Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchJolyon Baraka Thomas, "Faking Liberties: Religious Freedom in American-Occupied Japan" (U Chicago Press, 2019)
Episode 296
Jolyon Baraka Thomas’s Faking Liberties: Religious Freedom in American-Occupied Japan (University of Chicago Press, 2019) challenges the commonsensic…
6 years, 6 months ago
Geoffrey Barstow, "Food of Sinful Demons: Meat, Vegetarianism, and the Limits of Buddhism in Tibet" (Columbia UP, 2018)
Episode 58
Tibetan Buddhism teaches compassion toward all beings, a category that explicitly includes animals. Slaughtering animals is morally problematic at be…
6 years, 6 months ago
William M. Gorvine, "Envisioning A Tibetan Luminary: The Life of a Modern Bonpo Saint" (Oxford UP, 2018)
Episode 56
In his new book, Envisioning A Tibetan Luminary: The Life of a Modern Bonpo Saint (Oxford University Press, 2018), William M. Gorvine provides a mult…
6 years, 7 months ago
Levi McLaughlin, "Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution: The Rise of A Mimetic Nation in Modern Japan" (U Hawaii Press, 2018)
Episode 287
Being Japan’s largest and most influential new religious organization, Soka Gakkai (Society for the Creation of Value) and Soka Gakkai International …
6 years, 7 months ago
Berthe Jansen, "The Monastery Rules: Buddhist Monastic Organization in Pre-Modern Tibet" (U California Press, 2018)
Episode 55
The Monastery Rules: Buddhist Monastic Organization in Pre-Modern Tibet (University of California Press, 2018) discusses the position of the monaster…
6 years, 7 months ago
Max Oidtmann, "Forging the Golden Urn: The Qing Empire and the Politics of Reincarnation in Tibet" (Columbia UP, 2018)
Episode 286
In 1995, the People’s Republic of China resurrected the technology of the “Golden Urn,” a Qing-era tool which involves the identification of the rein…
6 years, 8 months ago
Daniel Veidlinger, "From Indra’s Net to Internet: Communication, Technology, and the Evolution of Buddhist Ideas" (U Hawaii Press, 2018)
Episode 54
In this episode of New Books in Buddhist Studies, I am joined by Daniel Veidlinger to discuss his exciting new book From Indra’s Net to Internet: Com…
6 years, 8 months ago
Julia Cassaniti, "Remembering the Present: Mindfulness in Buddhist Asia" (Cornell UP, 2018)
Episode 53
How do you understand mindfulness? Is your understanding limited by your own culture’s definition of what mindfulness is? These are some of the quest…
6 years, 8 months ago
Jessica Starling, "Guardians of the Buddha’s Home: Domestic Religion in Contemporary Jōdo Shinshū" (U Hawaii Press, 2019)
Episode 52
In her recent ethnography, Guardians of the Buddha’s Home: Domestic Religion in Contemporary Jōdo Shinshū (University of Hawaii Press, 2019), Prof. …
6 years, 8 months ago
Ashley Thompson, "Engendering the Buddhist State: Territory, Sovereignty and Sexual Difference in the Inventions of Angkor" (Routledge, 2016)
Episode 53
Thanks to the international tourism industry most people are familiar with the spectacular ruins of Angkor, the great Cambodian empire that lasted fr…
6 years, 9 months ago