This thesis examines Buddhist rituals conducted (mainly) by monks for the wellbeing of deceased lay-persons in contemporary Fujian province in Southeast China. Research was conducted within the Bristol project on 'Buddhist Death Rituals in Southeast Asia and China' and sponsored by the AHRC. Based on fieldwork conducted from March-December 2008 in the three urban areas of Xiamen and Quanzhou in Southern Fujian, and the capital Fuzhou in Northern Fujian, and on written materials, such as Buddhist scriptures, monastic public announcements and ritual manuals, I describe and analyse a variety of post-burial rites. They range from small scale rites of offering to nourish and help the deceased during the liminal period of forty-nine days after death and rebirth, to one-to-three day funeral chaodu 'rites of ferrying across' sending off the departed to a better rebirth, ideally held before the end of the forty-nine days liminal period, to the large-scale public rituals of universal liberation held during the so-called 'Ghost Month' and the crown of Buddhist rituals the shuilu fahui or 'Grand Dharma Assembly of Liberation of all Land and Water Beings' .. The research presented here is more like a snapshot or survey of contemporary Buddhist rituals and practices for the dead in Southeast China than an in depth anthropological analysis; my hope is, through this overview, to provide inspiration and basic material for future research .

This dissertation is a study in comparative hagiology. In particular, it focuses on a comparative analysis of the early sources on the medieval Christian St. Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) and the Tibetan Buddhist Mi la ras pa (circa 1052-1135), up to and including the so called 'standard versions' of their life stories written by Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (1221-1274) and gTsang smyon Heruka (1452-1507) respectively. The textual and contextual investigation of these sources moves from the underlying assumption that medieval Christian life writings of saints and Tibetan Buddhist mam thar(s) - as narratives of the complete liberation of an enlightened master - are both forms of hagiographic writing. On the one hand, therefore, this dissertation attempts to verify the legitimacy of this position - by testing the taxonomical classification of Tibetan mam thar(s) as hagiography through a systematic analysis of the structure, content and historical context of the early sources on Mi la ras pa compared and contrasted with those on St. Francis (here taken as a perfect case study for an investigation into the underlying dynamics of the hagiographical process). On the other hand, the dissertation attempts to verify the possibility of studying hagiographic sources as a universal human religious phenomenon - particularly in light of the possibility of confirming the applicability of hagiography as a valid and valuable analytical category also outside of its original Christian context.

This PhD dissertation is a cognitive anthropological investigation of the folk psychology of the self in the context of Mongolian Buddhist beliefs of personal continuity after death. In most general terms, folk psychology will be the central topic in relation to which other concepts will be discussed. The concepts of self and personal identity within folk psychology comprise the more specific topic to be focused on. Then, all that discussion will be applied to particular cultural phenomena - religious concepts and afterlife beliefs. And this latter discussion will be embedded in the discussion about cultural transmission of religious concepts. For the most part, cultural transmission will be approached from a perspective of cultural epidemiology. Finally, at the most particular level, these cultural phenomena will be empirically investigated in the Mongolian Buddhist context. This dissertation will be interested in the possibility of a universal folk psychology of the self and its constraining effect in the process of cultural transmission. Thus, my aim will be to characterise the elements of the folk psychology of the self and how it might play a causal role in the folk conception of personal continuity after death or afterlife beliefs. This approach will be contrasted with a cognitive account that posits innate basis afterlife beliefs. Furthermore, it is important to empirically demonstrate that such a connection exists. Therefore, the cultural context under investigation is one that explicitly teaches that the self lacks, for instance, such properties as unchangeable locus of experience. Buddhist contexts stand as a potential challenge here. I have conducted a one year fieldwork in Mongolia and did experimental studies with local Buddhists in order to test my hypothesis about the folk psychology of self.

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Socially Engaged Buddhism (SEB) in the UK forms part of a diverse and complex Buddhist picture. Concerned with developing Buddhist solutions to social, political and ecological problems it had its genesis in the movements against nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War in the 1960s. It holds with the notion of engagement in caring and service, in social and environmental protest and analysis, in non-violence as a creative way of overcoming conflicts, and in `right livelihood' and other initiatives which prefigure a society of the future. Engaged Buddhism has transformed the soteriological emphasis of more traditional forms of Buddhist thought to programs of social, political, and economic transformation. The spiritual emphasis on Buddhist practices such as meditation continues to be at the heart of many forms of engaged Buddhism, but, to apply a term Evelyn Underhill coined many years ago in her study of mysticism, it is a "practical spirituality, " one in which the transformation of society takes equal precedence with the transformation of the individual. Both textual and anthropological studies of Buddhism, have often presented it as stereotypically 'other-worldly' (Weber 1958/62), lacking in social engagement. This study adopts an inductive investigation that will test empirically the `this-worldly', `other-worldly' dichotomy, through the relationship of Buddhists to their social settings. This implies a continuity versus discontinuity debate at stake in this discussion, suggesting the possibility of a continuous (traditional) view, which asserts `all Buddhism is engaged' (Nhat Hanh 1987), or that SEB is in some sense `a new phenomenon' (Queen, 2000: 1) and thereby is a break with tradition. The lack of empirical scholarly research, however,h as left only the voices of academics talking to each other within the framework of the debate. This study sets out to remedy that situation, by presenting an empirically based extensive case study analysis and survey of five New Buddhist organisations, who are socially engaged in a variety of ways. This thesis aims to locate Socially Engaged Buddhism in the UK and place it within an emerging `Western Buddhism' examining its adaptation and development and discerning the significance and impact of SEB on the British Buddhist landscape in order to characterise the phenomenon and its relationships to the wider British Buddhist world, and academic discourse

This thesis examines the life, teachings and posthumous prosecution of the Burmese nationalist monk Shin Ukkaṭṭha (1897-1978), who in 1981 was posthumously found guilty of misinterpretation of the Buddha's teachings. His case is the most famous of seventeen Vinicchaya trials conducted by the State Saṅghamahānāyaka Committee (SSC) established under Ne Win. Chapter One provides context, the self-regulation of the Sangha in the Pali canon, the switch to regulation by the king, and the history of vinicchaya ‘judgements.’ The transition in the remit of vinicchaya (wi-neik-sa-ya in Burmese) from monastic rules to beliefs reflects the crisis in Burmese Buddhism in the British colonial period. Chapter Two looks at Shin Ukkaṭṭha’s life. From a family impoverished after his parents’ arrest for funding a rebellion led by the grandparents of Aung San, as a novice monk Shin Ukkaṭṭha excelled in poetry and writing. After he had pursued his education to the highest level in Burma, he spent seven years in India, debating with nationalists, members of different religions, theosophists, exuntouchables and global Buddhists. Shin Ukkaṭṭha’s response to colonialism was both practical and philosophical. He set up a school for the poor on his return from India, which, while teaching Buddhism and secular curricula, also offered a base for rebels and left wing groups. Writing over 30 books, he questioned the authenticity of canonical texts and reinterpreted rebirth on the basis of Darwin, producing his famous ‘Die Human Born Human’ theory. These views were shared by contemporary thinkers in India, including Evans-Wentz and Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup, co-authors of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, but were unacceptable to the conservative Sangha hierarchy in Burma. Expressing his views freely under the British, he was tried for them by the SSC. Chapter Three explores this and the other 16 cases tried by the SSC.

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In recent decades, Buddhist scholars have begun serious exploration into the theoretical dimensions of Buddhist ethics. However, due to the diversity of moral proclamations found in traditional texts and commentaries, it has been difficult to formulate a widely acceptable theory of Buddhist ethics. Working with the textual analyses of the Buddhist Pāli Canon and recent scholars of Buddhism, I present arguments for viewing early Buddhist ethics as broadly Kantian (deontological) in nature. The methodology follows that of previous authors in Buddhist ethics and in Comparative Religious Ethics with a focus on philosophical ethics and historical and textual studies. In constructing a framework of Buddhist ethics, this work draws from the ancient sources, primarily the Buddhist Pāli Canon, as well as the philological and historical work of previous Buddhist commentators and scholars. A similar construction of the ethics of Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804) is based primarily on the recent writings on both the philosophy and life of Kant, and for source material critical English editions of Kant's primary works. The uniqueness of this work is found in the discussion of Buddhist ethics in the context of its theories of human nature and cosmology and secondarily in its revaluation of Kantian thought as a legitimate interlocutor for scholars of Buddhist ethics. This Kantian perspective, when combined with the insights gained from virtue ethics and consequentialist perspectives, provides a fuller understanding of Buddhist ethics. The findings suggest that Buddhist ethics may claim not only many of the same strengths, but also suffer the same weaknesses, as Kantian deontological moral theory.

The aim of this thesis is to explore how the everyday relational contexts of religious practitioners affect their religious practice and the development of their own distinctive religious habitus. The thesis explores the case of Buddhist volunteers at a Chinese Buddhist organisation in Taiwan called Dharma Drum Mountain to examine how volunteers develop a Chinese Buddhist moral habitus and engage in Chinese Buddhist moral practices in the relational dimensions of their everyday lives, including family, friends, colleagues and other volunteers. I drew upon the sociological thought of Sayer, Bottero and Scheff (etc.) to develop my interpretation, and have deployed semi-structured interviews and participant observation to collect the research data. The thesis found that the Dharma Drum Mountain movement systematically cultivates its volunteers' Chinese Buddhist moral habitus through Sheng Yen's concept of character education. The goal of character education is to achieve harmonious relationships with others through Chinese Buddhist self-cultivation, or the development of Chinese Buddhist moral habitus from a sociological perspective. The thesis found that Chinese Buddhist moral habitus is a collective accomplishment. Relationality guides the religious moral practices of Buddhist volunteers, because sharing Buddhism with others is the most important factor contributing to the fostering of harmonious relationships with others and achieving mutual well-being. Sharing is the key that opens the door to a win-win situation in interpersonal relationships. Dharma Drum Mountain encourages its volunteers to share through the thorough institutionalisation of sharing into its organisational structure, which is achieved by establishing a mechanism for group discussion in every place where its Buddhist teachings are taught. In addition, the thesis found that volunteers made use of three methods to develop their Chinese Buddhist moral habitus: self-awareness, self-evaluation and joint practice with other people through intersubjective negotiation. The outcome of successful intersubjective negotiation is mutual attunement. Finally, volunteers fully made use of six kinds of Chinese Buddhist moral concepts emphasised by DDM - care, respect, gratitude, shame, repentance and empathy - to develop Chinese Buddhist moral habitus in different kinds of interaction situations.

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