{"title":"Paths to the Buddhist priesthood: A qualitative study of Kōyasan priests","authors":"Charles Mueller, Miori Nagashima","doi":"10.1177/00377686231162532","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Factors that currently lead Japanese men to enter and remain in the Buddhist priesthood are poorly understood. This article reports the results of a qualitative study that examines the profiles of a seminary instructor and six Shingon Buddhist priests (真言) at Kōyasan guesthouse temples (高野山). The data, collected from semi-structured interviews, were analyzed with ATLAS.ti using a thematic analysis approach. The study identified seven key themes related to (1) family, (2) mentoring relationships, (3) education, (4) labor, (5) spiritual practices, (6) religious doctrines and faith, and (7) the devotion of guests. For the six priests, family connections were found to play an especially critical role in initial decisions to enter the priesthood, whereas other factors chiefly contributed to sustained commitment. The results are discussed in terms of theories of ‘costly signalling’, ego-identity statuses, and the Japanese tendency to construct personal identity within the context of social affiliations.","PeriodicalId":46442,"journal":{"name":"Social Compass","volume":"70 1","pages":"263 - 282"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0000,"publicationDate":"2023-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Social Compass","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00377686231162532","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"RELIGION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Factors that currently lead Japanese men to enter and remain in the Buddhist priesthood are poorly understood. This article reports the results of a qualitative study that examines the profiles of a seminary instructor and six Shingon Buddhist priests (真言) at Kōyasan guesthouse temples (高野山). The data, collected from semi-structured interviews, were analyzed with ATLAS.ti using a thematic analysis approach. The study identified seven key themes related to (1) family, (2) mentoring relationships, (3) education, (4) labor, (5) spiritual practices, (6) religious doctrines and faith, and (7) the devotion of guests. For the six priests, family connections were found to play an especially critical role in initial decisions to enter the priesthood, whereas other factors chiefly contributed to sustained commitment. The results are discussed in terms of theories of ‘costly signalling’, ego-identity statuses, and the Japanese tendency to construct personal identity within the context of social affiliations.
期刊介绍：
Social Compass is a fully peer reviewed international journal that publishes original research and review articles on the sociology of religion. It aims to reflect the wide variety of research being carried out by sociologists of religion in all countries. Part of each issue consists of invited articles on a particular theme; for the unthemed part of the journal, articles will be considered on any topic that bears upon religion in contemporary societies. Issue 2 each year contains selected papers from the biennial conferences of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion (ISSR). Readers are also invited to contribute to the Forum section.
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