Hank GlassmanThe Face of Jizō: Image and Cult in Medieval Japanese Buddhism

University of Hawaii Press, 2012

by Scott Mitchell on May 10, 2012

Hank Glassman

View on Amazon

In this episode, we talk with Prof. Hank Glassman who’s written a new book titled The Face of Jizō: Image and Cult in Medieval Japanese Buddhism (University of Hawaii Press, 2012). Jizō is a Buddhist Bodhisattva whose presence has become somewhat ubiquitous throughout Japan as the protector of travelers, women, and children and childbirth. Historically, though, he has also been closely associated with death and is known as the protector of the six realms of rebirth. In some accounts, this bodhisattva is also conflated with King Yama, the lord of the hell realms, and it according to his mythology, Jizō has vowed now to enter full awakening until all the hell realms have been emptied of suffering sentient beings.

Prof. Glassman’s book is the culmination of decades of interest and research on the cult of Jizō. He is interested in how Jizō came to take such a prominent place in Japanese Buddhism and religious life and practice. His book is extremely well written and accessible, conveying through numerous stories and narratives the life this particular bodhisattva has had in Japanese religious history.

{ 0 comments }

Patricia CampbellKnowing Body, Moving Mind: Ritualizing and Learning at Two Buddhist Centers

November 3, 2011

There is a lot of ritual involved in Buddhist practice. As more and more North Americans are discovering Buddhism, they are engaging in more and more Buddhist ritual, despite a general aversion many North Americans have to ritualized behavior. Dr. Patricia Campbell‘s new book, Knowing Body, Moving Mind: Ritualizing and Learning at Two Buddhist Centers (Oxford University [...]

Read the full article →

Charles PrebishAn American Buddhist Life: Memoirs of a Modern Dharma Pioneer

October 5, 2011

Charles Prebish is among the most prominent scholars of American Buddhism. He has been a pioneer in studying the forms that Buddhist tradition has taken in the United States. Now retired, he has written this unusual new book, An American Buddhist Life: Memoirs of a Modern Dharma Pioneer (Sumeru Press, 2011). The book tells the [...]

Read the full article →

Bryan CuevasTravels in the Netherworld: Buddhist Popular Narratives of Death and the Afterlife in Tibet

September 23, 2011

Today on “New Books in Buddhist Studies” we’ll be going to hell and back with Bryan Cuevas in a discussion of his new book Travels in the Netherworld: Buddhist Popular Narratives of Death and the Afterlife in Tibet (Oxford University Press, 2008). Common in Tibetan Buddhism is the story of the délok, a person who has died, [...]

Read the full article →

David McMahanThe Making of Buddhist Modernism

September 2, 2011

For many Asian and Western Buddhists today, Buddhism means meditation and an embrace of the world’s interdependence. But that’s not what it meant to Buddhists in the past; most of them never meditated and often saw interdependence (or dependent origination) as something fearful to be escaped. Many scholars, especially recently, have told this story of [...]

Read the full article →

Lori MeeksHokkeji and the Reemergence of Female Monastic Orders in Premodern Japan

June 20, 2011

Scholars have long been fascinated by the Kamakura era (1185-1333) of Japanese history, a period that saw the emergence of many distinctively Japanese forms of Buddhism. And while a lot of this attention overshadows other equally important periods of Japanese Buddhist history, there is still much to be learned. Take the Buddhist convent known as [...]

Read the full article →

Jason ClowerThe Unlikely Buddhologist: Tiantai Buddhism in Mou Zongsan’s New Confucianism

June 10, 2011

The 20th-century Chinese philosopher Mou Zongsan is relatively little known in the West, but has been greatly influential in Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China, as well as influencing Confucian studies in North America. His work helped revive Confucianism at a time when many thought it dead. Yet at the same time, Mou devoted significant [...]

Read the full article →

Daniel VeidlingerSpreading Dhamma: Writing, Orality, and Textual Transmission in Buddhist Northern Thailand

June 3, 2011

New media technology changes culture. And when it comes to religion, new technology changes the way people think and practice their traditions. And while we usually think of technology as some new gadget or machine, there was a time when the written word itself was a new technology, and this had a profound impact how [...]

Read the full article →