New Books in Buddhist Studies

• Magdalena Maria Turek, "Buddhist Hermits in Eastern Tibet: Saint-Making and Ascetic Performance" (Routledge, 2025)

  Magdalena Maria Turek is an independent research scholar. She received her PhD from Humboldt University, Germany, and was a Research Fellow with the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Program in Buddhist Studies at the American Council of Learned Societies, USA. Her research examines how contemporary reiterations of Tibetan Buddhist orthopraxy, local narratives, and religious historiography shape Buddhist identities among Tibetans in China and the diaspora. She just published Buddhist Hermits in Eastern Tibet: Saint Making and Ascetic Performance (Routledge, 2025), a fascinating ethnography of the meditation school of Lapchi in Kham, which is in Eastern Tibet in modern day Yushu Prefecture in Qinghai Province. This is a relatively modern hermitage founded by a charismatic ascetic master named Tsultrim Tarchen, and populated by various nuns and monks who are studying meditation under Tsultrim Tarchen. Her book explores the rise of Tsultrim Tarchen, the activities practiced by the students there, and the how their contemplative practices and ascetic regimes allow for self-formation and empowerment on the part of the meditators, participate in ethno-religious revival, and articulate a counter-cultural position against Chinese domination of Tibetan culture. I found this book rich with ethnographic detail about the various nuns and why they were there. It was able to help me understand modern Buddhist practices on their own terms, but also how they relate to broader social and historical forces. It's very readable, but also deeply researched both in the field and in terms of the theoretical literature.  Note: Early on in the podcast, we mention a film made by some traveling companions of Dr. Turek's around the same area she did fieldwork. The film was not made by Dr. Turek and does not reflect her views, but gives a sense of the area where she did her fieldwork. The link to the trailer can be found here. Kate Hartmann is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Wyoming. She recently published Making the Invisible Real: Practices of Seeing in Tibetan Pilgrimage (Oxford University Press, 2025). Her other work can be found on her personal website. 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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• Emergent Phenomena with Daniel M. Ingram

  Today, host Prof. Pierce Salguero sits down with Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, a retired ER physician, co-founder of the Emergent Phenomena Research Consortium, CEO of Emergence Benefactors, and a noted adept in Buddhist meditation. Together we explore “emergent phenomena,” or the spiritual, mystical, magical, energetic, and psychedelic possibilities at the deep end of human experience. Along the way, we discuss dark nights of the soul, ontological fruit salad, brain scans of peak meditation states, and warning labels on spiritual practice. 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. Resources mentioned in this episode: Links to all Daniel's stuff Emergent Phenomena Research Consortium Emergent Benefactors Daniel M. Ingram, Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha (2018) website | book DharmaOverground.org Olivier Sandilands & Daniel M. Ingram, Documenting and defining emergent phenomenology: theoretical foundations for an extensive research strategy (2024) Avijit Chowdhury et al., Investigation of advanced mindfulness meditation “cessation” experiences using EEG spectral analysis in an intensively sampled case study (2022) Malcolm J. Wright et al., Altered States of Consciousness are Prevalent and Insufficiently Supported Clinically: A Population Survey (2024) Pierce Salguero, The Secret Spiritual Lives of Buddhist Studies Scholars (2024) Become a paid subscriber on blackberyl.substack.com to unlock our members-only benefits, including PDFs of these resources. 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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• Alexus McLeod, "Myth and Identity in the Martial Arts: Creating the Dragon" (Lexington Books, 2025)

  Myth and Identity in the Martial Arts: Creating the Dragon (Lexington Books, 2025) is a study of the role of myth and ideology in the formation of social identity, focusing on a variety of communities of practice involving the martial arts in East Asian and Western history. Alexus McLeod argues that myths of the martial arts should not be understood as “falsehoods” created as means of legitimizing modern practices, but should instead be understood as narratives that enable individuals and communities to formulate social identities and to accord meaning to their practices. This book covers six influential sources of myth and identity formation in the history of martial arts: early Chinese and Indian philosophy, the formation bushido thought in the Edo period of Japan, Republican-era Chinese conceptions of nationhood and physical culture, Western contributions and the innovations of Bruce Lee, African American conceptions of martial arts as a response to oppression in the twentieth century, and the contemporary ideologies of mixed martial arts. On doing philosophy with non-textual sources, see Alexus McLeod, An Introduction to Mesoamerican Philosophy.  On violence as the preferred weapon of the stupid (so they can avoid doing any interpretative labour), see David Graeber, The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy. 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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• Brook Ziporyn, "Experiments in Mystical Atheism: Godless Epiphanies from Daoism to Spinoza and Beyond" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

  A new approach to the theism-scientism divide rooted in a deeper form of atheism.Western philosophy is stuck in an irresolvable conflict between two approaches to the spiritual malaise of our times: either we need more God (the “turn to religion”) or less religion (the New Atheism). In Experiments in Mystical Atheism: Godless Epiphanies from Daoism to Spinoza and Beyond, (University of Chicago Press, 2024) Brook Ziporyn proposes an alternative that avoids both totalizing theomania and atomizing reductionism. What we need, he argues, is a deeper, more thoroughgoing, even religious rejection of God: an affirmative atheism without either a creator to provide meaning or finite creatures in need of it—a mystical atheism.In the legacies of Daoism and Buddhism as well as Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Bataille, Ziporyn discovers a critique of theism that develops into a new, positive sensibility—at once deeply atheist and richly religious. Experiments in Mystical Atheism argues that these “godless epiphanies” hold the key to renewing philosophy today.You can download the supplementary materials here. Other works recommended by Brook Ziporyn in this Interview Mercedes Valmisa, All Things Act, Oxford UP. Jana S. Rošker, Chinese Philosophy in Transcultural Contexts, Bloomsbury Academics Gregory Scott Moss, Absolute Dialetheism, forthcoming. But for a taste of a similar argument in a book chapter format, please check here. Blaise Aguera y Arcas, Whiat is Intelligence? Penguin Random House 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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• Gregory N. Evon, "Salvaging Buddhism to Save Confucianism in Choson Korea (1392-1910)" (Cambria Press, 2023)

  Salvaging Buddhism to Save Confucianism in Chosŏn Korea (1392-1910) (Cambria Press, 2023) is a fascinating book that sits at the intersection of Buddhist studies and premodern Korean literary history. Gregory N. Evon’s book unfolds in two parts: the first charts the history of the place, position, and status of Buddhism in Chosŏn Korea, charting how Buddhism went from being outright attacked to grudgingly tolerated. The second part looks at how this background and court intrigue led the Chosŏn official Kim Manjung 金萬重 (1637–1692) — someone typically thought of as a stalwart Neo-Confucian — to find value in Buddhism, so much so that he wove into his novel Lady Sa’s Journey to the South (Sassi namjŏng-gi 謝氏南征記) the idea that Buddhism might even hold the key to save Confucianism. Salvaging Buddhism to Save Confucianism in Chosŏn Korea should be of interest to those interested in the history of Buddhism, Chosŏn Korea, and premodern literature. It should particularly appeal to readers who might be more familiar with Kim Manjung’s more well-known work, A Nine Cloud Dream (Kuunmong 九雲夢). For such readers in particular, this book offers a new and more complex way to think about this author — and the place of Buddhism in early modern Korea. 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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