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New Books in Buddhist Studies

Marshall Poe
New Books in Buddhist Studies
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  • Kin Cheung, "Teaching Asia during a Resurgence of Anti-Asian Racism" (ASS, 2025)
    An open access Asia Shorts edited volume from AAS. The spring of 2020 will remain etched in collective memory as a moment of profound upheaval. The COVID-19 pandemic forced schools and universities around the world to close their doors, reshaping education overnight. Teachers scrambled to reimagine their classrooms in online spaces, while students adjusted to a new, distanced reality. For educators of Asia-related topics, these shifts carried unique challenges. Already marginalized within English-speaking curricula, Asia’s place in classrooms faced further reductions amidst the chaos of pandemic adaptation. Recognizing this, our Asia Shorts volume, Teaching about Asia in a Time of Pandemic (AAS, 2025), was conceived as a timely response, offering guidance and inspiration during those uncertain times. Almost five years later, the world has moved forward, but the ripple effects of that historic spring are still felt. This supplemental set of open-access essays, edited by Kin Cheung (Associate Professor of East and South Asian Religions at Moravian University) builds upon the foundation of the original volume, reflecting on the enduring impacts of the pandemic on education, equity, and how we teach about Asia. One lasting consequence of the pandemic has been the rise in anti-Asian racism. Harassment and violence against Asians, fueled by pandemic-related scapegoating and xenophobic rhetoric, surged globally. In the United States, inflammatory phrases such as “China virus” and “kung flu” further stigmatized Asian communities, exacerbating a wave of hostility. Educators now face the challenge of addressing these injustices while fostering inclusive, empathetic learning environments. The essays in this collection delve into the pedagogical responses to anti-Asian racism, advocating for teaching frameworks that prioritize social justice and counteract harmful stereotypes and complement the important work of the scholars whose work appears in our recent Asia Shorts volume, Global Anti-Asian Racism, edited by Jennifer Ho. Another critical dimension explored in this volume is the necessity of representation. Asian Americans remain underrepresented in both the teaching workforce and teacher education programs, leading to a curriculum that often overlooks the rich cultural and linguistic assets of Asian students and their families. This gap underscores the importance of preparing teachers to adopt culturally responsive practices, ensuring that all students—especially Asian American learners—feel seen and valued in the classroom. These essays also challenge educators to move beyond surface-level engagement with Asia. A case in point is the life and legacy of Grace Lee Boggs, an Asian American activist whose story offers rich insights into the intersections of race, gender, and political activism. By teaching figures like Boggs through an antiracist, transnational lens, students can develop a deeper, more empathetic understanding of complex historical narratives. This approach not only enriches their knowledge of Asia and its diasporas but also equips them with critical tools to navigate and challenge systemic inequities in their own societies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/buddhist-studies
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  • Catherine Hartmann, "Making the Invisible Real: Practice of Seeing in Tibetan Pilgrimage" (Oxford UP, 2025)
    Dr. Catherine Hartmann is Assistant Professor of Asian Religions in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at University of Wyoming. She received her B.A. in Religious Studies from the University of Virginia in 2011, M.A. in the History of Religions from the University of Chicago in 2013, and a Ph.D. from the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University in 2020. Dr. Hartmann's engagement with Religious Studies arises out of a longstanding interest in religion as a force that shapes our experience of the world, and in the practices religions develop to transform that experience. Her work focuses on the history of Tibetan pilgrimage to holy mountains and the goal of transforming perception while on pilgrimage. She is also interested in Buddhist ethics, vision and visuality, theories of place, and autobiographical writing. Her most recent book, Making the Invisible Real: Practices of Seeing in Tibetan Pilgrimage (Oxford UP, 2025), asks the following question: How can a person learn to see a mountain as a divine mandala, especially when, to the ordinary eye, the mountain looks like a pile of rocks and snow? This is the challenge that the Tibetan pilgrimage tradition poses to pilgrims, who are told to overcome their ordinary perception to see the hidden reality of the holy mountain. Drawing on multiple genres of Tibetan literature from the 13th to 20th centuries--including foundational narratives of holy places, polemical debates about the value of pilgrimage, written guides to holy sites, advice texts, and personal diaries--this book investigates how the pilgrimage tradition tries to transform pilgrims' perception so that they might experience the wondrous sacred landscape as real and materially present. Catherine Anne Hartmann argues that the pilgrimage tradition does not simply assume that pilgrims experience this sacred landscape as real, but instead leads pilgrims to adopt deliberate practices of seeing: ways of looking at and interacting with the world that shape their experience of the holy mountain. Making the Invisible Real explores two ways of seeing: the pilgrim's ordinary perception of the world, and the fantastic vision believed to lie beyond this ordinary perception. As pilgrims move through the holy place, they move back and forth between these two ways of seeing, weaving the ordinary perceived world and extraordinary imagined world together into a single experience. Hartmann shows us how seemingly fantastical religious worldviews are not simply believed or taken for granted, but actively constructed and reconstructed for new generations of practitioners. Previous interview with Dr. Hartmann on the New Books Network: Teaching Buddhist Studies Online A Discussion with Kate Hartmann. Milarepa, the One Who Harkened, by Nicholas Roerich. Dr. Hartmann's website with contact information: https://www.drkatehartmann.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/buddhist-studies
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  • Meditation Side-Effects and Other Altered States, with Miguel Farias
    In today’s episode, Dr. Pierce Salguero sits down with Miguel Farias, an experimental psychologist and researcher of religion, spirituality, and cognition. Together we try to get to the bottom of whether meditation is actually good for you through a comparison of Miguel's research on the adverse effects of meditation with my research on Asian notions of meditation sickness. Along the way, we discuss the limitations of modern Western understandings of consciousness, and explore whether we can develop a more expansive, multifaceted understanding of altered states both pleasant and unpleasant. If you want to hear scholars and practitioners engaging in deep conversations about the dark side of Asian religions and medicines, then subscribe to Black Beryl wherever you get your podcasts. You can also check out our members-only benefits on blackberyl.substack.com. Enjoy the show! Resources mentioned: Miguel Farias and Catherine Wikholm, The Buddha Pill: Can Meditation Change You? (2019). Miguel Farias, Oxford Handbook of Meditation (2022). Miguel Farias et al, “Adverse Events in Meditation Practices and Meditation-based Therapies: A Systematic Review” (2021). Pierce Salguero, “‘Meditation Sickness’ in Medieval Chinese Buddhism and the Contemporary West” (2023). Peter Berger, The Homeless Mind (1973). Joseph Henrich et al. article on the Müller-Lyer illusion (2010). The source for the term “monophasic bias” is apparently Charles Laughlin’s chapter “Transpersonal Anthropology” in Roger Walsh’s book Paths Beyond Ego (1993). Pierce Salguero, A Lamp Unto Yourself (2025). Resources provided by the interviewee on blackberyl.substack.com: Introduction to the Oxford Handbook of Meditation Pierce Salguero is a transdisciplinary scholar of health humanities who is fascinated by historical and contemporary intersections between Buddhism, medicine, and crosscultural exchange. He has a Ph.D. in History of Medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (2010), and teaches Asian history, medicine, and religion at Penn State University’s Abington College, located near Philadelphia. www.piercesalguero.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/buddhist-studies
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  • Peter D. Hershock, "Consciousness Mattering: A Buddhist Synthesis" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
    Consciousness Mattering (Bloombury, 2023) presents a contemporary Buddhist theory in which brains, bodies, environments, and cultures are relational infrastructures for human consciousness. Drawing on insights from meditation, neuroscience, physics, and evolutionary theory, it demonstrates that human consciousness is not something that occurs only in our heads and consists in the creative elaboration of relations among sensed and sensing presences, and more fundamentally between matter and what matters. Peter Hershock argues that without consciousness there would only be either unordered sameness or nothing at all. Evolution is consciousness mattering. Shedding new light on the co-emergence of subjective awareness and culture, the possibility of machine consciousness, the risks of algorithmic consciousness hacking, and the potentials of intentionally altered states of consciousness, Hershock invites us to consider how freely, wisely, and compassionately consciousness matters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/buddhist-studies
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  • Mick Brown, "The Nirvana Express: How the Search for Enlightenment Went West" (Oxford UP, 2023)
    Mick Brown’s The Nirvana Express: How the Search for Enlightenment Went West (Oxford UP, 2023) is a riveting account about the West's engagement with Eastern spirituality across a century. It traces the life of multiple characters that intersected across time and space to create a network of interlinking stories about saints, salesmen and scoundrels all involved in spirituality. From Edwin Arnold, whose epic poem about the life of the Buddha became a best-seller in Victorian Britain, to the occultist and magician Aleister Crowley; and from spiritual teachers Jiddu Krishnamurti, Meher Baba and Ramana Maharshi to the controversial guru Rajneesh, The Nirvana Express is an exhilarating, sometimes troubling journey through the West's search for enlightenment. Archit Nanda is PhD scholar in Comparative Literature at Queen Mary University of London. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/buddhist-studies
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