9 papers in the library · 6 citations · publishing 2015-2024
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion August 21, 2024 Takeshi Kimura
Abstract The Ainu people are indigenous to Japan (the term Ainu means “human”). They have lived mainly in Hokkaido (called Ainu mosir by the Ainu people) and the Tokyo Metropolitan area. Previously, they also lived in Sakhalin (formerly Karafuto) and the Kuril Islands (including the Chishima Islands). In the early 21st century, aspects of the Ainu people’s social lives were no different from...
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion August 31, 2021 Sarah Shaw
Abstract Perhaps the most significant contribution of Buddhism to the international stage in recent years has been the promotion and cultural acceptance of meditation. Historically central to many Buddhist traditions and once considered an activity for a dedicated few, meditation has become mainstream. Within Buddhism itself, it has now become more widely acknowledged as a lay as well as a...
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion December 23, 2019 William Thompson-Uberuaga
Should Christian theology be interested in mysticism? A strong current within contemporary theology believes it should be, linking up with an older tradition holding that the mystical dimension has always formed the deepest current in the flowing river of Christianity and its theologies and doctrines, even if some have failed to recognize that. This article explores this modern current, its...
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion November 22, 2019 W. Parsons
The definition and meaning of mysticism have been the subject of debate for decades within academia. While in a colloquial sense its referent may be readily apparent, there is no one existing definition of the term that adequately captures the multiple, diverse phenomena that have been termed “mystical.” Genealogical studies reveal its origin in the Greek mystery religions (muo; mystikos),...
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion June 25, 2019 Judson B. Murray
Daoist mysticism is a subfield in academic areas of study including comparative mysticism, Chinese religions, and Daoist studies. Methodologies employed in it often adopt and adapt different definitions, categories, and theories formulated in contemporary Western scholarship on the subject of “mysticism” for the purpose of analyzing Daoist thinkers, texts, practices, and traditions throughout...
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion May 23, 2019 K. Pechilis
Gender and spirituality are both terms that signify alterity, especially a critique of established social conventions, including conventions of disciplining personhood on the basis of gender classifications and according to doctrinal and ritual patterns of organized religion. To be aware of gender as a hierarchical system is a modern phenomenon; “spirituality” has a much longer history of use...
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion April 26, 2018 Clark Chilson
Abstract “Naikan” 内観 is a self-reflective form of meditation founded by Yoshimoto Ishin 吉本伊信 (1916–1988), who developed it from a lay Shin Buddhist practice called mishirabe身調べ. After Yoshimoto used it to help prisoners in the 1950s, psychiatrists in the 1960s started to use it as a psychotherapy. Today in Japan it is the most popular psychotherapeutic method that originated in Buddhism. Naikan...
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion August 31, 2016 Stuart Sarbacker
Abstract The contemporary academic study of religion has its roots in conceptual and theoretical structures developed in the early to mid-20th century. A particularly important example of such a structure is the concept of the “numinous” developed by the theologian and comparativist Rudolf Otto (1869–1937) in his work, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of...
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion September 3, 2015 Michael Stoeber 6 citations
Abstract The comparative study of mysticism began in the mid-19th century, with the development of the modern meaning of the word, which had begun to be used as a substantive, with the classification of “mystics” in the 17th century. This differed from the traditional Greek Christian use of the adjective mystikos, to qualify rituals, scriptures, sacraments, and theology as “mystical” contexts...