Unit name | Theravada Buddhist Practice in Asia |
---|---|
Unit code | THRS30019 |
Credit points | 20 |
Level of study | H/6 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12) |
Unit director | Dr. Langer |
Open unit status | Open |
Pre-requisites |
None |
Co-requisites |
None |
School/department | Department of Religion and Theology |
Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
This unit aims to provide students with an overview of the history and development ‘Theravåda Buddhism’ in practice in Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia as well as in depth knowledge of several important topics. The unit focuses on a number of significant topics: the practice of monasticism, lay practice, the relationship between the monk and the laity, the position of women and Buddhist nuns, forest monks, magic and protection, ‘protestant’ Buddhism, and Buddhism and conflict in Sri Lanka. These themes will be investigated by utilizing various kinds of sources – primary textual sources, epigraphical sources in translation, the writings of historians and social anthropologists – in order to illustrate a more general issue in the contemporary study of religion, namely the study of texts and doctrine versus the study of people and practice.
Aims:
10 x 2 hrs seminars
One summative coursework essay of 3000 words (50%) and one unseen examination of two hours (50%).
T. Bartholomeusz, Women under the Bo Tree (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
R. F. Gombrich, Buddhist Precept and Practice: Traditional Buddhism in the Rural Highlands of Ceylon (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1991).
S. J. Tambiah, Buddhism and the Spirit Cults in North-East Thailand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970).
Melford E. Spiro, Buddhism and Society: A Great Tradition and its Burmese Vicissitudes (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).
Donald K.Swearer, The Buddhist world of Southeast Asia (Albany: State University of New York Press,1995).