Pure Land was one of the main fields of mythopoesis and discourse among the Asian Buddhist traditions, and in Japan of central cultural importance from the Heian period right up to the present. The pieces reproduced in this set have been chosen as linchpin works accentuating the diversity and evolution of Pure Land Buddhism. These selections of previously published articles will serve as an essential starting-point for anyone interested in this perhaps underestimated area of Buddhist studies.

Pure Land was one of the main fields of mythopoesis and discourse among the Asian Buddhist traditions, and in Japan of central cultural importance from the Heian period right up to the present. The pieces reproduced in this set have been chosen as linchpin works accentuating the diversity and evolution of Pure Land Buddhism. These selections of previously published articles will serve as an essential starting-point for anyone interested in this perhaps underestimated area of Buddhist studies.

Pure Land was one of the main fields of mythopoesis and discourse among the Asian Buddhist traditions, and in Japan of central cultural importance from the Heian period right up to the present. The pieces reproduced in this set have been chosen as linchpin works accentuating the diversity and evolution of Pure Land Buddhism. These selections of previously published articles will serve as an essential starting-point for anyone interested in this perhaps underestimated area of Buddhist studies.

Pure Land was one of the main fields of mythopoesis and discourse among the Asian Buddhist traditions, and in Japan of central cultural importance from the Heian period right up to the present. However, its range, inconsistency, variability, and complexity have tended to be misevaluated. The pieces reproduced in this set, organized both chronologically and thematically, have been chosen as linchpin works accentuating the diversity of what evolved under this heading of Buddhism. Special attention is given to the traps into which Western observers may fall, the role of the large True Pure Land (Jōdoshinshū) school, and the richness of Tokugawa and twentieth-century developments. These selections of previously published articles will serve as an essential starting-point for anyone interested in this perhaps underestimated area of Buddhist studies.

With a foreword by Prof. Alfred Bloom. This completely new study of Japanese Shin Buddhism offers a valuable combination of historical development, carefully selected readings with commentaries and illustrations. Widely welcomed both for its scope as course work reader and as a general introduction to the subject.

What, if anything, is Esoteric Pure Land Buddhism? In 1224, the medieval Japanese scholar-monk Dōhan (1179–1252) composed The Compendium on Esoteric Mindfulness of Buddha (Himitsu nenbutsu shō), which begins with another seemingly simple question: Why is it that practitioners of mantra and meditation rely on the recitation of the name of the Buddha Amitābha? To answer this question, Dōhan explored diverse areas of study spanning the whole of the East Asian Mahayana Buddhist tradition. Although contemporary scholars often study Esoteric Buddhism and Pure Land Buddhism as if they were mutually exclusive and diametrically opposed schools of Buddhism, in the present volume Aaron Proffitt examines Dōhan’s Compendium in the context of the eastward flow of Mahayana Buddhism from India to Japan and uncovers Mahayana Buddhists employing multiple, overlapping, so-called “esoteric” approaches along the path to awakening. Proffitt divides his study into two parts. In Part I he considers how early Buddhologists, working under colonialism, first constructed Mahayana Buddhism, Pure Land Buddhism, and Esoteric Buddhism as discrete fields of inquiry. He then surveys the flow of Indian Buddhist spells, dhāraṇī, and mantra texts into China and Japan and the diverse range of Buddhist masters who employed these esoteric techniques to achieve rebirth in Sukhāvatī, the Pure Land of Bliss. In Part II, he considers the life of Dōhan and analyzes the monk’s comprehensive view of buddhānusmṛti as a form of ritual technology that unified body and mind, Sukhāvatī as a this-worldly or other-worldly soteriological goal synonymous with nirvana itself, and the Buddha Amitābha as an object of devotion beyond this world of suffering. The work concludes with the first full translation of Dōhan’s Himitsu nenbutsu shō into a modern language.

Questions of secularity and modernity have become globalized, but most studies still focus on the West. This volume breaks new ground by comparatively exploring developments in five areas of the world, some of which were hitherto situated at the margins of international scholarly discussions: Africa, the Arab World, East Asia, South Asia, and Central and Eastern Europe. In theoretical terms, the book examines three key dimensions of modern secularity: historical pathways, cultural meanings, and global entanglements of secular formations. The contributions show how differences in these dimensions are linked to specific histories of religious and ethnic diversity, processes of state-formation and nation-building. They also reveal how secularities are critically shaped through civilizational encounters, processes of globalization, colonial conquest, and missionary movements, and how entanglements between different territorially grounded notions of secularity or between local cultures and transnational secular arenas unfold over time.

This study examines the history of the Japanese period film and proposes that a powerful relationship exists between the past and present in Japan's narrative tradition. The first section of the book analyzes the form and function of the Japanese period film, describing the unique iconography and characteristics of films set in the past. The author also examines how the period film has allowed Japanese filmmakers to circumvent government censorship by serving as a rhetorical device with which they can explore contemporary concerns through a criticism of the past. The final section of the book contains chapters that focus on the narrative in Japanese epic, religion, theater, and modern popular literature. A complete filmography and bibliography are included.

For close to a thousand years Amida’s Pure Land, a paradise of perfect ease and equality, was the most powerful image of shared happiness circulating in the Japanese imagination. In the late nineteenth century, some Buddhist thinkers sought to reinterpret the Pure Land in ways that would allow it speak to modern Japan. Their efforts succeeded in ways they could not have predicted. During the war years, economist Kawakami Hajime, philosopher Miki Kiyoshi, and historian Ienaga Saburō—left-leaning thinkers with no special training in doctrinal studies and no strong connection to any Buddhist institution—seized upon modernized images of Shinran in exile and a transcendent Western Paradise to resist the demands of a state that was bearing down on its citizens with increasing force. Pure Land, Real World treats the religious thought of these three major figures in English for the first time. Kawakami turned to religion after being imprisoned for his involvement with the Japanese Communist Party, borrowing the Shinshū image of the two truths to assert that Buddhist law and Marxist social science should reinforce each other, like the two wings of a bird. Miki, a member of the Kyoto School who went from prison to the crown prince’s think tank and back again, identified Shinran’s religion as belonging to the proletariat: For him, following Shinran and working toward building a buddha land on earth were akin to realizing social revolution. And Ienaga’s understanding of the Pure Land—as the crystallization of a logic of negation that undermined every real power structure—fueled his battle against the state censorship system, just as he believed it had enabled Shinran to confront the world’s suffering head on. Such readings of the Pure Land tradition are idiosyncratic—perhaps even heretical—but they hum with the same vibrancy that characterized medieval Pure Land belief. Innovative and refreshingly accessible, Pure Land, Real World shows that the Pure Land tradition informed twentieth-century Japanese thought in profound and surprising ways and suggests that it might do the same for twenty-first-century thinkers. The critical power of Pure Land utopianism has yet to be exhausted.

Have you ever wondered what happens to us when we die? What if you really HAD to know? When tragedy strikes the family of young Jobran Winter, he is forced to confront these questions directly. Undertaking a feverish "Quest," he explores various branches of Christianity; Judaism; Islam; Hinduism; Buddhism; Sikhism, as well as the religions of China and Japan. His search encompasses the New Age, Reincarnation, Spiritism and Psychical Research. Attending channeling sessions and sances, investigating haunted houses and Near-Death Experiences, he examines spiritual traditions ranging from Swedenborg to Scientology, from Jodo Shinshu to the Jehovah's Witnesses. Finally, the Quest brings him into direct contact with Hospice work; physical disability; child abandonment; abortion; suicide; euthanasia, and even cold-blooded murder. Encounter the doctrines of Purgatory & Predestination, Universalism & Annihilationism, as you journey in a novel that will make you reexamine your ideas about religion, skepticism, love, death and LIFE.