World Religions: Eastern Traditions |
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28 January 2025 - Adetswil
Tonight by the fire I finished reading World Religions: Eastern Traditions, edited by Willard G. Oxtoby. I read the sister volume on western traditions many years ago and found it to be a very informative discussion of the history and development of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Interestingly, despite remembering the book quite well I did not record when I read it in my spreadsheet. Maybe it was pre-spreadsheet? I assembled that from notes in my journals maybe 10 years ago? Interesting what we remember and what we do not. When I saw the eastern traditions book at a used bookstore in Zürich I snatched it up as I have wanted to read it for a long time. I started last year with the Buddhist chapter as a refresher while taking a deep dive into Shinto. Oxtoby's book definitely served as a good refresher and I learned a great deal of history. Shinto itself is sandwiched into a chapter with Chinese and Korean traditions that also have syncretic relationships with Buddhism. Then the book sat in my pile for quite a few months before I back to it, starting with Hinduism. I have studied and know this tradition well, but it was a delight to revisit. It also made me chuckle when the Hindu temple of Atlanta, where I first encountered the religion in physical form over two decades ago, was pictured in the discussion of the Hindu diaspora. Next was a chapter on Jainism, which I did not know much about the precepts of even though I consider their fundamental statement of belief, ahimsa paramo dharma, to be the first axiom of proper human relationships. The Jains, however, apply that principle to all relationships, both with the animate and inanimate. Next were the Sikhs, whose tradition I am also less familiar with. Then there was a short chapter to skip to at the end on Pacific island religions which didn't really do them jsutice. I still have a book on Hawaiian religion in my tsundoku pile that I picked up on Kilauea two years ago though. Oxtoby ended the book with a discussion of the history of the changing definition of what constitutes a religion in western civilization, even giving a lengthy justification of why the Communism was excluded from the current work. I think it will probably make its way into future works on religions of this period.
If you can find a copy of Oxtoby's World Religions: Eastern Traditions, it's definitely worth picking up and reading.
