New Books in Buddhist Studies
351 episodes - English - Latest episode: 22 days ago - ★★★★ - 29 ratingsInterviews with Scholars of Buddhism about their New Books
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Episodes
Charles Goodman, "The Tattvasaṃgraha Of Śāntarakṣita: Selected Metaphysical Chapters" (Oxford UP, 2022)
November 21, 2022 09:00 - 1 hourThe Tattvasaṃgraha of Śāntarakṣita: Selected Metaphysical Chapters (Oxford University Press, 2022) collects excerpts from a massive encyclopedic work of the late period of Buddhism in India. Translator Charles Goodman has selected sections of this Sanskrit text which cover debates over the existence of prime matter, God, and an immaterial soul, as well as controversies around the cause and effect, karma, and Jain perspectivalism. Within these chapters, through a translation of the verses of t...
97 Buddhist Medicine and Buddhish
November 18, 2022 09:00 - 1 hourIn this episode, Pierce Salguero comes on to discuss two of his books: Buddhish, A Guide to the 20 Most Important Buddhist Ideas for the Curious and Skeptical (Beacon Press, 2022) and A Global History of Buddhism and Medicine (Columbia UP, 2022). Pierce is a transdisciplinary scholar of health humanities, fascinated by historical and contemporary intersections between Buddhism, medicine, and crosscultural exchange. He has a Ph.D. in History of Medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicin...
Leah Kalmanson, "Cross-Cultural Existentialism: On the Meaning of Life in Asian and Western Thought" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
October 20, 2022 08:00 - 59 minutesDoes human existence have a meaning? If so, is that meaning found in the world outside of us, or is it something we bring to our experience? In Cross-Cultural Existentialism: On the Meaning of Life in Asian and Western Thought (Bloomsbury, 2020) Leah Kalmanson shows how East Asian philosophies challenge the dichotomy implicit in the way this question is often framed. Her book investigates Korean Buddhist meditation, Confucian ritual practices, and Yijing divination. Along the way she argues t...
Matthew W. King, "In the Forest of the Blind: The Eurasian Journey of Faxian's Record of Buddhist Kingdoms" (Columbia UP, 2022)
October 19, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourWhat would an “anti-field history” of Buddhist Studies look like? What does the social history of knowledge look like when it both includes and exceeds the West/Nonwest binary, the ethnonational subject, the secular humanist gaze, and the moral narratives and metaphysical content of modernism? Matt W. King explores these critical questions and models innovative approaches in his second monograph, In the Forest of the Blind (Columbia University Press 2022), which uses Faxian’s Record of Buddhi...
On Tibetan Buddhist Philosophy and Gorampa Sonam Senge
October 06, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourConstance Kassor is an assistant professor of religious studies at Lawrence University, where she teaches courses on Buddhist thought and Asian religious traditions. Her research focuses on Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, and she is currently involved in several projects related to the Madhyamaka philosophy of the 15th-century thinker, Gorampa Sonam Senge. She is also interested in religion and comics, women and gender minorities in Buddhism, pedagogy, and digital humanities. Learn more about yo...
Alison Melnick Dyer, "The Tibetan Nun Mingyur Peldrön: A Woman of Power and Privilege" (U Washington Press, 2022)
October 04, 2022 08:00 - 38 minutesBorn to a powerful family and educated at the prominent Mindröling Monastery, the Tibetan Buddhist nun and teacher Mingyur Peldrön (1699–1769) leveraged her privileged status and overcame significant adversity, including exile during a civil war, to play a central role in the reconstruction of her religious community. In The Tibetan Nun Mingyur Peldrön: A Woman of Power and Privilege (U Washington Press, 2022), Alison Melnick Dyer employs literary and historical analysis, centered on a biogra...
NBN Classic: Ronald E. Purser, "McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality" (Repeater Books, 2019)
October 02, 2022 09:00 - 1 hourThis episode proved remarkably popular, so we're reposting it as an NBN classic for those who missed it the first time. In his recent exposé, McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality (Repeater Books, 2019), Ronald Purser Ph.D. takes a hard look at the mindfulness movement that has taken society by storm. Purser opens the book by questioning elements of the movement that have lead to its success: its scientific credibility, its secular façade, the prevailing discou...
NBN Classic: Ann Gleig, "American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity" (Yale UP, 2019)
October 01, 2022 16:00 - 1 hourThis episode proved remarkably popular, so we're reposting it as an NBN classic for those who missed it the first time. In her new book, American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity (Yale University Press, 2019), Ann Gleig makes a major contribution to scholarship on American Buddhism. Gleig focuses on meditation-based convert Buddhist lineages in North America, and in particular she is interested in the generational changes underway in these groups. The first generations of convert Buddhist te...
95 Intercultural Buddhism and Philosophy: A Discussion with Jin Y. Park
September 30, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourWelcome to the new season of the Imperfect Buddha Podcast. After a well-earned and challenging summer filled with drought, war, political strife and ridiculous heat, we’re back in the saddle and raring to go with some intellectual stimulation aimed at the practicing life. Four episodes are lined up with Buddhist scholars, philosophers and practitioners. First off we have Jin Y. Park. She is Professor and Department Chair of Philosophy and Religion at the American University and also served as...
David Max Moerman, "The Japanese Buddhist World Map: Religious Vision and the Cartographic Imagination" (U Hawaii Press, 2021)
September 23, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourFrom the fourteenth through the nineteenth centuries Japanese monks created hundreds of maps to construct and locate their place in a Buddhist world. Expansively illustrated with multiple maps and illustrations, The Japanese Buddhist World Map: Religious Vision and the Cartographic Imagination (University of Hawai’i Press, 2021) by D. Max Moerman is the first monograph of its kind to explore the largely unknown archive of Japanese Buddhist world maps and analyze their production, reproduction...
John Kieschnick, "Buddhist Historiography in China" (Columbia UP, 2022)
September 16, 2022 08:00 - 50 minutesSince the early days of Buddhism in China, monastics and laity alike have expressed a profound concern with the past. In voluminous historical works, they attempted to determine as precisely as possible the dates of events in the Buddha's life, seeking to iron out discrepancies in varying accounts and pinpoint when he delivered which sermons. Buddhist writers chronicled the history of the Dharma in China as well, compiling biographies of eminent monks and nuns and detailing the rise and decli...
On the Buddhist Life
September 15, 2022 08:00 - 56 minutesAndrea Miller is an editor at Lion’s Roar magazine and is the author of Awakening My Heart: Essays, Articles and Interviews on the Buddhist Life, out now from Pottersfield Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/buddhist-studies
Caleb Swift Carter, "A Path Into the Mountains: Shugendō and Mount Togakushi" (U Hawaii Press, 2022)
September 13, 2022 08:00 - 57 minutesOften represented as a tradition of ancient origins, Shugendō has retained a quality of mystery and nostalgia in the public imagination and scholars as the “original” champions of mountain asceticism. In his monograph, A Path Into the Mountains: Shugendō and Mount Togakushi (U Hawaii Press, 2022), Caleb Carter challenges this conceptualization by examining historical documents of Mount Togakushi. By focusing on themes of narratives, institution, and ritual, Carter explores how the transmissi...
Evan Berry, "Climate Politics and the Power of Religion" (Indiana UP, 2022)
July 14, 2022 08:00 - 57 minutesHow does our faith affect how we think about and respond to climate change? Climate Politics and the Power of Religion (Indiana University Press, 2022) is an edited collection that explores the diverse ways that religion shapes climate politics at the local, national, and international levels. Drawing on case studies from across the globe, it stands at the intersection of religious studies, environment policy, and global politics. From small island nations confronting sea-level rise and inten...
On Tonglen Meditation
July 13, 2022 08:00 - 45 minutesLama Palden Drolma is a western teacher trained by Tibetan Buddhist masters. She the founder of Sukhasiddhi Foundation. She is a licensed psychotherapist, spiritual teacher, coach, and has studied Buddhism in the Himalayas with some of the preeminent Tibetan masters of the 20th century. She was authorized to become one of the first western lamas by Kalu Rinpoche. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnet...
Robin Dunbar, "How Religion Evolved: And Why It Endures" (Oxford UP, 2022)
July 07, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourWhat is the evolutionary purpose of religion, and are some individuals more inclined than others to be religious? Our species diverged from the great apes six to eight million years ago. Since then, our propensity toward spiritual thinking and ritual emerged. How, when, and why did this occur, and how did the earliest, informal shamanic practices evolve into the world religions familiar to us today? In How Religion Evolved: And Why It Endures (Oxford UP, 2022), Robin Dunbar explores these and...
Derrida Meets Nagarjuna, with Peter Salmon
July 01, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourIn an historic event, the second Buddha himself Nagarjuna returns from the dead to team up with Jacques Derrida, non-Buddha, perhaps, to take on emptiness. They clash with identity politics. Bump into Jordan Peterson and the misses, and go for a coffee with John Gray. What you say? All of that in a single episode! Yes, dear listener. All of that in a single episode. You are called to enjoy the second part of my extended conversation with Mr Peter Salmon; awesome author of An Event, Perhaps. A...
On the Four Foundations of Mindfulness
June 27, 2022 08:00 - 52 minutesBen Connelly is a Minneapolis-based Soto Zen teacher in the Katagiri-lineage. He offers a wide variety of secular mindfulness trainings, including for police departments, corporate settings, correctional facilities, and addiction recovery groups. He teaches at the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center and is the author of Inside the Grass Hut, Inside Vasubandhu’s Yogacara, and most recently Mindfulness and Intimacy, out now from Wisdom Publications. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone...
Brad Warner, "The Other Side of Nothing: The Zen Ethics of Time, Space, and Being" (New World Library, 2022)
June 21, 2022 08:00 - 58 minutesIn the West, Zen Buddhism has a reputation for paradoxes that defy logic. In particular, the Buddhist concept of nonduality -- the realization that everything in the universe forms a single, integrated whole -- is especially difficult to grasp. In The Other Side of Nothing: The Zen Ethics of Time, Space, and Being (New World Library, 2022), Zen teacher Brad Warner untangles the mystery and explains nonduality in plain English. To Warner, this is not just a philosophical problem: nonduality fo...
Mark Siderits, "How Things Are: An Introduction to Buddhist Metaphysics" (Oxford UP, 2021)
June 20, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourMark Siderits’ How Things Are: An Introduction to Buddhist Metaphysics (Oxford University Press, 2022) is a wide-ranging survey of how Buddhist philosophers think about the nature of the world. The book takes readers through topics such as the well-known claim that there is no self, in addition to issues involved in causation, consciousness, and the metaphysics of time. Siderits argues that, as mereological nihilists, Buddhists deny the existence of conventional persons as well as the more on...
Bénédicte Brac de la Perrière and Peter A Jackson, "Spirit Possession in Buddhist Southeast Asia: Worlds Ever More Enchanted" (NIAS Press, 2022)
June 20, 2022 08:00 - 28 minutesWhat is the relationship between Spirit Possession Rituals and Buddhism in mainland Southeast Asia? How has modernity transformed Spirit Possession cults in the 21st century and what has led to the efflorescence of possession rituals across Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam in recent decades? Bénédicte Brac de la Perrière and Peter A. Jackson joined Terese Gagnon on the Nordic Asia Podcast handing out important insights of their new edited volume Spirit Possession in Buddhist Southeast ...
On Buddhism, Adventures, and Cooking Ethics
June 16, 2022 08:00 - 47 minutesEric Ripert is chef and co-owner of Le Bernardin on 7th Avenue in Manhattan’s Theater District, author of the autobiography 32 Yolks: From My Mother’s Table to Working the Line from Random House, numerous cookbooks, and host of the television series AVEC Eric. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/buddhist-studies
Karen O'Brien-Kop, "Rethinking 'Classical Yoga' and Buddhism" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
June 16, 2022 08:00 - 41 minutesRethinking 'Classical Yoga' and Buddhism (Bloomsbury, 2021) revisits the early systemic formation of meditation practices called 'yoga' in South Asia by employing metaphor theory. Karen O'Brien-Kop also develops an alternative way of analysing the reception history of yoga that aims to decentre the Eurocentric and imperialist enterprises of the nineteenth-century to reframe the cultural period of the 1st – 5th centuries CE using categorical markers from South Asian intellectual history. Buddh...
The Future of Religion: A Conversation with Robin Dunbar
June 14, 2022 08:00 - 49 minutesOf the many differences between the West and the rest of the world the issue of religiosity is one of the most striking. In the West ever fewer people belong to a religion – the number for the UK is now around 50% - and in the US around a third of people are religiously unaffiliated. But elsewhere in the world religions are growing – and in the world as a whole nearly 90% of people are religious. Robin Dunbar – Professor of Evolutionary Biology at Oxford University has been thinking about the...
On Buddhism Beyond Modernity
June 13, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourDr. Ann Gleig is associate professor of religious studies at the University of Central Florida. She is co-editor of Homegrown Gurus: From Hinduism in America to American Hinduism and has published widely on contemporary Buddhism. She is the author of American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity, from Yale University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/buddhist-studies
On Koans
June 10, 2022 08:00 - 54 minutesCorey Ichigen Hess is an ordained Zen monk and body therapist. He lived a monastic life for many years at Sogenji Zen Monastery in Okayama, Japan. He teaches meditation classes and works with individual clients doing private embodiment process coaching sessions, Sourcepoint Therapy, Structural Integration, and Biodynamic Craniosacral therapy at his home on Whidbey Island in Langley, Washington. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premi...
Roger R. Jackson, "Rebirth: A Guide to Mind, Karma, and Cosmos in the Buddhist World" (Shambhala, 2022)
June 09, 2022 08:00 - 56 minutesAlthough Buddhism is one of the religious traditions best known for asserting rebirth, the history and scope of Buddhist approaches to the idea has not received comprehensive treatment—until now. This first-ever guide to ideas and practices surrounding rebirth in Buddhism covers the historical context for the Buddha’s teachings on the topic, explains what Buddhists believe is actually reborn and where, surveys rebirth-related practices in multiple Buddhist cultures, and considers whether all ...
Jason M. Wirth on Zen, the Kyoto School, and Whether Nietzsche is a Buddha
June 08, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourWelcome to this Great feast conversation. Philosophy Professor at Seattle University, Soto Zen Priest, Sangha leader, and Dharma teacher, Jason M. Wirth is the author of Nietzsche and other Buddhas: Philosophy after Comparative Philosophy (Indiana UP, 2019), Engaging Dogen’s Zen and Mountains, and Rivers, and the Great Earth, both from 2017. In a rare and deep conversation, we discuss whether Nietzsche is a Buddha, the problem of ideology and Buddhist identities, advice from Gramsci on good s...
On Nibiiro Art, the Dalai Lama, and Buddhism
May 31, 2022 08:00 - 45 minutesRima Fujita was born in Tokyo and now resides in Southern California. She graduated from Parsons School of Design with her B.F.A. and has exhibited her work internationally to much acclaim. As a descendant of the Last Samurai her creative aesthetics is strongly influenced by the philosophy of Bushido and Buddhism. Known for her distinctive style with vivid colors on black surface, Rima’s works are extracted from her dreams and meditation process. They are ethereal and evoke a timeless sense o...
Dean Sluyter, "The Dharma Bum's Guide to Western Literature: Finding Nirvana in the Classics" (New World Library, 2022)
May 27, 2022 08:00 - 59 minutesToday I talked to Dean Sluyter about his book The Dharma Bum's Guide to Western Literature: Finding Nirvana in the Classics (New World Library, 2022). Suppose we could read Hemingway as haiku . . . learn mindfulness from Virginia Woolf and liberation from Frederick Douglass . . . see Dickinson and Whitman as buddhas of poetry, and Huck Finn and Gatsby as seekers of the infinite . . . discover enlightenment teachings in Macbeth, The Catcher in the Rye, Moby-Dick, and The Bluest Eye. Some of us...
On the Internment of Japanese Buddhists in World War Two
May 25, 2022 08:00 - 57 minutesDuncan Ryuken Williams was born in Tokyo, Japan to a Japanese mother and British father. After growing up in Japan and England until age 17, he moved to the U.S. to attend college (Reed College) and graduate school (Harvard University, where he received a Ph.D. in Religion). Williams is currently a Professor of Religion and East Asian Languages & Cultures and the Director of the USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture. Previously, he held the Shinjo Ito Distinguished Chair of...
Mayfair Yang, "Chinese Environmental Ethics: Religions, Ontologies, and Practices" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2021)
May 24, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourAn interdisciplinary collection in the new field of environmental humanities, Chinese Environmental Ethics: Religions, Ontologies, and Practices (Rowman and Littlefield, 2021) brings together Chinese environmental ethics, religious ontology, and religious practice to explore how traditional Chinese religio-environmental ethics are actually put into social practice both in China’s past and present. It also examines how Chinese religious teachings offer a wealth of resources to the environmenta...
91 Peter Salmon on Jacques Derrida and the Buddha
May 20, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourToday I talk with Peter Salmon, author of An Event, Perhaps; an intellectual biography of Jacques Derrida. Our conversation was rich: We tackle Derrida and Buddhism, Derrida and the culture wars, Derrida and practice. Foucault gets a mention, as does Heidegger, as does spiritual enlightenment, mindfulness and spirituality. Our conversation was incomplete. We made plans. This is now the first part of a two part conversation. The second helping is going to be even more Budhistsy. Matthew O'Conn...
Annabella Pitkin, "Renunciation and Longing: The Life of a Twentieth-Century Himalayan Buddhist Saint" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
May 20, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourIn the early twentieth century, Khunu Lama journeyed across Tibet and India, meeting Buddhist masters while sometimes living, so his students say, on cold porridge and water. Yet this elusive wandering renunciant became a revered teacher of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. At Khunu Lama’s death in 1977, he was mourned by Himalayan nuns, Tibetan lamas, and American meditators alike. The many surviving stories about him reveal significant dimensions of Tibetan Buddhism, shedding new light on question...
On Buddhism for Children
May 11, 2022 08:00 - 50 minutesAndrea Miller is the deputy editor of Lion's Roar magazine (formerly the Shambhala Sun), a publication force within Buddhism that so many of you will already know, and the author of two picture books: The Day the Buddha Woke Up. She's also the editor of three anthologies, most recently All the Rage: Buddhist Wisdom on Anger and Acceptance. I spoke with Andrea on the heels of her trip to India to attend the International Buddhist Conclave, which afforded her the chance to attend sacred Buddhis...
On Rinzai Zen Life in Japan
May 06, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourCorey Ichigen Hess is an ordained Zen monk and body therapist. He lived a monastic life for many years at Sogenji Zen Monastery in Okayama, Japan. He teaches meditation classes and works with individual clients doing private embodiment process coaching sessions, Sourcepoint Therapy, Structural Integration, and Biodynamic Craniosacral therapy at his home on Whidbey Island in Langley, Washington. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premi...
Peter A. Jackson and Benjamin Baumann, "Deities and Divas: Queer Ritual Specialists in Myanmar, Thailand and Beyond" (NIAS Press, 2021)
May 06, 2022 08:00 - 30 minutesHow does queer life fit into Buddhism and ritual? What role do gay men and trans women play in the practice of spirit mediumship and how do queer spirit mediums mediate between Thailand’s religious fields? How can we understand the increasing numbers of queer spirit mediums across mainland Southeast Asia? Peter A. Jackson and Benjamin Baumann provide important insights into their new book Deities and Divas, Queer Ritual Specialists in Myanmar, Thailand and Beyond (NIAS Press 2021). Deities an...
The Importance of Pali, the Language of Ancient Buddhism
May 04, 2022 08:00 - 32 minutesCore Buddhist teachings are preserved in the ancient Indian language Pali. Listen in as Aleix Ruiz-Falqués speaks about its structure, its significance, and opportunities to study it with him online. Raj Balkaran is a scholar, online educator, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/buddhist-studies
89 Daniel Ingram on Practice
May 04, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourIn this episode, returning guest Daniel Ingram comes on to discuss a range of fascinating questions concerning practice. We explore coming through the pandemic, the impact of long-term relationships on practice, first Buddhist books, hardcore Dharma practice, how life might have been different without practice, suffering and karma and Daniel’s new project, The Emergent Phenomenology Research Consortium. Matthew O'Connell is a life coach and the host of the The Imperfect Buddha podcast. You ca...
88 Doubt: Part 2
May 04, 2022 08:00 - 26 minutes“Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.” Voltaire You know too much, yet understand too little. And it’s the same for me, and everyone you and I happen to know. And, so it begins. What follows are a series of posts and audio-casts that respond to this living human condition, bringing together practice materials from non-Buddhism, post-traditional approaches to Buddhism, and the work of Peter Sloterdjik. Each post represents a visit to the Great Feast and provi...
Scott Stonington, "The Spirit Ambulance: Choreographing the End of Life in Thailand" (U California Press, 2020)
April 25, 2022 08:00 - 55 minutesThe Spirit Ambulance: Choreographing the End of Life in Thailand (University of California Press, 2020) is a journey into decision-making at the end of life in Thailand, where families attempt to craft good deaths for their elders in the face of clashing ethical frameworks, from a rapidly developing universal medical system, to national and global human-rights politics, to contemporary movements in Buddhist metaphysics. Scott Stonington’s gripping ethnography documents how Thai families attem...
C. Pierce Salguero, "Buddhish: A Guide to the 20 Most Important Buddhist Ideas for the Curious and Skeptical" (Beacon Press, 2022)
April 22, 2022 08:00 - 53 minutesAre you curious about Buddhism but find yourself met with scholarly texts or high-minded moralizing every time you try to pick up a book about it? Well, if so, relax. This is no ordinary introduction to Buddhism; there are none of the saccharine platitudes and dense pontification that you may have come to expect. Buddhish: A Guide to the 20 Most Important Buddhist Ideas for the Curious and Skeptical (Beacon Press, 2022) is a readable introduction for complete newcomers that provides an object...
On Sanctuary and San Francisco Zen Center
April 21, 2022 08:00 - 33 minutesZenju Earthlyn Manuel is an author, Zen priest, teacher, divine seer, artist, and Drum medicine woman. Her work has been featured in Essence Magazine, CNN, CBS NEWS, KPFA Radio, Buddhadharma, and Lion’s Roar. She holds a M.A. from UCLA and a Ph.D. in Transformative Learning from California Institute of Integral Studies. She spoke to me from Green Gulch Farm, a Zen practice center within the San Francisco Zen Center. She is the author of “Sanctuary: A Meditation on Home, Homelessness, and Belo...
Corey Landon Wozniak, "The Buddha at the Bellagio: (Teaching) Religion in Sin City" (Revealer, 2022)
April 18, 2022 08:00 - 42 minutesToday I talked to Corey Landon Wozniak about his Revealer article (2022) "The Buddha at the Bellagio: (Teaching) Religion in Sin City." As Wozniak points out, Las Vegas (for all that it's sin city) is full of religion, all kinds of it. He talks about how religion is done in America's Sodom and Gomorrah rolled into one. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/buddhist-studies
Rossa Ó Muireartaigh, "The Zen Buddhist Philosophy of D. T. Suzuki: Strengths, Foibles, Intrigues, and Precision" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
April 15, 2022 08:00 - 51 minutesD.T. Suzuki (1870-1966) reached global fame for his writings on Zen Buddhism. In this introduction to his theories of self, knowledge, and the world, Suzuki is presented as a Buddhist philosopher in his own right. Beginning with a biography of his life providing the historical context to his thought and discussing Suzuki's influences, The Zen Buddhist Philosophy of D. T. Suzuki: Strengths, Foibles, Intrigues, and Precision (Bloomsbury, 2022) covers the Zen notion of the non-self and Suzuki's ...
Robert Barnett et al., "Conflicting Memories: Tibetan History Under Mao Retold : Essays and Primary Documents" (Brill, 2020)
April 13, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourAfter the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, history under him was retold: for example, the Cultural Revolution was rebranded as “Ten Years of Chaos” and its policies were deemed “ultra-left.” In comparison to these changes in national narratives, how was the local history of Tibet under Mao retold after his death and in the subsequent decades of economic reform? To answer this question, the edited volume Conflicting Memories: Tibetan History under Mao Retold (Brill, 2020) explores the writings of ...
On Zen in America, Shunryu Suzuki, and the San Francisco Zen Center
April 05, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourMichael Downing teaches creative writing at Tufts University. This conversation features a deep dive into Michael’s nonfiction book Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center, hailed by the New York Review of Books as a "dramatic and insightful" narrative history of the first Buddhist monastery outside of Asia, and by the Los Angeles Times as "a highly readable book, important for the healing it invites in giving voice to the thoughts and feelings of Zen ...
Mark Epstein, "The Zen of Therapy: Uncovering a Hidden Kindness in Life" (Penguin, 2022)
April 01, 2022 08:00 - 51 minutesA remarkable exploration of the therapeutic relationship, Dr. Mark Epstein reflects on one year’s worth of therapy sessions with his patients to observe how his training in Western psychotherapy and his equally long investigation into Buddhism, in tandem, led to greater awareness—for his patients, and for himself For years, Dr. Mark Epstein kept his beliefs as a Buddhist separate from his work as a psychiatrist. Content to use his training in mindfulness as a private resource, he trusted that...
China, Buddhism and the Belt and Road Initiative in Mainland Southeast Asia
March 31, 2022 08:00 - 24 minutesLaunched in 2013 by Chinese President XI Jinping, China’s Belt and Road initiative has manifested throughout Southeast Asia in the form of multibillion dollar investments in transport infrastructure, industrial estates and other forms of “hard” development. This push for trade and hard infrastructure has been accompanied by a surge in various soft power initiatives, including the use of religion as a cultural resource. Joining Dr Natali Pearson on SSEAC Stories, Dr Gregory Raymond sheds light...
On the Rinzai Way and Korinji Monastery
March 28, 2022 08:00 - 52 minutesMeido Roshi is the abbot of Korinji monastery in Wisconsin. In 2008 Meido Roshi received inka shomei ("mind seal"), designating him an 86th-generation Zen dharma heir and a 48th-generation holder of the lineage descended from Rinzai Gigen. Meido Roshi's book The Rinzai Zen Way: A Guide to Practice is out from Shambhala Publications in March 2018. The focus of our conversation is this book and I highly recommend picking up a copy. It’s incredibly accessible to anyone, even if you’ve never read...