In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Books ReceivedThe Ambitions of Curiosity: Understanding the World in Ancient Greece and China. By G.E.R. Lloyd. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. xvi + 175. Price not given.The Art of the Han Essay: Wang Fu's Ch'ien-Fu Lun. By Anne Behnke Kinney. Tempe: Center for Asian Studies, Arizona State University, 1990. Pp. xi + 154. Paper $10.00.The Autobiography of Jamgön Kongtrul: A Gem of Many Colors. By Jamgön Kongtrul Lodrön (...) Thayé and translated by Richard Barron (Chökyi Nyima). Ithaca, New York: Snow Lion Publications, 2003. Pp. xxii + 549. Price not given.Awesome Nightfall: The Life, Times, and Poetry of Saigyō. By William R. LaFleur. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003. Pp. xiii + 173. Paper $14.95.Becoming the Compassion Buddha: Tantric Mahamudra for Everyday Life. By Lama Thubten Yeshe, edited by Robina Courtin, and foreword by Geshe Lhundub Sopa. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003. Pp. xi + 194. Paper $14.95.Between Two Worlds East and West: An Autobiography. By J. N. Mohanty. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. ix + 134. Hardcover RS 525.00.The Chinese Face of Jesus Christ. Edited by Roman Malek, S.V.D. Sankt Augustin, Germany: Institut Monumenta Serica and China-Zentrum; and Nettetal, Germany: Steyler Verlag, 2002. Pp. 391. EUR 40.00.Chinese Medicine in Contemporary China: Plurality and Synthesis. By Volker Scheid. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002. Pp. xiv + 407. Hardcover $69.95. Paper $23.95.Confucian Feminist: Memoirs of Zeng Baosun (1893-1978). Translated and adapted by Thomas L. Kennedy. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2002. Pp. xxi + 170. Price not given.Consciousness Studies: Cross-Cultural Perspectives. By K. Ramakrishna Rao. Jefferson (North Carolina) and London: McFarland and Company, 2002. Pp. 367. Hardcover $65.00.Constituting Communities: Theravāda Buddhism and the Religious Cultures of South and Southeast Asia. Edited by John Clifford Holt, Jacob N. Kinnard, and Jonathan S. Walters. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. Pp. viii + 224. Hardcover $65.50. Paper $21.95.Developments in Indian Philosophy from Eighteenth Century Onwards: Classical and Western. By Daya Krishna. Volume X Part 1 of History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization, edited by D. P. Chattopadhyaya. New [End Page 110] Delhi: Centre for Studies in Civilizations, 2001. Pp. xxiii + 417. Hardcover RS 1200.East and West: Identità e dialogo interculturale. By Giangiorgio Pasqualotto. Venezia: Marsilo Editori, 2003. Pp. 210. EUR 16.00.Effortless Action: Wu-wei as Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China. By Edward Slingerland. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xii + 352. Price not given.Encountering Kā lī: In the Margins, at the Center, in the West. Edited by Rachel Fell McDermott and Jeffrey J. Kripal. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003. Pp. xviii + 321. Hardcover $55.00, £37.95. Paper $21.95, £15.95.Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy. Edited by Antonio S. Cua. New York and London: Routledge, 2003. Pp. xx + 1020. Hardcover $150.00.Essays on Indian Philosophy. By J. N. Mohanty and edited by Purushottama Bilimoria. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. xxxvii + 347. Paper RS 525.00.Faith, Humor, and Paradox. By Ignacio L. Götz. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 2002. Pp. 136. Hardcover $61.95.Four Illusions: Candrakīrti's Advice for Travelers on the Bodhisattva Path. Translated by Karen C. Lang. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xv + 240. Price not given.The Great Awakening: A Buddhist Social Theory. By David R. Loy. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003. Pp. 223. Paper $16.95.The Hidden History of The Tibetan Book of the Dead. By Bryan J. Cuevas. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 328. Price not given.Huang Di nei jing su wen: Nature, Knowledge, Imagery in an Ancient Chinese Medical Text. By Paul U. Unschuld. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003. Pp. xii + 520. Hardcover $75.00, £52.00.In Dewey's Wake: Unfinished Work of Pragmatic Reconstruction. Edited by William J. Gavin. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. Pp. vi + 249. Hardcover $71.50. Paper $23.95.Knowledge and Freedom in Indian Philosophy. By Tara Chatterjea. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2002. Pp. xvi + 159. Hardcover... (shrink)

Although Theravada Buddhism and Roman Catholicism agree on the moral justification for palliative sedation, they differ on the premises underlying the justification. While Catholicism justifies palliative sedation on the ground of the Principle of Double Effect, Buddhism does so on the basis of the Third Noble Truth. Despite their theological differences, Buddhism and Catholicism both value the moral significance of the physician’s intent to reduce suffering and both respect the sanctity of life. This blurs the demarcation line between Buddhism (...) and Catholicism regarding the moral justification of palliative sedation. -/- . (shrink)

Theravāda is the tradition of Buddhism associated with South and South‐East Asia. Important cultural and literary archives from Theravāda Buddhist countries are preserved in Western countries with former colonial influence in the region, notably France and the United Kingdom, as well as Denmark and Germany. The history of the Theravāda tradition is properly pursued in relation to institutions in Sri Lanka and later South‐East Asia. Theravāda identity is also therefore partly about the transmission and observation of distinctive monastic regulations, and (...) indeed the field of monastic law (alongside Abhidhamma and Pāli grammar) has clearly absorbed considerable intellectual activity in Theravāda countries – as it did in medieval European Christian monasticism – as much as doctrinal matters. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Theravada Buddhism and The British Encounter: Religious, Missionary, and Colonial Experience in Nineteenth Century Sri LankaTerry C. MuckTheravada Buddhism and The British Encounter: Religious, Missionary, and Colonial Experience in Nineteenth Century Sri Lanka. By Elizabeth Harris. London: Routledge, 2006. 274 pp.Of all the facets of the multifaceted interactions among Buddhists and Christians, the one sure to generate the most heat is mission: Christians spreading the gospel, Buddhists (...) spreading the dhamma, Christians preaching and Buddhists preaching at the same time in the same places. This is the central topic of Elizabeth Harris’s Theravada Buddhism and the British Encounter: Religious, Missionary, and Colonial Experience in Nineteenth Century Sri Lanka. By throwing light on this crucial encounter, Harris greatly reduces the heat generated by these competing missions and makes greater understanding possible. At least, that would be one hoped-for outcome.Harris challenges the standard postcolonial critique (SPC) of what happened to Sri Lankan Theravada Buddhism and Sri Lankan Theravada Buddhists when Christian missionaries, riding on the coattails of the Portuguese, Dutch, and British colonialists, invaded the peaceful and pristine island of Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, in the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. SPC posits Western colonial missionaries gaining power through their political proxies, shaping Western understandings of Theravada Buddhism to fit their Puritan and rationalistic preconceptions, and then attempting to destroy this made-in-the-West Buddhism, using aggressive and triumphalistic mission tactics that not only failed, but generated such a backlash that still, today, Buddhist-Christian relationships in Sri Lanka are poisoned almost beyond remedy.Harris challenges the SPC not by denying the obvious truths embedded in the various elements of this version of the sad story, but by convincingly showing us that the SPC is only one side of a very complex story. The SPC, Harris argues, needs to be complexified by realizing that not all British in nineteenth century Ceylon fit the stereotypical missionary model, that Sri Lankan Buddhists had agency in shaping what became known as Protestant Buddhism in the twentieth century Buddhist revival, and that the Buddhist mission effort that corresponded to the Christian mission effort led to a system of competing mission efforts that must be factored into any attempt to understand the influence of the nineteenth century on the twentieth—and the twenty-first.British ChristiansHarris uses three paradigms to show the diversity of British interlocutors with Sri Lankan Theravada Buddhism and Buddhists. The first paradigm is an early (1796–1830), middle (1830–1870), late (1870–1900) periodization that corresponds to parts 1, 2, and 3 of the book. By means of this paradigm Harris shows that development took place in British understandings of Buddhist precept and practice. The earliest observers made mistakes, even when they based their observations on texts and [End Page 188] practicing Buddhist informants. As with most such developments, the changes and depths of understanding were uneven, with later commentators sometimes repeating the howlers and biases of the earliest commentators, even as they in some areas went far beyond them in depth of understanding. Later was not always better, but it usually was.The second paradigm one might call vocational. The British did not all come to Ceylon for the same reason. Some came as political overseers for the colonial government. Some came as merchants, looking for a way to turn the island’s abundant natural resources into pounds in their bank accounts back home. Some came simply as “tourists” looking to find out more about what was in the nineteenth century a very exotic culture indeed to European eyes. Some came as missionaries to spread the Christian gospel story. And a trickle of scholars seeking data for research topics gradually turned into a fairly broad stream by the end of the century. Each of these five groups came asking slightly different questions. Because Buddhism was so ubiquitous among the people of Ceylon, Buddhism was always part of the answer to the different questions politicos, businesspeople, travelers, Christians, and professors asked, but the different questions produced different products: statements of public policy vis-à-vis Buddhism, Southeast Asian versions of Weber’s observations about religion and economics, diaries and travelogues, theologies of religion, and... (shrink)

Theravada Buddhism. A Social History from Ancient Times to Modern Colombo. Richard F. Gombrich. Routledge, London 1988. x, 237 pp. Hbk £20.00, pbk £7.95.

Theravada Traditions: Buddhist Ritual Cultures in Contemporary Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka, by John Clifford Holt. University of Hawai’i Press. 2017. 391pp. Hb. $68, ISBN-13: 978-0-82486-780-5.

THIS ESSAY EXAMINES THE RELEVANCE FOR RELIGIOUS ETHICS OF BUDDHIST Abhidhamma texts, those dealing with the analysis and systematization of mental states arising in and examined by meditation practice. Developing recent scholarship on the prevalence and significance of interlocking lists in Buddhist canonical texts and commentaries, the Buddhist use of lists in the Abhidhamma constitutes a kind of narrative expression of moral development through the sequential occurrence of carefully defined mental states. Attention to this narrative dimension of the moral life, (...) while related to other recent proposals about the place of narrative in religious ethics, offers a way to employ this underexamined genre of religious literature (lists) drawn from a comparative context (Buddhist and Christian ethics), in service of a more nuanced account of moral development. (shrink)

Theravāda Buddhists draw a doctrinal distinction between otherworldly (lokuttara) and this-worldly (lokiya) actions, and also an ecclesiastical distinction between bhikkhu (wandering mendicant or 4 "monastic") action and lay action. Within the Theravāda tradition these modes of action have overlapped to form a more empirically relevant set. This set is constituted by the otherworldly action of the path winning bhikkhus, the this-worldly action of ordinary bhikkhus, the path winning or bodhisatta (future Buddha) action of exceptional laymen, and the this-worldly action of (...) ordinary laymen. These four modes of action have meshed together to form the basis for very complex and persistent Theravāda societies in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. The article concludes with some methodological observations concerning the relationship between the study of action (as carried out in the body of the article), and the study of ethics (as carried out by most contemporary scholars in the field of religious ethics). (shrink)

Americanization in Two Immigrant Theravada Buddhist Temples. Paul David Numrich. University of Tennessee, Knoxville 1996. xxiv, 181 pp. Illustrations. $25. ISBN 0-87049-905-X.

This paper examines recent innovations in the American vipassana or insight community, specifically a current I identify as ‘West Coast Vipassana’ that has revisioned the Theravadin Buddhist goal of liberation, from a transcendental condition that demands a renunciation of the world, to an ‘embodied enlightenment’ that affirms everyday householder life as a site for awakening. I draw on Jeffrey J. Kripal's tantric transmission thesis to advance an essentially tantric hermeneutic of West Coast Vipassana. I argue that while West Coast Vipassana (...) is originally based in Theravada Buddhism, an Asian renouncer tradition that sharply differentiates between the immanent and transcendent, it has taken a markedly tantric turn in America. I also note, however, that it considerably differs from traditional Buddhist tantric traditions such as Tibetan Buddhism or esoteric Japanese Buddhism in being distinctively modern and American. (shrink)

Among one of the older sub-fields in Buddhist Studies, the study of Theravāda Buddhism is undergoing a revival by contemporary scholars who are revising long-held conventional views of the tradition while undertaking new approaches and engaging new subject matter. The term Theravāda has been refined, and research has expanded beyond the analysis of canonical texts to examine contemporary cultural forms, social movements linked with meditation practices, material culture, and vernacular language texts. The Routledge Handbook of Theravāda Buddhism illustrates the growth (...) and new directions of scholarship in the study of Theravāda Buddhism and is structured in four parts: Ideas/Ideals Practices/Persons Texts/Teachings Images/Imaginations Owing largely to the continued vitality of Theravāda Buddhist communities in countries like Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos, as well as in diaspora communities across the globe, traditions associated with what is commonly called Theravāda attract considerable attention from scholars and practitioners around the world. An in-depth guide to the distinctive features of Theravāda, the Handbook will be an invaluable resource to provide structure and guidance for scholars and students of Asian Religion, Buddhism and in particular Theravāda Buddhism. (shrink)

This chapter asks how moral shame and dread in Theravāda Buddhist philosophy compare with their appropriated use in contemporary Thai society. There has been a received view or an appropriated understanding of these concepts, warning against doing bad deeds. Moral shame and dread imply an irrational fear of doing something morally horrible in this contemporary usage. For example, one has an excessive fear of punishments in purgatory and believes it should be the sole morally appropriate reason for not killing. However, (...) how does this appropriated understanding differ from the original Buddhist understanding? This chapter argues that they differ in their philosophical assumptions: causalism and possibilism. Theravāda philosophy espouses causalism, the view that one should avoid bad deeds because of the doctrine of karma. On the other hand, the appropriated understanding implies possibilism, with a scrupulosity-based assumption that avoiding evil behaviors is motivated by the grip of unreasonable fear that doing them could result in irredeemable errors. I offer a new conception of meditative intentionality's power to solve this implied irrational fear problem. (shrink)

The most precise and intricate model of mind from the tradition, the Theravāda, is developed in the Abhidhamma. Much of the first book of the canonical Abhidhamma, the Dhammasangani breaks down conscious awareness into its constitutive mental factors. The Dhammasangani goes on to supply a list of 56 mental factors (cetasika). The 56 factors that can occur in this moment of good conscious awareness are listed in the chapter, along with additional factors added by the commentary; in separate columns are (...) lists of representative bad and neutral thoughts. First in each column are five factors present in every moment of conscious awareness, understood as a distinct grouping by the commentary: contact, feeling, perception, intention, and consciousness itself. An aim of the Abhidhamma method is to teach the distinctions between mind and matter, which are often paired in a single formulation: nāma‐rūpa. (shrink)

This article investigates three distinct lineages of the transmission of the ancient Theravada meditation, boran kammatthan, in Siam from the late Ayutthaya to the Thonburi and Rattanakosin periods, as well as the survival of two of them as living practices. It traces the Ayutthaya lineage of the Supreme Patriarch Suk Kaitheun back from Wat Ratchasittharam in the present to Wat Pa Kaew in the sixteenth century. It also looks at the transmission of boran kammatthan from Wat Choengtha and other (...) temples in Ayutthaya via Wat Hongrattanaram to Wat Intharam by King Taksin and the Supreme Patriarchs of Thonburi under his support in the eighteenth century. It finally looks at the continuing transmission at Wat Pradusongtham from the 1750s to the present. Key meditation teachers, covered in this article, include the Supreme Patriarchs of Thonburi and early Bangkok periods, as well as King Taksin. Overall, by documenting more than one transmission from a historical point of view, I argue in this article that there could be various meditation lineages that transmitted diverse practices within the broad framework of boran kammatthan. (shrink)

By illustrating the presence and scope of the bodhisattva ideal in Theravāda Buddhist theory and practice, this article shows that some of the distinctions used to separate Mahāyāna Buddhism from Hīnayāna Buddhism are problematic, and, in particular, calls into question the commonly held theoretical model that postulates that the goal of Mahāyāna practitioners is to become buddhas by following the path of the bodhisattva (bodhisattva-yāna), whereas the goal of Hīnayāna practitioners is to become arahants by following the path of the (...) hearers of Buddha's disciples (śrāvaka-yāna). (shrink)

Centesimus Annus raises the issue of the relationship of religion to practical conduct. This paper constructs the issue; illustrates the construction with materials from Theravada Buddhist cultures; and applies the construction toCentesimus Annus. This is an exercise in social history.

In this essay, I offer a comparative analysis on the ontological perspective from Heidegger and Theravada Buddhism on ‘the motility of life’: namely, the essence of the organism belonging to living beings whether human or non-human animals. To question about the innermost essence of life by considering birth, maturing, aging, and death, Heidegger finds out later that his approach is incomplete and inadequate because his existential analytic of human Dasein cannot explain the animal motility as captivation. However, in (...) class='Hi'>Theravada Buddhist philosophy there is some doctrine in ‘The Four Noble Truths’ mentioning the same point of those processes of life, birth – decay - death, as ‘Dukkha’. Next, from the analysis I offer an argument to show that if the Buddhist conception of Dukkha is read into the motility of life, we can find a new Heideggerian concept of ‘underlying motility’ as a result which can give an answer to his question. (shrink)

Love and Sympathy in Theravada Buddhism. Harvey B. Aronson. Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi 1980. 127 pp. Rs 45.

ABSTRACT The construction of the modern Buddhist ‘Holy Land’, in present-day India and Nepal, was part and parcel of the formation of Buddhism as a world religion in the early twentieth century and continues to represent a potent expression of Buddhist materiality in the contemporary moment. This article explores the location of the Buddha’s birthplace at Lumbinī within the discourse of modern Theravāda missionisation, reform and preservation. I assert that the project of locating and restoring Lumbinī was essential to Buddhism’s (...) modern revival in Nepal and the domestication of Theravāda. The Maha Bodhi Society and Nepal’s Dharmodaya Sabha were formative in the construction of Lumbinī as a monument of Buddhist heritage and operated as the leading voices in efforts to repatriate the site to Buddhist custodianship. Exploring the material dimensions of early modern Theravāda reform signals a shift from domestic encounters with colonialism and Christian missionisation in locales of Buddhist majority to the transnational flow of persons, practices and knowledges that have come to shape the contours of modern Buddhism. 1. (shrink)

In Thailand the pre-reform Therav?da meditation system, bor?n kamma??h?na, is now practised only by small and isolated groups. To promote detailed comparative study of bor?n kamma??h?na, the tradition of it taught at Wat Ratchasittharam, Thonburi, is explored through a translation of a text on?n?p?nasati attributed to Suk Kaitheun, the head of its lineage. This is followed by a detailed discussion and comparison with the description of the same technique in the Visuddhimagga. Some close connections between these two sources are identified (...) and it is speculated that, despite features concerning nimitta, bodily location, terminology etc. that are diagnostically distinctive for bor?n kamma??h?na, its method for?n?p?nasati can be seen as a rational development of earlier techniques advocated by Buddhaghosa. (shrink)

Because Europeans have shaped scholarly discourse about Southeast Asia and Buddhism, movement away from understanding “pure” Theravada Buddhism through religious and philosophical doctrine was a technique to decenter Western readings and shows how practitioners shaped their own beliefs. Stanley Tambiah called for academics to pay more attention to common beliefs of laypeople and everyday practices of monks. This, in turn, placed anthropologists at the center of collecting knowledge about Theravada Buddhism. Yet French philosophers continued, through their theories, to (...) influence the structure of anthropological analysis of Theravada cultures, particular through gift exchanges. In this paper, I will explore ways Derrida’s theories of gifts and ghosts can add to anthropological studies of Southeast Asian communities while also helping to recover philosophical and ethical components of Theravada practices. (shrink)

In the development of Indian Buddhism we begin to see a shift away from the early Buddhist epistemology based in phenomenology and process metaphysics toward a type of event-based metaphysics. This shift began in the reductionist methodology of the Abhidhamma and culminated in a theory of momentariness based in rationalism and abstraction, rather than early Buddhist empiricism. While early Buddhism followed an extensional model of temporal consciousness, when methodological reductionism was applied to the concept of time, it necessarily resulted in (...) a cinematic model of temporal consciousness like that of the Sautrāntikas or in an idea of the tri-temporal existence of dhammas, like that of the Sarvāstivādins. It is in the accounting of the process of karmic rebirth that we can most clearly see the effects of this shift. -/- The development of a theory of momentariness was incorporated into the Visuddhimagga by Buddhaghosa. In Buddhaghosa’s treatment of karmic rebirth, karma, particularly death-threshold karma, receives more emphasis in the process of rebirth than was previously found in the Suttas. The incorporation of “duration-less duration” via tritemporal existence by Buddhaghosa became necessary in order to explain karmic continuity in the rebirth process while retaining the concept of momentariness. (shrink)

This article highlights the central importance of Pāli phonetics in Theravāda Buddhism. In doing so, I focus on a single yet fundamental point of contention regarding the number of sounds in the Pāli language from the twelfth to fifteenth century. I argue that this debate on the number of sounds was of central concern due to the importance of Pāli pronunciation in the ritual sphere, the development of new regional monastic identities, and the introduction of regional scripts. In tracing this (...) debate between two competing systems of Pāli grammar I show that these developments in the phonetic description of the Pāli language reveal the use and adaptation of Sanskritic phonetics in order to differentiate Pāli from Sanskrit, the Prakrits, and its surrounding vernaculars. (shrink)