Princeton readings in religions. 

xviii, 564 pages ; 24 cm.; Part I.Ethical Practices --Social Values --Selected Anecdotes to Illustrate Ten Maxims --Kaibara Ekken's Precepts on the Family --The Shingaku of Nakazawa Doni --Clerical Precepts --Eisai's Promotion of Zen for the Protection of the Country --Shingon's Jiun Sonja and His "Vinaya of the True Dharma" Movement --A Refutation of Clerical Marriage --Lay Precepts --Eison and the Shingon Vinaya Sect --Kokan Shiren's Zen Precept Procedures --Part II.Ritual Practices --Gods --Records of the Customs and Land of Izumo --Miraculous Tales of the Hasedera Kannon --Japanese Puppetry : From Ritual Performance to Stage Entertainment --The Shinto Wedding Ceremony : A Modern Norito --Spirits --Tama Belief and Practice in Ancient Japan --Japan's First Shingon Ceremony --Shingon Services for the Dead --Genshin's Deathbed Nembutsu Ritual in Pure Land Buddhism --Women and Japanese Buddhism : Tales of Birth in the Pure Land --Epic and Religious Propaganda from the Ippen School of Pure Land Buddhism --Buddhism and Abortion : "The Way to Memorialize One's Mizuko" --Rituals of Realization --The Contemplation of Suchness --The Purification Formula of the Nakatomi --Dogen's Lancet of Seated Meditation --Chido's Dreams of Buddhism --A Japanese Shugendo Apocryphal Text --Faith --On Attaining the Settled Mind : The Condition of the Nembutsu Practitioner --Plain Words on the Pure Land Way --Shinran's Faith as Immediate Fulfillment in Pure Land Buddhism --Part III.Institutional Practices --Court and Emperor --The Confucian Monarchy of Nara Japan --The Founding of the Monastery Gangoji and a List of Its Treasures --Hagiography and History : The Image of Prince Shotoku --Nationalistic Shinto : A Child's Guide to Yasukuni Shrine --Sectarian Founders, Wizards, and Heroes --En the Ascetic --The Founding of Mount Koya and Kukai's Eternal Meditation --Legends, Miracles, and Faith in Kobo Daishi and the Shikoku Pilgrimage --A Personal Account of the Life of the Venerable Genku --Priest Nisshin's Ordeals --Makuya : Prayer, Receiving the Holy Spirit, and Bible Study --Orthopraxis and Orthodoxy --Muju Ichien's Shinto-Buddhist Syncretism --Contested Orthodoxies in Five Mountains Zen Buddhism --Motoori Norinaga on the Two Shrines at Ise --Shinto in the History of Japanese Religion : An Essay by Kuroda Toshio --Sasaki Shoten : Toward a Postmodern Shinshu Theology --Contemporary Zen Buddhist Tracts for the Laity : Grassroots Buddhism in Japan --Special Places --Keizan's Dream History --Tokeiji : Kamakura's "Divorce Temple" in Edo Popular Verse --Appendix :Chinese Romanization Conversion Tables.; This anthology reflects a range of Japanese religions in their complex, sometimes conflicting, diversity. In the tradition of the Princeton Readings in Religions series, the collection presents documents (legends and miracle tales, hagiographies, ritual prayers and ceremonies, sermons, reform treatises, doctrinal tracts, historical and ethnographic writings), most of which have been translated for the first time here, that serve to illuminate the mosaic of Japanese religions in practice. George Tanabe provides a lucid introduction to the "patterned confusion" of Japan's religious practices. He has ordered the anthology's forty-five readings under the categories of "Ethical Practices," "Ritual Practices," and "Institutional Practices," moving beyond the traditional classifications of chronology, religious traditions (Shinto, Confucianism, Buddhism, etc.), and sects, and illuminating the actual orientation of people who engage in religious practices. Within the anthology's three broad categories, subdivisions address the topics of social values, clerical and lay precepts, gods, spirits, rituals of realization, faith, court and emperor, sectarian founders, wizards, and heroes, orthopraxis and orthodoxy, and special places. Dating from the eighth through the twentieth centuries, the documents are revealed to be open to various and evolving interpretations, their meanings dependent not only on how they are placed in context but also on how individual researchers read them. Each text is preceded by an introductory explanation of the text's essence, written by its translator. Instructors and students will find these explications useful starting points for their encounters with the varied worlds of practice within which the texts interact with readers and changing contexts. Religions of Japan in Practice is a compendium of relationships between great minds and ordinary people, abstruse theories and mundane acts, natural and supernatural powers, altruism and self-interest, disappointment and hope, quiescence and war. It is an indispensable sourcebook for scholars, students, and general readers seeking engagement with the fertile "ordered disorder" of religious practice in Japan.; 

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