scholarly journals Dōgen and the Feminine Presence: Taking a Fresh Look into His Sermons and Other Writings

Religions ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (8) ◽  
pp. 232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michiko Yusa

Dōgen’s gender-egalitarian stance on women to attain awakening in their zazen practice is well known. At the same time, a nagging suspicion lingers on among some scholars that he grew increasingly misogynistic in his old age. In this present study, which focuses on Dōgen’s sermons compiled in the Record of Eihei (Eihei kōroku), the Shōbōgenzō, and other writings related to women, we find that even after Dōgen moved to Eiheiji, his stance on women remained consistent. Not only did he readily respond to his female disciples’ requests to give special sermons in memory of their parents, but also positively saw women’s presence in the development of the Buddhist tradition. Through this study it also becomes clear that Dōgen came to embrace a more flexible view on filial piety in his later years, as he deepened his reflection on this matter—the sense of gratitude one feels for one’s parents is concomitant with nurturing one’s compassion. The aspect of compassion that sustained Dōgen’s life of teaching begins to loom large. It was his Chinese master Nyojō (Rujing) who emphasized compassion as the pillar of the zazen practice. Two sermons Dōgen delivered on the anniversary of his father’s death, moreover, have given the scholars new information concerning his parentage. The focus on the aspect of "feminine presence” in Dōgen inadvertently (or naturally?) leads to the heart of Dōgen’s own identity.

Author(s):  
Nopphol Witvorapong ◽  
Yong Yoon ◽  
Wiraporn Pothisiri

Abstract Based on nationally representative data (N = 8,901), this study investigates the extent to which expectations for intra-family transfers and government assistance in old age impact the probability of saving for retirement among working-age individuals in Thailand. Results show that expectations for financial non-self-reliance and expectations that family support would constitute the most important source of old-age financial security reduce the probability that working-age individuals would save for retirement. Expectations for government support have no impact on average. Given that filial piety is weakening in Thailand, this study suggests that the government encourage pre-retirement savings more strongly.


2010 ◽  
Vol 30 (5) ◽  
pp. 879-896 ◽  
Author(s):  
TENZIN WANGMO

ABSTRACTUsing interview data from 30 Tibetan elders living in India and Switzerland, the paper explores the support they received, their perception of intergenerational relationships, and their acceptance of different levels of intergenerational exchange. All of the sample had aged in either India or Switzerland and so provide excellent comparison groups, from respectively a developing and a developed country, by which to study changing filial piety with time, context and socio-economic conditions. With limited resources in old age, most of the participants in India needed financial support. Among them, parents with many children and children in developed countries received better financial support and collective care than those with one child or all children living in India. In contrast, the participants in Switzerland were entitled to state old-age benefits, and so required mainly affirmation and emotional support. A consequence of living in a developed nation was dissatisfaction when the children adopted western values and the family's cultural continuity was threatened. The findings support two recommendations: in developing countries, the provision of old-age benefits to ensure a minimum level of financial security and independence among older adults; and in developed countries, the promotion of a mutual understanding of filial piety among different generations of older refugees and immigrants to help ameliorate intergenerational differences.


2006 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liz Schwaiger

In this paper I examine the relationship between the body in midlife and subjectivity in contemporary western cultures, drawing on both social constructionist and psychoanalytic perspectives. Referring to recent theoretical accounts, I take the position that how we are aged by culture begins in midlife, and that this period is therefore critical in understanding how the body-subject in western consumer cultures is aged and gendered through culturally normative discourses and practices. I also address the gendering of ageing bodies, and argue that, like the feminine, ageing has been marked by ambiguity and lack. This ambiguity has presented a problem for dualistic age theories, in that it has been difficult to theorize the ageing body productively since the binary language used to theorize it already devalues old age. I contend that our tacit understanding of both male and female ageing bodies is as discursively constituted as ’feminine’, based on cultural perceptions of loss of bodily control and the ambiguity of ageing bodies that become increasingly recalcitrant in the ’correct’ performance of cultural age and gender norms. Finally, I inquire whether alternative, non-dualistic perspectives might be developed that redress this problem, and disrupt the alignment of ageing with negative associations such as lack and loss, perspectives that, rather than associating gendered ageing with decline, loss or lack, associate it with the goal of living an abundant life into deep old age.


2020 ◽  
Vol 130 (632) ◽  
pp. 2497-2525 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rufei Guo ◽  
Junsen Zhang

Abstract Do parents forge children’s preference for old-age support? Becker (1993) conjectures that the inculcation of filial piety increases parents’ investment in children’s human capital. We provide the first empirical evidence on parents’ instilling of filial piety in children, by combining the natural experiment of twins with China’s One-Child Policy to obtain exogenous variations in children’s gender composition. Among the different models of filial-piety inculcation, our empirical results favour a Beckerian model of altruism inculcation in which parents solicit support from the child with a higher earnings endowment.


2020 ◽  
pp. 096973302094444
Author(s):  
Jing-Bao Nie

To effectively address ageing and develop adequate eldercare needs, among others, new ethical visions are much needed. One of the ways to formulate sound ethical visions for contemporary issues is to reclaim, reinterpret and revive old moral ideas and ideals rooted in different indigenous cultural traditions. Drawing thought, wisdom and inspirations from classical Confucianism, the article offers a Confucian ethical outlook on healthy ageing and social eldercare. The popular perception of ageing in the West as well as China regards old age as a period of inevitable decline. However, Kong Zi (Confucius) treats human life as an ongoing moral pilgrimage, with old age the summit of the lifelong journey. This Confucian ethical view on ageing as the culmination of a lifelong moral cultivation has various important themes. They include the primary feature of learning in healthy ageing, the essential role of social eldercare embedded in the popular Confucian norm ‘filial piety’ ( xiao), intergenerational flourishing and the necessity to respect the rights and dignity of each old person. Such a Confucian socio-ethical vision can not only help identify contemporary failings in the area of eldercare but also generate novel ideas and frameworks to help China and the world to face population ageing and elderly care in a more positive way.


Author(s):  
J. Y. Koo ◽  
G. Thomas

High resolution electron microscopy has been shown to give new information on defects(1) and phase transformations in solids (2,3). In a continuing program of lattice fringe imaging of alloys, we have applied this technique to the martensitic transformation in steels in order to characterize the atomic environments near twin, lath and αmartensite boundaries. This paper describes current progress in this program.Figures A and B show lattice image and conventional bright field image of the same area of a duplex Fe/2Si/0.1C steel described elsewhere(4). The microstructure consists of internally twinned martensite (M) embedded in a ferrite matrix (F). Use of the 2-beam tilted illumination technique incorporating a twin reflection produced {110} fringes across the microtwins.


Author(s):  
L. Andrew Staehelin

Freeze-etched membranes usually appear as relatively smooth surfaces covered with numerous small particles and a few small holes (Fig. 1). In 1966 Branton (1“) suggested that these surfaces represent split inner mem¬brane faces and not true external membrane surfaces. His theory has now gained wide acceptance partly due to new information obtained from double replicas of freeze-cleaved specimens (2,3) and from freeze-etch experi¬ments with surface labeled membranes (4). While theses studies have fur¬ther substantiated the basic idea of membrane splitting and have shown clearly which membrane faces are complementary to each other, they have left the question open, why the replicated membrane faces usually exhibit con¬siderably fewer holes than particles. According to Branton's theory the number of holes should on the average equal the number of particles. The absence of these holes can be explained in either of two ways: a) it is possible that no holes are formed during the cleaving process e.g. due to plastic deformation (5); b) holes may arise during the cleaving process but remain undetected because of inadequate replication and microscope techniques.


Author(s):  
Y. Taniguchi ◽  
E. Nakazawa ◽  
S. Taya

Imaging energy filters can add new information to electron microscopic images with respect to energy-axis, so-called electron spectroscopic imaging (ESI). Recently, many good results have been reported using this imaging technique. ESI also allows high-contrast observation of unstained biological samples, becoming a trend of the field of morphology. We manufactured a new type of energy filter as a trial production. This energy filter consists of two magnets, and we call γ-filter since the trajectory of electrons shows ‘γ’-shape inside the filter. We evaluated the new energyγ-filter TEM with the γ-filter.Figure 1 shows schematic view of the electron optics of the γ-type energy filter. For the determination of the electron-optics of the γ-type energy filter, we used the TRIO (Third Order Ion Optics) program which has been developed for the design of high resolution mass spectrometers. The TRIO takes the extended fringing fields (EFF) into consideration. EFF makes it difficult to design magnetic energy filters with magnetic sector fields.


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