Browsing by Subject "Zen Buddhism -- United States"
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- ItemAmericanized Buddhism and the Rise of the Individual-Experiential Religious Consciousness(2018) Kaplow, Benjamin J.; Gould, Mark; Herrala, MarkDrawing upon fieldwork conducted at two Buddhist centers in the Philadelphia area, I characterize the nature of religious commitment within Americanized Buddhism as part of a distinctly American transformation in religious thought, rather than a superficial modification of Asian Buddhist practice. This form of the religious commitment, the Individual-Experiential Religious Consciousness, is defined by the attributes of individualism, the primacy of experiential practice, and the universalization of religious validity, ritual, and access to religious truth. I claim that the Individual-Experiential Religious Consciousness is not limited to Buddhism, but is found in a variety of religious groups arising from the counterculture of the 1960s-70s. Utilizing Mark Gould’s theory of motivated religious disorder (Gould 2014), I analytically characterize the requisite causal conditions for the genesis of the Individual-Experiential Religious Consciousness, and aim to trace its institutionalization across religious movements. Drawing on a case study of Erhard Seminars Training, I argue that the Human Potential Movement and imported Zen of the 1960s and 70s were the first religious organizations to articulate this form of religiosity. Utilizing resource mobilization theory, I aim to articulate why the Individual-Experiential Religious Consciousness was first institutionalized in these movements. Lastly, by examining the organizational and religious composition of those early individual-experiential movements, I attempt to explain why they were superseded by the contemporary form of Americanized Buddhism.
- ItemMaria-Kannon Zen Center: Conflation of Two Icons as the Emblematic Statement of Religious Perennialism(2009) Huh, JenniferThere have been many historical attempts to conflate two distinct, yet similar icons from two different religious traditions, Buddhism and Christianity: Guan Yin and Virgin Mary. Despite their fundamental differences in doctrinal, cosmological, and theological features, many people have found that there is a deep affinity between Guan Yin and Virgin Mary in terms of their spiritual significance and iconographical features; both of them have been conceived as a distinctively feminine divine figure who assumes a mother-like representation and whose presence as a compassionate and accessible patroness looms large in peoples’ spiritual lives. The figurine of Maria-Kannon, which is a representation of Virgin Mary in guise of Guan Yin, is one example that attests to the perceived affinity between the two. Particularly, this figurine has been reexamined and reinvigorated in a modern context; the image of Maria-Kannon was adopted as a powerful imagery for interfaith dialogue at the Maria Kannon Zen Center (from now on, abbreviated as MKZC), located in Dallas, Texas. Founded in 1995 by Ruben Habito, who was a former Jesuit priest and a currently ordained Buddhist practitioner, the MKZC serves as a place to offer Zen meditative practices to the practitioners from different religious traditions.