Addiction is a dysfunction of the eating habit, and a disease of lifestyle, interpersonal relationships, and responsibility as a human being. A Buddhist approach for addiction recovery is discussed. Noah Levine, a Buddhist meditation teacher in the United States, has learned a “twelve steps” program to recover from addiction, and has used Buddhist meditation to recover from his own juvenile delinquency and addiction. He has integrated both practices and has developed a project to support youth who also suffer from those addictions and delinquency. He defines addiction as the action to avoid human difficulties and alleviate the pain (drug abuse) without serious confrontation and observance. He also maintains addiction as dukkha (suffering as understood in Buddhism) and suggests refuge in the three treasures (Buddhahood as awareness of reality; Dharma as twelve steps, the four noble truths and the eightfold path; Sangha as a mutual support community) as a path to recovery. He finds common radical views to question the default value system both in Buddhism and punk rock music, of which he is a fan.

Theravāda Buddhist monks are strictly limited by the Vinaya (monks' rules) with regard to their way of gaining, owning, and consuming foods. The most important principle for them is to live as beggars, and to depend on Dāna [religious gifts] given by lay people. In Theravāda Buddhism, such a monk's life is thought to be the optimum approach―though not the only one―to achieve Nibbāna (the doctrinal ideal of Theravāda Buddhism). Monks, however, cannot live without any food. This is an enormous dilemma for a monks' life.

How do monks deal with this food problem? How does this problem influence the religious practice of monks? In this paper I adopt an anthropological approach that is characterized by fieldwork and that aims to reveal processes of trial and error in the monks' life, taking Myanmar as an example. By doing this, I try to clarify one side of the religious practice of monks, for example, the reason why they become monks, the way their life courses develop, the way the organization of a monastery is formed, and so on. And I also insist that these facts could not be adequately discussed if we are particular about the distinction between the word “religion” and “secular,” which is an idea of modern European origin.

This article aims to analyze Hindu sacrificial rituals and related stories in South India and Sri Lanka and understand the nature of “transgressive religiosity.” These rituals are roughly divided into two types: sacralization and desacralization. Rituals of sacralization provide a person with a way of approaching a deity and acquiring its power. Rituals of desacralization, on the other hand, try to remove sin or pollution from him or her. While in the former case, distribution and consumption of sacrificial leftovers full of divine power are a significant part of the rituals, leftovers of the latter case, which have absorbed sin or pollution, are simply discarded outside a house or temple. In some rituals, however, their leftovers are discarded, but they are not performed for desacralization. I suggest that this is because the rituals (bali) aim to appease fierce deities such as Vedic ones. In the case of Śiva worship, the leftover is called nirmālya and given to Caṇḍa or Caṇḍeśvara. While he is a fierce manifestation of Śiva, Caṇḍa is also considered a devotee/saint of Śiva. Caṇḍa's act of chopping the legs of his father is not a criminal act, but an act out of devotion to Śiva. I suggest that receiving nirmālya, which should be discarded in normal contexts, is another act of showing devotion to Śiva. Receiving the leftovers of sacralization rituals has a social function to unite devotees under one deity, but receiving the leftovers of desacralization rituals expresses a fanatic and individualistic devotion (bhakti) to a deity. From the point of view of religious history, the latter is more important than the former.

In this article I will discuss the relationship between “food” and exercises in the Sōtō Zen sect using Eiheiji (where practices concerning food [jikijisahō] are thought to have continued since Dōgen) as an example.

First, I will compare the vocabulary about food used by priests with that in the secular world. Next, I will analyze how priests have meals by especially focusing on priest's performances, Buddhist texts (gemon), and taboos in sōdōhandai by using dishes called ōryōki. And I will analyze how waiters (jōnin) cook and serve. As a result, I will reveal that a series of rituals sanctifies foods and dishes, and that through this priests can embody the worldview of the Buddhist such as Buddhahood (hotoke), bodhisattva (bosatsu), Bhikkhu (sōryo) and fierce god (kijin) in the temple (garan).

In the second half of this paper I attempt to clarify the transformation of value in the “food” of the Buddhist, especially focusing on the history of shōjinryōri, which implies a vegetable plate (saishoku) and a simple meal (soshoku). Shōjinryōri is used in the secular world to express the “food” of the Buddhist. Such representation played a central role in filtering out the worldview and ritual of the Buddhist and extracting the mere meaning of food from shōjinryōri. which originally implied both food and how to eat it. In the modern context, shōjinryōri has become one of the traditional Japanese foods, and it has gradually started to take on the meaning of nationalism.

This article aims to examine the view of the body in alternative medicine, especially dietary practices based on an “alternative lifestyle,” which are often treated in researches of “spirituality” in Japan. The practitioners often insist that we must overcome the views and practices of medicine based on science to become healthy, because we cannot grasp our true self through them. Instead, they propose that we listen to the “voices of our bodies,” change our lifestyles, and choose daily practices in accordance with it. According to them, bodies are “natural” and not affected by anything including harmful discourses derived from modern industrial or consumer society, which is inhuman, so that we can know what we actually need for our health by listening to “our bodies' voices.”

However, recent scholars of anthropology and society have revealed that there are no bodies affected by any discourses, because our daily practices (including diet) are inevitably accompanied with moral discourses and carved by them. In addition, this article tries to show that such discourses of alternative medicine or lifestyle have the same structure as the ones of medical care or self-cultivating practices of modern consumer society.

Today the prohibition of alcohol is well associated with Islamic belief. In fact, the ban of alcohol is politically the easiest and most appealing way to “Islamize” a Muslim country. Paradoxically, however, in many such countries alcoholic beverages are consumed, sometimes even produced and exported. Rather than disrespect of religious norms, the pluralism of the Sharia (Islamic law) itself would more properly explain this phenomenon.

The following points are made: The Qur'ān, the divine scripture according to Islamic belief, prohibits only the drinking of wine (khamr). The historical reasons, as well as the nature of this prohibition, remain ambiguous. Even while a total alcohol ban program pushed forward by the Traditionalists (aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth), who thereby sought to realize an Islamic ideal (in their view), found its way into the mainstream of Sunnī Jurisprudence, the Ḥanafī doctrine that tolerates drinking modest amounts of liquors other than wine also was included as a part of the Sharia. Moreover, the Muslim scholars of classical periods, Ḥanafī or not, proved to be less zealous than modern Islamists in enforcing the severe ḥadd punishment (eighty or forty lashes) for drinking.

Food matters in various aspects―personal, social and even economic―at Jōdo Shinshū Buddhist temples in mainland United States. For more than a hundred years, Japanese immigrants and Japanese American Jōdo Shinshū sangha have been deeply and sincerely involved in cooking, providing, and inheriting foods at individual temples. The meals have been cooked and provided not only for individuals but also for people in different groups at temples as well as the Japanese immigrant community during pre-WWII years. The Japanese immigrant women have devoted themselves to cooking during these years. As temple bazaars have become popular after the war, the foods sold there gained popularity. The Jōdo Shinshū temples started to be recognized by local residents and communities through bazaar foods cooked by Japanese American Buddhists sold at the bazaars. These foods have been passed down and shared with people of next generations through cooking classes and cookbooks. Foods at Jōdo Shinshū temples have played significant roles in connecting individuals of different backgrounds and in supporting American Buddhism. Jōdo Shinshū in the United States could not have succeeded without the presence of the foods and the sangha who cooked and provided them.

Three main poles of Jewish dietary laws are prohibitions of (1) ingestion of blood, (2) cooking meat with dairy goods, and (3) eating the meat of “unclean” animals. Exact reasons or causes of the individual prohibitions have been variously argued and debated, but they are perhaps ultimately subject to interpretation. It seems more important to note the fact that the systematization of Jewish dietary laws occurred in the era of the Babylonian Exile, when Jewish people had lost both their kingdom and their land. At that time, they were forced to live in the midst of entirely different peoples, cultures, and religions. They were confronted with the danger of national dispersion and extinction. To keep their national identity, Jews in Babylon had to separate themselves from surrounding cultural environment. For that purpose, laws about one of the most fundamental elements of human life, that is, everyday food, must have been very helpful for them. Eating different foods in different ways was an effective means of avoiding ethnic and cultural assimilation and absorption, and of continuing to be a different and distinctive people.