Southeast China is a traditional stronghold of Buddhism, but little scholarly attention has been paid to this fact. Brian Nichols’s pioneering book, Lotus Blossoms and Purple Clouds, centers on a large Buddhist monastery in Quanzhou and combines ethnographic detail with stimulating analysis to examine religion in post-Mao China. Nichols conducted more than twenty-six months of field research over a fourteen-year period (2005–2019) to develop a re-description of Chinese monastic Buddhism that reaches beyond canonical sources and master narratives to local texts, material culture, oral history, and living traditions. His work decenters normative accounts and sheds light on how Buddhism is lived and practiced. It introduces readers to Quanzhou Kaiyuan Monastery and its community of clergy striving to revive traditions after the turmoil of the Maoist era; the lay Buddhists worshiping in the monastery’s courtyards and halls; the busloads of tourists marveling at the site’s buildings and artifacts, some dating as far back as the Tang Dynasty (ninth century); and the local officials dedicated to supporting—and restricting—the return of religion. Using gazetteers, epigraphy, and other archival sources, Nichols begins by tracing the history of Quanzhou Kaiyuan Monastery from the Tang Dynasty to the present, noting the continued relevance of preternatural events like the lotus-blooming mulberry trees and auspicious purple clouds associated with the founding of the monastery. The contemporary monastery is then explored through ethnographic participation/observation and interviews. Nichols uncovers a number of unexpected features of Buddhist religious life, making a case for the fundamentally liturgical nature of Buddhist monastic practice—one marked by a program of daily dharaṇi (sacred text) recitation, esoteric traditions, and ancestor veneration. Finally, he presents an innovative spatial analysis of the Quanzhou Kaiyuan Monastery temple that reveals how different groups engage with the site to create a place of religious practice, a tourist attraction, and a community park.

Tian Lun moved! The path to the highest point had opened! Who else would Lu Yang be if not him? War God? It was just an ant ... Immortal? God? Damn it... Saint realm? Causality? Tear him to shreds and perish, then send him to the cycle of reincarnation .... Slaughter? The main characters never show mercy.

How a daughter of feudal Japan, living hundreds of years in one generation, became a modern American.

Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto was born into a samurai family in the years following the Meiji Restoration in 1868. In this autobiography, she recounts her experiences growing up in a culture with very strict expectations. As her family’s influence and power wanes, a marriage is arranged for her and she leaves to join her future husband in America. Etsu’s story is interleaved with explanations of Japanese culture, religion, and history. As she is exposed to more of the world outside of Japan, she must reconcile the differences between the traditions she grew up with and the ideas of her new homeland. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

A Daughter of the Samurai tells the true story of a samurai and 's daughter, brought up in the strict traditions of feudal Japan, who was sent to America to meet her future husband. An engrossing, haunting tale that gives us insight into an almost forgotten age. Madam Sugimoto was born in Japan, not in the sunny southern part of the country which has given it the name of and quot;The Land of Flowers, and quot; but in the northern province of Echigo which is bleak and cold and so cut off from the rest of the country by mountains that in times past it had been considered fit only for political prisoners or exiles. Her father was a Samurai, with high ideals of what was expected of a Samurai and 's family. His hopes were concentrated in his son until the son refused to marry the girl for whom he was destined and ran off to America. After that all that was meant for him fell to the lot of the little wavy-haired Etsu who writes here so delightfully of the things that happened in their childhood days in far-away Japan.

Legacy treasure, the mysterious brocade box, caused by the blood rain, love and hatred, it was a complex mistake.