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The Fundamentalism Project vol. 1.
An unparalleled portrait, Donald K. Swearer's Buddhist World of Southeast Asia has been a key source for all those interested in the Theravada homelands since the work's publication in 1995. Expanded and updated, the second edition offers this wide ranging account for readers at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Swearer shows Theravada Buddhism in Southeast Asia to be a dynamic, complex system of thought and practice embedded in the cultures, societies, and histories of Thailand, Myanmar (Burma), Laos, Cambodia, and Sri Lanka. The work focuses on three distinct yet interrelated aspects of this milieu. The first is the popular tradition of life models personified in myths and legends, rites of passage, festival celebrations, and ritual occasions. The second deals with Buddhism and the state, illustrating how King Asoka serves as the paradigmatic Buddhist monarch, discussing the relationship of cosmology and kingship, and detailing the rise of charismatic Buddhist political leaders in the postcolonial period. The third is the modern transformation of Buddhism: the changing roles of monks and laity, modern reform movements, the role of women, and Buddhism in the West.
The first full history of a great commercial and political center that rose in Asia over almost five centuries.
Drawing on primary sources in Pali, Burmese and Thai, practising monk Venerable Khammai Dhammasami guides the reader through the complex history of monastic education in two neighbouring countries with very different Buddhist societies: Burma and Thailand. This book provides a clear account of the ways in which royal leaders and monastic institutions worked to develop monastic education in the face of changing political and economic conditions, including colonialism and the political instability of the 19th and 20th centuries. It studies influences from both British colonists and Siamese/Thai reformers, and engages with primary material, including documents from Burmese monasteries, royal orders, royal chronicles, and official government records. As the first book to examine monastic education in Burma and Thailand, this is a welcome contribution to the social, monastic and religious history of Southeast Asia, and the growing field of Burmese Buddhist Studies.
This work is the outcome of painstaking research on the evolution of stupas in Burma, Pagan Period, 11th to 13th centuries a.d. Burma known as the land of pagodas is nowhere so rich in the number of pagodas as in Pagan. The stupendous vastness of the ruins reminiscent of the glory that was of Pagan in its heyday inspired this study. The evolution traced back to the beginning of the stupa structure in India, deals with the various architectural phases (duly illustrated) it passed through ending with the final stage in the Rhwedagum Pagoda in Rangoon (Burma). Apart from the material side of the study, there is the need of looking into the aesthetic and spiritual side of the evolution. That religious architecture is a barometer of the material prosperity and social outlook of the people, besides being the handmaid of the spiritual aspirations of the devotees, is amply discernible in this study. The value of the art survey in this work is further enhanced by the inclusion of over 138 photographs. Moreover, besides the magnificent Pagan art, it gives a comparative view of the religious architectual development in the Asian countries contemporaneous with the Pagan Period.
Chiang Mai (literally, “new city”) suffered badly in the 1997 Asian financial crisis as the Northern Thai real estate bubble collapsed along with the Thai baht, crushing dreams of a renaissance of Northern prosperity. Years later, the ruins of the excesses of the 1990s still stain the skyline. In Ghosts of the New City, Andrew Alan Johnson shows how the trauma of the crash, brought back vividly by the political crisis of 2006, haunts efforts to remake the city. For many Chiang Mai residents, new developments harbor the seeds of the crash, which manifest themselves in anxious stories of ghosts and criminals who conceal themselves behind the city’s progressive veneer. Hopes for rebirth and fears of decline have their roots in Thai conceptions of progress, which draw from Buddhist and animist ideas of power and sacrality. Cities, Johnson argues, were centers where the charismatic power of kings and animist spirits were grounded; these entities assured progress by imbuing the space with sacred power that would avert disaster. Johnson traces such magico-religious conceptions of potency and space from historical records through present-day popular religious practice and draws parallels between these and secular attempts at urban revitalization. Through a detailed ethnography of the contested ways in which academics, urban activists, spirit mediums, and architects seek to revitalize the flagging economy and infrastructure of Chiang Mai, Johnson finds that alongside the hope for progress there exists a discourse about urban ghosts, deadly construction sites, and the lurking anxiety of another possible crash, a discourse that calls into question history’s upward trajectory. In this way, Ghosts of the New City draws new connections between urban history and popular religion that have implications far beyond Southeast Asia.
The Venusberg of the title story is, of course, Bangkok and environs, its Tannhauser an ex-GI who discovers it’s best not to come back. As in Occidental Adam, Oriental Eve, Cadet’s principal theme is the meeting of two cultures, and in this and the other ten stories, his protagonists are seen at frightening, baffling, bizarre and occasionally extremely funny moments in those meetings. A former volunteer remembers the few minutes’ up-country violence that changed his life – an expatriate painter follows the regressive course of the ‘primrose path’ through Bangkok’s night-clubs – a dying tycoon sees heaven and hell in the familiar metropolitan setting – a resourceful country girl discovers a remarkable if chilling remedy for the poverty oppressing her – while down in Pataya, when the US Navy pays a visit, a no-less-resourceful city lady averts potential psycho-nuclear disaster…or so she tells us. John Cadet is well-qualified to write of East and Southeast Asia. He has made his home there, teaching and engaging in journalism, as well as researching Thai literature, since 1961. The shorter of his stories have appeared in newspapers and magazines throughout the region and beyond, mostly under the pen-name Charles Browne. The short stories, along with a number of his longer works, are now appearing on the Internet. His study of the Thai epic, The Ramakien, in multiple editions, was published world-wide by Kodansha International. “Cadet has something worthwhile to say. (his) characters – from lissome students to diplomatic mediocrities = embody human frailties which make them…real. Venusberg Revisited … is thoroughly recommended and deserves to be widely read.” (Bangkok Post Newspaper)
Sociopath. Killer. Deviant. Monster, devoid of morals, incapable of human emotion. The villain known as Spark has been called this and more, and as a super-powered aberrant has masterminded countless crimes to build his father's inhuman empire. Yet to professor Sean Archer, this fearsome creature is only Tobias Rutherford—antisocial graduate researcher, quiet underachiever, and a fascinating puzzle Sean is determined to solve. But one kiss leads to an entanglement that challenges everything Tobias knows about himself, aberrants, and his own capacity to love. When his father orders him to assassinate a senator, one misstep unravels a knot of political intrigue that places the fate of humans and aberrants alike in Tobias's hands. As danger mounts and bodies pile higher, will Tobias succumb to his dark nature and sacrifice Sean—or will he defy his father and rise from the ashes to become a hero in a world of villains?