Amaterasu
Anecdote
Asceticism
Avalokitesvara
Bhikkhu
Bodhi
Bodhidharma
Bodhisattva
Bodhisattva Precepts
Buddha-nature
Buddhahood
Buddhism
Buddhism in Japan
Buddhist ethics
Buddhist temple
Buddhist texts
Category=QRRL
Christian monasticism
Clergy
Confucianism
Deity
Dharmachakra
Doctrine
Edo period
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eq_isMigrated=2
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Filial piety
Gautama Buddha
Genshin
Guanyin
Heian period
Hungry ghost
Ippen
Japanese literature
Kukai
Laity
Literature
Lotus Sutra
Maitreya
Memorial service (Orthodox)
Monastery
Nichiren
Nihon Shoki
Ordination
Poetry
Prayer
Precept
Preface (liturgy)
Princeton University Press
Pure Land Buddhism
Recitation
Religion
Religion in Japan
Religious text
Rite
Sanskrit
Schools of Buddhism
Sect
Sentient beings (Buddhism)
Sermon
Shingon Buddhism
Shinran
Sutra
Taoism
Tendai
The Monastery
The Venerable
University of Hawaii Press
Vinaya
Worship
Writing
Yin and yang
Zen master
Product details
- ISBN 9780691057897
- Weight: 794g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 28 Mar 1999
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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This anthology reflects a range of Japanese religions in their complex, sometimes conflicting, diversity. In the tradition of the Princeton Readings in Religions series, the collection presents documents (legends and miracle tales, hagiographies, ritual prayers and ceremonies, sermons, reform treatises, doctrinal tracts, historical and ethnographic writings), most of which have been translated for the first time here, that serve to illuminate the mosaic of Japanese religions in practice. George Tanabe provides a lucid introduction to the "patterned confusion" of Japan's religious practices. He has ordered the anthology's forty-five readings under the categories of "Ethical Practices," "Ritual Practices," and "Institutional Practices," moving beyond the traditional classifications of chronology, religious traditions (Shinto, Confucianism, Buddhism, etc.), and sects, and illuminating the actual orientation of people who engage in religious practices.
Within the anthology's three broad categories, subdivisions address the topics of social values, clerical and lay precepts, gods, spirits, rituals of realization, faith, court and emperor, sectarian founders, wizards, and heroes, orthopraxis and orthodoxy, and special places. Dating from the eighth through the twentieth centuries, the documents are revealed to be open to various and evolving interpretations, their meanings dependent not only on how they are placed in context but also on how individual researchers read them. Each text is preceded by an introductory explanation of the text's essence, written by its translator. Instructors and students will find these explications useful starting points for their encounters with the varied worlds of practice within which the texts interact with readers and changing contexts. Religions of Japan in Practice is a compendium of relationships between great minds and ordinary people, abstruse theories and mundane acts, natural and supernatural powers, altruism and self-interest, disappointment and hope, quiescence and war.
It is an indispensable sourcebook for scholars, students, and general readers seeking engagement with the fertile "ordered disorder" of religious practice in Japan.
George J. Tanabe, Jr., is Professor and Chair in the Department of Religion at the University of Hawaii. Having research interests covering doctrinal and practical issues in medieval and modern Japan, he is the author of MyÉe the Dreamkeeper, coeditor of The Lotus Sutra in Japanese Culture, and coauthor of Practically Religious: Worldly Benefits and the Common Religion of Japan.
