Browsing by Subject "Buddhism"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Leading with a "noble mission": the dynamic leadership of Maechee Sansanee Sthirasuta.
    (2010-09) Adachi, Kaoru
    This case study describes the leadership of Maechee Sansanee Sthirasuta, a dynamic Theravâda Buddhist nun and the founder and director of the Sathira Dhammasathan meditation center in Thailand. Her leadership characteristics, impact on her followers and contributions to Thai society were examined. Data was gathered through interviews with Maechee Sansanee, her colleagues and experts, direct and participant observations, and content analysis of documents and media between 2004 and 2009, including a total of six months of fieldwork. Maechee Sansanee's leadership was described through four dimensions: moral leadership, servant leadership, aesthetic leadership, and social entrepreneurship. She exemplifies moral values that are taught by Buddhism and demonstrates moral behaviors as shown to others. She serves the Buddha and the community by following Buddhist teachings and making herself useful to others. She created numerous projects that improved people's lives using her social entrepreneurial spirit and aesthetic development. While maechees generally have less social recognition and fewer resources than monks, they have more freedom from influence by the traditional sangha administration in pursuit of their activities, studies, and meditation. Maechee Sansanee has emerged as an exceptional leader in Thailand and the maechee community by utilizing her leadership and entrepreneurial skills while realistically recognizing constraints and possibilities.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Nature as Impression for Dao: A Theory of Spiritual Tourism Development in Da Nang - Vietnam
    (University of Minnesota Tourism Center, 2013) Tran-Tuan, Hung; Gartner, William C.; Schneider, Ingrid E.; Erkkila, Daniel L.; Lawrenz, Frances
    This research aims to generate a theory of spiritual tourism using data from a site in Việt-Nam, the city of Đà-Nẵng. Given that this form of tourism is young for Da-Nang, the issue is how the city should develop its spiritual tourism offering in a determinative and authentic way for the efficiency of its environment, socio-cultural, and economic sectors. Academically, spiritual tourism theory is wanting. Development and discussion of the grounded theory is based on cultural, heritage, and spiritual tourism.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Nature as Impression for Dao: A Theory of Spiritual Tourism Development in Da Nang Vietnam
    (University of Minnesota Tourism Center, 2015) Tran-Tuan, Hung
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    zAmya Theater Project: toward an intimacy of social change.
    (2010-06) Chaves, Rachel
    This dissertation addresses efficacy in activist, community-based theater (CBT). It relies primarily on my ethnographic research with zAmya Theater Project, a community-based theater in Minneapolis, MN that makes plays with and about people who have experienced homelessness. My time with zAmya has led me to develop a theory of and language for efficacy in community-based theater based not on the desire for large-scale or systemic social change, but upon the possibility of intensely local instances of transformation in interpersonal encounters, or what I call an intimacy of social change. I draw my definition of intimacy from Buddhist philosophy, where it denotes a radical presencing, or a closeness to the present moment of lived experience without grasping or becoming averse to that experience. This theory of efficacy is not intended to replace the call for systemic change other CBT practitioner-scholars (such as Augusto Boal) articulate, but rather to enrich that mode of praxis. I look at three sites within zAmya's rehearsal and performance process where this kind of efficacy exists (or has the possibility to exist in other CBTs). These sites are: 1) the movement of bodies through theatrical space and the way that movement produces freedom or oppression, 2) the way affect and emotion are produced in rehearsals and performances, and the way they move in circuits through the room or are prevented from doing so, and 3) the narrative act, which includes an analysis of the narrators and the way they negotiate the power contained within the act of storytelling. I contend that when intimacy, or radical presencing, occurs in any of these three sites, a moment of efficacy has occurred, and I propose that this model of efficacy be included in discussions about the impact of activist theater.