ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 32, 2025
Positive and Problematic Aspects of Modernistic Engaged Buddhism in Light of the History of Buddhist Adaptation to Cultures
John Makransky
Boston College
This article briefly reviews the history of Buddhist adaptation to cultures, focusing on two key goals that Buddhist traditions have maintained over that history: the primary goal of supramundane nirvāṇa and enlightenment and the secondary goal of applying Buddhist powers of knowledge and practice to meet mundane needs of people and societies. It discusses two kinds of constructive reflection Buddhists have employed in support of those two goals in pre-modern and modern times. In light of that history, it then offers its own critical-constructive reflections, first on positive contributions of modernistic engaged Buddhism, then on a problematic tendency in it to succumb to modern assumptions (about ultimate human values and primary causes and kinds of suffering) in ways that reduce its ability to offer important alternatives to them. Regarding the latter, it notes that the priority of the primary and secondary Buddhist goals have become unconsciously reversed in some quarters of modern engaged Buddhism, how this reversal rests on modern assumptions that contradict core Buddhist teachings, behavioral signs of this reversal, and deleterious effects that follow from it.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 32, 2025
Esoteric Buddhism in China: Engaging Japanese and Tibetan Traditions, 1912–1949. By Wei Wu. New York: Columbia University Press, 2024, xiv + 312 pages, ISBN 9780231200691 (paperback), $35.00; ISBN 9780231200684 (hardcover); ISBN 9780231553742 (e-book).
Reviewed by Eben Yonnetti
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 29, 2022
Ethos of the Great Perfection: Continual Mindfulness According to Patrul’s Foundational Manual
Marc-Henri Deroche
Kyoto University
This article investigates the role of mindfulness in the so-called foundational practices exposed in Dza Patrul Orgyan Jigme Chökyi Wangpo’s (1808–1887) famous manual, Words of My Perfect Teacher, which belongs to the Dzogchen lineage of the Heart Essence of the Vast Expanse within the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. It argues that, according to these spiritual instructions, the continual exercise of mindfulness, meta-awareness, and carefulness forms the “ethos of the Great Perfection”—the constant ethical base and the consistent way of life that supports the path of Dzogchen. Sources of Words of My Perfect Teacher (including Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra) and selected passages are analyzed in order to elucidate Patrul’s moral philosophy of mindful awareness and self-examination. The mnemonic, reflective, and attentional facets of the cultivation of mindfulness all work to internalize the ethical principles that govern the conduct of life, shaping new habits, exercising free will, and forming moral agency. They define the very ethos that articulates the value system and the re-orientation of attention. Such deliberate moment-by-moment mindfulness paves the way for discovering “instantaneous awareness,” the distinctive feature of Dzogchen, and for resting in its uninterrupted flow, from within to respond compassionately to other individuals and various circumstances.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 28, 2021
Buddhist Ethics as Moral Phenomenology: A Defense and Development of the Theory
Colin Simonds
Queen’s University at Kingston
This article defends and develops the categorization of Buddhist ethics as moral phenomenology. It first examines the use of the term in Western philosophical settings and compares it to how the term is employed in Buddhist settings. After concluding that Western ethical comportment and Buddhist moral phenomenology are commensurate terms, it explores how moral phenomenology has been understood in Buddhist contexts and considers the evidence scholars have used to make this interpretation. The article then looks to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition for further evidence of a moral phenomenological approach to Buddhist ethics and analyzes further proof of this interpretation. Finally, issues that emerge from a moral phenomenological approach to ethics are addressed from a Tibetan Buddhist perspective to strengthen this interpretation and offer moral phenomenology as a viable alternative ethical system.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 28, 2021
Living with the Mountain: Mountain Propitiation Rituals in the Making of Human-Environmental Ethics in Sikkim
Kalzang Dorjee Bhutia
University of California Los Angeles
In 2019, a debate erupted in the eastern Himalayan Indian state of Sikkim over whether the Indian Government should allow climbers to attempt to summit Mount Kanchenjunga, the world’s third highest mountain, located on the western border of Sikkim and Nepal. For local communities in Sikkim, Kanchendzonga, as the mountain is known, is seen as the protector deity of the land and its human and nonhuman inhabitants. Summiting him is considered deeply disrespectful. Ritual and textual traditions in contemporary west Sikkim provide insight into how local Buddhists create and reaffirm their relationship with Kanchendzonga and provide context for understanding the 2019 debates. These traditions outline appropriate ethical behavior and function pedagogically to demonstrate how the mountain and humans have historically engaged in forms of reciprocal care, healing, and protection, and how they can continue to do so, thereby ensuring a generative future for all of Sikkim’s transdimensional residents.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 27, 2020
Chinese Esoteric Buddhism: Amoghavajra, the Ruling Elite, and the Emergence of a Tradition. By Geoffrey C. Goble. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019, 336 pp., ISBN 978-0-231-19408-2 (Hardcover), $70.00.
Reviewed by Joseph P. Elacqua
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 25, 2018
Chinese and Tibetan Esoteric Buddhism. Edited by Yael Bentor and Meir Shahar. Leiden: Brill, 2017, xxi + 450 pp., ISBN 978-90-04-34050-3 (hardback), $130.00.
Reviewed by Joseph P. Elacqua
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 24, 2017
Gods of Medieval Japan, Volume 1: The Fluid Pantheon by Bernard Faure. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2015, xii + 496 pages, ISBN 978-0-8248-3933-8 (hardback), $55.00.
Gods of Medieval Japan, Volume 2: Protectors and Predators by Bernard Faure. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2015, x + 512 pages, ISBN 978-0-8248-3931-4 (hardback), $55.00.
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Reviewed by Joseph P. Elacqua
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 23, 2016
Spells, Images, and Maṇḍalas: Tracing the Evolution of Esoteric Buddhist Rituals. By Koichi Shinohara. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014, xxii + 324 pages, ISBN 978-0-231-16614-0 (hardback), $55.00.
Reviewed by Joseph P. Elacqua
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 23, 2016
Reason and Experience in Tibetan Buddhism: Mabja Jangchub Tsöndrü and the Traditions of the Middle Way. By Thomas Doctor. Routledge Critical Series in Buddhism. New York: Routledge, 2014, 156 pages, ISBN 9780415722469 (hardback), $145.
Reviewed by Adam C. Krug
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 22, 2015
Rimé Revisited: Shabkar’s Response to Religious Difference
Rachel H. Pang
Davidson College
This article analyzes Shabkar Tsokdruk Rangdrol’s (1781–1851) Tibetan Buddhist response to interreligious and intersectarian difference. While there exist numerous studies in Buddhist ethics that address the Buddhist perspective on contemporary issues such as abortion, euthanasia, and terrorism, there has been considerably less attention paid to Buddhist responses towards religious difference. Moreover, the majority of the research on this topic has been conducted within the context of Buddhist-Christian dialogue. This article examines Shabkar’s non-sectarian ideas on their own terms, within the context of Buddhist thought. I demonstrate the strong visionary, apocalyptic, theological, and soteriological dimensions of Shabkar’s rimé, or “unbiased,” approach to religious diversity. The two main applications of these findings are: (1) they broaden the current academic understanding of rimé from being a sociological phenomenon to a theological one grounded in social and historical particularities; (2) they draw attention to the non-philosophical aspects of Buddhist ethics.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 22, 2015
Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism: History, Semiology, and Transgression in Indian Traditions By Christian Wedemeyer. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013, xx + 313 pages, ISBN 978-0-231-16240-1 (hardback), $50.00.
Reviewed by Joseph P. Elacqua
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 22, 2015
The Yogin & the Madman: Reading the Biographical Corpus of Tibet’s Great Saint Milarepa. By Andrew Quintman. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014, 336 pages, ISBN 978-0-231-16415-3 (paperback), $35.00 / £24.00; ISBN 978-0-231-16414-6 (cloth), $105.00 / £72.50.
Reviewed by Massimo Rondolino
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 21, 2014
Introduction to Tantra: The Transformation of Desire. By Lama Yeshe. Compiled and edited by Jonathan Landaw. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2014, ISBN 978-61429-155-8 (paper-back), $16.95.
Reviewed by Alyson Prude
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 20, 2013
Theos Bernard, the White Lama: Tibet, Yoga, and American Religious Life. Paul G. Hackett. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012, xxii + 494 pages, ISBN 978-0-231-15886-2 (cloth), $32.95.
Reviewed by David M. DiValerio
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 20, 2013
Buddha’s Maritime Nature: A Case Study in Shambhala Buddhist Environmentalism
Barbra Clayton
Mount Allison University
This paper describes the Buddhist environmental ethic of Windhorse Farm, a Shambhala Buddhist community in Atlantic Canada supported by ecosystem-based sustainable forestry and organic farming. The values, beliefs and motives for this project are described and contextualized within the Shambhala Buddhist tradition, and these results are discussed within the context of the debate in scholarly discussions of environmental Buddhism over whether interdependence or virtues such as compassion and mindfulness are more significant for a Buddhist environmental ethic. The results of this study suggest that both areteic features and the metaphysical position of interdependence play key roles in the Shambhala approach to environmentalism. Results also suggest that the Shambhala environmental ethic defies the theoretical demand for a fact/value distinction, and that this case study may indicate why Buddhist traditions tend to lack systematic treatments of ethics.
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Volume 20, 2013
Mahāyāna Ethics and American Buddhism: Subtle Solutions or Creative Perversions?
Charles S. Prebish
Pennsylvania State University & Utah State University (Emeritus)
“Mahāyāna Ethics and American Buddhism: Subtle Solutions or Creative Perversions?” initially explores the notion of two distinctly different forms of upāya, first presented by Damien Keown in his 1992 volume The Nature of Buddhist Ethics, in which one form of skill-in-means is available only to bodhisattvas prior to stage seven of the bodhisattva’s path and requires adherence to all proper ethical guidelines, while the second form of upāya is applicable to bodhisattvas at stage seven and beyond, and allows them to ignore any and all ethical guidelines in their attempts to alleviate suffering. This distinctly Mahāyāna interpretation of upāya is used to examine the presumably scandalous behavior of Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche and Richard Baker, Rōshi, two of the most popular and controversial figures in American Buddhism. The article concludes that we can at least infer that applied in the proper fashion, by accomplished teachers, the activities allowed by upāya do present possibly subtle explanations of seemingly inappropriate behaviors. On the other hand, if abused by less realized beings, we must recognize these acts as merely creative perversions of a noble ethical heritage.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 20, 2013
The Taming of the Demons: Violence and Liberation in Tibetan Buddhism. By Jacob P. Dalton. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011, x + 311 pages, ISBN 978-0-300-18796-0 (paper), $27.50; ISBN 978-0-300-15392-7 (cloth), $40.00.
Reviewed by Sarah F. Haynes
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 19, 2012
Tibetan Ritual. Edited by José Ignacio Cabezón. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, 320 pages, ISBN 978-0-19-539282-1 (cloth), $29.95.
Reviewed by Holly Gayley
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 18, 2011
Buddhism Beyond the Monastery: Tantric Practices and their Performers in Tibet and the Himalayas. Edited by Sarah Jacoby and Antonio Terrone. Leiden: Brill, 2009, 202 pages, ISBN 978-90-04-17600-3 (cloth), $136.00.
Reviewed by Geoffrey Barstow
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 16, 2009
Buddhist and Tantric Perspectives on Causality and Society
Chris Kang
University of Queensland
This paper examines the articulation of causality from Buddhist and Indian Tantric perspectives, offering a potentially fresh look at this topic using epistemologies and insights outside the dominant Western paradigm. Reclaiming non-Western voices that analyze and intuit causality rooted in multidimensional modes of knowing reveals new possibilities about the nature of reality and enables integral transformative actions for emancipating human suffering. In particular, I examine the genealogy of early Buddhist, Buddhist Tantric, Sāṃkhya, and Hindu Tantric perspectives, with reference to relevant internal philosophical debates, to explicate alternative viewpoints on causality and their implications for society.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 14, 2007
Compassionate Violence? On the Ethical Implications of Tantric Buddhist Ritual
David B. Gray
Santa Clara University
Buddhism is often presented as a non-violent religion that highlights the virtue of universal compassion. However, it does not unequivocally reject the use of violence, and leaves open the possibility that violence may be committed under special circumstances by spiritually realized beings. This paper examines several apologetic defenses for the presence of violent imagery and rituals in tantric Buddhist literature. It will demonstrate that several Buddhist commentators, in advancing the notion of “compassionate violence,” also advanced an ethical double standard insofar as they defended these violent actions as justifiable when performed by Buddhists, but condemned them when performed by non-Buddhists.
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ISSN:1076-9005
Volume 4 1997
Passionate Enlightenment: Women in Tantric Buddhism. By Miranda Shaw. Princeton University Press, 1994, xv, 291 pages, ISBN 0-691-01090-0, $14.95 (paperback).
Reviewed by Roy W. Perrett
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 6, 1999
Maṇḍala and Landscape. Edited By Alexander W. Macdonald. Delhi: D.K. Printworld / South Asia Books, 1997, ISBN: 8124600600, US $140.00.
Reviewed by Cathy Cantwell
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 5 1998
Kar gling zhi khro: A Tantric Buddhist Concept. By Henk Blezer. Leiden: CNWS Publications, Vol. 56, 1997, viii + 249 pages, ISBN 90-73782-85-6.
Reviewed by Robert Mayer
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 5 1998
Consecration of Images and Stūpas in Indo-Tibetan Tantric Buddhism. By Yael Bentor. Brill’s Indological Library Vol. 11. Edited By Johannes Bronkhorst. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996, xxii + 415 pages, ISBN 90-04-10541-7.
Reviewed by Gareth Sparham
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An online journal of Buddhist scholarship
