"In collaboration with the Jodo Shu Research Institute (JSRI)."

It is said that the famous ninth century Chinese Buddhist monk Linji Yixuan told his disciples, "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him." The deliberately confounding statement is meant to shock people out of complacent ways of thinking. But beyond the purposeful jolt from complacency there is another intention. This axiom suggests that, for liberation, one should seek the Buddha nature that resides within, rather than a mere Buddha exterior. The metaphor of killing the Buddha dislodges a person from the illusion that enlightenment lies outside the body. The proclamation also highlights the power of violence, even on a symbolic level. Violence abounds in Buddhist thoughts, doctrine, and actions, however unacknowledged or misunderstood. If You Meet the Buddha on the Road addresses an important absence in the study of religion and violence: the religious treatment of violence. In order to pursue an understanding of the relationship between Buddhism and violence, it is important to first consider how Buddhist scriptures and followers understand violence. Drawing on Buddhist treatments of violence, Michael Jerryson explores the ways in which Buddhists invoke, support, or justify war, conflict, state violence, and gender discrimination. In addition, the book examines the ways in which Buddhists address violence as military chaplains, cope with violence in a conflict zone, and serve as witnesses of blasphemy to Buddhist doctrine and Buddha images.

This volume contributes to an emerging field that could be referred to as "plural spiritual care and chaplaincy". It's innovative approach brings together contributions from a broad range of contexts and religious traditions and includes empirical work and conceptual explorations. It helps to fill the gap between practices and developments related to plural spiritual care and chaplaincy in the scholarly discourse.

With so much of the global population living on the move, away from their homelands, and in diasporic communities, death and mourning practices are inevitably impacted. Transnational Death brings together eleven cutting-edge articles from the emerging field of transnational death studies. By highlighting European, Asian, North American, and Middle Eastern perspectives, the collection provides timely and fresh analysis and reflection on people’s changing experiences with death in the context of migration over time. First beginning with a thematic assessment of the field of transnational death studies, readers then have the opportunity to delve into case studies that examine experiences with death and mourning at a distance from the viewpoints of Family, Community, and Commemoration. The chapters highlight complicated issues confronting migrants, their families, and communities, including: negotiations of burial preferences and challenges of corpse repatriation; the financial costs of providing end-of-life care, travel at times of death, and arranging culturally appropriate funerals and religious services; as well as the emotional and sociocultural weight of mourning and commemoration from afar. Overall, Transnational Death provides new insights on identity and belonging, community reciprocity, transnational communication, and spaces of mourning and commemoration.

Are a person's perceptions and values altered when facing the end of life? Are a person's perceptions and values altered when facing the end of life? Do the dying see the world in a way that could help the rest of us learn how to live? This book takes us into the lessons of the dying. Through the words and circumstances of the terminally ill, we become immersed in their wisdom and in our own mortality. The dying speak to us in direct and personal ways, pointing toward a wise and sane way to live. In everyday language we can all understand, Rodney Smith extends the conversation about death to people of all ages and states of health. Through exercises and guided meditative reflections at the end of each chapter, the lessons of the dying become a blueprint for our own growth.

The dead are still with us. Contemporary therapists and counselors are coming to understand what's been known for millennia in most religions and in most cultures outside the Western milieu: it's important to continue bonds between the living and the dead. Taking these connections seriously, Goss and Klass explore how bonds with the dead are created and maintained. In doing so, they unearth a fascinating new way to look at the origins and processes of religion itself. Examining ties to dead family members, teachers, religious and political leaders across religious and secular traditions, the authors offer novel ways of understanding grief and its role in creating meaning. Whether for classes in comparative religion and death and dying, or for bereavement counselors and other trying to make sense of grief, this book helps us understand what it means to feel connected to those dead but not lost.

The relationships between religion, spirituality, health, biomedical institutions, complementary, and alternative healing systems are widely discussed today. While many of these debates revolve around the biomedical legitimacy of religious modes of healing, the market for them continues to grow. The Routledge Handbook of Religion, Medicine, and Health is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems, and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising over thirty-five chapters by a team of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into five parts: Healing practices with religious roots and frames Religious actors in and around the medical field Organizing infrastructures of religion and medicine: pluralism and competition Boundary-making between religion and medicine Religion and epidemics Within these sections, central issues, debates and problems are examined, including health and healing, religiosity, spirituality, biomedicine, medicalization, complementary medicine, medical therapy, efficacy, agency, and the nexus of body, mind, and spirit. The Routledge Handbook of Religion, Medicine, and Health is essential reading for students and researchers in religious studies. The Handbook will also be very useful for those in related fields, such as sociology, anthropology, and medicine.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork and archival research, it is one of the first studies to give readers a sense of what is happening on the front lines as a growing number of Buddhist priests try to reboot their roles and traditions to gain greater significance in Japanese society. The book profiles innovative as well as controversial responses to the challenges facing Buddhist priests. From traditional activities (conducting memorial rituals; supporting residences for the elderly and infirm; providing relief for victims of natural disasters) to more creative ones (collaborating in suicide prevention efforts; holding symposia and concerts on temple precincts; speaking out against nuclear power following Japan’s 2011 earthquake; opening cafés, storefront temples, and pubs; even staging fashion shows with priests on the runway), more progressive members of Japan’s Buddhist clergy are trying to navigate a path leading towards renewed relevance in society. An additional challenge is to avoid alienating older patrons while trying to attract younger ones vital to the future of their temples. The work’s central theme of “experimental Buddhism”provides a fresh perspective to understand how priests and other individuals employ Buddhist traditions in selective and pragmatic ways. Using these inventive approaches during a time of crisis and transition for Japanese temple Buddhism, priests and practitioners from all denominations seek solutions that not only can revitalize their religious traditions but also influence society and their fellow citizens in positive ways.

This visionary work explores the sensitive balance between the personal and private aspects of grief, the social and cultural variables that unite communities in bereavement, and the universal experience of loss. Its global journey takes readers into the processes of coping, ritual, and belief across established and emerging nations, indigenous cultures, and countries undergoing major upheavals, richly detailed by native scholars and practitioners. In these pages, culture itself is recognized as formed through many lenses, from the ancestral to the experiential. The human capacity to mourn, endure, and make meaning is examined in papers such as: Death, grief, and culture in Kenya: experiential strengths-based research. Death and grief in Korea: the continuum of life and death. To live with death: loss in Romanian culture. The Brazilian ways of living, dying, and grieving. Death and bereavement in Israel: Jewish, Muslim, and Christian perspectives. Completing the circle of life: death and grief among Native Americans. It is always normal to remember: death, grief, and culture in Australia. The World of Bereavement will fascinate and inspire clinicians, providers, and researchers in the field of death studies as well as privately-held professional training programs and the bereavement community in general.

Representing work by some of the leading scholars in the field, the chapters of this handbook survey the transformation and innovation of religious traditions and practices in contemporary Japan. Readers will find lively scholarly studies about changes in the traditional institutions of Buddhism and Shinto, vivid examples of social activism as well as the so-called “new religions,” examination of the relationship between religion and the state, and analysis of the religiosity of individuals encompassed by “spirituality,” pilgrimage and tourism, and the marketing of religions. This groundbreaking collection of scholarly papers helps to map out the fascinating complexity and dynamism of religion in contemporary Japanese society and culture.