Monks, Money, and Morality: The Balancing Act of Contemporary Buddhism. Edited by Christoph Brumann, Saskia Abrahms-Kavunenko, and Beata Świtek. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. 255 pages. $29.95 (paperback). ISBN 9781350213753. Religion and economics is an area of ever-increasing scholarship, particularly within studies of Buddhism, despite still being in its early stages. The first book-length entry to Buddhism and economics, Buddhism and…
Tag: review
REVIEW: Dogen: Japan’s Original Zen Teacher, by Steven Heine
Dogen: Japan’s Original Zen Teacher. By Steven Heine. Boulder, CO: Shambhala Publications, 2021. xxiii + 333 pages. $29.95 (paperback). ISBN 9781611809800. Steven Heine, full professor at Florida International University and editor of Japan Studies Review, is the author, editor, or co-editor of nearly three dozen books, nearly a dozen of which are about the thirteenth- century Japanese Zen monk and…
REVIEW: Hungry Ghosts, by Andy Rotman
Hungry Ghosts. By Andy Rotman. Somerville MA: Wisdom Publications, 2021. 224 pages + 8 color repro- ductions. $32.00 (paperback). ISBN 9781614297215. Andy Rotman is an acknowledged expert in Indian Buddhist narrative literature, and his two volumes of translations of Sanskrit stories from the Divyāvadāna have broadened and greatly enriched our understanding of early Indian Buddhism. We are lucky to have…
REVIEW: Conjuring the Buddha: Ritual Manuals in Early Tantric Buddhism, by Jacob P. Dalton
Conjuring the Buddha: Ritual Manuals in Early Tantric Buddhism. By Jacob P. Dalton. Columbia University Press, 2023. 334 pages. $35.00 (paperback). ISBN 9780231205832. In Conjuring the Buddha: Ritual Manuals in Early Tantric Buddhism, Jacob P. Dalton employs both material and textual archaeologies to illustrate a tantric Buddhist tradition in flux at various transitional points in its development. He does this…
REVIEW: What Happened after Mañjuśrī Migrated to China?, edited by Chen, Kuan, and Fo
What Happened after Mañjuśrī Migrated to China?: The Sinification of the Mañjuśrī Faith and the Globalization of the Wutai Cult. Edited by Jinhua Chen, Guang Kuan, and Hu Fo. New York: Routledge, 2022. 316 pages. $170.00 (hardcover). Comprehensive index. Notes and bibliography follow each chapter. ISBN 9781032073491. When we write phrases like “the history of Buddhism,” what in the world…
REVIEW: American Sutra, by Duncan Ryūken Williams
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.
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.