American Sutra is the first comprehensive study of the history of Buddhism in the incarceration of Japanese Americans during the Pacific War. As Williams notes, this is a topic that has heretofore been relatively understudied in the history of a country that continues to be seen as white and Christian.
Tag: review
REVIEW: Superiority Conceit in Buddhist Traditions, by Anālayo Bhikkhu
Superiority Conceit in Buddhist Traditions: A Historical Perspective. By Anālayo Bhikkhu. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2021. 184 pages. $24.95 (hardcover). ISBN 9781614297192. Superiority Conceit is a lucid and accessible introduction to Ven. Anālayo’s vast body of work, primarily aimed at non-academics but with a robust set of citations for further reading. The titular “Superiority Conceit” effectively draws together what might…
REVIEW: Buddhism and Modernity: Sources from Nineteenth Century Japan, edited by Orion Klautau and Hans Martin Krämer
In offering a snapshot of influential Buddhist voices during the nineteenth century, Buddhism and Modernity makes a valuable contribution to the field of Buddhist studies in Japan that, heretofore, has typically focused on the premodern period. For this reason, it deserves a wide readership by those interested in the history of modern Japanese Buddhism.
REVIEW: Jewels, Jewelry, and Other Shiny Things in the Buddhist Imaginary, edited by Vanessa R. Sasson
Jewels, Jewelry, and Other Shiny Things in the Buddhist Imaginary is an edited collection of essays that, as described by its editor Vanessa R. Sasson, explores the category of jewels, broadly conceived, in a tradition all too often characterized by austerity. This book includes twelve essays on topics from South Asian, Newar, Tibetan, and East Asian Buddhism, covering a period of more than two millennia and drawing on both literary texts and material culture.
REVIEW: Karma and Punishment: Prison Chaplaincy in Japan, by Adam Lyons
Adam Lyons begins one chapter of his volume, Karma and Punishment: Prison Chaplaincy in Japan, with a joke he says he heard regularly among kyōkaishi, a Japanese role he translates as “prison chaplain”: “Why did you become a prison chaplain? ‘Because I did something terrible in a past life to deserve it’” (p. 216). The wry joke encapsulates some of the heavy and complex stressors that the position entails. Adam Lyons’ volume skillfully navigates the complex tensions involved in the role at present and how it developed since the late 1800s. Karma and Punishment takes the reader on a historical journey to show the origins of kyōkaishi; he shows both how they changed and what stayed consistent through different periods of history. Along the way, Lyons ties these developments to a valuable discourse on the religion-state relations and the evolving laws that oversee those connections.
REVIEW: Faking Liberties: Religious Freedom in American-Occupied Japan, by Jolyon Baraka Thomas
Faking Liberties is divided into two main sections, each consisting of four chapters, with an introduction and conclusion outside of these sections. The sections, respectively, describe the attitudes toward religious freedom before and after the 1945 Occupation of Japan began.
REVIEW: Pure Land: History, Tradition, and Practice, by Charles B. Jones
Charles B. Jones’ Pure Land: History, Tradition, and Practice is an excellent reminder that viewing the whole forest is every bit as important as investigating its individual trees. Not a textbook yet functioning in a somewhat similar role, this synoptic book serves as a wonderful resource for undergraduate teaching with its informal engagement of the reader.
Review: Esoteric Theravada
Kate Crosby’s new work makes available the results of years of very important research into the tradition of esoteric meditation in Southeast Asia. Crosby recovers what had been the most widespread form of Buddhist meditation in Southeast Asia prior to the modern period. In her introduction, Crosby explains that she uses the phrase the “old meditation” (borān kammaṭṭhāna) because the kind of meditation practice that she is examining existed prior to those promoted during the “revival period” that began in the nineteenth century, such as vipassanā or insight.
Review: Why I Am Not a Buddhist
In his recent book, Why I Am Not a Buddhist, Evan Thompson ventures to examine Buddhist modernism, Buddhist exceptionalism, and neural Buddhism. Specifically, Thompson identifies as the goals of his book the desire to present a “philosophical critique of Buddhist modernism” (p. 19) and to argue “for cosmopolitanism, the idea that all human beings belong to a single human community” (p. 21). To Thompson, these two goals are intrinsically intertwined since Buddhist modernists seem to conflate science, especially neuroscience, with what is referred to as Buddhist mindfulness practices…
Review: Be the Refuge
“Where are all the young adult Asian American Buddhists, and what can we learn from them?” In answering these questions, Chenxing Han’s Be the Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists combats the erasure of Asian American Buddhists in representations of American Buddhism. Despite making up two thirds of the American Buddhist population, Asian Americans are frequently left out of histories of American Buddhism. In “raising the voices of young adult Asian American Buddhists,” Han has created a new American sutra that is at once memoire, ethnography, history, and cultural critique.