Mindfulness, yoga, Tantra, Zen, martial arts, karma, feng shui, Ayurveda. Eastern ideas and practices associated with Asian religions and spirituality have been accommodated to a global setting as both a spiritual/religious and a broader cultural phenomenon. ‘Eastern spirituality’ is present in organized religions, the spiritual New Age market, arts, literature, media, therapy, and health care but also in public institutions such as schools and prisons. Eastspirit: Transnational Spirituality and Religious Circulation in East and West describes and analyses such concepts, practices and traditions in their new ‘Western’ and global contexts as well as in their transformed expressions and reappropriations in religious traditions and individualized spiritualities ‘back in the East’ within the framework of mutual interaction and circulation, regionally and globally.

This volume explores the reception, development and construction of Eastern practices in the Nordic countries. The focus is on spirituality, medicine and healing from a lived religion perspective. Besides a geographical focus on the Nordic countries and their characteristics, this collection examines the embodied practices aligned with different expressions of religiosity, alternative medicine, spirituality and healing practices. By addressing questions about how so-called Eastern practices are embodied, spread and materialized, the contributors shed light on a cultural change in Nordic societies regarding religious, spiritual and alternative health practices, that are sometimes at odds with the dominant medical discourse about life-threatening diseases and other types of conditions.

Decolonising the Study of Religion analyses historical and contemporary discussions in the study of religion and Buddhism and critically investigates representations, possibilities, and challenges of a decolonial approach, addressing the important question: who owns Buddhism? The monograph offers a case-based perspective with which to examine the general study of religion, where new challenges require reflection and prospects for new directions. It focuses on Buddhism, one religion which has been studied in the West for centuries. Building on postcolonial theories and supplemented with a critical analysis of identity and postsecular engagement, the book offers new possibilities and challenges to the study of religion. It critically investigates decolonisation in the study of religion, subscribing to a third way between ‘objectivist’ and ‘subjectivist’ positions. Analysing the postcolonial and decolonial critique of the study of religion, with a particular focus on Buddhist studies in the West and in Japan, this book will be of interest to researchers in the field of Religious Studies, Buddhism, Japanese religions, anthropology, Asian Studies and those interested in religion and decolonisation.

The religious landscape in Asia has long been diverse, with various forms of syncretic traditions and pragmatic practices continuously having been challenged by centrifugal forces of differentiation. This anthology explores representations and managements of religious diversity in Japan, China, South Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and diaspora religions originating in these countries, seen through the lenses of history, identity, state, ritual and geography. In addition to presenting empirical cases, the chapters also address theoretical and methodological reflections using Asia as a laboratory for further comparative research of the relevance and use of 'religious diversity'. Contributors are: Donald Baker, Ugo Dessi, Chung Van Hoang, Ayelet Harel-Shalev, Noa Levy, Gideon Elazar, Santosh K. Singh, Yu Tao, Ed Griffith, Satoko Fujiwara, Uwe Skoda, Tudor Silva, Martin Tsang, Marianne Q. Fibiger, Jørn Borup, and Lene Kühle. Religious Diversity in Asia was made possible by a framework grant from the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation allowing the grant holder (Jørn Borup) and two colleagues (Marianne Q. Fibiger and Lene Kühle) to host a workshop at Aarhus University and to co-arrange workshops in Delhi and Nagoya. We would like to thank professors Arshad Alam and Michiaki Okuyama for hosting these latter workshops at Jawaharlal Nehru University and Nanzan University, and we would like to thank Professor Chong-Suh Kim for the invitation for Jørn Borup to visit Seoul National University. We would also like to extend our gratitude to all the scholars who participated in the workshops and to all the authors we subsequently invited to contribute to our endeavor to create this academically relevant volume.

The nineteenth century witnessed a proliferation of alternative religious currents and practices, appropriating earlier traditions, entangling geographically distinct spiritual discourses, and crafting a repository of mindscapes eminently suitable to be accommodated by later generations of thinkers and practitioners. Penned by specialists in the field, this volume examines important themes and figures pertaining to this occult amalgam and its resonance into the twentieth century and beyond. Global guises of the occult, ranging from the Americas and Europe to India, are variously addressed, with special attention to the crucial role of mesmerism and the origins of modern yoga.

This volume of the Annual Review for the Sociology of Religion adresses the challenges of the diversity and complexity of sociological approaches to Asian forms and dynamics of Asian or Asian-inpired ascetic ideas and practices. Eleven papers, written by scholars conducting researches in different geographic and cultural contexts, all contribute to enrich discussion on the relevance of sociological studies of Yoga, meditation and other ascetic techniques and traditions. Contributors are: Zuzana Bártová, Loïc Bawidamann, Jørn Borup, Sally SJ Brown, Ugo Dessì, Marianne Qvortrup Fibiger, Marc Lebranchu, Patrick S.D. McCartney, Lionel Obadia, Matteo Di Placido, Alexandros Sakellariou, João Paulo P. Silveira, and Rafael Walthert.

Ancient ideas on sacred sound find a very tangible and lively expression in the practice of kirtan, which is a broad term referring to various forms of devotional singing commonly done in South Asian traditions. Kirtan is a core practice in the Hindu and Sikh faiths that is becoming increasingly popular around the world among people of all ethnicities, thus developing as a transnational and transcultural phenomenon. Indeed, the broader cultural implications and deepening social penetration that this practice has achieved over the past five decades suggest that it is attaining permanent status in the world’s religious soundscape. Sacred Sound and the Transcultural Practice of Kirtan explores the practice of kirtan as it has been re-created in the United States, Canada, and Brazil through multi-sided interactions that generate new cultural patterns in an ongoing process of cross-pollination. Approaching kirtan as a type of ‘technology of the self’, Gustavo Moura combines textual, historical, and ethnographic sources to address the questions of how this practice is adopted and adapted in the Americas and how it has been shaping identities, communities, and traditions.