In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 87-92 [Access article in PDF] Christian Prayer Seen from the Eye of a Buddhist Kenneth K. Tanaka Musashino Women's University, Tokyo When I think about Christian prayer, the image I get is that of a young girl of about eight years old with long brown hair. Wearing a nightgown, she is kneeling next to her bed with her hands clasped and her head bowed. (...) I have often queried myself about the source of this image. This is an interesting question in itself. I personally don't know of anyone who fits that description or who has actually witnessed someone like her in prayer. Nevertheless, it is interesting how a Buddhist raised in a predominately Christian society comes to form his image of Christian prayer.Working further with this image, I see this little girl—let's call her Megan—doing two things in her evening prayer. One is that she is giving thanks to God for the benefits she has received. She thanks him for her food, clothing, friends, and family. Then, she also makes a request. In this petitionary element of her prayer, she is asking God to make her sick father get well soon. As she does so, her expression turns more serious, and she clasps her hands more firmly and brings them closer to her chest. She then looks up toward the ceiling, expressing her heartfelt wish for her father's early recovery. What is noteworthy is that Megan's prayers are spoken aloud as in a human conversation.I realize that this image does not do justice to a topic as enormous as "Christian prayer," but I believe that it provides a glimpse into how one Buddhist imagines the topic. I have a number of questions about Megan's prayer, particularly as I try to understand what may be going on inside of her. I wonder first and foremost, what God looks like to her. Is God a male or a female, or neither? I would think that even for her (in this gender-sensitive age), God is still a male. If so, does she see him as an elderly man with a long white beard, holding a cane and sitting in a throne? Next, where does God reside? If he is in heaven, what is heaven like to her? I wonder if heaven is located somewhere amidst the lofty, puffy clouds. In regards to her father's illness, how does she think God can make her father get well? What is the mechanism by which a personified God can heal? Perhaps I am being too analytical and overly rigorous with my questions about a spiritual act, and that of an eight-year-old at that.Perhaps I should, instead, turn the questions toward me, asking how I would [End Page 87] answer the same questions about a Buddhist girl "praying" before the Buddha or a bodhisattva for the same kind of wish? The image that immediately crops up in my mind is of a girl of about twelve and her mother whom I saw at a pagoda in Rangoon, Burma, a number of years ago. The girl is wearing a large, red fresh flower in her hair and has on traditional apparel. She sits with her mother on a marble floor of a spacious area in front of Buddha images that are several meters in height. She holds a bouquet of flowers held upright between the palms of hands in a gesture of reverence. She sits with her legs folded but thrown out to her side, a style common in her country as well as in Thailand. Her eyes appear closed, and her head is slightly bowed down toward the Buddha images. She stays in that posture for what seems like several minutes; her mother does the same. I don't know, of course, what is going on inside, but she is certainly not meditating.I believe this is an important point to make here, for Buddhists are stereotypically seen to only meditate. However, the vast majority of lay Buddhists... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Asura’s Harp: Engagement with Language as Buddhist PathKenneth K. TanakaAsura’s Harp: Engagement with Language as Buddhist Path. By Dennis Hirota. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag, 2006. 156 pp.In Asura’s Harp, Hirota focuses on the Pure Land Buddhist thought of Shinran (1173–1263), the founder of Jōdo Shinshō school and one of the major figures of Japanese Buddhism. I believe Hirota’s main argument of the book is succinctly expressed on its back cover (...) blurb: “Unlike monastic traditions that seek the eradication of delusional attachments through transcendence of ordinary thought and speech, Shinran teaches that human existence is inevitably characterized by linguisticality and that the genuinely practicable path to realization lies in engagement with language.” For Hirota, language plays a central role in the religious transformative experience called Shinjin, considered a genuine awareness of the self and the world. This way of understanding religious language goes against the dominant view, especially that of Zen with its proverbial “beyond words” approach 1 and contemporary Buddhist discussions on language as being limited and even false.In the prologue of the book, Hirota points out the growing convergence in the Buddhist outlook and the current interest in Western thought. Both traditions see that “persons are not autonomous agents making judgments and initiating actions independently of others, their past, and their location in society and history” (p. 2). Instead, humans are now seen to be situated in particular temporal and spatial circumstances, with its attendant limitations, prejudices, and finitude. In terms of language, this realization has led to a shift in Western thought from metaphysical to hermeneutical concerns, thus resonating with Buddhism’s view of ordinary language [End Page 182] as “inevitably warped by attachments and informed by falsely reifying conceptualization” (p. 2).At the same time both traditions recognize the adaptive use of language, as seen especially in the Buddhist conception of “skillful means,” to provide guidance to self-realization and awareness. This, Hirota believes, offers an opportunity for a dialogue between contemporary Western thought and Buddhism.With this as the backdrop, Hirota sets out to clarify the nature and significance of language in Shin Pure Land thought with an intent to contribute to this broader discussion of religious language across religious and cultural boundaries, a formidable task for any scholar. However, there is no one, in my opinion, more qualified to carry out this task than Hirota, for he served as the chief translator of the twenty-year project that culminated in the Collected Works of Shinran (CWS)2 and has been publishing insightful and provocative writings in the study of language from Shin Buddhist perspective in both English and Japanese.3 There are very few, if any, scholars in Japan dealing with this subject with the ability to talk about it in a cross-religious and disciplinary context. In more recent years, he has taken his findings to gatherings outside Japan, particularly to Europe. In fact, this book is, in large part, an outcome of the talks he delivered several years ago in the Fürst Franz-Josef and Fürstin Gina Memorial Philosophy Lecture Series at the Internationale Akademie für Philosophie in Liechtenstein.Before I focus in on some of the central points in this book, it would be helpful to get a bird’s eye view of this book, Asura’s Harp by listing the chapter titles. The book comprises four parts: “Buddhist View of Language,” “Engagement with the Pure Land Teaching,” “Truth as Transformative Event,” and “Language and Religious Awareness.” Part 1 contains three chapters: “Shinran’s Buddhist Critique of Language,” “Reality as Language,” and “The Dialogical Structure of True Language.” Part 2 also includes three chapters: “Modes of Engagement with the Teaching,” “The Encounter with Truth,” and “The Context of Encounter.” Part 3 contains two chapters: “Shinran Face to Face” and “Hearing the Vow.” In part 4, we find two chapters: “Language and Realization of Shinjin” and “Living from the Name of Buddha.” The postscript, “Shinran and Hermeneutical Thought,” is a helpful aid in getting a little more insight into Hirota’s view on language.As is evident by the chapter titles, there is much to comprehend and digest, particularly... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Acceptance of the Other as a Similarly Valid Path and Awareness of One's Self-Culpability:A Deepening Realization of My Religious Identity through DialogueKenneth K. TanakaAs the title of my paper indicates, two features of my identity have become more vivid as the result of my participation in the International Buddhist-Christian Theological Encounter (IBCTE) sessions. The first of the two stemmed from my rude awakening that not everyone involved with our (...) sessions accepted the assumption that the other was a similarly valid soteriological path.In one of our sessions a few years back, the discussion moved to a topic of the nature of "ultimate path," which, as it turned out, began to raise some extremely sensitive issues. An unusually tense atmosphere hung over the discussion table, a rare turn of events for our usually jovial dialogue group composed mostly of liberal-minded members. One of the Christian members gave voice to her fundamental view that Jesus was the sole path through which one can be saved. It was clearly what anyone would regard as an exclusivist position. In asking for further clarification, she reiterated her view that her Christian faith necessitated that she took that position, and that I as a Buddhist was, therefore, not included in that soteriological scheme. I responded to her that I understood that I would not be in her scheme since I was not Christian, but would I nevertheless be saved? After some hesitation, in so many words, she replied that I would not be! Had she been a member of a more conservative group, it would have been easier to accept that kind of a response, but coming from an academic with liberal leanings, her comments caught me off guard. But on the other hand, I appreciated her honesty in being true to her understanding of the tradition, for it seemed to me that it was not an easy thing for her to say.This short encounter has been etched firmly in my mind and, ironically, remains for me the most memorable moment among all of the IBCTE sessions attended. I did not pursue the matter further at that time (aside from the fact that time had run [End Page 41] out for that particular session), since I was aware that such an exclusive position (as distinguished from those of inclusivism and pluralism) was common among Christians. I just happened to have encountered it in a rather unexpected circumstance and was not prepared with a comeback.This encounter forced me to inquire about my own position concerning the salvation of people other than Buddhists. Would I regard her as not being saved? After some probing and reflection on my part, I can say with little hesitation that I would never be able to say, "no, you are not." I have no basis on which to refute what her time-tested tradition promises. I am not in a position to negate the claims of her tradition or to question the sincerity of her commitment. From my Buddhist perspective there is no universal criterion on which to make judgments about others. My personal view on this issue has been similar to John Hick's pluralism position, but without his insistence that all paths reflect and lead to the same truth.Perhaps, my view reflects a prevailing, modern or postmodern understanding of Shinran (1173–1262), the founder of my tradition (Jodo-Shinshu), who is often portrayed as an extremely liberal thinker as seen in the following words attributed to him from the Tannisho (emphasis added):Now, whether you accept the Nembutsu, entrusting yourself to it, or reject it, that is your own decision.These rather well-known passages reinforce the image of Shinran, particularly in the Jodo-Shinshu community in the United States, as an accommodating and tolerant thinker.However, the picture is a little more complex, for I am also aware that Shinran held what I refer to as an "exceptionalist" view. Based largely on his historical belief that with the arrival of Mappo, the Last Period of the Dharma, there were no other teachings appropriate for the age of spiritual decadence. While he was tolerant of others, thereby allowing even his... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Individual in Relation to the Sangha in American Buddhism:An Examination of "Privatized Religion"Kenneth K. TanakaIn his celebrated book Bowling Alone (2000), Robert Putnam noted the increased level in the phenomenon of "privatized religion" within the previous thirty-five years. Many of the Baby Boomer generation left churches in the late 1960s and the 1970s. Some sought out new religious movements and religious therapies, but most simply "dropped out" of (...) organized religion altogether. He cites Wade Clark Roof and William McKinney, specialists in American religion, who describe the outcome of this trend in American religious behavior: "[The consequence was a] tendency toward highly individualized religious psychology without the benefits of strong supportive attachments to believing communities. A major impetus in this direction in the post-1960s was the thrust toward greater personal fulfillment and quest for the ideal self.... In this climate of expressive individualism, religion tends to become "privatized," or anchored in the personal realms."1 Putnam observes that although privatized religion may be "morally compelling and psychologically fulfilling," it involves less social capital than environments in which individuals are connected to other individuals in shared faith commitment.Interestingly, American Buddhism may be one of the beneficiaries of this trend, for the recent growth of Buddhism in the United States is partly attributable to the climate of "privatized" religion. Nowhere is this symbolized more than by the so-called Nightstand Buddhists.2The Nightstand Buddhists derive their name from their practice of placing a Buddhist meditation book on the nightstand after reading it before they go to sleep. They get up the next morning and practice to the best of their ability the meditation they had read about the night before. Further, they may frequently attend lectures at the local university and visit a Buddhist center's web-page or participate in an online Buddhist discussion group. And if we were to visit them, we might find their homes decorated with Buddhist artifacts.But these Nightstand Buddhists do not show up in any statistics on the [End Page 115] American Buddhist population because they would not identify themselves as Buddhists. According to Thomas Tweed, who coined the term Nightstand Buddhists, "Sympathizers (= Nightstand Buddhists) are those who have some sympathy for Buddhism but do not embrace it exclusively or fully. When asked, they would not identify themselves as Buddhists. They would say they are Methodists, or Jewish, or unaffiliated."3 However, they have been an important part of the story of Buddhism in America from its beginning and continue to be so today.Among the three million Buddhists currently estimated to be in the United States, I believe there are Buddhists who exhibit many of the same characteristics as the Nightstand Buddhists. And this number is significant, particularly among those converts to Buddhism whose main practice is meditation. This group of convert Buddhists is one segment of the larger Buddhist community in the United States, which I have categorized into four groups.41. New Asian American Buddhists (those who have mostly arrived in the United States since the 1960s: Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Cambodian, Myanmar, Laotian, and Sri Lankan).2. Old-line Asian American Buddhists (those who were established before World War II: Chinese and Japanese).3. Convert Buddhists whose main practice is meditation (predominately Euro-Americans practicing in the Zen, Vipassanā, and Tibetan traditions).4. Convert Buddhists whose main practice is chanting (Sōkagakkai International–USA, a sizable percentage of whom are African and Hispanic Americans).In this paper, I wish to focus on a Jōdo Shinshū temple from the second group (old-line Asian American Buddhists) and on several centers collectively that belong to the Zen, Vipassanā, and Tibetan traditions from the third group (convert Buddhists whose main practice is meditation), looking at the manner in which individuals relate to their respective institutions and traditions, with special attention given to the phenomenon of "privatized religion."For purposes of this paper, my definition of "privatized religion" is based on the observation of Roof and McKinney, cited above, as "a tendency for individuals (1) to emphasize practicing at home over religious centers, and (2) to value the subjective and the inward." The homebound orientation is connected... (shrink)

Book Information The Blackwell Guide to Philosophical Logic. Edited by Lou Goble. Blackwell Publishers. Oxford. 2001. Pp. x + 510. Paperback, £16.99.

My life as a quantum physicist / M. Nakahara -- A review on operator quantum error correction - Dedicated to Professor Mikio Nakahara on the occasion of his 60th birthday / C.-K. Li, Y.-T. Poon and N.-S. Sze -- Implementing measurement operators in linear optical and solid-state qubits / Y. Ota, S. Ashhab and F. Nori -- Fast and accurate simulation of quantum computing by multi-precision MPS: Recent development / A. Saitoh -- Entanglement properties of a quantum lattice-gas model on (...) square and triangular ladders / S. Tanaka, R. Tamura and H. Katsura -- On signal amplification from weak-value amplification / Y. Shikano -- Topological protection of quantum information / K. Fujii -- Quantum annealing with antiferromagnetic fluctuations for mean-field models / Y. Seki and H. Nishimori -- A method to change phase transition nature - Toward annealing methods / R. Tamura and S. Tanaka -- Computational analysis of the first stage of the photosynthetic system, the light-dependent reaction, by quantum chemical simulation method / M. Tada-Umezaki -- Two-qubit gate operation on selected nearest neighboring qubits in a neutral atom quantum computer / E. Hosseini Lapasar... [et al.] -- A simple operator quantum error correction scheme avoiding fully correlated errors / C. Bagnasco, Y. Kondo and M. Nakahara -- Black hole predictability, classical and quantum / A. Ishibashi -- Classical field simulation of finite-temperature Bose gases / T. Sato -- Atomic quantum simulations of lattice gauge theory: Effect of gauge symmetry breaking / K. Kasamatsu, I. Ichinose and T. Matsui -- Recursive construction of noiseless subsystem for qudits / U. Gungordu... [et al.] -- Composite quantum gates for precise quantum control / M. Bando... [et al.] -- New formulation of statistical mechanics using thermal pure quantum states / S. Sugiura and A. Shimizu -- Thermodynamics in unitary time evolution / T. N. Ikeda -- Second law of thermodynamics with QC-mutual information / T. Sagawa. (shrink)

In his book review of Graham Priest's The Fifth Corner of Four, Mark Siderits, while criticising Priest's philology, suggests that Priest's work is 'of considerable interest' for two reasons. First, 'when two independent traditions use similar methods to work on similar issues, it is always possible that one may have hit on approaches that the other missed'. Second, 'the decentering that can be induced by looking at another tradition may trigger fresh insights, even if those insights are not ones that (...) were actually developed by the tradition marked 'other''. The main task of this paper is to unpack Siderits' thought. By analysing some of Priest's work, I will suggest a decentering that must have taken place in China when Buddhism was 'exported to China in Buddhist shipping containers'. For anyone familiar with the forms of Buddhist philosophy developed in India, various forms of Chinese Buddhism can often look strange. Some ideas that were debated and defended by Indian Buddhists do not appear anywhere in Chinese Buddhism and some assumptions have been quietly added to Buddhism by Chinese Buddhists. By showing that Priest's work brings out the 'innovation' that Chinese Buddhists gave to Buddhism, I will suggest that it is this decentering that Siderits suggests Priest makes use of. (shrink)

Dharmakīrti argues that there is no pramāṇa (valid means of cognition or source of knowledge) for a thesis that is a self-contradiction (svavacanavirodha). That is, self-contradictions such as ‘everything said is false’ and ‘my mother is barren’ cannot be known to be true or false. The contemporary scholar Tillemans challenges Dharmakīrti by arguing that we can know that self-contradictions are false by means of a formal logical inference. The aims of the paper are to answer Tillemans’ challenge from what we (...) take to be Dharmakīrti’s or Dharmakīrtian (someone who is like Dharmakīrti) perspective and to demonstrate the unique features of Dharmakīrti’s view of inference. By so doing, we show that the epistemology in relation to the formal conception of logic that underlies Tillemans’ challenge is problematic from Dharmakīrti’s or Dharmakīrtian perspective. The paper, thus, presents Dharmakīrti’s view of inference and logical reasoning as well as a Dharmakīrtian challenge to the formal conception of logic that is the dominant contemporary conception. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that a distinction ought to be drawn between two ways in which a given world might be logically impossible. First, a world w might be impossible because the laws that hold at w are different from those that hold at some other world (say the actual world). Second, a world w might be impossible because the laws of logic that hold in some world (say the actual world) are violated at w. We develop a novel (...) way of modelling logical possibility that makes room for both kinds of logical impossibility. Doing so has interesting implications for the relationship between logical possibility and other kinds of possibility (for example, metaphysical possibility) and implications for the necessity or contingency of the laws of logic. (shrink)

A historical investigation of the exclusion of Africa and Asia from modern histories of philosophy.

Kripke completeness of some infinitary predicate modal logics is presented. More precisely, we prove that if a normal modal logic above is -persistent and universal, the infinitary and predicate extension of with BF and BF is Kripke complete, where BF and BF denote the formulas pi pi and x x, respectively. The results include the completeness of extensions of standard modal logics such as , and its extensions by the schemata T, B, 4, 5, D, and their combinations. The proof (...) is obtained by extending the correspondence between the representation of modal algebras and the completeness of propositional modal logic to infinite. (shrink)

A logic is called 'paraconsistent' if it rejects the rule called 'ex contradictione quodlibet', according to which any conclusion follows from inconsistent premises. While logicians have proposed many technically developed paraconsistent logical systems and contemporary philosophers like Graham Priest have advanced the view that some contradictions can be true, and advocated a paraconsistent logic to deal with them, until recent times these systems have been little understood by philosophers. This book presents a comprehensive overview on paraconsistent logical systems to change (...) this situation. The book includes almost every major author currently working in the field. The papers are on the cutting edge of the literature some of which discuss current debates and others present important new ideas. The editors have avoided papers about technical details of paraconsistent logic, but instead concentrated upon works that discuss more 'big picture' ideas. Different treatments of paradoxes takes centre stage in many of the papers, but also there are several papers on how to interpret paraconistent logic and some on how it can be applied to philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of language, and metaphysics. (shrink)

Fuzzy logic has become an important tool for a number of different applications ranging from the control of engineering systems to artificial intelligence. In this concise introduction, the author presents a succinct guide to the basic ideas of fuzzy logic, fuzzy sets, fuzzy relations, and fuzzy reasoning, and shows how they may be applied. The book culminates in a chapter which describes fuzzy logic control: the design of intelligent control systems using fuzzy if-then rules which make use of human knowledge (...) and experience to behave in a manner similar to a human controller. Throughout, the level of mathematical knowledge required is kept basic and the concepts are illustrated with numerous diagrams to aid in comprehension. As a result, all those curious to know more about fuzzy concepts and their real-world application will find this a good place to start. (shrink)

We prove that every countable non-standard model of WKL0 has a proper initial part isomorphic to itself. This theorem enables us to carry out non-standard arguments over WKL0.

It has been an open question whether or not we can define a belief revision operation that is distinct from simple belief expansion using paraconsistent logic. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of meeting the challenge of defining a belief revision operation using the resources made available by the study of dynamic epistemic logic in the presence of paraconsistent logic. We will show that it is possible to define dynamic operations of belief revision in a paraconsistent setting.

Following on from Shaun Gallagher's influential 2005 book How the Body Shapes the Mind, this volume brings together leading experts from the fields of philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, and psychiatry in a productive dialogue, exploring key questions and debates about the relationship between body schema and body image.

In this paper, we propose an extension of the Minimal Generation Gap (MGG) to reduce the number of fitness evaluation for the real-coded GAs (RCGA). When MGG is applied to actual engineering problems, for example applied to optimization of design parameters, the fitness calculating time is usually huge because MGG generates many children from one pair of parents and the fitness is calculated by repetitive simulation or analysis. The proposed method called Saving MGG reduces the number of fitness evaluation by (...) estimating the promising degrees of children using individual distribution and fitness information of population, and selecting children based on the promising degree before evaluating the fitness. Experimental results show that RCGA with Saving MGG can provide large reducing effects on 20 or 30 dimensional Sphere functions, Rosenbrock functions, ill-scaled Rosenbrock functions, and Rastrigin function. (shrink)