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Zen Buddhist ideas and practices in many ways are unique within the study of religion, and artists, poets and Buddhists practitioners worldwide have found inspiration from this tradition. Until recent years, representations of Zen Buddhism have focussed almost entirely on philosophical, historical or “spiritual” aspects. This book investigates the contemporary living reality of the largest Japanese Rinzai Zen Buddhist group, Myōshinji. Drawing on textual studies and ethnographic fieldwork, Jørn Borup analyses how its practitioners use and understand their religion, how they practice their religiosity and how different kinds of Zen Buddhists (monks, nuns, priest, lay people) interact and define themselves within the religious organization. Japanese Rinzai Zen Buddhism portrays a living Zen Buddhism being both uniquely interesting and interestingly typical for common Buddhist and Japanese religiosity.
Myōshinji, a living religion
Series:
Numen Book Series, Volume: 119
Author:
Zen Buddhist ideas and practices in many ways are unique within the study of religion, and artists, poets and Buddhists practitioners worldwide have found inspiration from this tradition. Until recent years, representations of Zen Buddhism have focussed almost entirely on philosophical, historical or “spiritual” aspects. This book investigates the contemporary living reality of the largest Japanese Rinzai Zen Buddhist group, Myōshinji. Drawing on textual studies and ethnographic fieldwork, Jørn Borup analyses how its practitioners use and understand their religion, how they practice their religiosity and how different kinds of Zen Buddhists (monks, nuns, priest, lay people) interact and define themselves within the religious organization. Japanese Rinzai Zen Buddhism portrays a living Zen Buddhism being both uniquely interesting and interestingly typical for common Buddhist and Japanese religiosity.
Author:
Abstract
Religious diversity has emerged as a new scholarly field, but historically, and especially beyond a Western sphere, religious diversity has been the norm of most lived religion. As such, a focus on diversity is a perspective revealing monolithic traditions as particular and constructed, rather than universal and essential. Diversity has been used in emic frameworks for discursive and institutional legitimation. Religious traditions have oscillated between different types of diversities and unities in strategic identification and authority narratives. This article will present examples of such inter- and intra-religious unity and diversity representations from Asian (Buddhist, Hindu, Chinese and Japanese) philosophical and sociological contexts in a historical and comparative perspective. While acknowledging post-orientalist theories and critical discourse analyses, it also discusses the importance of seeing such negotiations of diversities as quintessential ingredients of lived religion.
Abstracts
What happens with the diaspora settings and identities over time and generations? By comparing two distinct cases from two different religious (Buddhism and Hinduism) and cultural contexts with origin in Asian countries (Japan and India), this chapter discusses the differences and structural similarities of religious diversity in the diaspora settings of two different island communities, both of which have a historical span of 150 years through five and six generations. Both cases are based on field studies in Hawaii (Borup) and Mauritius (Fibiger).
Abstracts
This introductory chapter frames the theoretical approaches to investigating religious diversity in Asia. Historical accounts and contemporary statistics suggest Asia, with its plethora of different religious traditions, to be religiously highly diverse. Careful analyses of empirical complexities and theoretical considerations are, however, necessary to gain a more realistic understanding of the field being explored in this anthology. The chapter thus discusses conceptual challenges with ‘religion’ and ‘diversity’ before describing different types of religious diversity and different ways of managing religious diversity as part of theological, political and discursive strategies.