris
Author: Ian Harris
Author: Ian Charles Harris
Author: Stephen M. Barr
Author: Nagendra Nātha Pradhāna
Author: Matthew T. Kapstein
Author: Graham Rooth
Author: Mark W. McGinnis
Author: Ian Harris
Author: Miguel Farias
Author: Ann Heirman