Sarah Shaw - Secularizing Buddhism: New Perspectives on a Dynamic Tradition

Praise for Secularizing Buddhism

As Buddhadharma and Buddhist practice are transmitted to the West and as Buddhism engages with modernity, Buddhist ideas, practices, and commitments are adapted and transformed. This fascinating collection of essays by some of the leading scholars of contemporary Buddhism explore the complex interaction of Buddhism with the modern world. This volume will be a valuable resource for practitioners, scholars, and anybody interested in the present and future of Buddhism and in the contributions it can make to our world.

Jay Garfield, author of Engaging Buddhism: Why It Matters to Philosophy

This volume provides a much-needed critical treatment of the multiple secularizing Buddhism processes and projects underway in global Buddhism. Exploring a range of contexts from the Pli canon to Pure Land Buddhism, the museum to the mindfulness movement, these authors clearly illuminate the complicity between secularization and colonialism, racism, and neoliberalism. Secularizing Buddhism makes two important intellectual and ethical interventions: It identifies the ethnocentric, racialized violence that occurs when the secular is constructed as binary other and developmentally superior to the religious. It also suggests how the relationship between the two can be reconfigured in more fluid, dynamic, and context-sensitive ways.

Ann Gleig, author of American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity

Utilizing but not bound by slippery dichotomies such as secular versus religious, modern versus traditional, and West versus Easttaking them instead as semiotic pairs or, to use a more traditional Buddhist concept, as nondualthe essays in this fine collection explore various facets of Buddhism in contemporary society. From mindfulness in the schools to Buddhist art in museums, from controversies over rebirth to immanent Buddhism and more, Secularizing Buddhism provides a thoughtful mosaic of our ever-evolving situation.

Paul L. Swanson, author of Nanzan Guide to Japanese Religions

Shambhala Publications, Inc.

2129 13th Street

Boulder, Colorado 80302

www.shambhala.com

2021 by Richard K. Payne

Manifesting the Buddha Dharma in a Secular Age by Bhikkhu Bodhi was previously published in Buddhism in Dialogue with Contemporary Societies, edited by Carola Roloff, Wolfram Weie, and Michael Zimmermann. Religions in Dialogue, vol. 17. Muenster, Germany: Waxmann Verlag, 2020.

Image on .

Image on : Unidentified artist. Standing Buddha, c. 12th century. Wood, 257/16 8 43/16 in. (64.6 20.3 10.6 cm). Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Gift of Ruth and Sherman Lee, 2003.35.4.

Cover art: caoyu36/iStock

Cover design: Daniel Urban-Brown

Interior Design: Michael Russem

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For more information please visit www.shambhala.com.

Shambhala Publications is distributed worldwide by Penguin Random House, Inc., and its subsidiaries.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Payne, Richard K., editor.

Title: Secularizing Buddhism: new perspectives on a dynamic tradition / edited by Richard K. Payne.

Description: First edition. | Boulder, Colorado: Shambhala, [2021]

Identifiers: LCCN 2020022579 | ISBN 9781611808896 (trade paperback)

eISBN 9780834843721

Subjects: LCSH : Buddhism and secularism.

Classification: LCC BQ 4570. S 43 S 43 2021 | DDC 294.3/37dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020022579

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