scholarly journals Deity and Display: Meanings, Transformations, and Exhibitions of Tibetan Buddhist Objects

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Tythacott ◽  
Chiara Bellini
Keyword(s):  
Instrumental Function ◽  
Tibetan Buddhist ◽  
The West ◽  
Body Support

This paper analyses the values and uses of Tibetan sacred artefacts in their original contexts as well as the transformation of meanings once placed in museums. It discusses the perception of statues, paintings, ritual instruments and books from a Tibetan Buddhist perspective, examining the iconographic and iconometric functions of the images, and asserting that a primary purpose is as a ‘support for practice’ (tib. sku rten, ‘body-support’). Sacred images represent the embodiment of the Buddhas, deities and masters and, once consecrated by lamas, are considered to have the power to confer blessings. Despite the instrumental function of such artefacts, however, it is also possible to identify and delineate a complex Himalayan concept of aesthetics. The text moves on to analyse the effects of the transition of Tibetan Buddhist images into different museological contexts, comparing the display of Tibetan material in the consecrated spaces of Himalayan monastery museums with their exhibition in secular museological sites in the West.

Tartan Buddhists

2012 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
John McKenzie
Keyword(s):  
Potential Utility ◽  
Tibetan Buddhist ◽  
The West ◽  
Dependent Relationship ◽  
Different Types

The purpose of this article is to provide a sociological typology for understanding the different types of practitioners within the Tibetan Buddhist organization, Rokpa International, in Scotland. It will be argued that the empirically derived criteria and Weber’s (1978) sociological concepts of authority, power and status allow us to understand the tensions and mutually dependent relationship between the different types. In conclusion, it will be argued that, while this typology is not presented as a challenge to existing typologies, this article demonstrates the potential utility of these sociological concepts for understanding the practice and development of Buddhism in the West.

scholarly journals Macho Buddhism: Gender and Sexualities in the Diamond Way

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-103
Author(s):  
Burkhard Scherer
Keyword(s):  
Tibetan Buddhism ◽  
Gender Stereotyping ◽  
Sexual Ethics ◽  
Tibetan Buddhist ◽  
Historical Source ◽  
The West ◽  
Cultural Attitudes ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Previous Scholarship

Western Tibetan Buddhist movements have been described as bourgeois and puritanical in previous scholarship. In contrast, Ole Nydahl’s convert lay Karma Kagyu Buddhist movement, the Diamond Way, has drawn attention for its apparently hedonistic style. This article addresses the wider issues of continuity and change during the transition of Tibetan Buddhism from Asia to the West. It analyses views on and performances of gender, sexual ethics and sexualities both diachronically through textual-historical source and discourse analysis and synchronically through qualitative ethnography. In this way the article demonstrates how the approaches of contemporary gender and sexualities studies can serve as a way to question the Diamond Way Buddhism’s location in the ‘tradition vs modernity’ debate. Nydahl’s pre-modern gender stereotyping, the hetero-machismo of the Diamond Way and the mildly homophobic tone and content of Nydahl’s teaching are interpreted in light of Indian and Tibetan Buddhist sexual ethics and traditional Tibetan cultural attitudes on sexualities. By excavating the emic genealogy of Nydahl’s teachings, the article suggests that Nydahl’s and the Diamond Way’s view on and performance of gender and sexualities are consistent with his propagation of convert Buddhist neo-orthodoxy.

Buddhist Economics

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew King
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Economic Behavior ◽  
People’S Republic Of China ◽  
People's Republic Of China ◽  
Tibetan Buddhist ◽  
The West ◽  
Site Specific ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Western Development

In addition to summarizing key concerns in Theravāda Buddhist Economics by scholars such as E. F. Schumacher and the Thai monk Payutto, this essay explores how descriptions of the West, Western development, and the “science” of economics serves in that literature to construct Occidentalist versions of Southeast Asian traditionalism and religious orthodoxy. It then introduces the previously unstudied work of Shérab Tendar, a prominent Tibetan Buddhist scholar in the contemporary People’s Republic of China who has written prodigiously on what he considers to be a scripturally based Mahāyāna and Tantric Buddhist Economics. Comparing these three influential iterations of Buddhist Economics, this essay argues that this movement has less to do with economics proper than with what I call trans-Buddhist “scales of value”: site-specific desires and measures of sought after outcomes that here privilege the economy and economic behavior as a technique for individual, social, and environmental well-being and emancipation.

scholarly journals Rhizomatic Religion and Material Destruction in Kham Tibet: The Case of Yachen Gar

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 533
Author(s):  
Daan F. Oostveen
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Tibetan Buddhism ◽  
Field Trip ◽  
Interstitial Space ◽  
Tibetan Buddhist ◽  
World Religion ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
Chinese State

This article looks at the Tibetan Buddhism revitalization in China in particular, in Kham Tibet, and the way how it was both made possible and obstructed by the Chinese state. As a case, we look at the Yachen Gar monastery in the West of Sichuan. The Yachen Gar monastery became the largest Buddhist university in China in the past decades, but recently, reports of the destruction of large parts of the Buddhist encampment have emerged. This article is based on my observations during my field trip in late 2018, just before this destruction took place. I will use my conceptual framework of rhizomatic religion, which I developed in an earlier article, to show how Yachen Gar, rather than the locus of a “world religion”, is rather an expression of rhizomatic religion, which is native to the Tibetan highlands in Kham Tibet. This rhizomatic religion could emerge because Yachen is situated both on the edges of Tibet proper, and on the edges of Han Chinese culture, therefore occupying an interstitial space. As has been observed before, Yachen emerges as a process which is the result of the revival of Nyingmapa Tibetan Buddhist culture, as a negotiation between the Tibetan communities and the Chinese state.

Keeping It Real!: Constructing and Maintaining Traditional Authenticity in a Tibetan Buddhist Organisation in Scotland

2011 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 94-105
Author(s):  
John S. McKenzie
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Local Culture ◽  
Sociological Perspective ◽  
Tibetan Buddhist ◽  
The West ◽  
Reflexive Modernization ◽  
The Social ◽  
Flow Of Information ◽  
Core Features

Many studies on the westward transplantation of Buddhism focus on the retention of traditional authenticity. The sociological perspective provided here moves the emphasis to the social construction of such claims. The social construction of traditional authenticity will be explored through a study of the Tibetan Buddhist organisation, Rokpa Scotland (RS) and it will be demonstrated that RS constructs claims to traditional authenticity by adapting to the local culture whilst demonstrating links with an ancient practice. These claims are then reified by limiting adaptations and retaining core features associated with Buddhism. None the less adapting to the West can be seen as detraditionalization and can present a threat to claims to traditional authenticity. However, RS can claim to control the detraditionalization process by responding to the effects of reflexive modernization and controlling the flow of information. In controlling detraditionalization RS provides the plausibility structures to maintain claims to traditional authenticity.

Enumeration and Identification of Asbestos Fibres in Water

1974 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 526-527 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. Mudroch ◽  
J. R. Kramer
Keyword(s):  
Water Supply ◽  
Water Samples ◽  
Drainage Basin ◽  
Lake Superior ◽  
Research Work ◽  
List Type ◽  
The West ◽  
Asbestos Fibre ◽  
Amphibole Asbestos

Approximately 60,000 tons per day of waste from taconite mining, tailing, are added to the west arm of Lake Superior at Silver Bay. Tailings contain nearly the same amount of quartz and amphibole asbestos, cummingtonite and actinolite in fibrous form. Cummingtonite fibres from 0.01μm in length have been found in the water supply for Minnesota municipalities.The purpose of the research work was to develop a method for asbestos fibre counts and identification in water and apply it for the enumeration of fibres in water samples collected(a) at various stations in Lake Superior at two depth: lm and at the bottom.(b) from various rivers in Lake Superior Drainage Basin.

The fight to save Uganda’s White Rhino

1964 ◽  
Vol 2 (01) ◽  
pp. 6-12
Keyword(s):  
The West ◽  
West Nile ◽  
White Rhino

In the West Nile District of Uganda lives a population of white rhino—those relies of a past age, cumbrous, gentle creatures despite their huge bulk—which estimates only 10 years ago, put at 500. But poachers live in the area, too, and official counts showed that white rhino were being reduced alarmingly. By 1959, they were believed to be diminished to 300.

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