Search Results (162)

With the growth of academic interest in Korean Buddhism’s modern history over the 1990s, newly introduced oral history methodologies showed great potential. In contrast with oral history trends in Western Buddhist studies, oral history in Korean Buddhist studies emerged from the need to supplement the lack of surviving documentation and to record testimony regarding key historical events before witnesses pass away. While the first decades of Korean Buddhist oral history have produced an invaluable increase in primary sources available for current and future resources, the field has nevertheless suffered from methodological issues and limitations often resulting from the Korean Buddhist community’s conflation of oral history with its own pre-established oral traditions. This article examines how oral history methodologies have been mobilized to reconstruct Korea’s modern Buddhist past within South Korean academia. It also critically evaluates the methodological limitations and institutional biases embedded within these studies, before surveying more recent efforts to overcome these issues through greater critical rigor, methodological refinement, and the inclusion of more diverse perspectives. Full article

In modern China, the introduction of Science from the West posed a significant challenge to Chinese Buddhism, which was already in a state of decline. The intellectual currents of the New Culture Movement (1915–1923) and the subsequent anti-religious movement, which initially targeted Christianity but expanded to include all religions, subjected Buddhism to severe criticism and pressure for reform. In response, Buddhist intellectuals developed the idea of “Buddhism being scientific” as a defensive strategy. On the one hand, they direct parallels between Buddhist concepts, such as the microscopic world described in scriptures, and modern scientific discoveries like microbiology and the theory of relativity, aiming to demonstrate Buddhism’s empirical validity and superiority. On the other hand, they argued that Buddhism could supplement the shortcomings of science, particularly in addressing spiritual and moral needs, thus positioning it as a necessary complement to a purely materialistic worldview. Under the dominant influence of the scientific paradigm, Buddhism underwent a profound academic transformation. Its teachings were systematically integrated into modern disciplinary frameworks, such as Buddhist history, philosophy, and psychology, shifting from a primarily faith-based practice to an object of scholarly study. This scientization process stripped many traditional elements of their sacred character, reinterpreting them through a rational lens and ultimately redirecting the course of modern Chinese Buddhism. Full article

This paper examines the discourse surrounding the relationship between meditation and psychological well-being from a historical perspective. While both Buddhist practitioners and psychotherapists aspire to a state of health, they appear to diverge on what this goal entails and how to achieve it. Influential voices such as Conze and Jung have argued that psychotherapy and Buddhist meditation are incompatible: psychotherapy helps individuals adjust to contemporary society, whereas Buddhism is ultimately designed for detachment from worldly life. At its core, this view rests on an ideological opposition between “tradition” and “modernity,” with the latter interpreted as an exceptional condition. Using Buddhism in Republican China (1912–1949) as a case study, this paper examines how Master Taixu (1890–1947) and the lesser-known mental hygiene advocate Jin Sheng (ca. 1900–?) responded to emerging mental health concerns and the global diffusion of related therapeutic techniques. Analyzing the modern predicament in which the Buddhism–mental health dialogue places them, this research argues their convergence in framing mental illness as a fundamental cognitive obstruction, with meditation alone insufficient as a remedy. Full article

Across modern Asia and many other regions, artificial intelligence is transforming religious life in diverse and profound ways. Robot priests chant sutras at Japanese Buddhist temples, AI-powered apps offer personalised coaching in Quranic recitation to millions of Muslims, and bereaved families consult algorithm-generated avatars of the deceased in China. They are neither merely tools for instrumental use nor channels for transmitting pre-existing religious authority. Instead, they create new forms of religious content, new types of spiritual encounters for religious users, and new structures of authority. This paper argues that understanding these phenomena requires theoretical innovation beyond simply applying existing concepts to new domains. Drawing on Actor–Network Theory, algorithmic culture studies, and scholarship on Asian religious traditions, the paper proposes the theoretical framework of generative charisma, theorising how AI systems gain religious authority through three interconnected mechanisms: captivation by generation, intimacy trust through personalisation, and oscillating enchantment. It also highlights accountability as a structural issue that needs critical discussion regarding governance. The paper demonstrates the framework’s usefulness by examining AI recitation coaching in Islamic practice and AI grief avatars in Chinese Buddhist mourning, showing its relevance across different religious traditions and technological forms. Full article

Buddhist Sunday schools were modeled on the Christian Sunday school, a form of religious education that emerged in late eighteenth-century Britain to provide literacy and moral instruction for impoverished children. Following the Meiji Restoration, Japanese Buddhism institutionalized Buddhist Sunday schools (佛敎日曜學校) for children’s moral cultivation by adapting Christian methodologies, expanding them nationwide during the 1920s and 1930s through standardized curricula. In Korea, Buddhist Sunday schools were introduced from the 1920s onward in response to the expansion of propagation centers (p’ogyo-dang, 布敎堂), the growing demand for youth propagation, and the exclusion of religious education from public schools under the Japanese colonial system. This article examines the comprehensive educational vision and operational principles of these schools—integrating graded administration, teacher qualifications, worship, and recreational activities for children—with a focus on “佛敎 日曜學校案” [Proposals for Buddhist Sunday Schools] written by Ra Un-hyang (羅雲鄕) in 1940. It further analyzes the nationwide distribution of these schools in 1940, identifying limitations such as financial precariousness, personnel shortages, and a lack of societal recognition. Nevertheless, Buddhist Sunday schools represent a significant historical milestone, as they served as a practical site where the popularization of modern Buddhism was realized and as a strategic effort for the cultivation of children and youth as future religious adherents. Full article

In the history as well as historiography of Chinese Buddhism, the tradition has often been closely associated with death-related cultural practices and ideas, an association that has frequently carried negative connotations. Early twentieth-century reformers such as Taixu famously criticized Buddhism as a religion of ghosts and funerals and sought to redirect Mahāyāna Buddhism toward engagement with an urban, modernizing society. Contemporary Taiwanese Buddhists have realized many aspects of this socially engaged vision. Yet concern with death remains deeply embedded in Buddhist life. Far from standing in contradiction to social engagement, this concern has become one of its central expressions, most visibly in the emergence of modern Buddhist palliative care. Focusing on the writings of the scholar-monk Shi Huimin, this article examines the development of Buddhist palliative care in Taiwan in response to a secular, multireligious, and rapidly aging society, with primary attention to Huimin’s conceptual work. Rather than treating death in isolation, Huimin situates dying within a broader ethical horizon that links good death to good aging, good living, and community formation. Through his reinterpretation of the Five Śīlas and his notion of a Community Pure Land, he extends prevailing concerns with dying well toward a more comprehensive reflection on everyday moral cultivation, healthy lifestyles, and communal responsibility. In this sense, the study reads Buddhist palliative care as a site that “provincializes” dominant Euro-American frameworks of spiritual and palliative care, highlighting their particular historical and Christian-inflected origins while tracing how they are reconfigured and made productive in a multireligious, secular context. By foregrounding Huimin’s conceptual contributions, this study highlights how palliative and spiritual care are localized and reworked within Taiwanese Buddhism, connecting end-of-life care to broader questions of life, aging, and community well-being. Full article

This paper draws on Michel Foucault’s analysis of disciplinary power to examine the history of penal punishment and Buddhist chaplaincy at Lüshun Prison in Dalian during Japan’s colonial rule (1905–1945). The goal is to call into question the dominant understanding of Japanese prison system as simply an apparatus of naked colonial oppression by exploring the contradictions and limitations in the penitentiary system of Japan as an empire and a modern nation-state. The research is based on official prison documents, True Pure Land Buddhist Honganji sect archival sources, local Chinese publications, oral testimonies from the 2000s, interviews with descendants, and fieldwork at Lüshun Prison. The first part introduces the history of Lüshun Prison and the second explains the prison as a modern criminal justice institution embodying the Benthamian panopticon principle and modern disciplinary power. The third part examines the brutal corporeal punishment at Lüshun Prison and explores how the prison combined deliberate strategies of disciplining manipulation with bodily punishment to (re)create disciplined and subjected individuals. The fourth and fifth parts focus on Buddhist chaplaincy at Lüshun Prison as a disciplining practice. The fourth considers the limits of Buddhist chaplaincy by showing the depoliticized Buddhist doctrine deployed by chaplains was unable to discipline prisoners as it failed to make them repent and be loyal subjects of imperial Japan. The notion of public good used to justify Buddhist chaplaincy in Japan loses its political meaning when applied to the colonial penitentiary setting of Lüshun Prison. The fifth part further explores this ambiguity in Buddhist chaplaincy by focusing on examining the case of Ahn Jung-geun, the Korean independence activist who assassinated the Japanese statesman Ito Hirobumi and was imprisoned and executed at Lüshun Prison in 1910. Rather than transforming Ahn, prison chaplains ended up being transformed by him. This reversion betrays not just a tension between the private and the public, or the individual and the social, but at the same time a tension between the supposedly homogenized nation-state and the multi-ethnic empire. Full article

The traditional craft of Buddha statue carving represents an important form of cultural heritage in many Asian societies, yet the transmission of this knowledge is increasingly threatened by modernization and the declining number of skilled artisans. This study explores the use of Virtual Reality (VR) as an innovative tool for preserving and teaching the cultural knowledge associated with Salah Lanna stone Buddha carving. A VR-based learning environment was developed to simulate traditional carving techniques, tools, and cultural narratives related to Lanna Buddhist art. The system was designed using Unity 3D and integrated hand-tracking interaction to enable immersive practice of carving procedures. The prototype was evaluated through expert review involving ten specialists in Buddha carving, art education, and VR technology. The evaluation assessed five dimensions: usability, authenticity, cultural relevance, immersion, and perceived learning potential. Results indicate high levels of expert evaluation results regarding the effectiveness of the system, with average scores of 4.6 for usability, 4.8 for authenticity, 4.7 for cultural relevance, 4.5 for immersion, and 4.9 for perceived learning potential on a five-point scale. The findings suggest that VR technology can provide a promising platform for preserving traditional craftsmanship and supporting immersive cultural learning. By integrating technical training with cultural narratives, the system demonstrates potential for enhancing access to traditional craft education while contributing to the digital preservation of Salah Lanna cultural heritage. Full article

Meditation-related difficulties have been systematically documented in contemporary contemplative science, yet the prescriptive resources preserved in the ancient Buddhist commentarial literature remain underutilized in comparative research. This study analyzes the case of five hundred monks in the Paramatthajotikā I’s commentary on the Karaṇīya-metta-sutta. During intensive practice, these monks experienced complex psychosomatic symptoms—perceptual disturbances, fear, somatic distress, and cognitive impairment—and received from the Buddha an integrated prescription of five protective practices (pañca rakkhā). Through Pāli textual and comparative analysis with Lindahl et al.’s taxonomy of meditation-related difficulties, this study demonstrates that the monks’ symptoms correspond systematically to the perceptual, affective, somatic, and cognitive domains of the modern taxonomy, with the critical difference residing in interpretive frameworks rather than in the phenomena themselves. The five practices—loving-kindness meditation, protective chant recitation, contemplation of impurity, mindfulness of death, and the arousal of religious urgency—constitute a sequentially structured system progressing from the emotional reframing of fear to the deconstruction of bodily and existential attachment, culminating in the restoration of soteriological motivation. This study argues that Paramatthajotikā I’s prescriptive system provides a historically grounded, soteriologically oriented complement to contemporary contemplative science, particularly in bridging the gap between phenomenological classification and meaning-centered intervention. Full article

Background/Objectives: Lucid dreaming—dreaming with the awareness that one is dreaming—has been explored from many perspectives, including those of cognitive neuroscience and various ancient cultural traditions. Lucid dreaming appears within the Tibetan-Buddhist literature together with dream yoga, a set of contemplative practices aimed at cultivating lucidity during dreams along with other qualities such as visual imagination, somatic awareness, and cognitive flexibility. These practices include deity visualization, which is the practice of bringing to mind a detailed image of a being whose qualities the practitioner wishes to cultivate. We examined whether it is possible to induce a lucid dream of Chenrezig, the ultimate embodiment of compassion in a Tibetan-Buddhist context. Methods: Five participants slept in the sleep laboratory for 7 overnight sessions with polysomnographic recording and auditory reminders to visualize Chenrezig during REM sleep. Results: Lucid dreams were reported by two participants. A frequent lucid dreamer with no prior Tibetan-Buddhist training experienced a lucid dream that included a visualization of Chenrezig following auditory cueing during REM sleep. A monastic participant with no prior history of lucid dreaming reported their first-ever lucid dream on the night following their laboratory session. Conclusions: This exploratory study illustrates, via collaborative research including monastic scholars trained in neuroscience, that dream content can be intentionally shaped using an approach that integrates contemplative visualization practices with modern techniques of dream engineering. Full article

The 19th century Protestant missionary James Legge is acknowledged for his voluminous and Christianity-inflected translations of Chinese classics of “Three Teachings”, yet his rendition of Buddhist texts remains under-examined. This study analyzes whether a value of Western theology exists in his portrayal of the Chinese monk Fâ-hien in A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, where the pilgrim should emerge as a devout Buddhist, a pioneering explorer, and a morally sensitive figure. Legge foregrounded these facets through paratexts such as illustrations and footnotes, but also repeatedly framed Fâ-hien within a biblical interpretation by frequently drawing parallels between Christianity and Buddhism. At the textual level, he shifted the original first-person narrative to a third-person perspective, which weakened the emotional and spiritual sense of Fâ-hien’s journey. Legge’s scholarly competence in Chinese learning and his role as Oxford’s first Professor of Chinese determined his precise representation of the rich connotations of Fâ-hien’s image, balancing academic rigor with an orientation toward Great Britain’s colonial education and imperial interests. His Christo-Buddhist intervention in the paratexts, associating the primary text with Christian culture, reveals his underlying missionary purpose to evangelize China. To this end, this study reveals how religious translation served both missionary and scholarly ends, contributing to Western perceptions of Chinese religion while illustrating the broader power dynamics of Christian engagement with modern China. Full article

This study addresses a lacuna in Buddhist modernism scholarship, which has extensively examined Buddhists’ employment of science as an instrument for Buddhist apologetics across Theravada, Yogacara, Zen and Tibetan Buddhist traditions, yet has largely neglected Huayan Buddhism. Taking an influential contemporary Buddhist adherent, Zhong Maosen (b. 1973), as a case study, it analyzes his deployment of modern physical theories—including relativity, string theory, mass–energy equivalence, black hole and dark matter theories—as an apologetic tool to defend Huayan texts. Zhong argues that some narratives in Huayan texts anticipate these physical theories and even depict unrealized technologies. Zhong’s interpretive strategy amounts to creative reconstruction rather than technical correspondence: he blurs ontological and epistemological boundaries between Huayan texts and physics, recasting the mystical narratives of Huayan texts as prescientific insights to defuse pejorative “anti-scientific” connotations. Shaped by his dual identity as a former secular academic and ordained monk, Zhong’s apologetics reconcile his own epistemic shift while situating itself within the historical trajectory of Buddhist modernism’s engagement with the epistemic authority of scientific rationality. This case study attempts to enrich understanding of how science functions as a medium for contemporary Buddhist apologetics and fills the research gap of the modern scientific reinterpretation of Huayan Buddhism. Full article

This article examines the theoretical and practical frameworks surrounding liminal states of consciousness—specifically lucid dreaming and out-of-body experiences (OBEs)—within Indian religious and philosophical traditions. Through a comparative analysis of Vedāntic, Yogic, Buddhist, and Jain systems, the article argues that these states are not merely anomalous psychological events but deliberately cultivated “architectures of liminality” designed to investigate the nature of self, consciousness, and reality. Methodologically, this article offers a comparative analysis of models and categories of liminal consciousness across Indian traditions, critically engaging relevant neurophenomenological frameworks and incorporating a small set of representative first-person exemplars. The results reveal a spectrum of interpretations: from the mind-only projection model of Buddhist dream yoga to the subtle-material interaction model of Jain karmic ontology, and from the embodied cognition framework of modern neuroscience to the disembodied consciousness theories of classical Indian systems. The study concludes that a comprehensive understanding of liminal consciousness must integrate first-person phenomenological reports with the soteriological, ritual, and metaphysical contexts that structure their interpretation, thereby challenging reductionist approaches in contemporary consciousness studies. Full article

Humans inherit an ethical condition shaped by suffering: biological, historical, and relational. Buddhism begins by diagnosing this suffering as inherent to embodied life, while Western theology situates suffering and morality as consequences of the Fall. Levinas reframes suffering not as a problem to be extinguished but as the very site of ethical awakening: the Other’s vulnerability commands an infinite responsibility. Maria Dimitrova’s comparative work on Levinas and Buddhist thought reveals how compassion and responsibility illuminate one another and how both exceed purely ontological frameworks. This paper weaves these traditions into a single genealogy of ethics—from Edenic innocence to the historical moral burden of exile, from biological interdependence to the modern “Necropolis,” and finally toward a speculative future in which technology may allow a reconfiguration of suffering itself. The result is a proposal that ethics is neither eternal nor arbitrary but a pilgrimage arising from suffering and oriented toward a horizon of grace made possible not by divine restoration but by human and post-human agency. Full article

This article aims to show how scientific interpretations of the mind can be integrated with traditional Buddhist models of the mind that maintain no-self in light of modern Buddhist meditation practices. Building on David McMahan’s work, it compares two models of mind, the Theater-of-the-Mind and the Ten Ox Herding Pictures (C. Shíniútú; K. Sibudo 十牛圖). The former places the self at the center of experience, while the latter, although it makes use of a conventional self, ultimately maintains the impermanence of the self. While this article primarily contributes to a theoretical understanding, a practical claim is made regarding the pedagogic reconciliation between these two approaches. This is done through the analysis of the two models of mind, an explanation of how Buddhist pedagogy integrates a model that reifies the self through provisional acceptance, and finally by providing an example of this integration with a recently developed Buddhist-based meditation program. One implication of this work is that the tensions between the secular and religious approaches to meditation that afflict so much of the discussion surrounding practices such as mindfulness can be quelled, at least to some extent, by a careful philosophical interrogation of the models of mind implied by those practices. Full article