My book is available for review on Reading Religion. C'mon. You know you wanna review it!
#MakingAmericanBuddhism #Buddhism #BuddhistStudies
https://readingreligion.org/9780197641569/the-making-of-american-buddhism/

New Books in Buddhist Studies podcast interview with me! About my book! Listen here or on your podcast listening device of choice!
https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-making-of-american-buddhism

#MakingAmericanBuddhism #Buddhism #BuddhistStudies

Know someone who does research or works on #race & #religion in America; #WorldWarII; Japanese American internment; the post-war occupation of Japan; the #ColdWar; the #BeatGeneration; American Buddhism, Asian America Studies; #BuddhistStudies? Tell them about the book! 6/

It would be useful if Buddhist Studies academics were to declare a conflict of interest based on their membership of, and status within, a religious sect.

Religious people are biased. And such bias is inconsistent with open intellectual inquiry. It leads to apologetics in place of critical scholarship. Apologetics are rife in Buddhist Studies.

#Buddhism #Buddhiststudies

My 14th article on the Heart Sutra is now published:

Attwood, J. 2023. "The Heart Sutra Revisited." [Review article]. Buddhist Studies Review. 39(2): 229-254. https://journal.equinoxpub.com/BSR/article/view/25433

A review of five articles on the Heart Sutra in a special issue of Acta Asiatica (121).

This article was reviewed by two editors, but was not anonymously "peer reviewed".

#buddhiststudies #buddhism #buddhist

From Kahrs, E. (1998) Indian Semantic Analysis.

Durga's commentary on the Nirukta s.v. "skandha"...

(6.17b) skandho vṛkṣasya samāskannaṃ bhavati | ayam apītaraḥ skandha etasmād eva | āskannaṃ kāye |

skandhaḥ (skandhas- nt.) 'branching crown' of a tree [is so called because it] is
attached (samāskannam: sam-ā√skand) [to it]; this other skandhaḥ (skandha- m.;
'shoulder') [is so called] for the very same reason: it is attached to the body. (p. 148)

#buddhism #buddhiststudies

More evidence that normative #Buddhist religious texts are a poor guide to the history of #Buddhism

Shaw, Julia. (2013). "Archaeologies of Buddhist propagation in ancient India: ritual and practical models of religious change." World Archaeology 45(1): 83-108.

https://www.academia.edu/6618090/Archaeologies_of_Buddhist_propagation_in_ancient_India_ritual_and_practical_models_of_religious_change

Also rare to see Buddhist history described as a process rather than as merely episodic. The question "Why change?" is actually addressed for a change.

#buddhiststudies

The oldest Prajñāpāramitā manuscript was C-14 dated to ca 70 CE.

The oldest artefact with Pāḷi writing is from the 6th century CE & the oldest actual ms of a Pāli text is from the 9th century CE.

Pāli texts do not necessarily predate Prajñāpāramitā texts. Nor do they necessarily represent an earlier period of Indian history.

#buddhiststudies #buddhism

Del Toso, Krishna. (2015) "The Function of saññā in the Perceptual Process According to the Sutta-piṭaka: An Assessment." Philosophy East and West 65(3): 690-716.

A very useful overview of this key Buddhist technical term that proves Roy Norman's dictum that what has been done needs to be done again.

I also conclude that saññā denotes "recognition" (i.e. cognition + naming) but my emphasis is that it's naming *the experience*.

#buddhiststudies

Max Deeg. (2020) "Many biographies – multiple individualities: the identities of the Chinese Buddhist monk Xuanzang."

https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110580853-045/html

"Religious biographies construct lives between individuality and religious functionality or purpose."

Deeg's investigations of Xuanzang are insightful and worth pondering.

#buddhiststudies

I recommend this lecture by Sarah Mattice https://youtu.be/vxcfIuoHj1Q and her book Exploring the Heart Sutra. https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498599405/Exploring-the-Heart-Sutra

Sarah didn't know Huifeng (2014) or any of my work when she published this. Which I would normally treat as a fatal error. Still her approach has a great deal to recommend it and is a worthwhile fresh take: at some point I'd like to see a synthesis of Mattice's work with mine.

#buddhiststudies #heartsutra #buddhism

New blog post on that burning question: What's the Difference Between a Meditator and Corpse?
(Some comments on the Mahāvedalla Sutta MN 43)

http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2023/02/whats-difference-between-meditator-and.html

#buddhism #buddhiststudies

Properly wonkish take...

Newberg, J. D. and Nash, A. B. 2023. "An updated classification of meditation methods using principles of taxonomy and systematics." Frontiers in Psychology. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1062535/full

#meditation #buddhism #buddhiststudies

"I do not see much in common between Nāgārjuna’s emptiness and that of Maitreya" (Skilling 2007, 231).

Skilling, Peter. (2007). Mṛgara’s Mother’s Mansion: Emptiness and the Śūnyatā Sūtras. Journal of Indian and Tibetan Studies 11, 225-247.

#buddhiststudies #buddhism

“Katamo ca, bhikkhave, lokassa samudayo? Cakkhuñca paṭicca rūpe ca uppajjati cakkhuviññāṇaṃ. Tiṇṇaṃ saṅgati phasso. Phassapaccayā vedanā; vedanāpaccayā taṇhā; taṇhāpaccayā upādānaṃ; upādānapaccayā bhavo; bhavapaccayā jāti; jātipaccayā jarāmaraṇaṃ soka­pari­deva­duk­kha­do­manas­supāyāsā sambhavanti. Ayaṃ kho, bhikkhave, lokassa samudayo.

loka = kevalassa dukkhakkhandhassa

#buddhism #buddhiststudies

The use of the term "consciousness" in discussing ancient Buddhist discourses is a Whiggish anachronism, in which we imagine ancient Indians to just be primitive versions of, and precursors to, ourselves rather than a distinctive culture in their own right.

#buddhiststudies #Buddhistphilosophy

"At least for academic Buddhist studies, the phenomenon of scholars becoming apologists for Iron Age or Medieval metaphysics is a major problem, especially in the supposedly allied field of Madhyamaka studies."

From a forthcoming article.

#buddhiststudies #indianphilosophy

Ironically, Edward Conze's belief in a transcendent magical reality in which "all is one" and "A is not-A" has no counterpart in any form of #Buddhism AFAIK.

The religion in which we do find this kind of thinking is #Hinduism, especially forms of Advaita #Vedanta.

#Conze had a lot more in common with Vedanta, especially as interpreted through the mind of Madam #Blavatsky, than he did with Buddhism.

#indianphilosophy #buddhiststudies

Today I completed the redrafting of chapter four of my new book, an #ethnography of contemporary past-life memory in #Cambodia, from a perspective that combines #anthropology and #BuddhistStudies.

This chapter is about a young girl who remembered being her own uncle, and was given an unhatched egg to eat, in an attempt to force past-life amnesia.

In the process, I discuss themes of #memory, #ritual failure, the notion of progressive moral dependency, and the idea of the self. #Buddhism

Today I completed the redrafting of chapter four of my new book, an #ethnography of contemporary past-life memory in #Cambodia, from a perspective that combines #anthropology and #BuddhistStudies.

This chapter is about a young girl you remembered being her own uncle, and was given an unhatched egg to eat, in an attempt to force past-life amnesia.

In the process, I discuss themes of #memory, #ritual failure, the notion of progressive moral dependency, and the idea of the self. #Buddhism