Description
Book SynopsisWith air pollution now intimately affecting every resident of Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, Saskia Abrahms-Kavunenko seeks to understand how, as a physical constant throughout the winter months, the murky and obscuring nature of air pollution has become an active part of Mongolian religious and ritual life. Enlightenment and the Gasping City identifies air pollution as a boundary between the physical and the immaterial, showing how air pollution impresses itself on the urban environment as stagnation and blur. She explores how air pollution and related phenomena exist in dynamic tension with Buddhist ideas and practices concerning purification, revitalisation and enlightenment. By focusing on light, its intersections and its oppositions, she illuminates Buddhist practices and beliefs as they interact with the pressing urban issues of air pollution, post-socialist economic vacillations, urban development, nationalism, and climate change.
Trade ReviewThis illuminating book will appeal mostly to professional scholars and graduate students in Mongolian and Buddhist studies.
* Choice *
Author Saskia Abrahms-Kavunenko follows lay Mongolian Buddhists and invites us to reflect both on their discourses of "light," which are explicitly linked to purification and religious.
* Lion's Roar: Buddhist Wisdom for Our Time *
The pages of this book bring to life vivid scenes of the functioning of Mongolian society, culture, customs, day-to-day life, and the environmental landscape of Ulaanbaatar in such a way that the lonely capital city of Mongolia dances to life in front of the reader's eyes.
* Journal of the American Academy of Religion *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Note on Transliteration and Terms
Introduction
1. Dust and Obscuration in a New Economy
2. A History of Enlightenment in Mongolia
3. Buddhism, Purification, and the Nation
4. Ignorance and Blur
5. Networks and Visibility
6. Karma and Purification
7. Removing Blockages, Increasing Energy
8. Temple Critiques
9. White Foods, Purification, and Enlightenment
Conclusion: Stillness and Movement
Glossary
Notes
References
Index
