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Khentrul Rinpoché (2015), A Joyful Ocean of Precious Diversity

Khentrul Rinpoche, 2015. Ocean of Diversity.Shar Khentrul Jamphel Lodrö (ཤར་མཁན་སྤྲུལ་རིན་པོ་ཆེ་འཇམ་དཔལ་བློ་གྲོས); Joe Flumerfelt, ed. 2015. A Joyful Ocean of Precious Diversity: An unbiased summary of views and practices, gradually emerging from the teachings of the world’s wisdom traditions (སྣ་ཚོགས་ནོར་བུའི་རོལ་མཚོ། །རིས་མེད་འཛམ་གླིང་རིག་པའི་གཞུང་ལུགས་བྱུང་རིམ་ལྟ་གྲུབ་ཉིང་བསྡུས།།). Belgrave, Australia: Tibetan Buddhist Rimé Institute, ISBN: 9780994445308. US$24.95.

OCLC: 978641292. Official site: rimebuddhism.com

Contents:
Acknowledgments … vii
Editor’s Preface … ix
Introduction … 1

PART ONE: WORKING WITH DIVERSITY
1 The Nature of Belief … 15
2 The Rimé Philosophy … 29

PART TWO: THE WORLD'S BELIEF SYSTEMS
Systems with an Extrinsic Focus
3 Ancient Wisdom Traditions … 49
4 Hinduism … 67
5 J​udaism … 89
6 Christianity … 107
7 I​slam … 129 Continue reading “Khentrul Rinpoché (2015), A Joyful Ocean of Precious Diversity”

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Kubota, Tibetan Buddhism: Germany & Switzerland (2012)

久保田, 滋子 「チベット仏教の現代的展開に関する一考察 : ドイツとスイスを事例とし」 『哲學』 128 (2012. 3)

Kubota, Shigeko. ‘Thoughts on the modern aspects of Tibetan buddhism: the cases of Germany and Switzerland’. Tetsugaku No. 128, 2012, pp.403–445. [In Japanese; abstract / PDF]

From the Abstract

At present, numerous Tibetan Buddhist groups exist in Europe and North America, but the Buddhism of these groups differ from the “customary Buddhism” that is an integral part of daily life for the Tibetans themselves. From the point of view of a Tibetan, the Buddhism of those groups are not a part of Tibetan culture but rather of Western culture, and are a form of Western religion like Christianity. […]

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Bentzen, ‘Origins of Religiousness: Natural Disasters’ (2013)

Nepal has earthquakes; Java has volcanoes; the United Kingdom has dreary weather. Is there a geographic correlation between religiosity and catastrophe?

Jeanet Sinding Bentzen. ‘Origins of Religiousness: The Role of Natural Disasters’. University of Copenhagen Department of Economics Discussion Paper 13-02, 2013. [official site / PDF]

From the Abstract

[…] Natural disasters are a source for adverse life events, and thus one way to interpret my findings is by way of religious coping. The results are robust to various measures of religiousness, and to inclusion of country fixed effects, income, education, demographics, religious denominations, and other climatic and geographic features. The results hold within Christianity, Islam and Buddhism, and across continents. […]

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Suzuki, ‘Why did Korea become Christian?’ (2012)

鈴木 崇巨 （著）『韓国はなぜキリスト教国になったか』 春秋社　２０１２

Suzuki, Takahiro. Kankoku wa naze kirisutokyōkoku ni nattaka (*Why did Korea become a Christian country?). Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 2012. 217 pp. ISBN: 9784393222065. [official]

내가 제일 잘 나가 !
“Are you ready for the B E S ✝ ? 내가 제일 잘 나가!” © 2011 YG Entertainment
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Schwartz, Re-enchanting China (2012)

Björn Schwartz. ‘Re-enchanting China: Private Religiosities in the Media Field in Beijing’. M. A. diss., Lund University, 2012. 120 pp. [official site / PDF]

Most of us are familiar with the official picture of tantric Buddhism as a quaint bit of old hat. But who among the determiners of the West’s cultural priorities can admit that right now, the Vajrayāna competes head-on with Christianity as the preferred religion of the world’s next elite? Schwartz pierces the unreal construction of Buddhist Asia as a ball of cuteness, unleashing a torrent of dissonant keywords:

VIP religion, guanxi-networking, post-socialist subjectivity, clubbing as networking and status affirmation, field analysis, status, the emerging structure of entitlement, social change in contemporary China, the private media field in Beijing, conversion, Vajrayana Buddhism, christianity, housechurch, religious revival, emergent social hierarchy, private religions, secret social movements, the Christian field in China, the Buddhist field in China.

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Li, Madhyamakāvatāra 6.1–97 (2012)

李学竹 〈《入中论颂》第六章1一97颂校勘〉 《中国藏学》 1, 2012. (ISSN 1671-6043)

Li, Xuezhu. ‘Madhyamakāvatāra-kārikā’. China Tibetology no.1, 2012, pp.1–16.

Slightly late news, but then this publication doesn’t seem to have been mentioned anywhere else (or brought to my attention) by anyone named in the acknowledgements. That isn’t too surprising, though. One of the three other publications mentioned by the author is an edition of Vasubandhu’s “Viṃśatikākārikā” (p.2), yet one of the nominal collaborators has established back in 2008 that this text should properly be titled Viṃśikā.
Continue reading “Li, Madhyamakāvatāra 6.1–97 (2012)”

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Science: animals are sentient (7/7/2012)

Guess what, theists? Animals have feelings too. That’s what Cambridge scientists are now confident in saying in the wake of the recent Francis Crick Conference. Science and reason are important in a modern society, so it just became that much harder to inflict scripturally sanctioned harm on sentient beings.

This reminds me of a discussion I once had in Germany. Prof. Schmithausen, you were right to think that something was up with theistic contempt for animals. The priests you knew may have been accurate on the detail – animals don’t have souls – but they were wrong on the big picture: they don’t either. Both humans and animals have “homologous subcortical brain networks” and share “primal affective qualia”. Every body hurts; and that suppressed observation was obvious long before it became a hipster anthem.

‘Are you hungry, Buddha? Because I know how that feels.’ Ancient Buddhist story of animal sentience, illustrated in an 11th-century Newar manuscript now kept at Cambridge.
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Toumpouri, ‘L’illustration de Barlaam et Joasaph’ (2010)

Marina Toumpouri [academia.edu]. ‘L’illustration byzantine du Roman de Barlaam et Joasaph’. 3 vols., 792 pp. PhD diss., Université Charles de Gaulle (Lille), 2010.

A worthy study of some real Western Buddhism:

From the Abstract

The Barlaam and Joasaph tale is a text of Buddhist inspiration which tells the story of the son of an Indian king, Joasaph, who, tired of mundane pleasures, is converted by the monk Barlaam and eventually becomes a monk. The Greek version of the Barlaam and Joasaph Romance, the work of Euthyme the Athonite (+1028), monk of Georgian origin, is datable between 975 and 987. The text is known to us in hundred and fifty nine manuscripts, among which six were illustrated, produced between the eleventh and the sixteenth century. The present work is dedicated to the study of the illustrated manuscripts.

That bhikṣu looks awfully out of place in Europe. (Trust me on this.) J. Paul Getty Museum, Ms. Ludwig XV 9, fol. 31v
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Voting for God

Yesterday the ritual procedure for nominating candidates for the presidency of the United States of America drew to a close. Sen. John McCain’s acceptance speech was littered with references to the consecration of the United States by God:

We believe everyone has something to contribute and deserves the opportunity to reach their God-given potential … We’re all God’s children and we’re all Americans. […]

I’m going to fight to make sure every American has every reason to thank God, as I thank Him: that I’m an American, a proud citizen of the greatest country on earth, and with hard work, strong faith and a little courage, great things are always within our reach.

Frankly, I expected just a little more from John McCain, the self-styled reflective student of history. McCain, unlike his running mate, and the current incumbent (prior to holding office), at least has some personal experience of the wider world — even if it happened to involve pouring munitions from a great height onto civilian infrastructure (for which he can hardly be accused of being unpatriotic).

McCain, in following convention and pushing the buttons of his party’s faithful, neglects to mention what happens to governments that form compacts with Almighty Gods. At some inopportune moment, they disintegrate: inexorably, ignominiously, permanently.

This year Nepal’s monarchy became just the latest in a long line of national elites forsaken by the God(s) integral to their thinking and systems of power. In some respects I am inclined to think that Nepal — where every dinner is a candlelit dinner, thanks to the mismanagement of the country’s meagre resources — not only shows the past, but the way of the future.