Becoming a nun, becoming a man: Taiwanese Buddhist nuns' gender transformation

This article explores apparent contradictions in the gender identifications of Taiwanese Buddhist nuns. Because the texts and teachings of their tradition provide conflicting messages about women's spiritual abilities, the nuns create a complex gender cosmology as a means of accommodating textual contradictions, without rejecting any textual statements. This strategy allows the nuns to assert that they have spiritual abilities equal to those of men, without rejecting or contradicting textual statements that they do not. Without denying that they are women, and that they are therefore threatening to men, the nuns primarily identify themselves with the male gender. Compartmentalising and contextualising gender symbols allow the nuns to see themselves both as men and as women without contradiction.     

Subjective relational experiences and employee innovative behaviors in the workplace

This paper presents two studies that explore the implications of subjective relational experiences (positive regard, mutuality and vitality) on employee engagement in innovative behaviors at work. Data collected at two points in time were used to test two mediation models that link subjective relational experiences and innovative behaviors. The results of Study 1 indicate that subjective relational experiences directly and indirectly, through affective commitment, are associated with employee engagement in innovative behaviors. The results of Study 2 indicate that subjective relational experiences are positively related to psychological availability, creative self-efficacy, and engagement in innovative behaviors. In addition, the findings of Study 2 indicate that creative self-efficacy fully mediates the relationship between psychological availability and engagement in innovative behaviors, and partially mediates the link between subjective relational experiences and employee engagement in innovative behaviors. The findings of both studies provide further support to the theoretical distinction between psychological state engagement and behavioral engagement at work.     

Fondness makes the distance grow shorter: Desired locations seem closer because they seem more vivid

Do appealing locations seem nearer than unappealing locations merely because they are more desirable? We examine the possibility that people represent desirable locations as nearer than equidistant undesirable locations. In three studies, participants represented a variety of locations on a university campus (Study 1) and in the greater New York City area (Studies 2 and 3) as nearer the more positive they felt about those locations. The relationship between positivity and closeness was mediated by the tendency for participants to generate particularly vivid representations of the locations when they evaluated them more positively (Studies 2 and 3). We discuss the theoretical implications of these results for mental construal, motivated perception, and metacognition.     

The making of a sacred mountain. Meanings of nature and sacredness in Sápmi and northern Norway

A case study of sacred landscapes in the contemporary era, the article deals with a particular mountain and its rise to sacredness. Fuelled by plans of ski-slope development, the fate of Tromsdalstind caused a lively debate in local newspapers, as well as a report issued by the Sami Parliament. The report connected sacredness to Sami traditions in the past and to current laws on the protection of Sami cultural memories. This, then, was a case of sacredness constructed outside the context of organized religions and ongoing religious traditions, as well as a case of using secular laws as the primary basis for definitions of sacredness.Through this process, love for the mountain appears to have grown deeper and more religious, both for the Sami as well as for other northern Norwegians. Neither more nor less authentic than those of the past, these concepts of sacredness belong to the late modern world of law culture, nature romanticism, and to pan-indigenous spirituality as a “religion” in the making.     

Context-bound Islamic theodicies: The tsunami as supernatural retribution vs. natural catastrophe in Southern Thailand

After the tsunami of 26 December 2004, local discourses in the prevalently Muslim Satun province in Southern Thailand were characterized by religious interpretations of the disaster. The range of Islamic interpretations varied, and was far from homogeneous. Statements are framed in plural theodicies and ultimately impute disasters to human responsibility, in apparent contrast to both scientific explanations and other Islamic tenets. The aim of this article is to present the range of theodicies associated with the event and to analyze their use in relation to the specific socio-historical and ethno-political context, in the words of people belonging to the Islamic and Buddhist religious élites. In these examples religious discourses leave behind the theological universalistic explanations of the existence of suffering and evil to become context-bound commentaries on the state of morality of local communities, with the aim of defining social boundaries.     

Western esotericism: Towards an integrative model of interpretation

Despite the fact that during the last fifteen years we have witnessed the emergence of a research field of ‘Western esotericism’, scholars are still far from agreeing on definitions of ‘esotericism’. For an academic ‘field’, however, that wants to establish international networks and to bring together scholars from various research areas and disciplines, it is highly desirable to provide an interpretational framework in which these different studies find their place. The main argument of this article is that such common ground can be found only when esotericism is seen not as a selection of historical ‘currents’, however defined, but as a structural element of Western culture. After reviewing the most influential approaches to Western esotericism, this article identifies two dimensions of an esoteric discourse: claims of higher knowledge and ways of accessing this ‘truth’. To these dimensions can be added certain world views that are typically involved in there discourses. The interpretative model proposed here aims at critically addressing basic aspects of Western self-understanding including the rhetorics of rationality, science, enlightenment, progress and absolute truth. It postulates that conflicts of religious world views, identities and forms of knowledge lie at the heart of Western cultural history.     

Astonishment: A study of an ethically valorised emotion in Buddhist narrative literature

This essay explores the role that Buddhist narrative literature plays in fostering the cultivation of ethically valorised emotions. The essay focuses on astonishment, as it figures in ārya ?ūra's Jātakamālā, a collection of Sanskrit narratives. The essay examines how and why ārya ?ūra valorises astonishment and what this valorisation reveals about the significance of emotions in Buddhist ethical life. The key distinction implicit in ārya ?ūra's work between natural and cultivated emotions is worked out.     

The contemporary lay meditation movement and lay gurus in Sri Lanka

This article examines the lay meditation movement occurring in contemporary Buddhism in Sri Lanka. The lay meditation movement represents a different perspective from the nationalistic Sinhala Buddhism that has dominated the discourse in the wake of the intractable ethnic conflict in the country. The lay meditation movement reflects the contemporary ferment in Buddhist discourse among the laity. One of the key themes in this movement is the privileging of experience because it gives the lay groups authority to challenge contemporary orthodoxy and it has empowered a new class of spiritual leaders, the lay gurus. Paraphrasing Stirrat, we can say that these lay gurus are leading the lay meditation movement towards ‘a series of different interpretations of what it means’ to be a Buddhist today. In its overall effect the lay meditation movement not only reconstructs what it means to be a Buddhist today but also points in the direction of establishing new forms of sectarianism that could be considered to be ‘new religious movements’ under the umbrella of Buddhism.