Reading and performing Aristophanes’ Lysistrata through the work of Judith Butler on performativity and precarity. This paper explores both Aristophanes’ play and the experience of performing and studying it.

The author did in situ research for an MA in Asian Religions on Japan’s greatest saint, Kūkai, in his birthplace of Zentsūji, along the Pilgrimage of Shikoku that symbolically recapitulates his career, and at Kōya-san, the mountaintop monastery south of Kyōto that Kūkai founded in the early 9th Century. Kūkai was a key figure igniting the golde…[Read more]

Contemporary engaged Buddhist scholars typically claim either that Buddhism always endorsed social activism, or that its non-endorsement of such activism represented an unwitting lack of progress. This article examines several classical South Asian Buddhist texts that explicitly reject social and political activism. These texts argue for this…[Read more]

As per its title

This is a formatted version (for e-book readers or printing) of a very long blog post about secular and radical Buddhism. It discusses Stephen Batchelor’s secular Buddhism, Seno’o Giro’s radical Buddhism (as well as its roots in Mahayana philosophy; Nichiren and the Lotus Sutra in particular), and several related topics.

The Seleucid Antiochus IV profoundly intervened in the cult of Jerusalem in 168 BC. Under the leadership of the Hasmoneans, an uprising developed against these interventions, which led to the restoration of the cult, the establishment of the Hasmoneans as high priests and the independence of Judea. Against the background of widely differing…[Read more]

The Nike monument of Samothrace is one of the most important works of ancient sculpture. Since its discovery in 1863 it has always had a special appeal for modern viewers, but a deeper understanding of its historical significance is still a problem: if consensus could be reached quickly on the fundamental classification of the Nike statue in the…[Read more]

Review article from History of Political Thought covering books on the history of Athenian democracy and its relevance to politics now (as of publication date in 2017)

This essay will show, however, that the text is not linked to diplomas, but belonged to an African version of Prosper’s chronicle. I will propose a new edition, which will put the text back in its original context. Rather than looking for ‘good’ and ‘bad’ texts according to 19th-century categories, I will try to analyze the specific character…[Read more]

This published Japanese-English guidebook to the island of Shikoku, emphasizing its culture and history, has been available by permission on the Web in French, Spanish, and Dutch at European Websites, as well as this English-Japanese version since 1997. Most of the chapters are bilingual, with English and Japanese alternating for those studying…[Read more]

Mindfulness of breathing or ānāpānasati has a prominent place among the meditation methods taught by the Buddha. This doesn’t come as a surprise, if we know this is exactly the method the Teacher used to attain his own enlightenment, but also to “generally dwell during rains residence”. Therefore, he qualified this type of mental training as a n…[Read more]

Udāna is the third book of the Khuddaka Nikāya, the last of the five nikāyas in the Sutta Pitaka. It consists of eight vaggas, with ten suttas in each, 80 suttas in total. Similarly to some other books of the Pāli Canon, in this collection each sutta is a combination of prose and verses called udānas, inspired utterances or uplifting utte…[Read more]

A cultural, historical, and practical guidebook to Kagawa Prefecture on the island of Shikoku across the narrow Seto Inland Sea from the main island of Japan. Formerly the province of Sanuki, a compact area with convenient train lines, it has great potential for tourism. An active region culturally for more than 2,000 years, it was the birthplace…[Read more]

In this article Stephe Harrop combines theatre history and performance analysis with contemporary agonistic theory to re-conceptualize Greek tragedy’s contested spaces as key to the political potentials of the form. She focuses on Athenian tragedy’s competitive and conflictual negotiation of performance space, understood in relation to the…[Read more]

Subtitled “Symbols of Self-Realization in the Kanfugen-gyo [the meditation practice of the Lotus Sutra trilogy],” this was a presentation at the conference on Jungian Perspectives on Creativity and the Unconscious at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio in 1979. Having researched dreams and legends surrounding the Buddha, the view of the author…[Read more]

Two papers on the Jungian psychology of Asian religions from M.A. coursework at the University of Hawaii in 1978. “Equations of Freedom with Enlightenment” analyzes Chinese Buddhism, Taoism, and Zen as to the meaning of liberation. Then “This World as a Symbolic Body of the Buddha” analyzes the Shingon Buddhist cosmology of Kukai and its Tantric…[Read more]

Hashikuradera, the inner sanctuary of Kompira-san on Shikoku island, defied the Meiji government and has kept Buddhism and Shinto on the same hallway to this day. This old map depicts the syncretic divinity Kompira Daigongen whirling through the air from Kompira-san or Elephant’s Head Mountain (upper left) to meet Kukai, just labeled the great…[Read more]

Between Continuity and Negation – Reception of the Ancient Spolia in the Christian Tradition in the North of Kosovo The use of spolia has been recorded on numerous sacred objects in the Northern Kosovo, especially in the micro region around the Roman settlement in Sočanica. Spolia were mostly used for construction and paving; however, their use…[Read more]

CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE CULT OF ANTINOUS IN THE ROMAN SETTLEMENT AT SOČANICA This Roman settlement, located on the territory near Sočanica, was parтly explored around the 1950’s. Systematic excavations, headed by E.Češkov, resulted in quite a large number of mobile and immobile finds, helped to form a clearer picture about the history, econom…[Read more]

THE ORIGIN OF ANTINOUS CULT IN ROMAN SETTLEMENT NEAR SOČANICA А Roman settlement, located near the village of Sočanica, was part-ly explored around 1960’s. Systematic excavations headed by archae-ologist E. Čerškov and resulted in quite a large number of mobile andimmobile finds helped form a clearer picture of the history, economyand urban layout…[Read more]