Thesis (M.A.)--香港中文大學. / Manuscript. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 239-255). / Thesis (M.A.)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue. / 前言 --- p.1 / Chapter 第一章 --- 總論 --- p.6 / Chapter 一 --- 本文之範圍 --- p.6 / Chapter 二 --- 本文撮要 --- p.8 / Chapter 第二章 --- 因果關係之定位 --- p.23 / Chapter 一 --- 認知之主觀性 --- p.23 / Chapter 二 --- 因果關係之實然性 --- p.26 / Chapter 第三章 --- 因果關係 --- p.32 / Chapter 一 --- 具體事之因果關係 --- p.32 / Chapter 二 --- 因果事伴之分析 --- p.48 / Chapter 三 --- 對承續之規則性觀點之批評 --- p.60 / Chapter 四 --- 因果關係之本質 --- p.84 / Chapter 第四章 --- 因果律 --- p.121 / 引言 --- p.121 / Chapter 一 --- 因果律之定義 --- p.123 / Chapter 二 --- 因果律之本性´أ概然性 --- p.131 / Chapter 第五章 --- 因果原則 --- p.141 / Chapter 一 --- 因果關係之普遍性 --- p.143 / Chapter 二 --- 因果關係之齊一性 --- p.167 / Chapter 第六章 --- 佛家因果觀念 --- p.198 / 引言 --- p.198 / Chapter 一 --- 佛家緣生性空之本義 --- p.199 / Chapter 二 --- 三論宗之因果觀念 --- p.210 / Chapter 三 --- 僧肇之物不遷論與因果關係 --- p.231 / 「注釋」 --- p.239

Amituofo recitation is the chanting of the phrase "namo Amituofo , which is a rite commonly used among Buddhists for the attainment of merit. However, the attained merits would be nullified if the initiate gets pregnant after she has done Jiezhu. This has much to do with taboos related to female sexuality. Women always have a marginalized status as the supposedly "weaker" gender having a lower social position. The association of female bodily discharges with defilement further discredits their status. Jiezhu in effect reinforces the idea of "defilement" attributed to the female body. The shame that the women feel with the male-defined negative female bodily image affirms the patriarchal hegemony. / Based on historical, textual and field studies, this thesis examines a women-oriented initiation rite called Jiezhu. Jiezhu, a once-in-a-lifetime rite of passage, is performed by menopausal women in Ninghua, Western Fujian, China. / However, ritualistic acts provide therapeutic healing. The Jiezhu woman has to go through a stage in which she has to handle the change of her role and identity as a life-giver (mothering) with the end of her procreative cycle. The ritual provides both private and public meanings to the woman and helps her relieve the physical and mental difficulties that she faces in her menopausal stage. / It is believed in the villages of Ninghua that when a woman reaches her menopausal age, she has to do Jiezhu, without which, her Amituofo recitation (nianfo) would not be efficacious. In other words, Jiezhu, as a pre-requisite for Amituofo recitation, is at the same time a purification rite. / Jiezhu appropriates the woman into a new phase of being by first providing private meanings to her. Ritualistic acts can bridge memory and imagination. The ritual program allows the woman to go back and forth the past, the present and the future. Jiezhu dramatically juxtaposes girlhood and mature womanhood, reenacts her wedding and rehearses her future funeral. Death and rebirth symbols abound. In Jiezhu, the woman "witnesses" her own funerary rites to ensure abundant personal possessions are burned for her to receive in the underworld after her death. The woman acquires spiritual strength to ease off from her menopausal stress and to allay the fears of the approach of death. Jiezhu and Amituofo recitation make up a twin tool they use to ensure a more fortunate rebirth. / Second, Jiezhu gives social meanings. The woman is given a new identity. She is now eligible for Amituofo recitation and becomes a member of the nianfo community. As social inferiority can be compensated for by a show of lavishness, Jiezhu as an expensive event creates symbolic capital. Jiezhu has become a symbol of prestige and resources that in part enhances the status of the women. / The women are also able to express their power within the limits of their traditional politics. The woman's contributions as a wife and a mother are valued and celebrated in the Jiezhu ceremony. The youthful, bright and colourful gift items given by the married daughter display a defiant tone against the association of Jiezhu with old age. Jiezhu celebrates an oft-neglected life crisis of women. / To conclude, Jiezhu on the one hand "traditionalizes", and on the other hand, as a strategic mode of action, challenges traditions through religious and social empowerment. Jiezhu preserves the established order but it also facilitates transformation in the initiate. The two dynamics of ritual are not antithetical; they produce and contend with each other. / Cheung, Tak Ching Neky. / "September 2007." / Adviser: Chi Tim Lai. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-08, Section: A, page: 3178. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 390-406). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

This thesis concerns the contribution of Buddhism to sustainability. It explores the impacts of Buddhism on the lives of nine individuals and the implications of these impacts for a sustainable world. This thesis regards sustainability as the most pressing issue at this junction in human history. It believes that the shift to sustainability requires profound individual and social transformations throughout the world and that such transformations necessitate the involvement of the spiritual traditions of the world. As one such tradition, Buddhism has the ability to impart principles and practices that have been applied in daily living for over 2,500 years to contemporary sustainability discourse. The modern idea of sustainability first became prominent in the international arena in 1980s when the Brundtland Commission enunciated its vision of the path to sustainability and referred to it as 'sustainable development'. However, this thesis contends that the concept of sustainable development was flawed from the beginning because it was founded on the idea of perpetual economic growth as the solution to environmental and social problems. Instead, the thesis forwards a holistic, systems approach to sustainability that regards human well-being as the ultimate goal. It adopts two theoretical conceptions of sustainability developed by Donella Meadows - the pyramidal framework for sustainability and the scheme of leverage points - as tools to analyse the contribution of Buddhism to sustainability. This thesis examines the literature on Buddhism and sustainability. It finds that Buddhism espouses many ecological and social values conducive to a sustainable philosophy of life. In addition, Buddhist economics has experienced rich theoretical developments in recent years and provides an alternative to mainstream economics based on growth. Buddhist economics has helped propel two Buddhist developmental paradigms - Bhutan's Gross National Happiness and Thailand's Sufficiency Economy - to the forefront of national agendas in their respective countries, thus demonstrating the renaissance of the application of Buddhist thinking in society. At the micro level, many communities around the world are attempting to translate the most fundamental principles of Buddhism into ways for harmonious living and in an attempt to combat the tide of environmental and social degradation. Thus, Buddhism is making an impact on sustainability at many levels around the world. However, this thesis finds little empirical evidence to demonstrate the effect of Buddhism on forms of personal transformation that leads to sustainable behaviour. This is despite the importance of the idea of transformation and personal growth in Buddhism. This empirical void leads to the aim of the thesis, which is to explore the ways in which the beliefs, practices and transformational tools within Buddhism can contribute to living sustainably. To achieve this aim, the methodology of mindful inquiry was employed. Mindful inquiry is a methodological union of East and West and integrates four perspectives: critical theory, hermeneutics, phenomenology and Buddhism. It is appropriate for a values-based research such as this one where the orientation of the researcher is critical to the outcome of the research. A method consistent with mindful inquiry is the basic interpretive qualitative study. The basic interpretive qualitative study used in this study combines elements from ethnography, case study, phenomenology and critical research. It was used to explore the lifeworlds of nine Buddhist participants in order to understand the impact of Buddhism on their lives. The major data gathering technique was in-depth interviews although participant observation and document collection were also used. Analysis of data proceeded through the constant comparative method. The findings from this thesis are divided into three themes. Firstly, the idea of personal sustainability is forwarded as a concept to help understand the impact of Buddhism. Personal sustainability concerns the psychological 'integratedness' of individuals to enable the achievement of higher levels of well-being. The findings suggest that Buddhism has significantly enhanced the personal sustainability level of all nine participants. Secondly, Meadows' ideas of paradigm shift and paradigm transcendence are explored. The findings suggest that paradigm shifts or paradigm transcendence have occurred among the participants through the adoption of Buddhist principles and meditative practices. Thirdly, the notions of happiness and purpose in life are investigated. The findings highlight radical changes in the participants' understandings of these notions and the nature of these understandings that are significantly different from conventional views. As a result of these findings, the thesis argues that the contribution of Buddhism to sustainability can be considerable because Buddhism contributes to the protection of natural capital, the enrichment of social and human capitals, and a deepened understanding of well-being, which is divorced from simplistic ideas such as material accumulation and sensual gratification. The thesis concludes by highlighting the potentials of Buddhism to instigate profound personal and social transformations that could lead to a sustainable world.

This is a creative practice-based photographically researched project that is contextualised by a written exegesis. I am attempting to conceptualise the apparent visual experiences that occur during the dying process, death, and rebirth as believed within Tibetan Buddhism. The Bardo of life is also relevant as it pre-ordains the visual context of the experiences within the dying, death and rebirth Bardos.Through the medium of photography, my methodology and practice are reflective of two fundamental ideas. These are: Luminosity and Illusion. They are supported by my research into the phenomenon of the 'Near Death Experience' and the Jungian concept of the conscious and subconscious mind. These states of reality are explored in relation to the Tibetan Book of the Dead's concept of the Bardo. My focus is to photograph the four elements of Earth, Fire, Air and Water as mediums familiar to all human beings and relate these in context to the Tibetan Book of the Dead's description of entering the Bardo of death. Illusion and luminosity are discovered by 'seeing' these within the four elements, and are related in context to the Tibetan Buddhists' belief of an after-death reality. This transition from the dying process into the unknown Bardo of death is supported by the familiarity of these four elements in life, and the mind's notion of reality.

An assertion that psychotherapy is an independent science and a self-authority on human mind and behaviour has uprooted its connection with philosophy and religion. In practice, the scientist-practitioner model of psychotherapy, a seemingly dualistic model, prefers determinism of science to free will of choice in humans. In particular, the model does not see reason and emotion as co-conditioning causes of human behaviour and suffering within the interdependent aggregates of self, other, and environment. Instead, it argues for wrong reasoning as the cause of emotional suffering. In Western thought, such narrative began at the arrival of scripted language and abstract thought in Greek antiquity that has led psychotherapy to think ignorantly that emotions are un-reasonable therefore they are irrational. Only rational thinking can effectively remove un-reasonable emotions. This belief creates confusion between rational theory and rational method of studying change in emotion because of the belief that science cannot objectively measure emotions. As a result, rational epistemologies that are ignorant of moral and metaphysical issues in human experience have multiplied. These epistemologies not only construct an unchanging rational identity, but also uphold the status of permanent self-authority. Fortunately, recent developmental psychology and cognitive neuroscience research have quashed such ideas of permanent self-identity and authority. Buddhist theory of Interdependent Arising and Conditional Relations sees such identity and authority as arisen together with deluded emotional desires of greed and hatred. These desires co-condition interdependent states of personal feeling and perception (metaphysics), conceptual thinking and consciousness (epistemology) and formation of (moral) emotion and action within the context of self other-environment matrix. Moral choices particularly highlight the intentional or the Aristotelian final cause of action derived from healthy desires by valued meaning makings and interpretations. Theravada formulation aims to end unhealthy desires and develop the healthy ones within the matrix including the client-clinician-therapeutic environment contexts. Theravada treatment guides a tripartite approach of practicing empathic ethics, penetrating focus and reflective understanding, which integrates ecologically with Western rational analysis. It also allows scientific method of studying change in emotion by applying the theory of defective desires. In addition, interdependent dimensions of thinking and feeling understood from Theravada perspective present a framework for developing theory and treatment of self disorders. Thus, Theravada treatment not only allows scientific method of studying change in emotion and provides an interdependent theory and treatment but also ecologically integrates with Western rational analysis. Moreover, Theravada approach offers an open framework for further development of theoretical and treatment models of psychopathology classified under Western nomenclature.

Thesis (M.A.) -- Central Connecticut State University, 2007. / Thesis advisor: Lilián Uribe. "... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MA, Department of Modern Languages." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 91-96). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.Arch.)--University of Minnesota, 2001. / Includes end notes. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 115) and index. Also available on the World Wide Web as a PDF file.

Examining links between Huxley's <i>Brave New World</i> and Buddhism, with particular emphasis on the story of Siddhartha Gautama.

Examining links between Huxley's <i>Brave New World</i> and Buddhism, with particular emphasis on the story of Siddhartha Gautama.

Although Buddhism was introduced in the United States over a century ago, only recently has it become part of the mainstream. In addition to the exponential increase in Buddhist practitioners in the United States, scholar Thomas Tweed argues that Buddhist images and references, devoid of religious context, have seeped into American society. The increasing popularity and prevalence of Buddhism in America is attributable to many factors including changes to the immigration laws in the 1960s and the episodic popularity of all things Eastern. This fascination with the East is epitomized by the current Dalai Lama, who has a pop-culture presence as well as political sway, as evidenced by his meeting with John McCain on July 25, 2008. Just as the pre-1965 immigration laws stifled Buddhism in the United States by limiting the number of Asian immigrants, Mao’s communist doctrines prevented the practice of Buddhism in China. As a result, in recent years Buddhism has emerged in the United States and remerged in China. By examining the state of Buddhism in Beijing and Chinese Buddhism in Houston this thesis shows that despite the comparable newness of the religion in both places, it is developing in very different ways, showing the impact region has on religion.