Sino-Tibetan Buddhism implies cross-cultural contacts and exchanges between China and Tibet. The ten case-studies collected in this book focus on the spread of Chinese Buddhism within a mainly Tibetan environment and the adaptation of Tibetan Buddhism among a Chinese-speaking audience throughout the ages.

This volume explores the role played by monastic discipline in the emergence and evolution of modern Chinese Buddhism. A central feature of the Buddhist tradition, monastic discipline has received growing attention in the contemporary Buddhist world, but little from scholars. Adopting a diachronic perspective and a multidisciplinary approach, contributions by leading scholars investigate relevant Vinaya-related practices in twentieth and twenty-first centuries China and Taiwan, including issues of monastic identity and authenticity, updated ordination procedures, recent variations of Mahāyāna precepts and rules, and original perspectives on body movement and related sport activities. The restoration and renewal of Vinaya practices and standards within Chinese Buddhist practices shed new light on the response of Buddhist leaders and communities to the challenges of modernity. Contributors are: Ester Bianchi, Raoul Birnbaum, Daniela Campo, Tzu-Lung Chiu, Ann Heirman, Zhe Ji, Yu-chen Li, Pei-ying Lin, and Jiang Wu.

During the Republican period (1912–1949) and after, many Chinese Buddhists sought inspiration from non-Chinese Buddhist traditions, showing a particular interest in esoteric teachings. What made these Buddhists dissatisfied with Chinese Buddhism, and what did they think other Buddhist traditions could offer? Which elements did they choose to follow, and which ones did they disregard? And how do their experiences recast the wider story of twentieth-century pan-Asian Buddhist reform movements? Based on a wide range of previously unexplored Chinese sources, this book explores how esoteric Buddhist traditions have shaped the Chinese religious landscape. Wei Wu examines cross-cultural religious transmission of ideas from Japanese and Tibetan traditions, considering the various esoteric currents within Chinese Buddhist communities and how Chinese individuals and groups engaged with newly translated ideas and practices. She argues that Chinese Buddhists’ assimilation of doctrinal, ritual, and institutional elements of Tibetan and Japanese esoteric Buddhism was not a simple replication but an active process of creating new meanings. Their visions of Buddhism in the modern world, as well as early twentieth-century discourses of nation building and religious reform, shaped the reception of esoteric traditions. By analyzing the Chinese interpretation and strategic adaptations of esoteric Buddhism, this book sheds new light on the intellectual development, ritual performances, and institutional formations of Chinese Buddhism in the twentieth century.

The interdisciplinary volume Transfer of Buddhism across Central Asian Networks (7th to 13th Centuries), edited by Carmen Meinert, offers a new transregional and transcultural vision for religious transfer processes in Central Asian history. It looks at the region as an integrated (religious) whole rather than from the perspective of fragmented sub-disciplines and analyses the spread of Buddhism as a driving force in a societal and cultural change of pan-Asian importance. One particular dimension of this ‘Buddhist globalisation’ was the rise of local forms of Buddhism. This volume explores Buddhist localisations through manuscripts and material culture in the multiethnic oases of the Tarim basin, the Transhimalyan region of Zangskar, Ladakh and Kashmir and the Western Tibetan Kingdom of Purang-Guge. Contributors are: Kazuo Kano, Deborah Klimburg-Salter, Rob Linrothe, Linda Lojda, Carmen Meinert, Henrik H. Sørensen, Monica Strinu, Gertraud Taenzer, Sam van Schaik, and Jens Wilkens.

The Buddhist World joins a series of books on the world’s great religions and cultures, offering a lively and up-to-date survey of Buddhist studies for students and scholars alike. It explores regional varieties of Buddhism and core topics including buddha-nature, ritual, and pilgrimage. In addition to historical and geo-political views of Buddhism, the volume features thematic chapters on philosophical concepts such as ethics, as well as social constructs and categories such as community and family. The book also addresses lived Buddhism in its many forms, examining the ways in which modernity is reshaping traditional structures, ancient doctrines, and cosmological beliefs.

Winner of a 2021 Kayden Translation Award A true story of love, separation, and rediscovery in a time of cultural and spiritual upheaval in Tibet. An inspiring and intimate tale set against the turmoil of recent Tibetan history, Inseparable across Lifetimes offers for the first time the translations of love letters between two modern Buddhist visionaries. The letters are poetic, affectionate, and prophetic, articulating a hopeful vision of renewal that drew on their past lives together and led to their twenty-year partnership. This couple played a significant role in restoring Buddhism in the region of Golok once China’s revolutionary fervor gave way to reform. Holly Gayley, who was given their correspondence by Namtrul Rinpoche himself, has translated their lives and letters in order to share their remarkable story with the world.

Buddhism in America provides the most comprehensive and up to date survey of the diverse landscape of US Buddhist traditions, their history and development, and current methodological trends in the study of Buddhism in the West, located within the translocal flow of global Buddhist culture. Divided into three parts (Histories; Traditions; Frames), this introduction traces Buddhism's history and encounter with North American culture, charts the landscape of US Buddhist communities, and engages current methodological and theoretical developments in the field. The volume includes: - A short introduction to Buddhism - A historical survey from the 19th century to the present - Coverage of contemporary US Buddhist communities, including Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana Theoretical and methodological issues and debates covered include: - Social, political and environmental engagement - Race, feminist, and queer theories of Buddhism - Secular Buddhism, digital Buddhism, and modernity - Popular culture, media, and the arts Pedagogical tools include chapter summaries, discussion questions, images and maps, a glossary, and case studies. The book's website provides recommended further resources including websites, books and films, organized by chapter. With individual chapters which can stand on their own and be assigned out of sequence, Buddhism in America is the ideal resource for courses on Buddhism in America, American Religious History, and Introduction to Buddhism.

Senior scholars and former students celebrate the life and work of Janet Gyatso, professor of Buddhist studies at Harvard Divinity School. Inspired by her contributions to life writing, Tibetan medicine, gender studies, and more, these offerings make a rich feast for readers interested in Tibetan and Buddhist studies. Janet Gyatso has made substantial, influential, and incredibly valuable contributions to the fields of Buddhist and Tibetan studies. Her paradigm-shifting approach is to take a topic, an idea, a text, a term—often one that had long been taken for granted or overlooked—and turn it inside out, to radically reimagine the kinds of questions that might be asked and what the answers might reveal. The twenty-nine essays in this volume, authored by colleagues and former students—many of whom are now also colleagues—represent the breadth of her interests and influence and the care that she has taken in training the current generation of scholars of Tibet and Buddhism. They are organized into five sections: Women, Gender, and Sexuality; Biography and Autobiography; the Nyingma Imaginaire; Literature, Art, and Poetry; and Early Modernity: Human and Nonhuman Worlds. Contributions include José Cabezón on the incorporation of a Buddhist rock carving in Central Asian culture; Matthew Kapstein on the memoirs of an ambivalent reincarnated lama; Willa Baker on Jikmé Lingpa’s theory of absence; Andrew Quintman on a found poem expressing worldly sadness on the forced closure of a monastery; and Padma ’tsho on Tibetan women’s advocacy for full female ordination. These and the many other chapters, each fascinating reads in their own right, together offer a glowing tribute to a scholar who indelibly changed the way we think about Buddhism, its history, and its literature.

The world’s “great” religions depend on traditions of serious scholarship, dedicated to preserving their key texts but also to understanding them and, therefore, to debating what understanding itself is and how best to do it. They also have important public missions of many kinds, and their ideas and organizations influence many other important institutions, including government, law, education, and kinship. Anthropology of Eastern Religions: Ideas, Organizations, and Constituencies is a comparative survey of the world’s major religious traditions as professional enterprises and, often, as social movements. Documenting the principle ideas behind eastern religious traditions from an anthropological perspective, Murray J. Leaf demonstrates how these ideas have been used in building internal organizations that mobilize or fail to mobilize external support.

This book is an historical survey of Buddhism in India and shows how over a period of 2500 years, Buddhism has been engaged in a struggle against caste-hierarchy. It has challenged Brahmanism, the main exploitative system of traditional Indian society, and instead endeavored to build religious egalitarianism.