In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:European Network of Buddhist-Christian StudiesJohn D'Arcy MayThe European Network of Buddhist-Christian Studies met at Samye Ling, Scotland, 16-19 May 2003. The theme of the meeting was "Buddhists, Christians, and the Doctrine of Creation."Samye Ling, founded in 1967 by Dr. Akong Tulku Rinpoche and now under the guidance of his brother, the Venerable Lama Yeshe Losal, is one of the oldest and largest Buddhist monasteries in Europe. Ven. (...) Yeshe, in welcoming conference participants, told how the monastery has both materially and spiritually reinvigorated what had become a depressed area around the town of Lockerbie in southwest Scotland. Despite the inclement weather, it was thus an appropriate venue for the fifth conference of the European Network of Buddhist-Christian Studies on the topic of creation. As Perry Schmidt-Leukel (Glasgow), who organized the conference, pointed out in his opening remarks, creation in view of ultimate redemption is the quintessentially Christian doctrine. Yet Buddhism certainly did not see samsara as the ultimate reality, and even if the origin of the world was ultimately an unanswerable question, Buddhism too was confronted by the problem of evil.Ernst Steinkellner (Vienna) opened the conference proper with an account of Buddhist critiques of Hindu doctrines of creation. The absolute Brahman was not a creator, but in the course of doctrinal evolution (the masculine Brahman becoming the post-Vedic Brahma) the world came to be seen as the work of a kind of demi-urge, leaving open the question of why. Buddhism, restricting itself to the realm of the finite, mocked Brahmin ideas of the cause of the world, but still had to account for the existence and nature of the world. By the time the Madhyamaka had developed theories of momentary creation, these had become part of the common logic of Buddhists and Hindus.This was followed by a presentation on contemporary Buddhist critiques of creation and creator doctrines by José Cabezón (Santa Barbara), who pointed out certain affinities between modern theories of many universes without beginning or end and traditional Buddhist ideas. Buddhism, he maintained, has an aversion to cosmological uniqueness, whether spatial, temporal, causal, or personal, but it does [End Page 237] regard the causal law of karman as ineluctable. Despite the critiques of Buddhist thinkers such as Gunapala Dharmasiri of Sri Lanka, who are under the misapprehension that Buddhism is on a par with science whereas Christianity is merely religion, this lays the basis for a metaphysics. The site of both suffering and liberation is the cocreativity of all beings. Buddhism is concerned not with being, but with consciousness.Eva Neumaier (Calgary) suggested that in fact Buddhism does have conceptions of creation, but in narrative form, represented in the cosmological structure of the world as the product of the Buddha's meditation rather than as a cosmogony. Creation is not ex nihilo, because nature predates any act of creation, yet the "emptiness" of shūnyatā is also the "swollenness" of fulfilled potential. The Buddha has been represented as the all-creating sovereign, and pure mind has been interpreted as the gender-neutral mother-father of all Buddhas, the "primordial basis." The "original enlightenment" objected to by Critical Buddhism enabled Buddhists to adapt pre-Buddhist ideas such as the Tao, even to the extent of tolerating animistic polytheism.If this presentation surprised some participants, it provided the perfect counterpart to the paper on Christian ideas of creation by John Keenan (Middlebury College). The Jewish and Christian conceptions of creation arise out of events in history, the exodus from Egypt being the originating metaphor. For Christians, liberation from the bondage of sin was the legacy of Israel's tribal warrior God. The Genesis accounts of creation are essentially liturgical, not cosmogonic. Creation is simply assumed as the evidence of divine transcendence; God is not a benevolent parent. The pagan critics who mocked the Jewish and Christian creation stories were just as misguided as the Buddhists who ridiculed the Vedic myths. God was eventually conceived as ipsum esse, the "to be" of things, a nonsubstantialist account that does not purport to answer the question "why." According to the logic of Buddhism, the complete enlightenment of all would mean the... (shrink)

Felicitation to Professor Samdhong Rinpoche, a Buddhist scholar, educationist, and former President of Association of Indian Universities; includes biography.

Three works on the fundamentals of Buddhist logic explaining difficult points as per Kagyudpa interpretation and its affiliates.

In How Not to Miss the Point, beloved Buddhist teacher Jetsun Khandro Rinpoche focuses on the Buddha's core teachings-basic principles that are universally true, whether we are Buddhist or not-as a way to cultivate our inner light and work for good, no matter how the world unfolds around us"- Provided by publisher.

An esteemed modern Tibetan Buddhist teacher presents a system of meditation instructions designed for achieving relaxation in our stressful, fast-paced world In the late 1990s, shortly after arriving in the United States, it became clear to Dza Kilung Rinpoche that his Western students responded to traditional meditation instructions differently from his students back in Asia. The Westerners didn't know how to relax—and their pressured, fast-paced lifestyles carried over into meditation. With this in mind, Dza Kilung Rinpoche set out (...) to create a meditation system that could break through the noise of Western life. The Relaxed Mind contains instructions for the seven-phase practice that he developed for students in the West. It is adapted from traditional instructions to counteract the overwhelming distraction that is becoming a global culture these days, not only in the West. Beginners will find a wealth of useful, easy-to-understand information while more experienced meditators may be surprised to find their practice deepening through letting go of tension. (shrink)

This is the only edition of Bede's Ecclesiastical History which also offers the Greater Chronicle as well as his Letter to Egbert. The Chronicle and the Letter have been newly translated, and both they and the authoritative Colgrave translation of the Ecclesiastical History are supported by a detailed introduction and notes.

Un Vénérable et un Philosophe se rencontrent... L'" initié " et le " profane " disputent en amitié. Ils s'interrogent sans concession sur les mythes fondateurs de l'Ordre, sur la laïcité aux prises avec le religieux et, peut-être aujourd'hui, avec le politique, l'économique, le médiatique. Ils réfléchissent sur l'histoire maçonnique. Ils constatent que, défiant tout humanisme, l'économie prétend s'installer mondialement, réduisant les identités nationales. Les francs-maçons ont-ils pleinement conscience des dangers qui contredisent leurs valeurs : croissance des inégalités, crise de (...) l'écologie planétaire...? Ont-ils la volonté et les moyens d'y faire face? Récusant langue de bois et angélisme - y compris maçonniques - le Vénérable et le Philosophe s'entretiennent sur les indispensables mutations de l'action et de la pensée humaines. Ils soulignent la nécessité de s'ouvrir à la pensée antagoniste, seule capable d'analyser, au cœur des sociétés différentes, le règne actuel de l'économisme et de conjurer " les identités meurtrières ". (shrink)

The Venerable Master's vision was as vast as the Dharma Realm, and he taught and transformed all beings without regard to path of rebirth, country, ethnic origin, religion, and so forth. There are two countries, however, where he had special affinities in this life: China and the United States. Although the majority of his disciples are Chinese, history will probably remember him primarily for his work in bringing the teachings of the Buddha to the people of the West.

Cross Veneration in the Medieval Islamic World: Christian Identity and Practice under Muslim Rule. By Charles Tieszen. The Early and Medieval Islam World, vol. 1. London: I.B. Tauris, 2017. Pp. x + 229. $95.

Volgendo l’attenzione alla problematica traduzione del cosiddetto basilicus iactus menzionato nella commedia Curculio di Plauto questo articolo cerca di fornire un nuovo contributo allo studio della cultura ludica latina. Sulla scorta di evidenze interne al testo, in particolare a proposito dell’identità drammatica dei suoi protagonisti e delle isotopie narrative presenti, e grazie a testimonianze esterne alla commedia, nello specifico alcune tradizioni cultuali greche e magno-greche, questa ricerca propone di intendere l’espressione basilicus iactus non come “colpo del re” bensì come “colpo (...) della regina”, con un rinvio implicito alla dea Venus e al colpo degli astragali che dalla divinità prendeva il nome. (shrink)

Various strands of religious thought distinguish veneration from worship. According to these traditions, believers ought to worship God alone. To worship anything else, they say, is idolatry. And yet many of these same believers also claim to venerate—but not worship—saints, angels, images, relics, tombs, and even each other. But what's the difference? Tim Bayne and Yujin Nagasawa (2006: 302) are correct that “it seems to be extremely difficult to distinguish veneration from worship.” Many have argued throughout history that veneration collapses (...) into worship and that those who venerate saints or icons are guilty of idolatry. In this essay, we distinguish worship from veneration in two stages. First, we give a formal account of their difference. Drawing from St. John of Damascus (c. 675-749 AD), we argue that worship is a determinate of the determinable veneration. Second, we give more substantive accounts of both that explain their differences and similarities. Drawing again from St John, we argue that acts of veneration and worship signify subordination. Their difference, however, lies in the fact that worship alone requires absolute subordination. (shrink)

The question of the simultaneity of relatives is one of the most debated aspects of Aristotle’s theory of relational properties. Are they exceptions to the rules of co-introduction and co-suppression for a pair of relatives? The present article studies a particular chapter of the long history of this problem, the contribution of three Byzantine thinkers of the ninth century. Their discussion is embedded in the complex phenomenon of the Iconoclast crisis. For reinvigorating their discourse on icons, these iconophiles thinkers deployed (...) Aristotelian logic, notably by treating the model and the image as Aristotelian relatives. This move implies tackling the issue of the simultaneity of relatives. Metrophanes, Nicephorus and Theodore solved it in three different ways which the present article reconstructs. (shrink)

Catholicism's precarious position in twentieth-century Scotland was in part a reflection of continued anti-Catholic and anti-Irish sentiments, but it was also the result of new political doctrines, growing worker movements and the introduction of complete female suffrage. These challenges were met, in part, by Margaret Sinclair, in religion Sister Mary Francis of the Five Wounds. The cause for her beatification and canonization was unofficially launched in 1926 and met with a groundswell of support, extending beyond Scotland to Europe and North (...) America as the working-classes embraced her as one of their own. Not only was she declared `Angel of the Factory', thereby extending the Church's influence to the factory floor, but her image was grafted to that of the nation as `Scotland's Little Flower'. She was to symbolize feminine piety, the working-class struggle and the epitome of Scottish Catholicism. (shrink)

Over a century ago European explorers in Eastern Turkestan (southern Xinjiang) made a remarkable discovery: the Sunni inhabitants of Khotan were engaged in elaborate veneration of the Shiʿi twelve Imams, whom they believed to be buried at various holy sites in the Khotan region. This paper investigates Khotan’s net work of holy sites and the narratives that were attached to them, from the sixteenth century to the present. While the political landscape of the present may sometimes make the Sunni-Shiʿi divide (...) appear natural, the case of Eastern Turkestan, which had its own, idiosyncratic approach to sectarian identity, reminds us that the maintenance of such a Sunni-Shiʿi consensus on sectarian designation was dependent on networks of knowledge reproduction that did not embrace the entirety of the Muslim world. Pre-Islamic sacred geographies, the power of locally networked holy sites, the phenomenon of textual appropriation, and a popular and eclectic manuscript tradition overwhelmed weak sectarian distinctions, bringing Muslim followers of the Hanafi legal tradition to pray at the purported tombs of Twelver Imams. (shrink)

Arthur C. Clarke once wrote that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguish able from magic. " The language of magic is evident in much of popular discourse about computers. A content analysis of Time magazine reporting on computers and related technologies over a ten-year period revealed that 36 percent of all these stories used explicitly magical or religious language. Together with a qualitative analysis of implic itly magical themes, the patterns in Time's reporting reveal how magic language was used as (...) one strategy to stabilize and close the technological frame of personal computers in the mid-1980s. (shrink)

In this paper, I am concerned with elucidating and expanding our attitudes toward our own death. As it is, our common attitudes toward our death are the following: we fear our premature death, and we dread our inevitable death. These attitudes are rational, but I want to argue that our attitudes toward death should be more complicated than this. A condition upon our value, our preciousness, as creatures is that we are vulnerable, and our vulnerability is, at bottom, a vulnerability (...) to death. A corollary of this is that we could not be loved, either by ourselves or by others, for one cannot love—be concerned for—a being invulnerable to death. As a consequence, death plays a deep and abiding role in our value systems. Our susceptibility to premature and inevitable death is a condition upon our being valuable creatures and, in turn, it is a condition upon our being loved. Given the high value that we place on being valuable creatures who deserve love, we should equally place a high value on the const.. (shrink)

Cet article met en lumière la réception du Talmud parmi les érudits parisiens chrétiens entre 1140, avec la rédaction du Adversus judaeorum de Pierre le Vénérable, et 1248, la condamnation officielle par Eudes de Châteauroux. Avec la création des universités au XIIe siècle, la curiosité intellectuelle et la soif de savoir dirigent les théologiens chrétiens vers des textes non plus uniquement bibliques, mais aussi rabbiniques. Simultanément, la présence de l’Église et son orthodoxie doctrinale se renforcent, avec un désir encore plus (...) fort d’encadrer ses fidèles. Le XIIIe siècle est l’époque d’une série de condamnations de thèses chrétiennes par l’Église pour prévenir la propagation d’erreurs dogmatiques. Avec Pierre le Vénérable, nous voyons pour la première fois un théologien chrétien s’attarder sur les textes talmudiques. Ce n’est véritablement qu’un siècle plus tard que le Talmud se fait connaître par les savants chrétiens, après que Nicolas Donin, juif converti au christianisme, informe Grégoire IX des erreurs blasphématoires à l’encontre de Dieu et du christianisme contenues dans ce livre. Une fois examiné, le Talmud est condamné 1240, puis solennellement en 1248 par l’autorité parisienne, soutenue par des enregistrements méticuleux, intitulés Extractiones de Talmut. (shrink)

Meditation. Sogyal Rinpoche. Rider, London 1994. 90 pp.. £6.99. Metta. Loving kindness in Buddhism. Khun Sujin Boriharnwanaket. Translated from the original Thai by Nina von Gorkom. Triple Gem Press, London 1995. 120 pp. £7.95.

Culturally inherited institutional norms structure much of human social life. Successfully replicating institutions train their current members to behave in the generally adaptive ways that served past members. Ancestor veneration is a well-known manifestation of this phenomenon whereby deference is conferred to prestigious past members who are used as cultural models. Such norms of respect may be maintained by punishment based on evidence from theory and laboratory experiments, but there is little observational evidence to show that punishment is commonly used. (...) To test for punishment as a mechanism that maintains these norms, we examine a norm of ancestor veneration in a natural field experiment at the Memorial Student Center at Texas A&M University. The MSC is a memorial to university war dead, and the expectation is that all who enter the building remove their hats out of respect. Observations reveal that hat removal is significantly more common at the MSC than at two control locations. Survey data indicate that most, but not all, subjects understand the norm to be veneration of the dead, and most expect others to follow the norm. Many report a strong negative emotional response when asked to imagine the norm being violated. Sixty-two percent report they would definitely or probably ask the noncompliant to uncover. Focal follow data show that punishment is relatively rare, however, with the majority of behatted subjects going unreproached as they pass through the building. Both survey and observational data indicate there is a motivated minority that enthusiastically enforces the norm. (shrink)

About Padmasambhava: Historical Narratives and Later Transformations of Guru Rinpoche, edited by Geoffrey Samuel and Jamyang Oliphant. Garuda Verlag, 2020. 299 pp. Pb CHF 39,80. ISBN-13: 9783906139364.

El presente trabajo tiene como intención aproximarnos a la historia de la Venerable Orden Tercera Servita de Sevilla. Esta institución religiosa de laicos tuvo un especial protagonismo en la ciudad durante los siglos XVIII, XIX y primeros años del siglo XX. El artículo comienza con un breve recorrido por los aspectos más conocidos de la Familia de Siervos de María. A continuación, se exponen los orígenes de la misma centrados en la primitiva Hermandad de Nuestra Señora de los Dolores (...) de San Marcos. Posteriormente, y como núcleo central del estudio, desarrollamos unas notas sobre su evolución histórica como Orden tercera así como un análisis de su organización interna y funcionamiento. (shrink)

This article first briefly examines the textual structure of the Vangisathera Samyutta of the Pali Samyutta-nikaya in conjunction with two other versions preserved in Chinese translation in Taisho vol. 2, nos. 99 and 100. Then it compares the main teachings contained in the three versions. These three versions of this collection on the subject of the venerable Vangisa represent three different early Buddhist schools within the Sthavira branch. This comparative study of these three different versions focuses on three major (...) topics: Arhants at the pravarana ceremony; sensual desire and the way to extinguish it; and the Buddha’s teachings to Vangisa. It reveals similarities and significant differences in structure and doctrinal content, thus advancing the historical/critical study of early Buddhist doctrine in this area. (shrink)

The practice of icon veneration is often either dismissed either as a superstitious ‘magical’ rite or relegated to the exclusive arena of theological metaphysics. Such reductive approaches discount...