Contemporary Tibetan Buddhist Rimé Response to Religious Diversity

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-34
Author(s):  
Rachel Pang
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Religious Diversity ◽  
Tibetan Buddhist ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Buddhist Studies ◽  
Buddhist Literature ◽  
Eastern Tibet ◽  
Diverse Communities ◽  
Diverse Cultures ◽  
Significant Attention

In a world where communities across the globe are becoming increasingly interconnected, encounters with diverse cultures and faiths are inevitable. How can diverse communities approach these encounters in a way that fosters dialogue rather than conflict, peace rather than war? Specifically, in the context of Buddhism, how should Buddhists relate to religious diversity in a way that simultaneously remains faithful to their own spiritual traditions while being openminded and respectful towards the beliefs and practices of others? One of the most well-known Buddhist responses to religious diversity was the rimé movement in nineteenth-century eastern Tibet. While the term “rimé” (meaning “impartial” or “non-sectarian” in Tibetan) has become a catchphrase in contemporary Tibetan Buddhist contexts, there has been little sustained engagement with this topic by Buddhists and Buddhist studies scholars. This essay documents and contextualizes the contemporary uses of the term rimé (non-sectarianism) in Tibetan Buddhist communities and situates it within Tibetan Buddhist literature and history. I argue that it is essential for both Buddhists and Buddhist-studies scholars to devote significant attention to the concept of rimé and to engage in interfaith dialogue. For Buddhists, the very survival of their religion depends on it. For Buddhist-studies scholars, it contributes to the development of an accurate understanding of one of the most significant intellectual moments in modern Tibetan history. For humankind, it contributes to interfaith understanding, harmony, and peace.

An Incomplete Journey Away from the Past: The Life and Ideas of Antonius Ameuney (1821–1881)

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 318-338
Author(s):  
Anthony Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Religious Diversity ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
English Speaking

Abstract This article recovers a dissonant voice from the nineteenth-century nahḍa. Antonius Ameuney (1821–1881) was a fervent Protestant and staunch Anglophile. Unlike his Ottoman Syrian contemporaries, who argued for religious diversity and the formation of a civil society based on a shared Arab past, he believed that the only geopolitical Syria viable in the future was one grounded in Protestant virtues and English values. This article examines Ameuney’s complicated journey to become a Protestant Englishman and his inescapable characterization as a son of Syria. It charts his personal life and intellectual career and explores how he interpreted the religious, cultural, political, and linguistic landscape of his birthplace to British audiences. As an English-speaking Ottoman Syrian intellectual residing permanently in London, the case of Antonius Ameuney illustrates England to have been a constitutive site of the nahḍa and underscores the role played by the British public in shaping nahḍa discourses.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 297-306
Author(s):  
Candy Gunther Brown
Keyword(s):  
Religious Diversity ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
After School ◽  
Coercive Power ◽  
Voluntary Programs ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Opting Out ◽  
Scientific Support ◽  
Beliefs And Values ◽  
Mindfulness Practices

The conclusion reconceptualizes secularization in terms of transparency and voluntarism and recommends best practices that respect cultural and religious diversity. The conclusion argues for an opt-in model of informed consent in which students and teachers may actively decide whether to opt into voluntary programs based on adequate information. Opt-in programs are offered during noninstructional hours (before or after school or during lunch) to minimize barriers to opting out, and cultivate transparency about strengths and limitations of scientific support, challenging, adverse, and/or religious effects, contraindications, and alternatives. Subtracting religious language and adding scientific framing may not go far enough to avoid religious endorsement or coercion. Paradoxically, the secular framing of yoga and mindfulness practices widens their platform to influence religious beliefs and values. Secularization may be construed not as subtraction and addition but as radically rebuilding from foundations that make explicit and interrogate—thereby enhancing agency to act without being controlled by—assumptions about self and world. Transparency counters the taken-for-grantedness that imbues assumptions about self and world with much of their power. Identifying, questioning, and choosing whether to accept, reject, or modify beliefs and practices protects against unduly coercive power of the state and subtle coercion of unthinking decisions.

Microcosm and Macrocosm

2021 ◽  
pp. 103-124
Author(s):  
Marek Tuszewicki
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Folk Culture ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
The World

This chapter examines the far-reaching consequences of the persistent conviction in folk culture of the close bonds between the human body (the microcosm) and the world (the macrocosm). This conviction was not only the ground from which 'folk-type medicine' grew, but also key evidence that ancient theories surrounding the origins and functioning of the world, the anatomy and workings of the human body, and even astrology were very much alive in the medicine-related beliefs and practices of the residents of eastern Europe at the turn of the nineteenth century. The chapter contains examples of treatments employing methods inspired by folk mythology and expressed in a language that used an anthropomorphic and cosmological code, and of the consequences of the perception of humans as a reflection of the world around them.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Chaim I. Waxman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Orthodox Jews ◽  
Orthodox Judaism ◽  
Orthodox Jewish ◽  
Psychological Perspective ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Religious Law

This chapter introduces Orthodox Judaism, which is viewed phenomenologically, defined broadly, and recognized in the systems of beliefs and practices maintained by Orthodox Jews. It mentions the halakhah or Orthodox religious law that conceives the ‘practices’ part of the Orthodox Jewish system. It also reveals Orthodox Jewish practices that are not pursued to accord with halakhah but can be characterized as minhag or custom. The chapter looks at Orthodox Judaism in America since the nineteenth century and examines a series of halakhic changes or changes in what is deemed to be proper Orthodox conduct. It explains the various directions in which ‘acceptable’ Orthodox behaviour is developing from a social and psychological perspective.

Cross-Cultural Considerations in Supporting Bereaved Students

2017 ◽  
pp. 70-81
Author(s):  
Sandra A. López
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Cultural Awareness ◽  
Cultural Humility ◽  
Grief And Loss ◽  
Culturally Competent ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Cultural Considerations ◽  
School Based ◽  
Evidence Based Guidelines ◽  
Diverse Cultures

This chapter provides school-based practitioners with practical evidence-based guidelines for developing culturally relevant responses to support bereaved students of diverse cultures. The chapter highlights culturally competent approaches, explores key cultural considerations for assessing the significance of culture in the student’s life, helps school-based practitioners identify unique and important cultural values, beliefs, and practices, encourages cultural conversations, and facilitates healthy grieving through cultural understanding and appreciation. Culture is often a major determinant in how one perceives and navigates the world in circumstances of grief and loss. Therefore, it is of paramount importance for school-based practitioners to know how best to support culturally diverse bereaved students. The importance of the practitioner’s developing his or her own cultural awareness and cultural humility is emphasized.

scholarly journals History and Myth: Mahāmudrā Lineage Accounts in the 12th-Century Xixia Buddhist Literature

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 187
Author(s):  
Linghui Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Transmission Lines ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Tibetan Buddhist ◽  
Direct Experience ◽  
Buddhist Literature ◽  
The Third ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
Spiritual Legacy ◽  
History And Myth

Mahāmudrā—an Indo-Tibetan phenomenon of Buddhist spirituality—constitutes in its systematic presentation a path that maps out the mystical quest for direct experience of ultimate reality. Despite the post-15th century bKa’-brgyud attempts at a codified Mahāmudrā genealogy, the early Tibetan sources speak little with regards to how the different Indian Mahāmudrā threads made their way over the Himalayas. To fill this gap, the article investigates, via philological and historical approaches, the lineage accounts in the 12th-century Xixia Mahāmudrā materials against the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist landscape. Three transmission lines are detected. Among them, two lines are attested by later Tibetan historiographical accounts about Mahāmudrā, and thus belong to an Indo-Tibetan continuum of the constructed Buddhist yogic past based upon historical realities—at least as understood by Tibetans of the time. The third one is more of a collage patching together different claims to spiritual legacy and religious authority—be they historically based or introspectively projected. Not only does the Mahāmudrā topography, jointly fueled by these three transmissions, reveal the Xixia recognition and imagination of the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist legacies, it also captures the complexities of the multi-faceted picture of Mahāmudrā on its way over the Himalayas during the 11th/12th century.

Dangerous Debates: Jain responses to theological challenges at the Mughal court

2015 ◽  
Vol 49 (5) ◽  
pp. 1311-1344 ◽  
Author(s):  
AUDREY TRUSCHKE
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Local Identities ◽  
Diverse Communities ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Religious Differences

AbstractIn the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Jain leaders faced a series of religious questions at the royal Mughal court. At the request of their imperial Muslim hosts, Jain representatives discussed aspects of both Islam and Jainism on separate occasions, including the veracity of Islam, whether Jains are monotheists, and the validity of Jain asceticism. The Mughals sometimes initiated these conversations of their own accord and at other times acted on the prompting of Brahmans, who had political and religious interests at stake in encouraging imperial clashes with Jain leaders. Jain authors recorded these exchanges in numerous Sanskrit texts, which generally remain unknown to Mughal historians and Sanskrit scholars alike. I examine the Jain accounts of these cross-cultural debates and expound their political, religious, and intellectual implications. These engagements showcase how the Mughals negotiated religious differences with diverse communities in their kingdom. Furthermore, the Sanskrit narratives of these dialogues outline complex theological visions of how Jain beliefs and practices could thrive within a potentially hazardous Islamicate imperial order. More broadly Jain and Mughal discussions provide rich insight into key developments in religious precepts and local identities in early modern India.

Response to Prasenjit Duara, “Asia Redux”

2010 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 1015-1020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Watson Andaya
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Maritime Trade ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Trade Networks ◽  
Cultural Contact ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Territorial Boundaries ◽  
The Web

In his provocative essay, Prasenjit Duara argues that prior to the nineteenth century, the web of maritime trade networks infused the ill-defined area we call “Asia” with a genuine coherence, providing a conduit for cultural flows that readily permitted interactive relationships and the mutual adoption of new beliefs and practices. By the late nineteenth century, however, the imperial powers sought to ensure their global dominance by creating regional blocs consisting of territories that were economically subservient to the metropole. The consequent focus on the establishment of territorial boundaries encouraged a “nationalist congruence between state and culture” that gathered pace over the next hundred years. Only now are we beginning to see an Asia where interdependence and increasing cultural contact, carrying echoes of past connectivities, have opened up new opportunities by which a “transnational consciousness” can and should be encouraged.

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