Related Papers
A cross-pollination of identities: The meeting of Jews and Buddhism in America.
Benjamin Praff
"'I the Jew, I the Buddhist.' Multi Religious belonging as inner dialogue."
Mira Niculescu
Theorizing the JewBu: Converts, Secularizers, Integrators, and Hybridizers in American Buddhism and Jewish Mindfulness
Jay Michaelson
American Jews have been disproportionately present in the leadership and membership of American Buddhist communities. Surveying the work of Emily Sigalow, Mira Niculescu Weil, and others, this paper analyzes five modes of Buddhist-Jewish interaction. First, Jewish 'Converts' who leave behind Judaism to build Buddhist communities in America, bringing with them various aspects of secular Jewish culture and values. Second, Jewish 'Secularizers' who helped create secular mindfulness, particularly in healthcare contexts. Third, 'Integrators' who integrate Buddhist practices and philosophy into Jewish spirituality, creating what Niculescu Weil calls 'Jewish mindfulness' with varying degrees of acknowledgment of Buddhist influence, and often using Buddhist techniques and practices to attain Jewish spiritual goals. Fourth, 'Hybridizers' who explicitly blend Buddhism and Judaism in spiritual practice. And fifth, 'Responders' who reject Buddhism but discover, or create, 'native' forms of Jewish meditation that nonetheless owe a great deal to Buddhist techniques and values. Note: A revised and expanded version of this paper was published in the Oxford Handbook of American Buddhism (2024). Please cite to that version in publications.
Critical Review for Buddhist Studies 35
(Published Version) The Lotus Sutra's One Vehicle and Rissho Kosei-kai's Understanding of Interfaith Relations: The Ambivalence of Religious Inclusivism and Prospects for Embracing Religious Pluralism for the 21st Century
2024 •
Dominick Scarangello
This paper explores the Lotus Sutra-based understanding of the diversity of religions that underpins the Japanese Buddhist group Rissho Kosei-kai's approach to interfaith cooperation and dialogue. I examine how Rissho Kosei-kai creatively reinterpreted prewar Nichirenism's stance toward the diversity of religions to support a positively affirmative inclusivist embrace of other religions and enter dialogue with them. However, I determine that those innovations have an ambiguous contemporary legacy, as aspects of Rissho Kosei-kai's inclusivist notion of the oneness of religions cannot transcend reductive inclusivism and provide a coherent account of religious pluralism. I conclude by reflecting on the potential for establishing a practical framework for understanding religious pluralism for Rissho Kosei-kai and consider the prospects for embracing a thoroughgoing Lotus pluralism from the standpoint of the Lotus Sutra tradition.
© Copyrighted Material © Copyrighted Material 'Find your Inner God and Breathe': Buddhism, Pop Culture, and Contemporary Metamorphoses in American Judaism
Mira Niculescu
Review and Expositor
Review and Expositor 0(0) 1 -8 The encounter between Western and Eastern religions and cultures
2013 •
Nicholas Wood
This article reflects on the encounter between so-called Western and Eastern traditions, mainly during the modern period. It draws attention to the problematic nature of this encounter during a period of Western colonialism, and the impact of post-colonial criticism and perspectives. It examines the significance of the missionary movement, the development of comparative religion, and the recent emergence of dialogue as a more appropriate means of encounter between various traditions. It concludes with a discussion on the nature of plurality and pluralism, and argues that the church needs to develop a more adequate theology of religions that reflects present realities whilst remaining faithful to its historic witness.
Religion in Los Angeles: Religious Activism, Innovation, and Diversity in the Global City
"Aum Shalom: Jews, gurus, and religious hybridity in the City of Angels"
2021 •
Amanda J. Lucia
This chapter investigates how Los Angeles has provided an accepting home for new religious hybridities: blended articulations of sameness and difference, tradition and innovation, fixity and fluidity. In particular, this chapter argues that American Jews have been a vanguard of the spiritual hybridization process in Los Angeles throughout history and today they are instrumental in spearheading new forms of spiritual interaction by blending together East and West. Our research reveals how the Jewish-Hindus of Los Angeles are leaders in fields of Hindu practices, while often retaining their affiliation with a Jewish ethnic identity. This article investigates the reason why American Jews continue to serve as liaisons between eastern and western religions in the United States, whether we examine the 1960s counterculture or today’s transformational yoga festivals.
Critical Review for Buddhist Studies
The Lotus Sutra Sutra's One Vehicle and Rissho Kosei-kai's Understanding of Interfaith Relations: The Ambivalence of Religious Inclusivism and Prospects for Embracing Religious Pluralism for the 21st Century
2024 •
Dominick Scarangello
This paper explores the Lotus Sutra-based understanding of the diversity of religions that underpins the Japanese Buddhist group Rissho Kosei-kai's approach to interfaith cooperation and dialogue. I examine how Rissho Kosei-kai creatively reinterpreted prewar Nichirenism's stance toward the diversity of religions to support a positively affirmative inclusivist embrace of other religions and enter dialogue with them. However, I determine that those innovations have an ambiguous contemporary legacy, as aspects of Rissho Kosei-kai's inclusivist notion of the oneness of religions cannot transcend reductive inclusivism and provide a coherent account of religious pluralism. I conclude by reflecting on the potential for establishing a practical framework for understanding religious pluralism for Rissho Kosei-kai and consider the prospects for embracing a thoroughgoing Lotus pluralism from the standpoint of the Lotus Sutra tradition.
Journal of Religious and Cultural Theory
The Decontextualization of Asian Religious Practices in the Context of Globalization
2012 •
Brooke Schedneck
Global religious practices present a challenge and an opportunity to religious communities and practitioners. This term, global religious practices, I define as practices such as Buddhist meditation and Hindu yoga, that can be enacted and adapted in a variety of contexts and disembedded from their traditional religious discourses, settings, and communities. Paying attention to specific contexts in which religious practices are performed and the historical trajectories that created possibilities of global movement offers a nuanced understanding of how religious traditions connect, attach, and intersect with other modern religious and secular discourses. Global religious practices illustrate that religions do not travel as whole entities but partial elements that resonate with different cultures and are appropriated over time. In this article I focus specifically on Asian religions as these are especially disseminated in piecemeal, modernized versions that are often mistaken to be representative of the entire tradition. I discuss in particular three related areas yoga and meditation have entered, which have aided in the adaptation and globalization process: science, psychology, and health and well-being movements. I do not inquire into how ‘authentic’ or consistent these practices and innovations are but rather demonstrate the dynamic nature of religion within globalization, the limits and opportunities, and the complex and contingent features of this process. First I describe the contexts, which have led to the flourishing of Asian global religious practices including cultural flows, discourses of Orientalism, and the modern fascination with the self. In the second part of this paper I illustrate the processes and strategies through which Asian global religious practices are created and how these are recontextualized in new settings.
Modern Judaism
Current Jewish Spiritualities in Israel: A New Age (2012)
2012 •
Marianna Ruah-Midbar Shapiro
