Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Divinity School, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (doctoral)--Australian National University, 1978.

Disputats, Uppsala 2003.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 308-337).

Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on Feb 17, 2010). The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file. Dissertation advisor: Dr. Michael Mobley. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

I argue in this dissertation that Nietzsche’s struggle to free himself from Schopenhauer and Wagner’s influence interferes with his understanding of Buddhism, which he tends to tar with the same brush that he used on his mentors. I claim that Nietzsche has more in common with Mahayana Buddhism than he realizes, and suggest that he would have had more sympathy for Buddhist strategies for confronting suffering if his conception of such strategies had been more adequate. I offer a reading of the eternal recurrence according to which it promotes an existential reorientation towards the present moment that is very much in the spirit of Zen. I contend that the apparently irresoluble differences between the Nietzschean and Buddhist positions on questions relating to a karmic “moral world order” can be overcome on a careful interpretation, and that there are more than superficial parallels between the way that both Nietzsche and Zen thinkers ascribe spiritual significance to a certain kind of spontaneous action. / text

Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Ishimura, a small town in Japan’s rural northeastern Iwate Prefecture during the summer of 2012, this thesis pursues two objectives. (1) Building on observations found in recent Western scholarship on the nature of Japanese religious institutions (Covell 2005, Rowe 2011), this thesis contends that Japanese Buddhist temples operating in close-knit rural communities are, in addition to religious and social spaces, inherently domestic spaces characterized by familial networks that link the temple to the parish through real and imagined kinship relations. Family networks also define the internal structuring of temple leadership, consisting of actual nuclear or multigenerational families that live and work at the heart of a community temple. Importantly, these temple families directly influence the community perception of the temple as a religious and social institution. In short, this thesis contends that family defines and families represent community temples. This thesis demonstrates the domestic and familial characteristics of community temples by examining the families at the center of Ishimura’s three Buddhist institutions, Kamidera, Shimodera, and Nakadera. (2) This thesis then turns to explore the contentious nature of community temples as domestic spaces. Specifically, this thesis contends that the familial dynamics that define temple leadership carry potentially “disruptive, disintegrative, and psychologically disturbing” ramifications for temple leadership and parish families. Drawing on the case of Tatsu, the troubled and troublesome vice priest of Nakadera, this thesis seeks to understand how the failed succession of a head priest can generate dysfunction across the broader familial networks that constitute a community temple. The case of Tatsu and Nakadera ultimately illuminates the vulnerabilities inherent to community temples as family-mediated, domestic institutions. / text

Buddhist Studies / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Buddhist Studies / Master / Master of Buddhist Studies

As we move further into the 21st century, social observers are increasingly aware of the individual yet collective forms of spiritual practices emerging globally. In this study, I focus on two specific practices, yoga and Buddhism, as framed in the teachings of Master Thich Nhat Hanh, which have significant impacts on individuals in the late modern city of Hong Kong. This research investigates the implications these practices pose for self-identity in late modernity. Using semi-structured, face-to-face, in-depth interviews of forty individuals who have been engaging in these practices in Hong Kong during 2008-2009, I investigate the self-identity of these individuals using Anthony Giddens’ theoretical framework of selfhood. I propose the following questions: (1) How do these individuals respond to the conditions of late modernity in Hong Kong? (2) How do these individuals experience Giddens’ four dilemmas of late modernity (unification versus fragmentation, powerlessness versus appropriation, authority versus uncertainty, personalization versus fragmentation) and in what ways do they cope with these dilemmas? (3) How do these individuals engagement with these practices interact with their life trajectories and manifest the main features of Giddens’ reflexive project (lifestyles and life plans, the pure relationship, the body and self-actualization)? Several findings have emerged from the data that empirically affirm Giddens’ self-reflexivity framework: (1) the self-identity of individuals engaging in yoga and/or Master Thick Nhat Hanh’s teachings is reflexively understood in terms of their personal biographies; (2) from each distinctive biography, individuals use these practices to find a balance of the four dilemmas outlined in Giddens’ theoretical framework, namely, unification versus fragmentation, powerlessness versus appropriation, authority versus uncertainty and personalization versus commoditication; (3) three trajectories emerge from the data: the “healing self”; the “health/exercise self”; and the “lifestyle/re-emerging self.” These patterns show how individuals manage threats to selfhood in a late modern society while finding ways to achieve personal development and increased self-awareness. By empirically testing the applicability of Giddens’ theory through the study of these two mind/body practices in Hong Kong, this research has contributed to the field of modern sociology by: (1) offering an in-depth and systematic qualitative inquiry into practices of spirituality that are undertaken on both the individual and global level, (2) addressing the prevailing research gap by empirically supporting and expanding the utility of Giddens’ self-reflexive project and (3) presenting an accessible analysis of the concepts informing the idea of self-identity and how conditions of late modernity influence this process. / published_or_final_version / Sociology / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy