Search Results (6)

The purpose of this research is to examine whether Buddhist ethics can improve the health and well-being of Buddhist practitioners during pandemics like COVID-19. It is hypothesized that diseases are part of suffering, and Buddhist teachings aim to eliminate the suffering of all beings. Buddhism also offers ethical codes of conduct for its practitioners to improve their health and well-being. So, the Buddha’s teaching or Buddhist ethics, when practiced seriously, should be able to improve one’s health, physically and mentally, enhancing the well-being of all Buddhist practitioners during the spread of all pandemics including COVID-19. The present study found that Buddhist ethical practices like the chanting of Buddhist suttas and the development of mindfulness, concentration/meditation, and insight (vipassanā) can improve both physical and mental health, which are important for dealing with any pandemic, tremendously. If the cores of Buddhist ethics (morality, meditation, and wisdom) are perfectly practiced, not only will one live with good physical and mental health but one also will be able to eliminate all the mental defilements that are the root causes of all illnesses and thus enter nibbāna, the state of mind that is beyond all sources of suffering including pandemics/epidemics. More specifically, this paper highlights a set of Buddhist practices, called four bhāvanās (types of development), that can be used to improve health and well-being during any pandemic. Full article

The mid-twentieth century was celebrated in Theravāda civilizations as the halfway point in the five-thousand-year history of the Buddha’s dispensation, the sāsana. Around this time in Burma, fierce debates arose concerning the re-establishment of the extinct order of Theravāda nuns. While women were understood as having a crucial role in supporting and maintaining the sāsana, without a sanctioned means of higher ordination, they were excluded from its centre, that is, as active agents in sāsana history. In this paper, I explore what was at stake in these debates by examining the arguments of two monks who publicly called for the reintroduction of the order of nuns, the Mingun Jetavana Sayadaw (1868–1955) and Ashin Ādiccavaṃsa (1881–1950). I will show that both used the enigmatic Milindapañha (Questions of Milinda) to present their arguments, but more than this, by drawing from their writings and biographies, it will be seen that their methods of interpreting the Pāli canon depended on their unique models of sāsana history, models which understood this halfway point as ushering in a new era of emancipatory promise. This promise was premised on the practice of vipassanā meditation by both lay men and especially women, the latter who, through their participation in the mass lay meditation movement, were making strong claims as dynamic players in the unfolding of sāsana history. The question of whether the order of nuns should be revived therefore hinged on the larger question of what was and was not possible in the current age of sāsana decline. Beyond this, what I aim to show is that mid-twentieth-century debates around female ordination concerned the very nature of the sāsana itself, as either a transcendent, timeless ideal, or as a bounded history embodied in the practice of both monks and nuns. Full article

Our twenty-first century global society is in critical condition, with intertwined symptoms including ecological deterioration verging on ecosystem collapse; polarization of the human community across racial, ethnic, religious, ideological, and other lines, triggering violent conflicts on different levels; and gross inequality in economic status and opportunity, with many needlessly losing their lives due to hunger and malnutrition, and impoverished multitudes consigned to living in dehumanizing conditions. Taking the Four Noble Truths of the Buddha as a therapeutic approach to our dis-eased human condition, we examine symptoms of our Earth community’s severely disjointed condition, tracing their root causes to the three poisons of greed, ill will, and delusion, as manifested in the personal and in the collective, structural/institutional levels of our being. Eradication of these causes would usher in a wholesome and sustainable way of life for us all. The Buddha’s Eightfold Path is taken up as a strategic approach to global healing, transposing guidelines for personal spiritual practice into the socio-ecological dimension. This essay is offered not only for Buddhists but for all people of good will, of different religious backgrounds or none, who seek to live in a wholesome, sustainable, and awakened way together in one Earth community. Full article

This paper examines how the Buddhist revival, the Chan revival, and recent popularity of transnational meditation practices have facilitated Chinese women practicing Buddhist meditation in contemporary China. With the influence of the opening of China and growing transnational networks, there has been an increasing number of Han Chinese monastics and lay people practicing transnational meditation, such as samādhi, vipassanā and mindfulness, in the past two decades. Despite the restriction of accessing Chan halls at monasteries, some Chinese nuns and laywomen have traveled to learn meditation in different parts of China, and international meditation centers in Southeast Asia to study with yogis from all over the world. Surprisingly some returned female travelers have taken significant roles in organizing meditation retreats, and establishing meditation centers and meditation halls. Through examining some ethnographic cases of Chinese nuns and laywomen, this paper argues that the transnational meditation movement has an impact not only on gender equality, especially concerning Chinese women practicing meditation, but also on the development of contemporary Chinese Buddhism. The significant role of Chinese female meditators in promoting Buddhist meditation can reflect a trend of re-positioning the Chan School in contemporary China. Full article

This paper examines how the teaching of embodied practices of transnational Buddhist meditation has been designated for healing depression explicitly in contemporary Chinese Buddhist communities with the influences of Buddhist modernism in Southeast Asia and globalization. Despite the revival of traditional Chan school meditation practices since the Open Policy, various transnational lay meditation practices, such as vipassanā and mindfulness, have been popularized in monastic and lay communities as a trendy way to heal physical and mental suffering in mainland China. Drawing from a recent ethnographic study of a meditation retreat held at a Chinese Buddhist monastery in South China, this paper examines how Buddhist monastics have promoted a hybrid mode of embodied Buddhist meditation practices, mindfulness and psychoanalytic exercises for healing depression in lay people. With analysis of the teaching and approach of the retreat guided by well-educated Chinese meditation monastics, I argue that some young generation Buddhist communities have contributed to giving active responses towards the recent yearning for individualized bodily practices and the social trend of the “subjective turn” and self-reflexivity in contemporary Chinese society. The hybrid inclusion of mindfulness exercises from secular programs and psychoanalytic exercises into a vipassanā meditation retreat may reflect an attempt to re-contextualize meditation in Chinese Buddhism. Full article

Female non-Buddhists have been writing detailed descriptions of their personal experiences in vipassanā meditation retreats since the 1960s. These memoirists relate to the English-speaking world their experience of the retreat process and self-transformations. Early memoirists traveled Asia in order to learn and practice vipassanā meditation. These memoirs are as much about the meditation practice itself as living in an Asian culture. The mindfulness craze, beginning in the late 2000s, brought with it increased awareness of vipassanā practice. At this time we see a renewed interest in recording vipassanā retreat experiences, but these are even more personal and not concerned with travel, as many vipassanā meditation retreats are now available outside of Asia. I consider four female memoirists: Marie Byles and Jane Hamilton-Smith, writing in the 1960s and 1970s, and Raji Lukkoor, and Jennifer Howd, whose memoirs appeared in 2010 and 2014, respectively. These women’s writings demonstrate that, although non-Buddhist female meditators understand vipassanā meditation as a nongendered practice, it is still an embodied, gendered experience. Each of these women has different reactions to the female gender on the retreat, from outrage at gender discrimination to acceptance of it, from judgment of female teachers and meditators to revealing a more feminine self. Full article