Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Monasteries, Buddhist'

The importance of renewable energy technologies has become increasingly evident in the public mind in recent times. This has arisen during instances of energy shortage and oil price shocks, coupled with emerging concerns as a result of climate change effects. The attraction of renewable, natural energy sources such as wind, solar, hydro, geo-thermal and biomass, compared to the detrimental environmental impact of existing resources is obvious. The promise of renewable energy technology has provided hope to society’s need for sustainable energy, as well as the survival of human kind in the future. However, in the transition from fossil-fuel based technologies to renewable energy technologies, obstacles to change arise from the incumbency of vested interests. Thus, there is a pressing need to demonstrate to the public that renewable energy resources are practicable. Buddhist monasteries can be instrumental in this task. In countries, such as, Thailand, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka, monasteries play a social role as public centres for their communities. Not only do they deliver Dharma from the Lord Buddha, but they also model and teach their adherents how to conduct their lives in harmony with nature and the environment. In this paper, two aspects of energy have been discussed in relation to their application to Buddhist monasteries, including the importance of energy efficiency and the significance of renewable technology. The Bodhiyana Buddhist monastery in Serpentine, was used as a site for a case study to examine both issues. The case study contains energy audits and renewable energy resource assessments which play a vital role in each of the issues. Subsequently, the paper explores the ‘Noble Eightfold Path’ of Buddhist doctrine by demonstrating the bridge to renewable energy technology. The terms ‘Right Livelihood’ and ‘Appropriate Technology’ are used in relationship between these two elements.

Early monasteries are popularly perceived as ‘otherworldly’, purposefully founded as isolated retreats far from human habitation. Such views were formed through the bias towards textual sources in early academic enquiry. Ethnographic (e.g. Gombrich 1971) and epigraphic (e.g. Schopen 1997a) research in South Asia has begun to challenge these traditional assumptions demonstrating the economic and social value of monastic communities. Recent AHRC-sponsored fieldwork in Anuradhapura (Sri Lanka), conducted by the Upper Malvatu-Oya Exploration Project (UMOEP), has identified similar discrepancies between traditional interpretations and archaeological evidence proposing that the Sri Lankan landscape was administered through Buddhist monasteries rather than secular towns. It is also postulated that monastic communities may have led the colonisation of uninhabited regions, sometimes with or without government support (Coningham et al. 2007). In response to this research context, the aim of this thesis is to test the working hypothesis that early Buddhist monasteries in Sri Lanka performed core administrative and economic functions in the Anuradhapura hinterland. Such roles for monasteries will be determined through a multidisciplinary approach analysing the archaeological data of UMOEP, augmented and integrated with textual, epigraphic, architectural and ethnographic evidence. From such an analysis the roles and functions of Buddhist monasteries in the Anuradhapura hinterland in relation to craft production, irrigation and agriculture will be ascertained as well as defining the patronage that monasteries received. Further to this, once such roles have been determined for the Anuradhapura hinterland, the discussion will be broadened, entering into a comparative dialogue with selective case-studies from Christian medieval Europe to inform and challenge assumptions in the wider discussion of monasticism in a global context.

In response to Tibetan social pressures in the 11th century, Atisa initiated a renewal of Buddhist monasticism that resulted in all Buddhist praxis outside of meditation being strictly framed by attitudes and behaviors informed by love and compassion. Atisa's teachings are exemplified in pithy sayings that point to the heart of bodhisattva practice, and this mind training practice developed into a tradition in the period immediately following his passing. The success of the method, and of the emulation of Atisa as exemplar of a perfect bodhisattva, led to the adoption of mind training throughout Tibetan Buddhism. "Tibetan Mind Training: Tradition and Genre" explains the relation between a native Tibetan literary genre and monastic Buddhist practice found in the 14th century compilation Mind Training: The Great Collection (theg pa chen po blo sbyong rgya tsa). The introduction provides context and presents methodology. Chapter one argues that 'blo sbyong' should be translated as 'mind training.' Chapter two has two broad arguments: a rebuttal of a conception of mind training as an essentially psychological preparation for other practices; and an explanation of its praxis as the interaction of mind and real objects. Chapter three explains the relation of mind training praxis and tradition, with reference to Atisa's reforms. Chapter four explains some characteristics of the literary genre of mind training.

In this dissertation, the complex of Kizil (Xinjiang, China) and its Eastern Valley [Gudong] are elected as case studies. In order to understand the present academic situation on the topic, an attempt is made to identify and historicise the main tendencies in the research, and to highlight the main methodologies employed. After a brief description of the archaeological explorations that reached Kizil in the twentieth century, the development of the scholarship in both Europe and China is outlined. Secondly, the current main methodologies employed in the analysis of the site are described, in order to assess the present academic position on the topic and to possibly identify new paths.

Following several successful military expeditions against the Mongols in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Manchu rulers of Qing China (1644-1911) met an unprecedented challenge as they incorporated culturally different subjects into their growing empire. After doubling in territory and tripling in population, how did the multicultural Qing operate? How did the new imperial subjects receive and reinterpret Qing state policies? What have been the ramifications of the eighteenth-century political innovations in modern China? In this dissertation, I address these questions by examining the encounters of the expanding Qing empire with Tibetans and Mongols in Inner Asia. Central to the analysis is Tibetan Buddhism, to which Mongols and Tibetans have adhered for centuries. Recent decades have seen a growing volume of research attending to Tibetan Buddhism within the context of the Qing’s imperial policies, but key questions still remain with regards to the perspective of these Inner Asian communities and the reasons for their participation in the imperial enterprise. The inadequate understanding of the Qing’s interaction with Tibetan Buddhism is predicated upon the assumption that Qing emperors propitiated the belligerent Mongols by patronizing their religion. While this premise acknowledges Tibetan Buddhism’s importance in the Qing’s imperial formation, it simultaneously deprives those practicing the religion of agency. The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze how the empire was ruled from the viewpoint of the governed. The project draws evidence from Tibetan-language biographies and monastic chronicles, letters in the Mongolian language, as well as local gazetteers, artisanal manuals, and court statutes in Chinese and Manchu, the two official languages in the Qing era. These textual sources are supplemented by Tibetan Buddhist artifacts housed in museums and libraries in North America and Asia. Through an examination of the wide array of source materials, I argue that the Qing imperial rulers capitalized on the religious culture of Inner Asian communities, which in turn gave rise to a transnational religious network that was centered on Tibetan Buddhist epistemology. The religious knowledge system remained strong well past the formative eighteenth century. Its enduring impact on Qing political and social history was felt even as the empire worked towards creating a distinctive cosmopolitan Qing culture. The dissertation consists of four chapters, each of which locates a space within the context of the symbiotic growth of the Qing and the Tibetan Buddhist knowledge network. This dissertation revolves around Tibetan Buddhist scholars, institutions, rituals, and objects, as they traveled from Tibet to Qing China’s capital and eastern Mongolia, and finally entered the literary realm of intellectuals in eighteenth-century China. Chapter One brings into focus Tibetan Buddhist reincarnation—a dynamic practice that redefined the institutional genealogy of individual prestige—as the Qing imperial power increased its contact with Inner Asian communities from the 1720s in the strategic border region of Amdo between Tibet and Qing China. I discuss how local hereditary headmen refashioned themselves into religious leaders whose enduring influence could transcend even death so as to preserve their prestige. Yet, their impact reached beyond the imperial margin. Chapter Two traces the role of these religious leaders in transforming an imperial private space into the largest Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the Qing’s imperial capital. This monastery—Beijing’s Lama Temple (Yonghegong 雍和宮)—not only became a site that manifested Qing imperial devotion to Tibetan Buddhism, but also served as an institutional outpost for the increasingly transnational Tibetan Buddhist network to the east. The Lama Temple was not the only outpost of the growing religious network, and Chapter Three explores another major nodal point within this network at a contact zone in southern Mongolia. It was here that two massive Tibetan Buddhist monasteries were constructed, owing to the mutual efforts undertaken by the imperial household and Tibetan Buddhists from Inner Asia. The final chapter returns to the imperial center but shifts its focus to a discursive space formed by Tibetan Buddhist laity who also occupied official posts in the imperial court. Two Manchu princes and one Mongolian Buddhist composed or were commissioned to compile texts in multiple languages on Tibetan Buddhist epistemology. Their writings reveal the fluidity and extent of the religious network, as well as its symbiotic growth with the imperial enterprise as the Qing empire took shape territorially and culturally. This dissertation concludes by addressing the nature of the Qing’s governance and that of the transnational power of the Tibetan Buddhist network, and it aims to deconstruct the dominant discourse associated with imperial policies in the Inner Asian frontier. My findings offer insight into how Tibetan Buddhism had a lasting impact on the Qing’s imperial imagination, during and after the formative eighteenth century.

碩士
國立成功大學
建築學系專班
93
Regarding the classification of Buddhist temples, the style of the architecture usually halts in the outer appearance of the architecture and neglects the influence of subtle humanism, which passed down from generations. In this thesis, I try to adopt the history background and the development of thoughts, which cause the transitions in styles of the Buddhist temples. 　The early Buddhism of Taiwan gradually formed the great four sects. The Chinese government immigrated to Taiwan after World War II. Large amount of Chinese Buddhists monks came to Taiwan and brought in the traditional Chinese Buddhism that fulfilled the Taiwanese Buddhism. The concepts of “Humanistic Buddhism” expanded widely and established the four modern Taiwanese Buddhist sects, the University of Buddhism and the Buddhist television stations. Buddhism appears to be diversification. 　First, I trace from ancient traditional temples, secondly the Japanese colonization, thirdly the fundamental of Chinese Buddhism after war, and finally the transition of ancient traditional Buddhist temples to modernity. 　The Hsinchu is the city with ancient culture and high technology. Buddhists should rethink the reasons of how Hsinchu Buddhism not losing the tradition and modernity. Now I select the representative traditional monasteries: Kinshan Monastery, Jinye Monastery, Linyin Monastery. In addition, I include the post-war monasteries: Fuyen Vihara, Fabao Monastery, Shifang Zen Monastery. At last, I used Fayuan Monastery as an example of transition from tradition to modernity. Through changes of ages, the style of temples develops into different sects. However, the spirit and doctrine of Buddhism are the essence of the Buddhist monasteries.

Representing the first comprehensive study of Tibetan medical institutions, this dissertation argues that medicine played a crucial role in the development of Tibetan Buddhism outside of Tibet during the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), while Tibetan Buddhism played a vital role in the governance of the northern and western borderlands of the Qing Empire. During the same period remembered today for the rise of science along mercantile-colonialist sea routes, an inland network of Tibetan Buddhist monastic medical colleges (gso rig or sman pa grwa tshang) proliferated in tandem with the expansion of the Qing Empire over Inner Asia. My study examines these developments from a regional rather than an anachronistic nation-state perspective, historicizing both the "Tibetan" medical system and its community of practitioners within the context of Qing imperial expansion and decline. Combining the approaches of intellectual and institutional history, I argue that the medical colleges of Tibetan Buddhist monasteries bridged the realms of ritual and materiality that we understand as separate today, providing a key site for the display of benevolent governance, and serving as a vital forum for intellectual and material exchange between the Qing court and peoples of the Tibetan Buddhist frontiers. The "monastic guidelines" (bca' yig) of Tibetan medical colleges provide a window into these institutions' ritual and medical curricula, as well as debates over medical orthodoxy that took place within and between them. Historical narratives within monastic guidelines served as frameworks of legitimacy and templates for ritual practice, and the boundaries of medicine as a discipline were negotiated through the selective incorporation of various medical lineages and traditions. I explore the relationship between ritual debates, doctrinal debates, and ideas about how to both encourage and circumscribe experience within the monastic guidelines of medical colleges. One of the major issues at stake was the relationship between innovation and revelation, as physicians could claim a special insight into the experience of their predecessors in a medical lineage. While innovation was necessary for expertise in healing, revelation was potentially dangerous to the state. Such medical debates give us insight into ideas about the relationship between social and epistemic order taught within Tibetan Buddhist institutions as they spread within the Qing Empire. With the advent of new ways of defining territorial and disciplinary boundaries in the early twentieth century, ritual technologies for defining social and epistemic order were replaced by new institutional structures. I consider why the greater circulation of medical knowledge within the Qing Empire was followed by a fragmentation of medical nationalisms. While Han Chinese nationalists embraced the culture of science as a defensive strategy against Western powers and as a political strategy to distance themselves from the Qing formation, Tibetan Buddhists did not seek such a radical break. Similar and connected medical reforms in Lhasa, Eastern Tibet, Mongolia, and Buryatia reveal the continuity of Tibetan Buddhist knowledge networks and early cooperation among their separate nationalist projects. In the broader context of the history of science, the example of Tibetan Buddhist medical institutions points to the centrality of early modern networks of knowledge in determining modern political configurations.