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Podcast: New Books in Buddhist Studies
Episode: Justin R. Ritzinger, “Anarchy in the Pure Land: Reinventing the Cult of Maitreya in Modern Chinese Buddhism” (Oxford UP, 2017)
Description: In his recent monograph, Anarchy in the Pure Land: Reinventing the Cult of Maitreya in Modern Chinese Buddhism (Oxford University Press, 2017), Justin R. Ritzinger examines the cult of Maitreya as developed during the Republican period by the Chinese monk Taixu (1890-1947) and his circle. Drawing on previously unexamined sources, including contemporaneous anarchist periodicals, Ritzinger begins the book by arguing that Taixu was deeply involved in radical political circles during his formative years, far more so than has previously been appreciated. Here we learn not only about the tumult of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but also about...