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1
Eichman, Jennifer. "Zhuhong’s Communal Rules for the Late Ming Nunnery Filiality and Righteousness Unobstructed." NAN Nü 21, no. 2 (December 11, 2019): 224–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15685268-00212p03.
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AbstractThis article presents a single detailed case study of communal life at a small private Buddhist nunnery governed by strict rules and inhabited by religiously active nuns. The first half of this article focuses on why the nunnery was constructed, how it was funded, where it was built, its architectural design, and its residents. The second half examines the daily ritual activities of the nuns, their education, disciplinary procedures, fundraising, and community relations. In bringing to life how the culture of monastic discipline shaped the daily rhythms of these nuns’ lives, this article further sheds light not only on monastic culture in Hangzhou at the end of the Ming, but also demonstrates the contrast between that culture and other Buddhist and contemporary religious competitors in the surrounding religious landscape. In so doing, this article shifts our attention from the study of hagiography to the broader context of female monastic culture exhibited in the genres of communal rules (guiyue) and vinaya texts.
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Kim, Hwansoo. "Two Incarnations, One Person: The Complexity of Kim Iryŏp’s Life." Journal of Korean Studies 26, no. 1 (March 1, 2021): 51–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/07311613-8747707.
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Abstract Kim Iryŏp (Kim Wŏnju, 1896‒1971) was a pioneering feminist and prolific writer who left lay life to become a Buddhist nun. The bifurcation of her life between the secular and religious has generated two separate narratives, with Korean feminist studies focusing on Iryŏp as a revolutionary thinker and Buddhist studies centering on Iryŏp as an influential Buddhist nun. When divided this way, the biography of each career reads more simply. However, by including two significant but unexplored pieces of her history that traverse the two halves of her narrative, Iryŏp emerges as a more complex figure. The first is her forty-five-year relationship with the Buddhist monk Paek Sŏng’uk (1897‒1981). The second is how she extended some of her early feminism into monastic life but said little about the marginalization of nuns in Buddhism’s highly patriarchal system. In both her relationship with Paek and her feminism, Iryŏp drew on the Buddhist teaching of nonself, in which the “big I” is beyond gender. Thus, Iryŏp repositions herself as having attained big I, while Paek remained stuck in “small I.” Yet, while she finds equality with monks through an androgynous big I, none of her writings contest Korean Buddhism’s androcentric institutional structure.
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Shono, Masanori. "Local Buddhist Monastic Agreements among the (M?la)sarv?stiv?dins." Buddhist Studies Review 34, no. 1 (September 11, 2017): 53–66. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/bsrv.33779.
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Recently, there have been an increasing number of studies on the Buddhist monastic community as a whole and on individual Buddhist monks and nuns in Vinaya literature. However, we do not know much about how a local Buddhist monastic community was administered. In order to consider just an aspect of the administration in a local monastic community, I will in this paper investigate descriptions of agreements (Skt kriy?k?ra-) that local monastic communities or local Buddhist monks conclude in Vinaya texts belonging to the (M?la)sarv?stiv?dins.
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Chiu, Tzu-Lung, and Ann Heirman. "The Gurudharmas in Buddhist Nunneries of Mainland China." Buddhist Studies Review 31, no. 2 (January 15, 2015): 241–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/bsrv.v31i2.241.
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According to tradition, when the Buddha’s aunt and stepmother Mah?praj?pat? was allowed to join the Buddhist monastic community, she accepted eight ‘fundamental rules’ (gurudharmas) that made the nuns’ order dependent upon the monks’ order. This story has given rise to much debate, in the past as well as in the present, and this is no less the case in Mainland China, where nunneries have started to re-emerge in recent decades. This article first presents new insight into Mainland Chinese monastic practitioners’ common perspectives and voices regarding the gurudharmas, which are rarely touched upon in scholarly work. Next, each of the rules is discussed in detail, allowing us to analyse various issues, until now understudied, regarding the applicability of the gurudharmas in Mainland Chinese contexts. This research thus provides a detailed overview of nuns’ perceptions of how traditional vinaya rules and procedures can be applied in contemporary Mainland Chinese monastic communities based on a cross-regional empirical study.
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Salgado, Nirmala S. "On the Question of “Discipline” (Vinaya) and Nuns in Theravāda Buddhism." Religions 10, no. 2 (February 4, 2019): 98. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel10020098.
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This article centers on the relationship of rules (nīti) to the monastic form of life of contemporary Buddhist nuns in Sri Lanka. A genealogy of scholarship focusing on the rules of Buddhist monks and nuns led scholars to affirm a clear-cut distinction between nuns who have the higher ordination (bhikkhunῑs) and those who do not have it. However, that distinction is not self-evident, because bhikkhunῑs and other nuns lead lives that do not foreground a juridical notion of rules. The lives of nuns focus on disciplinary practices of self-restraint within a tradition of debate about their recent higher ordinations. Whether or not they are bhikkhunῑs, nuns today refer to rules in ways that are different from that which dominant Vinaya scholarship assumes. This article proposes that it is misleading to differentiate Buddhist nuns based on an enumeration of their rules and argues that nuns’ attitudes to rules say more about attempts to authorize claims to power in current debates about their ordination than about their disciplinary practice as a communal form of life.
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ULANOV, MERGEN S. "WOMEN IN THE HISTORY OF BUDDHIST CULTURE OF MEDIEVAL JAPAN." CASPIAN REGION: Politics, Economics, Culture 65, no. 4 (2020): 97–103. http://dx.doi.org/10.21672/1818-510x-2020-65-4-097-103.
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The article is devoted to the consideration of the role of women in the history of Buddhist culture in medieval Japan. The article examines the formation of the first female Buddhist monastic community in Japan. It is noted that the formation of the first Buddhist monastic community here was associated with women of Korean origin. A significant role in the institutionalization of Buddhism in Japan and its transformation into the dominant ideology was played by the Japanese empresses, who were impressed by the Buddhist approach to the religious status of women. The Japanese empresses actively supported the construction of Buddhist temples, donated land and significant funds to them. While pursuing a policy of strengthening the Buddhist church, they simultaneously contributed to its centralization and the establishment of strict control over the sangha by the state. The social and confessional status of women in the history of medieval Japan was constantly changing. If, until the end of the Nara period, nuns had the same social and confessional status as monks, then in the Heian era, nuns were removed from government positions and state ceremonies, and in religious treatises the opinion that women could not find salvation until will not be reborn as men. During the Kamakura and Muromachi eras, women again began to play an active role in society, including in religious institutions. During this period, new directions of Buddhism appeared (Amidaism, Soto-Zen, the Nichiren school), in whose doctrines the attitude towards women was more respectful. In the subsequent period, there was an increase in the influence of Confucianism and a weakening of the position of Buddhism in Japanese society, which negatively affected the social status of women and the state of the female monastic community.
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Anderson, Carol S., and Nirmala S. Salgado. "Introduction to papers on Women’s Leadership Roles in Therav?da Buddhist Traditions." Buddhist Studies Review 27, no. 1 (September 7, 2010): 15–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/bsrv.v27i1.15.
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These papers were presented at a panel, organized by us and chaired by Liz Wilson, on ‘Women’s Leadership and Monastic Organizations in Therav?da Buddhist Traditions’, at the 2008 American Academy of Religion meeting, Chicago. Here, we bring together articles that examine the roots of the teachings on nuns in P?li literature with others which investigate issues relating to contemporary Therav?da nuns, as well as an analysis of relevant debates in ancient China. The objective of these papers is to contribute to discussion of the multiple ways in which professionally celibate women are represented, organized and empowered in the textual and contemporary traditions of P?li and Therav?da Buddhism, to study how representations of female monasticism are related to organizational structures of leadership and agency, and explore how debates over the need for ‘dual ordination’ have occurred in traditions other than the Therav?da.
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Tsomo, Karma Lekshe. "Lao Buddhist Women: Quietly Negotiating Religious Authority." Buddhist Studies Review 27, no. 1 (September 7, 2010): 85–106. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/bsrv.v27i1.85.
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Throughout years of war and political upheaval, Buddhist women in Laos have devotedly upheld traditional values and maintained the practice of offering alms and other necessities to monks as an act of merit. In a religious landscape overwhelmingly dominated by bhikkhus (fully ordained monks), a small number have renounced household life and become maekhaos, celibate women who live as nuns and pursue contemplative practices on the periphery of the religious mainstream. Patriarchal ecclesiastical structures and the absence of a lineage of full ordination for women have combined to render the religious roles of Buddhist nuns and laywomen virtually invisible throughout most of Lao history. With limited access to Buddhist learning, maekhaos live at the margins of Lao society, both spatially and economically. Based on interviews gathered during fieldwork in Laos and at a Lao temple in California, this paper examines the lives of Lao Buddhist women, their relationship to religious authority, and ways they might move from the margins to full inclusion in Lao religious life.
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Jonveaux, Isabelle. "Facebook as a monastic place? The new use of internet by Catholic monks." Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis 25 (January 1, 2013): 99–109. http://dx.doi.org/10.30674/scripta.67435.
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Although Catholic monasteries are theoretically out of the world, monks and nuns more and more use the internet, both for religious and non-religious reasons. While society at large often takes it for granted that monks are out of modernity, monastic communities have been adopted media from relatively early on, and we cannot say that they have come late to its use. The internet can offer monasteries a lot of advantages because it allows monks to be in the world without going out of the cloister. Nevertheless, the introduction of this new media in monasteries also raises a lot of questions about the potential contradictions it poses with other aspects of monastic life. The paper seeks to research the use of the medium by monks and nuns even in their daily lives, and attempts especially to investigate the potential changes it brings to monastic life.
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Yuet, Keung Lo. "Conversion to Chastity: A Buddhist Catalyst in Early Imperial China." NAN NÜ 10, no. 1 (2008): 22–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/138768008x273700.
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AbstractThis paper traces the history of the notion of female chastity (zhen) in China from pre-Qin to the mid-imperial era and argues that, prior to the arrival of Buddhism in China, the idea of female “chastity” was concerned not so much with physical virginity as the dutiful fulfillment of wifely obligations as stipulated by the Confucian marriage rites. A woman's chastity was determined by her moral rectitude rather than by her biological condition. The understanding of the physical body as a sacrosanct entity that must be defended against defilement and violation emerged under the influence of Buddhist notions of the uncontaminated body, the pious observance of the Buddhist monastic code, and the performance of religious charity that became popular in early imperial China. Based on a critical analysis of a wide array of Confucian canonical texts, dynastic histories, Indian Buddhist scriptures, biographies of Chinese monks and nuns, the monastic code, and Chinese Buddhist encyclopedias, this paper delineates the gradual process by which the Buddhist concept of the “pure body” became fully assimilated into the indigenous Chinese notion of female “rectitude” and the notion of female chastity finally acquired an ontological identity around the end of the sixth century.
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Beauregard, David. "SHAKESPEARE ON MONASTIC LIFE: NUNS AND FRIARS IN MEASURE FOR MEASURE." Religion and the Arts 5, no. 3 (2001): 248–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15685290152813653.
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AbstractAgainst recent claims that Shakespeare satirizes and demystifies religious life in Measure for Measure, this article maintains that Shakespeare is generally sympathetic to Franciscan nuns and friars, particularly so in this play. Indeed, Shakespeare works against the anti-fraternal tradition by reversing its conventions. Nuns and friars are represented as virtue figures, not vice figures. The secular characters are guilty of sexual irregularities, whereas the religious are chaste and work to regularize the marriages of the lay figures. The usual exposure of the sexual corruption and hypocrisy of the friar backfires on Lucio, the chief vice figure in the play. The virginal and temperate Isabella, a secular figure in Shakespeare's sources, is portrayed as a prospective novice of the Poor Clares over against the puritanical Angelo, whose hypocritical asceticism turns into lust. Angelo conducts a public shaming English Protestant style, whereas the Duke in Catholic fashion conducts a sympathetic auricular confession. Finally Isabella does not sacrifice her virginity or accept the Duke's offer of marriage, two things her counterparts in the sources invariably do. Shakespeare's reversal of anti-Catholic conventions requires us to reposition him as a Catholic rather than a conforming member of the Church of England.
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Mecham, June. "Cooperative Piety among Monastic and Secular Women in Late Medieval Germany." Church History and Religious Culture 88, no. 4 (2008): 581–611. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/187124108x426754.
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AbstractScholarship has demonstrated that religious life for women was more fluid, more tied to the secular world and to gender ideologies, than strict categorizations of monastic versus lay, regular versus extraregular, visual versus intellectual allows. This article argues for the conceptualization and study of female monasticism, and female spirituality in general, as part of a broad continuum—as part of a shared culture of devotional practices—accepted and embraced (to a greater or lesser extent) by both men and women, secular and lay. More specifically, it explores the interaction between secular and professed women in support of monastic life, monastic devotion, and more broadly, medieval religious culture. Religious and lay women collaborated and cooperated to support specific religious communities and particular devotional practices, like the nuns' performance of the liturgy or their duty to remember patrons as part of the monastic memoria. Such collaboration and cooperation, however, has often escaped the notice of historians.
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Walker, Claire. "Exiled Children: Care in English Convents in the 17th and 18th Centuries." Children Australia 41, no. 3 (August 17, 2016): 168–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cha.2016.19.
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England's Catholic religious minority devised various strategies for its survival in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including the establishment of seminaries and convents in continental Europe, predominantly in France and the Spanish Netherlands. These institutions educated the next generation of English Catholic clergy, nuns and lay householders. Although convent schools were usually small, the nuns educated young girls within their religious cloisters. The pupils followed a modified monastic routine, while they were taught the skills appropriate for young gentlewomen, such as music and needlework. While many students were placed in convents with the intention that they would become nuns, not all girls followed this trajectory. Some left the cloister of their childhood to join other religious houses or to return to England to marry and raise a new generation of Catholics. Although we have few first-hand accounts of these girls’ experiences, it is possible to piece together a sense of their lives behind cloistered walls from chronicles, obituaries and letters. While the exiled monastic life for children was difficult, surviving evidence points to the vital role of convent care in Catholic families’ strategies, and the acknowledgement of their importance by the girls placed there, whether temporarily or permanently.
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Schrimpf, Monika. "Children of Buddha, or Caretakers of Women?" Journal of Religion in Japan 4, no. 2-3 (2015): 184–211. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/22118349-00402009.
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This paper deals with the self-understandings of ordained Buddhist women (nisō 尼僧, ama 尼) in contemporary Japan. Their situation is characterized by discrimination and limited access to clerical positions on the one hand and, with the exception of monastic nuns, by their lack of a clearly defined role on the other. Although the training required to attain the status of a fully ordained cleric is firmly regulated by each Buddhist school, ordained women’s subsequent way of life is not. They may be married and have their own families. They may be the head priestess of a temple, the wife of a temple priest, or work in a temple. They may live according to Buddhist precepts in private, or have secular jobs. Under these conditions, ordained women have found ways of empowering themselves by interpreting their role in accordance with their social contexts and by re-evaluating conservative conceptions of gender.
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Clark, Anne L. "Guardians of the Sacred: The Nuns of Soissons and the Slipper of the Virgin Mary." Church History 76, no. 4 (December 2007): 724–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0009640700500031.
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What could it mean to a medieval monastic community to own a valuable object? Certainly, property in general was crucial to the survival of a stable community, ideals of poverty and the thirteenth-century Franciscan experiment in radical poverty notwithstanding. More specifically, what did it mean to own not simply a field or mill that generated revenue, but an object that was believed to have power beyond its material qualities? Such objects—saints’ relics and wonder-working images—did of course also generate revenue, but their meaning and role for the monastic community and the wider society could be much richer than that. And what if the monastic community was a convent of nuns, of professed religious women whose lives were shaped not just by the rule they shared with their male counterparts, but also by the codes, both implicit and increasingly explicit, that constrained the range of women's religious activities?Although the first two of these questions—about monastic property and the religious value of sacred objects—have been extensively discussed in scholarship on the Middle Ages, a specific focus on gender in relation to monastic ownership of sacred objects has not been widely examined. My focus on gender here is generated by two salient aspects of religious life in the twelfth century, the period of this study. First, there was an increasing articulation of the priesthood as the sole means of mediating divine presence, and of that priesthood as exclusively male.
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Freeman, Elizabeth. "Cistercian Nuns in Medieval England: Unofficial Meets Official." Studies in Church History 42 (2006): 110–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0424208400003880.
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Late twentieth-century scholarship on the Cistercian monastic order was dominated by the distinction between elite and popular. The terminology was specific to the Cistercian debate -namely, ‘ideals’ versus ‘reality’ rather than ‘elite’ versus ‘popular’ – but the logic of a high Cistercian culture and a low Cistercian culture is one that students of any elite/popular debate will find familiar. The indispensable modern survey of Cistercian history, published in 1977, is the key promoter of this argument, with its title presenting an eloquent statement of its thesis:The Cistercians: Ideals and Reality. Although the focus of current investigations into elite and popular religion is undoubtedly the extent to which both varieties of religion are legitimate cultural forces which influence and depend on each other, the Cistercian argument was formulated in a much more hierarchical way and clearly saw the elite Cistercian life as the more legitimate of the two monastic expressions. The argument is that members of the Cistercian order exhibited a more or less ideal form of corporate religious life during the first one hundred years of the order’s existence, but that after the late twelfth century the order gradually lost its purity. Two aspects of popular life infiltrated the enclosed world of the cloister: first, the grubby realities of economics; and, second, interactions with women, generally meaning interactions with the increasing numbers of Cistercian nunneries.
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Ulanov, Mergen. "Buddhism in the Feminist Context: Historical Experience and Modern Discourse." Logos et Praxis, no. 2 (September 2019): 14–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.15688/lp.jvolsu.2019.2.2.
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The author considers the problems of women's place in Buddhist culture in the context of feminist discourse. He notes that Buddhism is distinguished by a tolerant and respectful attitude to the female. Buddhism admits that women, along with men, are able to achieve enlightenment and find Nirvana. However, the relationship between male and female monastic orders in Buddhism was not fully equal. The order of nuns was considered to be the youngest in comparison with the order of monks, and the rules restricting the behavior of the nuns were more than for the monks, which was probably a forced step aimed at taking into account the realities of society. Despite this, the Foundation of the women's monastic organization, which opened the way for women to religious knowledge and spiritual rank, was in its essence a radical social revolution for that time. The emergence of the female monastic community was an example of a fundamentally new view of women and their position in society. With the release of Buddhism outside India female monasticism became widespread in many Asian countries. Later, however, in the countries of South, South-East Asia and Tibet, the Institute of full female monasticism disappeared. In the second half of the twentieth century the attempts to revive the Institute that have led to the emergence of the phenomenon of neonuns. As a result of the spread of Buddhism in the West, it was included in the field of gender studies and feminist discourse. The question of equality between women and men in Buddhism has been actively developed by Western female Buddhists in the feminist discourse, that has formed a statement about the original equality of the sexes in Buddhism. The theme of the status of women in society and their rights has become an important part of the social concept of Western Buddhism. The result was the emergence of the international women's Buddhist Association "Sakyadhita".
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Chao, Shin-yi. "Good Career Moves: Life Stories of Daoist Nuns of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries." NAN NÜ 10, no. 1 (2008): 121–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/138768008x273737.
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AbstractDaoist monasticism rose to prominence in China during the late twelfth and the mid-thirteenth centuries amid the turmoil of war and dynastic change. A particular Daoist monastic order emerged, called Quanzhen or 'Complete Perfection', which became popular and spread throughout China. A number of commemorative stone steles from the monasteries of the period have been preserved, and serve as the main sources for this article. The steles record the religious activities and experiences of female practitioners, some of whom rose to leading positions, as founders, abbesses, and managers of flourishing monasteries. The funding for these monasteries came from the donations of the lay followers whom they inspired. Within the monastic universe, they trained and ordained the next generation of clerics, and provided ritual services to the lay community as well. Toward the end of their careers, abbesses choose their successors from among their female disciples, and a lineage based on the master-disciple relationship took shape.
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Bugyis, Katie Ann-Marie. "Nuns’ Priests’ Tales. Men and Salvation in Medieval Women’s Monastic Life, by Fiona J. Griffiths." Church History and Religious Culture 99, no. 1 (May 27, 2019): 71–73. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18712428-09901006.
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Wright, A. D. "The Religious Life in the Spain of Philip II and Philip III." Studies in Church History 22 (1985): 251–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0424208400007993.
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From the vividly autobiographic Life of St Teresa famous images of conventual life in sixteenth-century Spain have been derived; both the dark impression of unreformed monastic existence and the heroic profile of reformed regulars. Before and after that era the social, not to say political prominence of certain figures, friars and nuns, in Spanish life is notorious, from the reigns of the Catholic Monarchs to that of Philip IV and beyond. Modern historical research has indeed highlighted the contribution to political and ecclesiastical development, to early Catholic reform above all, of key members of the regular clergy under the Catholic Monarchs. For monastics, as opposed to mendicants, in post-medieval Spain, the extensive and meticulous researches of Linage Conde have put all Iberian scholars in his debt. The fascinating origins of the essentially Iberian phenomenon of the Jeronymites have recently received new attention from J.R.L. Highfield, but further insights into the true condition of the religious life in the Iberian peninsula of the supposedly Golden Age are perhaps still possible, when unpublished material is consulted in the Roman archives and in those of Spain, such as Madrid, Simancas, Barcelona and Valencia. Considerations of space necessarily limit what can be suggested here, but the development of monastic life in Counter-Reformation Spain is arguably best considered in its extended not just in its stricter sense: for parallels and contrasts, as well as direct influences, were not confined by the normal distinctions between the eremitic and the monastic, the monastic and the mendicant, the old and the new orders, or even the male and female communities. Furthermore the intervention of Spanish royal authority in Portuguese affairs between 1580 and 1640, not least in ecclesiastical and regular life, provides a useful comparative basis for consideration of truly Iberian conditions.
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Kilby, Christina A. "Humanizing the Enlightened Childhood: Epistolography as Human Formation in Tibetan Buddhism." Numen 68, no. 4 (June 1, 2021): 336–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15685276-12341627.
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Abstract This article contributes a Buddhist studies perspective to the question of what it means to be human. By analyzing a collection of letters written to a young Tibetan Buddhist lama, I trace the contours of a humanizing project that grounds the youth within the lived experience of the human life course that his elder has traversed. I also analyze epistolography as a medium for humanistic formation within Tibetan Buddhist monastic education. This textual study, though rooted in the context of a single epistolary relationship in early modern Tibet, illuminates the search for human wisdom that is fundamental to Buddhist childhoods across historical and cultural contexts.
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Dreyer, Elizabeth. "Book Review: Griffiths, Fiona J.: Nuns’ Priests Tales: Men and Salvation in Medieval Women’s Monastic Life." Theological Studies 80, no. 2 (May 7, 2019): 460–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0040563919836248g.
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Schedneck, Brooke. "Western Buddhist Perceptions of Monasticism." Buddhist Studies Review 26, no. 2 (October 5, 2009): 229–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/bsrv.v26i2.229.
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This paper explores the contemporary encounter between Western cultures and the Buddhist tradition of monasticism. I have investigated attitudes towards this institution in the forms of contemporary Buddhist memoirs, blog websites, interviews, and dharma talks. This article argues that the institution in general is not ideal for some Western Buddhists— it is seen by some as too restricting or anti-modern. Others find value in monasticism; they are aware of those who critique the institution, and offer instead a model that removes anti-modern elements that they see as problematic. As an extension of these attitudes, this article also draws on the issue of female monasticism. Western Buddhists argue that all women should have the choice to be ordained because this shows that Buddhism is modern. I conclude that Western Buddhists are interested in creating a modern, universal tradition, and this can be seen by analyzing conceptions about monastic life.
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Witkowski, Nicholas. "Living with the Dead as a Way of Life: A Materialist Historiographical Approach to Cemetery Asceticism in Indian Buddhist Monasticisms." Journal of the American Academy of Religion 87, no. 3 (July 17, 2019): 824–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfz040.
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AbstractThis study challenges the long-standing scholarly conception that ascetic practice was incompatible with the institutional imperatives of the Indian Buddhist monastery in the “middle period.” Drawing upon the rich narrative tradition in Indian Buddhist law codes (Vinaya), I employ a new hermeneutical approach in order to demonstrate that cemetery (śmaśāna) asceticism remained central to the Buddhist monastic lifestyle. I begin with an extended methodological discussion that locates my approach—what I call materialist historiography—in a genealogy of scholarship that reads literary texts for an anthropology of everyday life. I then draw from a wide range of Vinaya narratives to argue that, despite the increasingly vocal presence of a Brahmanical purity party, the ascetic practices of residing in the cemetery, meditating on corpses, scavenging for goods on the charnel ground, and stripping corpses of their funeral shrouds remained an everyday affair in the monastery.
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Hirsch, Carolin. "Religious Gift-Giving Turned Upside Down. On Monks and Punks in Myanmar." Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts- und Unternehmensethik 22, no. 1 (2021): 6–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.5771/1439-880x-2021-1-6.
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In Myanmar, a mainly Buddhist country, gift-giving practices are part of the everyday life. An established practice is dāna, where laypeople support those living a monastic life. Turning this established practice on its head is used as a tool of socio-political protest by a group of punks, who run the local chapter of Food Not Bombs in Yangon. The punks’' protest is contextualized through the local nexus of religion and politics, within which dāna practices occupy a central role.
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Hanckock-Parmer, Teresa. "Vocation and Enclosure in Colonial Nuns’ Spiritual Autobiographies." Renascence 71, no. 3 (2019): 155–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/renascence201971311.
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This article examines the discourse of enclosure utilized by Maria de San Jose (1656-1719, Puebla), Jeronima Nava y Saavedra (1669-1727, Bogota), and Francisca Josefa de Castillo (1671-1742, Tunja, Colombia) in their spiritual autobiographies. Despite dissimilar personal vocation narratives, these Hispanic nuns embraced enclosure as a tool of continuing spiritual advancement, both before and after actual profession of monastic vows. They portrayed the cloister simultaneously as connubial bedchamber and isolated hermitage, thus ascribing Baroque religious meaning to ancient anchoritic models through intersecting discourses of desert solitude, redemptive suffering, Eucharistic devotion, and nuptial mysticism. To attain ideal enclosure for self and others, these nuns advocated for reform in New World convents, which often reproduced worldly hierarchies, conflicts, and values. Enclosure, more than a symbolic vow or ecclesiastical mandate, constituted a formative practice that fostered correct action and attitude in nuns’ lives; these women conscientiously sought a cloistered life through which they cultivated holiness and created new spiritual meaning.
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Andersson, Catharina. "Cistercian Monasteries in Medieval Sweden—Foundations and Recruitments, 1143–1420." Religions 12, no. 8 (July 28, 2021): 582. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel12080582.
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This article presents an overview of the Cistercian monasteries that were founded in Sweden in the 12th and 13th centuries. The first were Alvastra and Nydala, founded in 1143, both male monasteries. However, eventually the nunneries came to outnumber the male monasteries (7/5). The purpose of the article is also to discuss the social background of the monks and nuns who inhabited these monasteries. As for the nuns, previous studies have shown that they initially came from the society’s elite, the royal families, but also other magnates. Gradually, social recruitment broadened, and an increasing number of women from the aristocratic lower levels came to dominate the recruitment. It is also suggested that from the end of the 14th century, the women increasingly came from the burghers. The male monasteries, on the other hand, were not even from the beginning populated by men from the nobles. Their family backgrounds seem rather to be linked to the aristocratic lower layers. This difference between the sexes can most probably be explained by the fact that ideals of monastic life—obedience, equality, poverty and ban on weapons—in a decisive way broke with what in secular life was constructed as an aristocratic masculinity.
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Matis, Hannah W. "The Seclusion of Eustochium: Paschasius Radbertus and the Nuns of Soissons." Church History 85, no. 4 (December 2016): 665–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0009640716000767.
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This article examines three works by the ninth-century theologian, Paschasius Radbertus, all addressed to the Carolingian community of religious women at Notre Dame de Soissons. In addition to being valuable sources for the Mariologist, these sources provide insights into the complex social world of Carolingian religious women. Written at the time of the implementation of the monastic reforms of Benedict of Aniane, Radbert's texts can be read as responses to the imposition of a stricter form of claustration on women's communities. Drawing on the patristic model of Jerome and Eustochium in particular, the spirituality of these texts stresses the contributions of religious women through intercessory prayer, liturgy, and correct doctrine. Radbert alternately emphasizes the important role played by widows in Carolingian religious houses and encourages younger members not to leave the shelter of the religious life. In particular, Radbert's commentary on Psalm 44 (45) meditates on a text that would have been significant at the nuns' consecrations, deliberately employing language that would have paralleled the conventions of secular marriage. In conclusion, Radbert's three texts for Carolingian nuns bear interesting resemblances to twelfth-century Cistercian spirituality.
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ERLER, MARY C. "Bishop Richard Fox's Manuscript Gifts to his Winchester Nuns: A Second Surviving Example." Journal of Ecclesiastical History 52, no. 2 (April 2001): 334–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s002204690100598x.
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To regularise and strengthen female monastic life in his Winchester diocese, in the early sixteenth century Bishop Richard Fox made a new translation of the Rule of St Benedict explicitly for women. He had it printed by Richard Pynson in 1517, thus taking advantage of the ability of the printing press to provide multiple copies for all the members of the four Hampshire womens' houses he addressed: St Mary Winchester (Nunnaminster), Wherwell, Romsey and Wintney.In addition to these printed copies Bishop Fox provided additional manuscript books for each of the four houses, as his preface to the Rule tells us: ‘And by cause we wolde not/that there shulde be any lacke amongis them of the bokis of this sayd translation/we haue therfore/aboue and besyde certayne bokes ther of/which we haue yeven to the sayde monasteris: caused it to be emprinted’ [italics mine] (sig. Aiiv).
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Geary, David, and Kiran Shinde. "Buddhist Pilgrimage and the Ritual Ecology of Sacred Sites in the Indo-Gangetic Region." Religions 12, no. 6 (May 26, 2021): 385. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel12060385.
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In contemporary India and Nepal, Buddhist pilgrimage spaces constitute a ritual ecology. Not only is pilgrimage a form of ritual practice that is central to placemaking and the construction of a Buddhist sacred geography, but the actions of religious adherents at sacred centers also involve a rich and diverse set of ritual observances and performances. Drawing on ethnographic research, this paper examines how the material and corporeal aspects of Buddhist ritual contribute to the distinctive religious sense of place that reinforce the memory of the Buddha’s life and the historical ties to the Indian subcontinent. It is found that at most Buddhist sites, pilgrim groups mostly travel with their own monks, nuns, and guides from their respective countries who facilitate devotion and reside in the monasteries and guest houses affiliated with their national community. Despite the differences across national, cultural–linguistic, and sectarian lines, the ritual practices associated with pilgrimage speak to certain patterns of religious motivation and behavior that contribute to a sense of shared identity that plays an important role in how Buddhists imagine themselves as part of a translocal religion in a globalizing age.
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Jones, E. A. "Rites of Enclosure: The EnglishOrdinesfor the Enclosing of Anchorites, S. XII–S. XVI." Traditio 67 (2012): 145–234. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0362152900001355.
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The enclosed solitary life, like other forms of (broadly speaking) monastic vocation, can trace its origins to the eastern deserts of the third and fourth centuries. But its development as a distinct and separately regulated form of living belongs to the central Middle Ages. By the twelfth century, the anchoritic vocation was an established part of a spiritual landscape that also included regular cenobites (monks, canons, nuns) and the still comparatively unregulated, freely wandering hermits. Anchorites usually lived alone (or at least without any spiritual companion: the life was impossible without servants or some other way of attending to the practitioner's domestic needs), in a cell attached (in most cases) to a parish church, often in an urban location; if men, they were usually priests, though more often seculars than regulars; in England, female anchorites, of whom very few appear to have been nuns prior to their enclosure, outnumbered males throughout the period.
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Sasson, Vanessa. "Peeling Back the Layers: Female Higher Ordination in Sri Lanka." Buddhist Studies Review 27, no. 1 (September 7, 2010): 77–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/bsrv.v27i1.77.
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The question of higher ordination for Therav?da women is a complicated one. Although thousands of Buddhist women in a number of different Therav?da countries pursue a life of homelessness and renunciation, the majority are not recognized as ordained renunciants by their surrounding male monastic orders. This paper explores some of the reasons behind the general reticence concerning higher ordination felt by many of the silm?tas interviewed, and focuses specifically on some of the socio-economic factors that may be affecting their decision-making process
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Cunich, Peter. "The Syon Household at Denham, 1539–50." Studies in Church History 50 (2014): 174–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0424208400001704.
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Late medieval monastic households shared many features in common with the large secular households of the gentry and aristocracy Indeed, the language used in describing monastic households had always echoed that of the extended secular family with ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ living together under the authority of a superior representing Christ but exercising control of the religious community as a ‘father’ or ‘mother’ figure. While the common life of the monastery was very different in many of its details to the lifestyle of a lay family, monastic legislators used the family relationship to describe the modus operandi of the monastic community St Augustine enjoined his monks to ‘obey your superior as you would a father’, and reminded an errant community of nuns that their superior had been ‘the mother not of your body but of your mind’. St Benedict wrote as ‘a father who loves you’, reminding his followers that God is ‘a loving father’ and urging them to show each other ‘the pure love of brothers’ while accepting the abbot as both the ‘father of the household’ and a ‘spiritual father’ who would provide for all their worldly and spiritual needs. David Rnowles therefore considered the medieval monastic conventus to be a ‘family’ in which a ‘simple family life’ was led by monks under the care of an ever-present superior who acted as a loving paterfamilias in governing the monastery; the monastery was ‘the home of a spiritual family whose life and work begin and end in the family circle’.
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Stöber, Karen. "Monasticism in the British Isles: A Comparative Overview." Religions 12, no. 9 (September 15, 2021): 767. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel12090767.
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The medieval British Isles were marked by a lively monastic presence throughout the entire period. Groups of monks, nuns, regular canons and canonesses, and friars established communities even in the furthermost reaches of the territory, and by doing so they came to play an important part in the life, culture, economy, and politics of the region. This paper will provide an overview of the arrival and spread of the different religious orders in England, Ireland, Wales, and Scotland, and by doing so, it will provide some comparative study of the different parts of the British Isles and examine how and when the spread and settlement of the various religious groups manifested itself across the islands, and what their impact was upon their localities and the society around them.
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Marina V., Ayusheeva. "Chakhar-Gebshi ‘s Concept of a Pious Monk." Humanitarian Vector 16, no. 3 (June 2021): 184–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.21209/1996-7853-2021-16-3-184-190.
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Buddhism occupies an important place in the history of culture of the Mongolian peoples, in particular from the 16th century, which corresponds to the third stage of the spread of the Buddhist religion among the Mongols. Although Buddhist teachings have wide influence on everyday life, the philosophy of Buddhism was understandable to a very small circle of adherents. For the majority of the population, ethical and didactic literature and the authority of teachers were much more important. In this regard, the image of the clergy was to be the standard of Buddhist behavior. There are amounts of non-canonical literature on the rules and instructions for righteous behavior, addressed to both laity and clergy. The article analyzes the ideal image of a monk, according to the requirements of Chakhar-gebshi Lubsantsultim on the basis of two works: “Biography of Chakhar-gebshi”, compiled by his disciple Luvsansamduvnima in 1818, and the work of Chakhar-gebshi entitled as a “Blue Book, History of Erdeni Dushi Monastery”. The biographical method used for characterizing Chakhar-gebshi allowed to show his life and him as a strict monk as a model to be followed. The methods of source study and comparative analysis were used for constructing and estimating of a model of religious behavior. The materials from “The Blue Book” ‒ a work of a monastic charter ‒ are general for monastic education and monastic environment in Mongolian Buddhism. The importance of keeping the teachings and religion of Buddha in purity and maintaining the moral image of his followers as an authority for the laity has been emphasized many times in the works of various authors. In this regard, the definitions of a pious monk written down by Chakhar-gebshi represent a complete system that combines basic Buddhist precepts. Keywords: Chakhar-gebshi, moral prescription, biography, Mongolian Buddhism, monks, charter
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JANSEN, BERTHE. "The Monastic Guidelines (bCa’ yig) by Sidkeong Tulku: Monasteries, Sex and Reform in Sikkim." Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 24, no. 4 (April 3, 2014): 597–622. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1356186313000850.
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AbstractSidkeong Namgyal Tulku was a colourful figure in the history of Sikkim. This crown prince was an incarnated lama as well as a student at Oxford, and a member of the Royal Asiatic Society. This article considers the various roles of Sidkeong Tulku in the light of a Tibetan work by his hand, which has been previously not connected to his person. Written in 1909, it consists of ‘monastic guidelines’ (bCa’ yig) which are a clear witness to the time and circumstances they were written in. This traditionally framed work, authored by a supposed Buddhist modernist, addresses the education of monks, monastic economy, sex, and preaching to the laity. These guidelines shed light on the changing status of the monastery in Sikkim, in the midst of reforms and threats to Sikkimese sovereignty. In this article I examine the contents of these guidelines in the context of its author's eventful but short life, against the political, religious and social backdrop of a Buddhist kingdom in turmoil.
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Martin, Therese. "Fiona J. Griffiths, Nuns’ Priests’ Tales: Men and Salvation in Medieval Women’s Monastic Life. The Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018, pp. 360, 29 illus." Mediaevistik 32, no. 1 (January 1, 2020): 286–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.3726/med.2019.01.30.
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The year 2018 saw the publication of two important monographs, each with groundbreaking scholarship on complementary aspects of monasticism; together they offer a clear path forward for Medieval Studies as a whole. While Fiona Griffiths’s Nuns’ Priests’ Tales and Steven Vanderputten’s Dark Age Nunneries approach the essentially interrelated natures of men’s and women’s medieval monasticism from different perspectives, it is by reading them in concert that one becomes aware of the paradigm shift they signal. In a welcome change from a traditional consideration of so-called “double” monasteries as neither fish nor fowl, Griffiths and Vanderputten offer a feast of evidence for the multiple levels of interactions between the genders—including priests and nuns, students and teachers, patrons, family members, and rulers, as well as the conventionally understood mixed religious communities of monks and nuns—at majority female monasteries in Western Christendom from the early through central Middle Ages. Vanderputten starts at the beginning of the ninth century and carries his investigation forward to the mid-eleventh, at which point Griffiths launches her study, moving the matter on from the late eleventh century into the early thirteenth.
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McShane, Bronagh A. "Negotiating religious change and conflict: Female religious communities in early modern Ireland, c.1530–c.1641." British Catholic History 33, no. 3 (March 30, 2017): 357–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/bch.2017.2.
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This article explores how communities of female religious within the English sphere of influence in Ireland negotiated their survival, firstly in the aftermath of the Henrician dissolution campaigns of the late 1530s and 1540s and thereafter down to the early 1640s. It begins by examining the strategies devised by women religious in order to circumvent the state’s proscription of vocational living in the aftermath of the Henrician suppression campaigns. These ranged from clandestine continuation of conventual life to the maintenance of informal religious vows within domestic settings. It then moves on to consider the modes of migration and destinations of Irish women who, from the late sixteenth century onwards, travelled to the Continent in pursuit of religious vocations, an experience they shared with their English counterparts. Finally, it considers how the return to Ireland from Europe of Irish Poor Clare nuns in 1629 signalled the revival of monastic life for women religious on the island. The article traces the importance of familial and clerical patronage networks to the ongoing survival of Irish female religious communities and highlights their role in sustaining Catholic devotional practices, which were to prove vital to the success of the Counter-Reformation mission in seventeenth-century Ireland.
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Li, Teng, and Matteo Salonia. "The Regulation of Religious Communities in the Late Middle Ages: A Comparative Approach to Ming China and Pre-Reformation England." Religions 11, no. 11 (November 14, 2020): 606. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel11110606.
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This article examines the regulation of religious life in the late Middle Ages (14th and 15th centuries), focusing comparatively on Catholic monastic communities in pre-Reformation England and Buddhist monasticism in early Ming China. This comparative approach to two of the most important monastic traditions across Eurasia allows us to problematize the paradigm of ideas and praxes surrounding monastic self-governance in Latin Christendom and to integrate the current scholarship on Ming regulation of religious communities by investigating the pivotal changes in imperial religious policies taking place in the early period of this dynasty. We find that monks and secular authorities at the two ends of Eurasia often shared the same concerns about the discipline of religious men and women, the administration of their properties, and the impact of these communities on society at large. Yet, the article identifies significant differences in the responses given to these concerns. Through the analysis of primary sources that have thus far been overlooked, we show how in early Ming China the imperial government imposed a strict control over the education, ordination and disciplining of Buddhist monks. This bureaucratic system was especially strengthened during the reign of Zhu Yuanzhang (r. 1368–1398), when the figure of the Monk-Official and other tools of secular regulation were introduced, and limits to property claims and economic activities of monasteries were imposed. Instead, during the same period, English monasteries benefited from the previous disentangling of the Church from secular political authorities across Europe. In fact, in late medieval England, the Benedictine tradition of self-governance and independence from the secular sphere was arguably even more marked than in the rest of the continent.
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Gold, Jonathan C. "Buddhist Nuns, Monks, and Other Worldly Matters: Recent Papers on Monastic Buddhism in India. By Gregory Schopen. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2014. Pp xvi+460. $36.00." History of Religions 56, no. 4 (May 2017): 452–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/690710.
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Wojtczak, Marzena. "Between Heaven and Earth: Family ownership versus rights of monastic communities. The Theodosian Code and late antique legal practice." U Schyłku Starożytności : studia źródłoznawcze, no. 17/18 (April 2, 2020): 117–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.36389/uw.uss.18-19.1.5.
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This article investigates the relationship between the legislation introduced in the field of proprietary rights assigned to various Church entities and the practice of accumulation of wealth by the monastic communities in late antique Egypt. On the one hand, among the literary sources the predominant theme concerning Egyptian monasticism is the idea of voluntary poverty and renunciation of worldly possessions aimed at the pursuance of a contemplative life. On the other hand, the papyri offer insight into monastic life that does not seem to have been entirely detached from the outside world. In this vein, the laws of Valentinian I and Theodosius II clearly indicate that monks and nuns continued to own property without disturbance after undertaking religious life. In addition, Theodosius the Great and later emperors restricted the freedom of certain groups of citizens to disown their property, rendering the Christian ideal of voluntary poverty not always feasible. It is only with Justinian that the rules regarding monastic poverty are shaped and set by the secular power. The incentive for this study is to check for any conflict between the principles of classical Roman law in the field of private ownership and imperial legislation included in the Codex Theodosianus. Giorgio Barone-Adesi observed the tension that took place between the Christian communities and their corporations that were allotted ever broader privileges and the Roman principle of preservation of the property within the family unit. There is, however, still some room left for discussion since not all the data easily adds up to an unequivocal conclusion. In this analysis, the Code is treated as a measure for taking a stand by the legislator in the dispute between the will of the owner, recognition of the rights of the heirs and family members, and finally the privileges granted to the religious consortia.
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Pemarathana, Soorakkulame. "Evolution of the Therav?da Buddhist Idea of ‘Merittransference’ to the Dead, and its Role in Sri Lankan Buddhist Culture." Buddhist Studies Review 30, no. 1 (October 7, 2013): 89–112. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/bsrv.v30i1.89.
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The practice of merit-transference in Sri Lankan Therav?da Buddhism has evolved over three important stages of development, namely, assigning of dakkhi??, giving of patti, and direct transferring of merit. These stages are generally understood as similar practices but are significantly different from each other. It is not the merit but the meritorious act that is dedicated to, or shared with the departed ones in first two stages. Pattid?na, in this context, does not strictly mean giving merit or giving what is obtained or achieved, as it has so far been interpreted, but giving a share of or stake in the ownership of a meritorious act. It is in the third stage that the idea of merit-transference appeared in Buddhist practice in Sri Lanka. Understanding this historical development is important for interpreting Buddhist texts in their historical contexts as well as for realizing the larger role assigned to the living in the contemporary practice of merit-transference (pu?y?numodan?/ pin anumodan-/ pin d?ma) and its influence on other arena of social and cultural life in Sri Lanka. This idea of merit-transference transformed mourning and sorrowful funerals into merit-making events. Practices related to this idea of merit-transference also successfully fulfill the psychological needs of the living to assist departed relatives and to maintain some form of relationship with them. It also allowed local beliefs to be assimilated into the Buddhist fold and shaped the social structure of the living, particularly the lay-monastic relationship.
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Amstutz, Galen. "Materiality and Spiritual Economies in Premodern Japanese Buddhism: A Problem in Historical Change." Journal of Religion in Japan 1, no. 2 (2012): 142–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/221183412x649610.
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Abstract The recent emphasis on materiality in religion has encouraged a good deal of attention to materiality in Buddhism, but that attention has fallen entirely on Buddhist traditions with conventional monastic orientations. Yet the major Japanese Buddhist school known as True Pure Land Buddhism (Jōdo Shinshū) has also historically possessed a highly important, if different, material dimension, for which one touchpoint has been its merchant members called Ōmi shōnin who flourished in later premodern Japanese history. After alluding to the difficulty of isolating the ‘material’ in any religious culture, the article sketches the transition in Christian materialities in Europe which marked a cognitive shift from medieval modes of thinking (exteriorized, animistic-monistic, oriented to relics and ancestor religion) towards modern modes (interiorized, oriented to abstraction and the psychological individual). Against that paradigm, almost all premodern Buddhist materialities, including those in Japan, can be seen as medieval in nature. However, Jōdo Shinshū was a departure employing an innovatively interiorized doctrine. From that perspective, both Europe and Japan were highly complex civilizations displaying a long-term medieval-to-modern shift, which impacted the material manifestations of religions by gradually replacing older economies of ritual exchange with more modern-looking economies of preaching, religious publication and commercial life. Western scholarship has resisted appreciating these issues in an Asian setting.
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Smith, Rachel J. "Griffiths, Fiona J. Nuns’ Priests’ Tales: Men and Salvation in Medieval Women’s Monastic Life. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2018. x+349 pp. $69.95 (cloth)." Journal of Religion 101, no. 1 (January 1, 2021): 138–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/711499.
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Sergunin, Vladimir A. "Reasons and conditions for the development of women community religious movement in the period of the great reforms of 19th century." Tambov University Review. Series: Humanities, no. 188 (2020): 176–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.20310/1810-0201-2020-25-188-176-186.
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The article is devoted to the history of women monasticism in the second half of the XIX and the beginning of XX century. The reasons and conditions of growing expansion for women religious and community movement are being explored. Among the reasons the following are considered: degradation of the system of traditional spiritual values (family, marriage, childhood, secularization of everyday life); decrease of marriage rates, caused by an outflow of the male population to military service and transformation of gender behavior, increase of education, personal identity and social activity of women. The named reasons are stratified in relation to urban and rural female population. The Highest Manifesto on the Abolition of Serfdom of Feb-ruary 19, 1861, the final edition of which was made by St. Philaret (Drozdov), is considered as the main event that influenced the indicators of the quantitative growth of monastic cloisters, which predetermined systemic changes in the life of the state and society. On the basis of all-Russian and local examples, the process of modernization of the traditional communal order is traced, the loss of which was made up for by the communal (cenoby) way of life of the monastery. Statistical indicators of the growth of female monastic activity during the second half of the XIXth century are presented. Attention is focused on the issue of changing mentality under the influence of modernization, practicality, rationalism. The most influential force that changed the traditional mentality of the female part of the population of the Tambov province is characterized by otkhodniki. The testimonies of Russian writers are presented, confirming both the general decline of spiritual and moral values, and the desire to protect traditional spiritual values. The female monastery community is seen as a model for the successive preservation of traditional spiritual Orthodox values. Examples of the high devotion of women nuns of the 19th century are provided.
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Braarvig, Jens. "The Buddhist Hell: An Early Instance of the Idea?" Numen 56, no. 2-3 (2009): 254–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156852709x405008.
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In spite of the modern idea that Buddhism is too rational a religion to have a conception of hell, the case is just the opposite. The Buddhists promoted this idea very early. This is not really surprising, since the idea of hell is closely connected with the concept of kamma , action, and its fruit or result. Every living being is what it is by the force of its actions in this or earlier lives: good actions entail rebirth in heaven or as a human, while bad actions have as their result rebirth as an animal, a ghost, or worst of all, in hell. In the Buddhist hell one is thus punished by the evil actions themselves, not by some sort of divine justice. Although life in hell is not eternal in Buddhism, it can still last for an enormous time span until the bad actions have been atoned for and one is reborn to a happier state of existence. Thus hell plays a great part in the Buddhist system of teachings, and it is a favourite topic in the monastic rules as well as in the narrative literature of the Jātakas , the subject of which is the Buddha's earlier lives. Hell is discussed as a topic already in the Kathāvatthu , the first scholarly treatise of Buddhism with a named author, datable between 250 and 100 BC. The discussion in the Kathāvatthu represents what may be seen as a fully developed conception of hell, and thus the Buddhist hell as described by its earliest canonical literature predates the appearance of the idea in most, if not all other religious traditions.
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Butcher, Andrea. "Keeping the Faith: Divine Protection and Flood Prevention in Modern Buddhist Ladakh." Worldviews 17, no. 2 (2013): 103–14. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15685357-01702002.
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In August 2010 the Himalayan Region of Ladakh, Northwest India, experienced severe flash-flooding and mudslides, causing widespread death and destruction. The causes cited were climate change, karmic retribution, and the wrath of an agentive sentient landscape. Ladakhis construct, order and maintain the physical and moral universe through religious engagement with this landscape. The Buddhist monastic incumbents—the traditional mediators between the human world and the sentient landscape—explain supernatural retribution as the result of karmic demerit that requires ritual intervention. Social, economic, and material transformations have distorted the proper order, generating a physically and morally unfamiliar landscape. As a result, the mountain deities that act as guardians and protectors of the land below are confused and angry, sending destructive water to show their displeasure. Thus, the locally-contextualized response demonstrates the agency of the mountain gods in establishing a moral universe whereby water can give life and destroy it.
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Litaker, Noria. "Lost in Translation? Constructing Ancient Roman Martyrs in Baroque Bavaria." Church History 89, no. 4 (December 2020): 801–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0009640721000020.
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Over the course of the early modern period, parish, monastic, and pilgrimage churches across Catholic Europe and beyond eagerly sought to acquire the relics of ancient Roman martyrs excavated from the Eternal City's catacombs. Between 1648 and 1803, the duchy of Bavaria welcomed nearly 350 of these “holy bodies” to its soil. Rather than presenting the remains as fragments, as was common during the medieval period, local communities forged catacomb saint relics into gleaming skeletons and then worked to write hagiographical narratives that made martyrs’ lives vivid and memorable to a population unfamiliar with their deeds. Closely examining the construction and material presentation of Bavarian catacomb saints as well as the vitae written for them offers a new vantage point from which to consider how the intellectual movement known as the paleo-Christian revival and the scholarship it produced were received, understood, and then used by Catholic Europeans in an everyday religious context. This article demonstrates that local Bavarian craftsmen, artists, relic decorators, priests, and nuns—along with erudite scholars in Rome—were active in bringing the early Christian church to life and participated in the revival as practitioners and creative scholars in their own right.
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Dorje, Rinchen. "Establishing Lineage Legitimacy and Building Labrang Monastery as “the Source of Dharma”: Jikmed Wangpo (1728–1791) Taking the Helm." Religions 12, no. 7 (June 30, 2021): 491. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel12070491.
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The eighteenth century witnessed the continuity of Geluk growth in Amdo from the preceding century. Geluk inspiration and legacy from Central Tibet and the accompanying political patronage emanating from the Manchus, Mongols, and local Tibetans figured prominently as the engine behind the Geluk influence that swept Amdo. The Geluk rise in the region resulted from contributions made by native Geluk Buddhists. Amdo native monks are, however, rarely treated with as much attention as they deserve for cultivating extensive networks of intellectual transmission, reorienting and shaping the school’s future. I therefore propose that we approach Geluk hegemony and their broad initiatives in the region with respect to the school’s intellectual and cultural order and native Amdo Buddhist monks’ role in shaping Geluk history in Amdo and beyond in Tibet. Such a focus highlights their impact in shaping the trajectory of Geluk history in Tibet and Amdo in particular. The historical and biographical literature dealing with the life of Jikmed Wangpo affords us a rare window into the pivotal time when every effort was made to cultivate a vast network of institutions and masters across Tibet. This further spurred an institutional growth of Buddhist transmission, constructing authenticity and authority thereof, as they were closely tied to reincarnation lineage, intellectual traditions, and monastic institutions. In doing so, we also have a good grasp of the creation processes of Geluk luminaries such as Jikmed Wangpo, an exemplar scholar and visionary who faced great opposition from issues with his lineage legitimation at Labrang and among the larger Geluk community.
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Beach, Alison I. "Nuns’ Priests’ Tales: Men and Salvation in Medieval Women's Monastic Life. By Fiona J. Griffiths. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. x + 360 pp. $69.95 cloth." Church History 88, no. 4 (December 2019): 1048–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0009640719002567.
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