Category: Religion

Buddhist Healing, Chinese Knowledge, Islamic Formulas, and Wounds of War

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Confluences of MedicineConfluences of Medicine in Medieval Japan: Buddhist Healing, Chinese Knowledge, Islamic Formulas, and Wounds of War, by Andrew Edmund Goble, is the first book-length exploration in English of issues of medicine and society in premodern Japan. This multifaceted study weaves a rich tapestry of Buddhist healing practices, Chinese medical knowledge, Asian pharmaceuticals, and Islamic formulas as it elucidates their appropriation and integration into medieval Japanese medicine. It expands the parameters of the study of medicine in East Asia, which to date has focused on the subject in individual countries, and introduces the dynamics of interaction and exchange that coursed through the East Asian macro-culture.

September 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3500-2 / $52.00 (CLOTH)

The Healing Heart of Japanese Women’s Rituals

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Bringing Zen HomeBringing Zen Home: The Healing Heart of Japanese Women’s Rituals, by Paula Arai, brings a fresh perspective to Zen scholarship by uncovering a previously unrecognized but nonetheless vibrant strand of lay practice. The creativity of domestic Zen is evident in the ritual activities that women fashion, weaving tradition and innovation, to gain a sense of wholeness and balance in the midst of illness, loss, and anguish. Their rituals include chanting, ingesting elixirs and consecrated substances, and contemplative approaches that elevate cleaning, cooking, child-rearing, and caring for the sick and dying into spiritual disciplines. Creating beauty is central to domestic Zen and figures prominently in Arai’s analyses.

September 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3535-4 / $52.00 (CLOTH)

New in the Dimensions of Asian Spirituality Series

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KarmaKarma has become a household word in the modern world, where it is associated with the belief in rebirth determined by one’s deeds in earlier lives. This belief was and is widespread in the Indian subcontinent as is the word “karma” itself. In lucid and accessible prose, this book, by Johannes Bronkhorst, presents karma in its historical, cultural, and religious context.

Dimensions in Asian Spirituality
August 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3591-0 / $17.00 (PAPER)

Indonesian Islam and the Temptations of Radicalism

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The End of InnocenceThe End of Innocence? Indonesian Islam and the Temptation of Radicalism, by Andree Feillard and Remy Madinier, is a translation of Le Fin de l’innocence? L’islam indonésien face à la tentation radicale de 1967 à nos jours, which was published to wide acclaim in 2006. It offers a unique overview of the role of Islam in Indonesian politics over the past few decades, paying close attention to the varying fortunes of key Islamist movements. The final chapter takes into account events that have taken place and publications that have appeared since 2006.

“There have been several books on Islam and politics in Indonesia in the post-Suharto period, but Feillard and Madinier’s work is by far the best. Engagingly written and comprehensive in its coverage, this brilliant book will be of interest to both specialists and the general reader interested in understanding the conundrum of politics in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country.” —Robert Hefner, Director, Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs, Boston University

August 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3523-1 / $28.00 (PAPER)
For sale only in the U.S., its dependencies, Canada, and Mexico

New in the Dimensions of Asian Spirituality Series

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SikhismSikhism offers a comprehensive overview of the religion, which originated in India’s Punjab region five hundred years ago. As the numbers of Sikhs settling outside of India continues to grow, it is necessary to examine this religion both in its Indian context and as an increasingly global tradition. While acknowledging the centrality of history and text in understanding the main tenets of Sikhism, Doris Jakobsh highlights the religion’s origins and development as a living spiritual tradition in communities around the world. She pays careful attention to particular events, movements, and individuals that have contributed to important changes within the tradition and challenges stereotypical notions of Sikh homogeneity and stasis, addressing the plurality of identities within the Sikh tradition, both historically and within the contemporary milieu.

Dimensions of Asian Spirituality
July 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3601-6 / $17.00 (PAPER)

E-Books from Three Pines Press

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Three Pines Press logoUniversity of Hawai‘i Press is a worldwide distributor for Three Pines Press, a publisher of Daoist studies headed by Dr. Livia Kohn. Digital editions of select Three Pines Press titles are now available for purchase through Tao Library: http://tao-library.com/store/

The site is currently offering visitors a free e-book valued at $12.00; go to Tao Library to claim your gift.

New in the Dimensions of Asian Spirituality Series

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Neo-Confucian Self-CultivationApproximately fifteen hundred years after Confucius, his ideas reasserted themselves in the formulation of a sophisticated program of personal self-cultivation. Neo-Confucians argued that humans are endowed with empathy and goodness at birth, an assumption now confirmed by evolutionary biologists. By following the Great Learning—eight steps in the process of personal development—Neo-Confucians showed how this innate endowment could provide the foundation for living morally. Neo-Confucian students did not follow a single manual elaborating each step of the Great Learning; instead they were exposed to age-appropriate texts, commentaries, and anthologies of Neo-Confucian thinkers, which gradually made clear the sequential process of personal development and its connection to social order. Neo-Confucian Self-Cultivation, by Barry C. Keenan, opens up in accessible prose the content of the eight-step process for today’s reader as it examines the source of mainstream Neo-Confucian self-cultivation and its major crosscurrents from 1000 to 1900.

Dimensions of Asian Spirituality
May 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3548-4 / $17.00 (PAPER)

English Translation of Landmark Zen Text

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Purifying Zen
In 1223 the monk Dogen Kigen (1200–1253) came to the audacious conclusion that Japanese Buddhism had become hopelessly corrupt. He undertook a dangerous pilgrimage to China to bring back a purer form of Buddhism and went on to become one of the founders of Soto Zen, still the largest Zen sect in Japan. Seven hundred years later, the philosopher Watsuji Tetsuro (1889–1960) also saw corruption in the Buddhism of his day. Watsuji’s efforts to purify the religion sent him not across the seas but searching Japan’s intellectual past, where he discovered writings by Dogen that had been hidden away by the monk’s own sect. Watsuji later penned Shamon Dogen (Dogen the monk), which single-handedly rescued Dogen from the brink of obscurity, reintroducing Japan to its first great philosophical mind. Purifying Zen, a translation of the Shamon Dogen by Steve Bein, makes this work available in English for the first time.

“Purifying Zen: Watsuji Tetsuro’s Shamon Dogen makes available in a clear and fluid translation an early classic in modern Japanese philosophy. Steve Bein’s annotations, footnotes, introduction, and commentary bridge the gap separating not only the languages but also the cultures of its original readers and its new Western audience.” —from the Foreword by Thomas P. Kasulis

May 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3556-9 / $24.00 (PAPER)

How to Behave Now Available in Paperback

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How to Behave

““In lucid prose accessible to specialists and non-specialists alike, [How to Behave: Buddhism and Modernity in Colonial Cambodia, 1860–1930, by Anne Ruth Hansen,] provides a sophisticated and multifaceted account of the early twentieth-century transformation of Buddhist discourse and pedagogical practices that should be of interest to any scholar or student of religious modernism.” —Journal of the American Academy of Religion

“Remarkable. . . . [Hansen’s] refreshing and provocative approach to the study of ethics in history will surely change the field in general. . . . As readers, we can only look forward to future studies that, if anything like this book, will change the way we understand ethics and its place in national memory and political and social reform.” —Journal of Religion


Southeast Asia: Politics, Meaning, and Memory
April 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3600-9 / $27.00 (PAPER)

The Buddhist Dead Now in Paperback

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The Buddhist Dead

“[The Buddhist Dead: Practices, Discourses, Representations, edited by Bryan J. Cuevas and Jacqueline I. Stone, is] the first full-length volume to investigate the place of death in Buddhism in a pan-Asian context. For that reason alone, it is a much-needed and welcome addition to the scholarly literature. That it is such a well-integrated, tightly argued, and beautifully crafted volume should make it the standard bearer for some time to come. . . . A thought-provoking and sophisticated volume, which challenges and advances the ways we think about death in Buddhism, and should serve as the foundation for future inquiries. The Buddhist Dead should be read by all Buddhist specialists and graduate students, and those interested in conceptions of and practices related to death and the afterlife. I moreover can recommend assigning select chapters for use in the undergraduate classroom, having successfully done so.” —Journal of the American Academy of Religion

“This volume presents research of the highest class by a set of the best scholars working in English in Buddhist studies. . . . Scholars of both Buddhism in general and of regional/national practices will need to turn to this collection for its up-to-date findings about the variety and importance of this fatally essential dimension of the religion.” —Japanese Religions

Studies in East Asian Buddhism, No. 19
May 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3599-6 / $28.00 (PAPER)
Published in association with the Kuroda Institute

Liu Zhi’s Confucian Translation of Monotheism and Islamic Law

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Rectifying God's NameIslam first arrived in China over 1,200 years ago, but for more than a millennium it was perceived as a foreign presence. The restoration of native Chinese rule by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), after nearly a century of Mongol domination, helped transform Chinese intellectual discourse on ideological, social, political, religious, and ethnic identity. This led to the creation of a burgeoning network of Sinicized Muslim scholars who wrote about Islam in classical Chinese and developed a body of literature known as the Han Kitab. Rectifying God’s Name: Liu Zhi’s Confucian Translation of Monotheism and Islamic Law, by James D. Frankel, examines the life and work of one of the most important of the Qing Chinese Muslim literati, Liu Zhi (ca. 1660–ca. 1730), and places his writings in their historical, cultural, social, and religio-philosophical contexts. His Tianfang dianli (Ritual law of Islam) represents the most systematic and sophisticated attempt within the Han Kitab corpus to harmonize Islam with Chinese thought.

January 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3474-6 / $48.00 (CLOTH)

New in Pureland Buddhist Studies

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Immigrants to the Pure LandReligious acculturation is typically seen as a one-way process: The dominant religious culture imposes certain behavioral patterns, ethical standards, social values, and organizational and legal requirements onto the immigrant religious tradition. In this view, American society is the active partner in the relationship, while the newly introduced tradition is the passive recipient being changed. Immigrants to the Pure Land: The Modernization, Acculturation, and Globalization of Shin Buddhism, 1898-1941, by Michihiro Ama, investigates the early period of Jodo Shinshu in Hawai‘i and the United States. It sets a new standard for investigating the processes of religious acculturation and a radically new way of thinking about these processes.

Pureland Buddhist Studies
Published in association with the Institute of Buddhist Studies at the Graduate Theological Union
January 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3438-8 / $47.00 (CLOTH)

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