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Abstract
This article is a study on the miniature clay Buddha tablets and stupas collected by the Ōtani Expedition presently at the National Museum of Korea. Similar examples were found in the Dunhuang cave temples, Buddhist stupas of Xi Xia, and through English and American expeditions of the early twentieth century. A comparative study establishes the functions and characteristics unique to the Ōtani clay tablets and stupas. Such artifacts were once believed to absolve the transgressions of the dead or commissioner, while also allowing one to accumulate merits for an improved afterlife. Well-suited for Buddhist missionary work, these tablets and stupas were produced in all regions where Buddhism was prevalent. Though small and made from a modest material, the miniature clay tablets and stupas represent an important genre of Buddhist art that expresses the universal role of religious art.
Abstract
This article addresses the intersection of the oral tradition with textual contents in Pāli Buddhist literature, by focusing mostly on the Suttapiṭaka. Lexicon and stylistic features can be seen as intentional strategies to enhance specific mnemonic and meditative qualities in the disciples, thus working symbiotically with the instructions they convey. By examining selected passages, I will demonstrate a functional interrelationship of three main factors: the lexicon of listening, the emphasis on attention, and meditative instructions. These three factors, in turn, rely upon the authoritative power of the scriptures, which is constructed and reinforced with specific rhetorical stratagems to raise and enhance meditative qualities in the disciples.
Abstract
Social research data shows that Jehovah’s Witnesses experience social ostracism, distancing, marginalization, and labeling in contemporary Lithuania. This article searches for an explanation for these public attitudes by applying a sociohistorical approach to the analysis of the processes of othering and resilience of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Lithuania from the organization’s arrival at the beginning of the twentieth century to today, focusing on its relations with society and state. It is based on the document and literature analysis of organization and academic sources as well as interviews with Jehovah’s Witnesses conducted in 2020–2021. The article argues that the social history of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Lithuania illustrates the processes of othering and resilience since the arrival of the organization in Lithuania throughout the Soviet period and in the Republic of Lithuania, as since 1990 both society and state have been contributing to the process of othering, while Witnesses continue persistently to exemplify resilient religion.
Abstract
This paper examines the complexity of the entanglement between rural and urban space in historic South Asia through the lens of urban religion. The article is organized in two stages. First, ancient literature and archaeological evidence are used to rethink the centrality of the agrarian space in the formation and development of ancient cities and urban religions in South Asia. Second, by using the concept of spatial capital as an analytical tool I examine how the geographical assets held by Buddhist monastic institutions in the countryside affected the economic and social mobility of urban actors in the city. This second section uses the ancient city of Barikot (Swat, Pakistan) during the first three centuries of the Common Era as a case study. On this ground, I argue a direct connection between the prominent role of the saṃgha in the transformation of social, economic, and political aspects of the ancient urban society in South Asia and its ability to master geographical space and relativize distances.
Abstract
This article argues that some supernatural horror fiction has religious affordance – that is, provides ideas that readers can draw upon to build their own religious outlook. In this regard, supernatural horror fiction is an important but previously overlooked part of lived religion. It also demonstrates that the afforded ideas are entwined with the supernatural experiences that the stories describe and looks at rhetorical tropes that dispose readers to believe in those experiences (at least while reading the story), and by extension to entertain the credibility of the religious ideas, as well. It demonstrates the important role that ambiguity, a central feature of supernatural horror fiction since the 1830s, plays in persuading readers to believe in the supernatural experiences and the religious ideas. Two case studies are used to make these arguments: M. R. James’s “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad” (1904) and Stephen King’s Revival (2014).
Abstract
Multiple forms of learning that seek inspiration from religion and spirituality are found alongside more formal learning institutions in contemporary Western societies. Familiarization with spiritual well-being often takes place in introductory courses and workshops, which usually incorporate various study materials – for example, course manuals. This article examines the use of learning materials within well-being spirituality by studying course materials for singing bowl sound relaxation, together with ethnographic data. The analysis builds on a thematic analysis that draws on studies of self-help literature and the notions of formal and nonformal learning, which help to further our understanding of self-help literature as a potentially important if largely unacknowledged source for learning. Our main argument is that singing bowl course materials in multiple ways express entanglements of secular and spiritual pedagogics and shed light on the place and role of contemporary spirituality in the wider frame of continuous adult learning.
Abstract
This article develops historical links between early Ayurveda and yoga in light of the claim that a physician can enter the inner self (antarātman) of a patient “in the manner of a yogi.” Ayurveda’s idiomatically yoga-based analysis of the inner self is detailed, illustrating a concern with the karma, consciousness, perceptual habits, and mental clarity of patients. Diagnosing these most subtle aspects of a patient is shown to require the development of the penetrative power of “true awareness,” which physicians get by yogic means. It is argued that the ideal physician is a yogi who evidences the existence of a yogic paradigm of karmic observation. Textual parallels indicate that this paradigm was held in common among Ayurvedic and Buddhist social circles especially. Yoga, it is argued, afforded the perceptual “physics” for a karmic cosmos, while its methods of perceptual mastery afforded the expansive vision required to observe it properly.