bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Emptiness
Authors: Bommarito Nicolas 
Published: June 2020

Abstract
This chapter addresses Buddhism's view on emptiness. Some Buddhists say that everything is empty. To say that things are empty is not to say they do not exist at all. Rather, it is saying that they do not exist in the way that they seem to, as free-standing and independent entities. Moreover, saying that everything is empty is not like saying that everything is red or round. It is saying that everything lacks an independent self-nature. Such a nature just is not there. When we take seriously the idea that everything is empty, we will start to wonder if this also applies to emptiness itself. For some Buddhists, the answer is no; emptiness itself is the one and only thing that is what it is all the time, without relying on anything else. But for other Buddhists that accept emptiness, emptiness itself also lacks any independent self-essence. The truth that everything exists only relationally is itself only relational. Emptiness is itself empty.
Who Do You Think You Are?
Authors: Bommarito Nicolas 
Published: June 2020

Abstract
This chapter explores self-knowledge, which is critical for solving the practical problems involved in getting through life. An awareness of your own quirks, character, and preferences is important for figuring out what works for you. However, self-knowledge is also tricky because it is especially elusive. People commonly learn about themselves only indirectly; often it is only by reading the reactions of others that people can see how harsh, kind, or annoying they are. It is also because when trying to know the self, the thing the individual is trying to see is the very thing that does the looking. Buddhism offers many evocative images to illustrate this special challenge: Just as a knife cannot cut itself, the mind cannot be directed toward itself. This makes knowing the self, especially in a deep way, an especially difficult task. Knowing the self thus requires special kinds of tools and methods. The chapter then considers the concept of Buddha Nature.
Karma
Authors: Bommarito Nicolas 
Published: June 2020

Abstract
This chapter examines karma. Karma, most literally, means action. Initially, it meant very specific ritual actions to bring about certain results. Later, the meaning of the term expanded and started to refer to all actions. Not only that, it is also used to refer to the effects of an individual’s actions and the connections between their actions and those effects. Given this basic idea of karma, it is important to highlight what it is not. People sometimes talk about the “law of karma.” People think of laws as having a lawmaker and an enforcer. However, karma is not like that—there is nobody writing the law and making sure it is enforced. In this sense, it is more like the law of gravity—it is a regularity in the way the world is; nobody has to write or enforce it. Moreover, karma is not some form of cosmic justice; it need not be about deserving the effects. Karma is not fate as well. The Buddha is clear that not all events are determined by karma.
The Two Truths
Authors: Bommarito Nicolas 
Published: June 2020

Abstract
This chapter analyzes the two truths. Buddhists care deeply about getting at the truth and as a result have thought a lot about what truth is. One of the most important philosophical ideas to emerge from Buddhism is that of the two truths. Though it is more commonly known as the two truths, it could also be called the Two Realities. What is really true, not just within a set of conventions, is called ultimate truth. This does not entail that conventional truth is always bad or to be abandoned. Conventional truth can be useful as long as it does not blind one to what is really happening. This idea plays two different roles in Buddhism: One is as a philosophical idea about the nature of reality; the other is as an interpretive strategy to make sense of a variety of Buddhist texts.
Enlightenment
Authors: Bommarito Nicolas 
Published: June 2020

Abstract
This chapter focuses on enlightenment. Many writers describe Buddhism as a path to happiness, but there are a few important ways in which enlightenment and happiness can be quite different. Happiness, for example, is often thought of as an entirely subjective state. The problem that Buddhists are trying to solve, however, is not merely a subjective state. The problem for Buddhists is not only about feeling bad but is a precarious and destructive way of being in the world, one that people often fail to recognize at all. In this sense, the Buddhist goal is more like being healthy than being happy. Enlightenment involves a radical reorientation of an individual’s outlook on the world. It is one that takes into account the ways in which an individual’s habits of seeing, feeling, thinking, and responding to things fool that individual into having a visceral sense that the world is one way when it is really very different.
Philosophy as Practice
Authors: Bommarito Nicolas 
Published: June 2020

Abstract
This chapter looks at another way to understand the philosophical aspects of Buddhism. Instead of seeing philosophy as about abstract things to know, we can think of it also as a kind of mental exercise, an intellectual training regimen. Rather than something to know, it is something to work through, something to do. Much of Buddhist philosophy can be read on two levels, as a description of how things are and as instructions for how to realize it. As such, Buddhist philosophy is like an exercise an individual goes through to help them get started in the right direction; it is a process that they go through to get their mind out of its old habits. This means that, like any practice, it is not for everyone and eventually, that individual may not need it anymore.
Varieties of Buddhist Practice
Authors: Bommarito Nicolas 
Published: June 2020

Abstract
This chapter provides an overview of the wide variety of Buddhist practices. Though people who practice Buddhism would all self-identify as Buddhist, what Buddhism means to them and the role it plays in their lives is very different. Think about the social context. For some Buddhists, Buddhism is deeply intertwined with both family life and powerful social institutions. This social context affects how practice looks for each. The role of ritual is also different for each. Moreover, there are different background assumptions about the supernatural in play. Another difference is the place of meditation in the lives of each of these Buddhists. None of this is to say that any of these people are practicing “real” or “authentic” Buddhism. It is merely to highlight the ways in which Buddhist practice varies around the world.
A Few Grains of Salt
Authors: Bommarito Nicolas 
Published: June 2020

Abstract
This chapter assesses some common cultural associations people have with Buddhism and where these associations came from. In the case of Europe and America, early in the 1800s, two groups—the Romantics and the Transcendentalists—started to take an interest in ideas from Asia in general and from Buddhism in particular. Another early source of Western interest in Buddhism is a religious movement called Theosophy. It is through these channels that many in the West first came into contact with Buddhism. It arrived filtered through people with very particular agendas and interests. People who had little, if any, command of Buddhist texts or the languages they were written in. Though they popularized ideas and texts from Asia, they did so with a very specific spin, one that still can be felt today. Ultimately, it is important to keep in mind that there is more to Buddhism than one's own idealized version of it because there is a real danger in projecting what one wants onto Buddhism and ignoring the rest.
Relics and Veneration
Authors: Bommarito Nicolas 
Published: June 2020

Abstract
This chapter addresses the role of relics and veneration in Buddhism. Words like “relic” and “veneration” can often feel too religious and too supernatural. For many with a modern outlook, practices involving the veneration of relics can seem archaic and irrelevant. As a result, they are too often overshadowed by philosophy and meditation in many contemporary discussions of Buddhism. Nevertheless, these practices can not only be deeply meaningful and transformative but are among the most widespread and popular in the Buddhist world today. Indeed, for the vast majority of practicing Buddhists in the world, the veneration of relics and important places is absolutely central to what Buddhism means to them. Most generally, these practices are ways of expressing respect and admiration, but they also bring about changes in one's outlook. They typically involve an especially important object or place, and there are, as one might expect, many variations. Since they often involve magical or supernatural elements, they are sometimes ignored or downplayed in modern forms of Buddhism. They are, however, important in the Buddhist world and offer important lessons, even for those who do not accept the supernatural aspects.
Developing Awareness
Authors: Bommarito Nicolas 
Published: June 2020

Abstract
This chapter examines the technique of developing awareness. Many Buddhist techniques are directed toward a particular object. Different objects can be selected for people at different levels of understanding, with different temperaments, or who face different obstacles. Other times, however, we are not aiming to be aware of anything in particular but simply more aware. We are not focused on any particular thing but instead have a heightened sensitivity to everything that is happening. This technique is similar to some of the earlier ones, but it is less like training the eyes to see particular things better and more like improving the sense of vision itself. It helps to develop a kind of discerning awareness of all of the events around life—their origins, duration, and characteristics.
Kindness and Joy
Authors: Bommarito Nicolas 
Published: June 2020

Abstract
This chapter focuses on Buddhist practices that aim to change one's feeling about good and bad events in one's life. These practices aim to change one's usual way of relating to others. In particular, they develop a pair of responses called metta and mudita. Metta is often translated as “loving kindness” and is a genuine concern for the happiness of others. Mudita is often translated as “sympathetic joy” and means feeling happy when good things happen to others. Though metta is similar to much of what can be called love or kindness, it is more specific than either. It is a sincere and selfless concern for others, for their happiness and well-being. Mudita is a similarly selfless response toward someone, but it is felt in response to a particular event.
Digital Domesticity
Authors: Kennedy Jenny , Arnold Michael , Gibbs Martin , Nansen Bjorn , Wilken Rowan 
Published: June 2020

Abstract
This book, Digital Domesticity: Media, Materiality, and Home Life, is concerned with the home, but it is not bounded by the home. While the home provides a necessary anchor point for our empirical and theoretical work, we are well aware that the home is not self-contained but is a node in multiple commercial, cultural, and technical networks, all of which interact, and all of which have local implications and global reach. The home’s socio-technical ecology operates in recursive relations with these much larger ecologies, none of which can be ignored if the home is to be understood. This book unearths this digital domesticity through accounts of evolving socio-technical relations as they unfold in processes of adopting and adapting to innovations; using, maintaining, and neglecting the complex of technologies in the home; and confronting the obsolescence of particular technologies and failure of systems of consumer technologies.
Appropriations
Authors: Michael Arnold 
Published: June 2020

Abstract
This chapter considers how media landscapes in the home have shifted over this century and examines how devices relate to each other and to householders to create dynamic and evolving media ecologies. At the turn of this century, a typical domestic media ecology comprised a cathode-ray television in the living room, perhaps connected to a videocassette recorder; a desktop computer in a home office, perhaps connected to a dial-up modem; and a landline telephone, often located in a communal area in the home. More recently, the home has become a place for high-definition “smart” televisions, intelligent multifunction set-top boxes, game consoles, digital radio, high-speed broadband, cabled and wireless home networks, mobile computing, cloud connections, online government service provision, gesture-controlled games, and much more. How and why have these technologies been appropriated? How has this ongoing appropriation reconfigured the domestic media ecology and the life that is lived within this ecology?
Housekeepings
Authors: Michael Arnold 
Published: June 2020

Abstract
This chapter focuses on the significant and often invisible forms of “articulation work” (the work to keep things working) needed to maintain digital media in good working order and fit-for-purpose in the domestic media ecology. It considers the labor of investigating options for, making decisions about, and purchasing and setting up new technologies as well as their ongoing maintenance. This chapter examines both the work and who does the work of maintaining and managing digital media. It also examines the relations of power, authority, gender, labor, and expertise that go into decision making, appropriating, maintaining, and using household digital technologies. In doing so, it furthers empirical developments concerning the notion of domestic media ecologies.
Displacements
Authors: Michael Arnold 
Published: June 2020

Abstract
This chapter considers how media technologies become obsolete, dysfunctional, and dispossessed and examines how households manage older technology devices and eventually move toward displacement, including through replacement and disposal. As new things are placed, older things are displaced. As new things are purposed, others are repurposed. As older things deteriorate and break or become obsolete, they are repositioned within the household ecology, they are moved to the periphery of the ecology (storage), or they are removed from the house altogether to some distant place. Attachments are formed with material things that make disposal difficult, and the lingering functionality and use values of media continue to be exercised, challenging the imperative of consumer electronics to force obsolescence and upgrading. This chapter investigates the steady accumulation of unused media within homes, informed by uncertainties around data stored on hard drives, electronic waste protocols, or even the slim chance of future reuse.
Debating Targeted Killing
Authors: Meisels Tamar , Waldron Jeremy 
Published: June 2020

Abstract
In this “for and against” book, Jeremy Waldron and Tamar Meisels defend competing positions on the legitimacy of targeted killing. The volume begins with a joint introduction, briefly setting out the terms of discussion, and presenting a short historical overview of the practice—i.e. what is targeted killing, and how has it been used in which conflicts and by whom. The debate opens with Meisels’ defense of targeted killing as a legitimate and desirable defensive anti-terrorism strategy, in keeping with both just war theory and international law. Meisels unreservedly defends the named killing of irregular combatants, most notably terrorists, during armed conflict. Additionally, she offers a possible moral justification for rare instances of assassination outside that framework, specifically with reference to recent cases of nuclear scientists developing weapons of mass destruction for the Iranian and Syrian governments. The debate continues with Waldron’s arguments focusing on the dangers and the inherent wrongness of governments’ having the right to maintain death lists—lists of named individuals who are to be hunted down and killed. Waldron notes the many differences between individualized targeting and ordinary combat, and he resists the attempt to assimilate targeted killing to killings in combat. Waldron also cautions us to consider carefully what a world of targeted killings will be like, the many abuses it is liable to, and why we should be very cautious, morally and strategically, in our thinking about it.
Introduction
Authors: Meisels Tamar , Waldron Jeremy 
Published: June 2020

Abstract
The debate over targeted killing in this volume begins with a joint introduction by the authors, briefly setting out the terms of discussion, and presenting a short overview of the practice—what is targeted killing, and how has it been used, in which conflicts, and by whom. Following some historical examples, mostly from Israel and the United States, the authors distinguish between contemporary signature strikes and personality strikes, and focus their forthcoming debate on the latter, i.e., named killing. While this book touches on a wide array of issues, e.g., civilian immunity, drones, violation of sovereignty, abuse of government power, etc., the authors urge the reader early on to maintain a steadfast focus on the essence of targeted killing debated throughout, namely, the targeting for death of named and identified individuals by our states and leaders.
Reply to Professor Waldron
Authors: Meisels Tamar 
Published: June 2020

Abstract
The volume concludes with an exchange between the authors, directly engaging with the others’ respective argument. In this penultimate chapter, Meisels briefly responds and replies to the arguments raised by Waldron against targeted killing. Meisels emphasizes some points of agreement between the two authors: Their commitment to the right to life and the laws of armed conflicts, and their non-pacifist and non-absolutist position on targeted killing. She reemphasizes their points of disagreement, such as the authors’ very different use of analogies, particularly in determining the normative framework for discussing targeted killing (war/armed conflict), their differing views on possible proliferation of target killing, as well as disagreements over precedents and particular cases.
Ethics and Extraterrestrials
Authors: Potthast Adam 
Published: June 2020

Abstract
This chapter examines how classical ethical theory might apply to the kind of alien life humans are most likely to encounter: nonrational, nonsentient life. Humans are unlikely to have basic ethical obligations to extraterrestrial life because it is very unlikely that extraterrestrial life could have moral status, by the lights of leading moral theories. Furthermore, even if extraterrestrial life did have moral status, consistency with moral practices on Earth would suggest that humans have very few basic ethical obligations to this life. However, it does not follow that humans could treat extraterrestrial life in any matter human beings see fit, because extraterrestrial life may require protection as humans follow through on basic ethical obligations to themselves. In sum, humans would not have ethical obligations to such life per se but the obligations people clearly do have to their fellow humans entail that people cherish, promote, and protect extraterrestrial life.
A Theoretical Framework of the Partisan Politics of Law and Order
Authors: Wenzelburger Georg 
Published: June 2020

Abstract
Chapter 2 develops a theoretical framework for the analysis of law and order policies from a partisan politics perspective. It argues that understanding law and order policy making involves two main steps that can be conceptually distinguished: agenda-setting and decision-making. For the agenda-setting phase, the chapter builds on the assumption that issues related to law and order are valence-loaden and generate issue competition between political parties. Therefore, issue owners are particularly likely to get tough on law and order. For decision-making, the theoretical argument relates to theories of comparative public policy analysis, according to which the preferences do translate into public policies, but only if the institutional context allows. Finally, this theoretical chapter discusses how law and order turns may shape the future policy path through positive policy feedback. All expectations are summarized in seven hypotheses to guide the empirical analysis.
Law and Order Policies and Third Way Social Democrats
Authors: Wenzelburger Georg 
Published: June 2020

Abstract
Chapter 4 provides a comparative case study on the law and order policies adopted by two social democratic governments, the British Blair administration and the German Red-Green government led by Chancellor Schröder. It reveals that while both governments started from a somewhat similar programmatic stance, only the British case saw a significant turn toward tougher policies. The divergence between the cases is explained by two main facts. First, the German SPD seemed to use a tough policy stance mainly for strategic reasons, whereas the leaders of New Labour were deeply convinced of the policy. Therefore, the German policy stance was much less coherent. Second, the power of the German constitutional court strengthened the position of the Ministry of Justice vis -à-vis the Ministry of the Interior—a fact that hindered a tougher path.
Law and Order Policies and Conservative Parties
Authors: Wenzelburger Georg 
Published: June 2020

Abstract
Chapter 5 presents evidence on how two conservative governments, the Bildt government in Sweden in the early 1990s and the French UMP governments at the beginning of the 2000s, embarked on rather different policy paths although both governments had pledged to implement harsher law and order policies. The difference between the two countries is explained by the fact that the Swedish political system constrains radical policy shifts by a legislative process that is lengthy and aimed at consensus. Therefore, the government simply did not have enough time to implement what might have been a major policy change. Second, the importance of law and order policies was greatly reduced in Sweden due to a major financial and economic crisis that hit the country only months after the government took office—hence, crime and security were not a priority. In France, in contrast, institutional constraints were weak, which explains the shift toward a harsher stance.
Law and Order and the Risk of Policy Overreaction
Authors: Wenzelburger Georg 
Published: June 2020

Abstract
Chapter 6 shows how an initial turn toward a harsher policy stance on law and order can set in motion positive policy feedback and lead to policy overreaction. It discusses the mechanisms that may lead to such overreaction building on Pierson’s framework. From the empirical evidence gathered, it seems plausible that especially the valence character of security-related issues, which make them issues on which elections can be won, creates a dynamic leading to policy feedback. However, this depends on the extent of the initial policy change: whereas overreaction can be diagnosed in the United Kingdom and France, the cases of Germany and Sweden show that positive feedback is not necessarily the case.