A study of the Buddhist tradition as it is found today in Asia. The course will focus on specific living traditions of East, South, and/or Southeast Asia. Themes to be addressed may include: contemporary Buddhist ritual practices; funerary and mortuary customs; the relationship between Buddhism and other local religious traditions; the relationship between Buddhist institutions and the state; Buddhist monasticism and its relationship to the laity; Buddhist ethics; Buddhist "modernism"; and so on.
This semester examines the multiple ways in which the enormous upheavals of modernity have impacted Buddhism and the ways in which Buddhist institutions, beliefs, practices, and values have responded, with a focus on Japan. Because the end of World War II changed the political landscape in fundamental ways throughout Asia, most notably the end of colonialism, the course will be divided into two sections: 1800 to 1945, and 1945 to the present. The course will focus on the example of Japan because of the unusual rapidity with which Japan began an accelerated process of Westernization and globalization at the end of the nineteenth, earlier than any other Buddhist nation, the rise of nationalism as an anti-Buddhist force, and the way in which Japanese Buddhist thinking has recovered from that period.
