The Army upheld religious observance and conformity. This was as true of the Hindu milieu of the Brigade of Gurkhas as it was of the Christian character of the wider Army. The Army’s ‘Christendom’ culture endured much longer than in civilian society: soldiers were expected to profess a religious affiliation, and mandatory worship did not disappear with the notional abolition of Sunday church parade in 1946. Only from the turn of the twenty-first century, and under the aegis of a New Labour government, did this situation begin to change. While the goal of making the Army more representative of society led to an increasing accent on recruiting from Britain’s ethnic and religious minorities, under the banner of equality, diversity and inclusion, Humanists began to challenge the Army’s Christian ascendancy. However, and although the proportion of soldiers professing ‘no religion’ (in fact, a remarkably varied category) grew in the early years of the twenty-first century, most notably after the end of major combat operations in Afghanistan, the appetite for fundamental religious change remained very limited, with Humanist aspirations being assimilated by the Army’s established culture of religious pluralism.

The Song religious world exhibited remarkable variety, innovation, and vibrancy. This survey of Song divinities, religious specialists, and religious practices highlights this era’s innovations and its continuities with the medieval past. Some old deities took on greater, national prominence in the Song. New local deities also emerged. The Song government approached these deities and their cults in various ways, granting state support, banning them, and often simply turning a blind eye. Among the lettered religions, Buddhism thrived, as the Chan school won widespread elite patronage. The Daoist church benefitted from extensive state patronage in two reigns, and new therapeutic, exorcistic regimens won government support and saw extensive use in the empire. Local festivals honoring new and old deities proliferated , as did large-scale rituals for the benefit of the suffering dead in the underworld. Clergies, lay elites, and commoners borrowed and shared practices to an unprecedented degree to secure protection and blessings in this life and the next.

The spirituality of the psychiatrist is important because of the way that it may impact the well-being of the psychiatrist, clinical practice and the understanding of psychiatry more widely. In some cases, it may influence a psychiatrist’s sense of vocation to be a psychiatrist. The case study in this chapter draws on the author’s own experience of the ways in which spirituality and formation as a psychiatrist were entangled during training. Three historical examples are offered of different ways in which religion and psychiatry might be entangled in the life, work and thought of psychiatrists: a pragmatic atheism (Maudsley), religion understood as pathology (Freud) and religion as beneficial to mental flourishing (Jung). Three more recent examples are then considered, one of a Christian attempt to integrate theology and psychiatry (Frank Lake), one of reflections on how Buddhism influences practice as a psychiatrist (Mark Epstein) and one of a personal encounter of a psychiatrist with shamanism (Olga Kharitidi).

This illustrates the theme of patient-centred spirituality by way of two case studies: one of a clinical encounter of the author with a patient in which neither spirituality nor religion was explicitly mentioned, and another in which the author was asked to see a patient because of a specifically religious concern. The first of these is interpreted in light of the work on spirituality in psychotherapy undertaken by Jeremy Holmes who, in turn, takes up the thinking of Donald Winnicott about transitional space. Spirituality is concerned with an ability to adopt a viewpoint outside oneself and to develop humility and a ‘negative capability’. The published views of patients suggest that spirituality/religion are explicitly important to many, even in a secular country like the UK, and that they would like them to be taken into account in treatment. It is proposed that there is ‘no such thing as a patient’, only encounters between human beings, one of whom is professionally identified as a physician (psychiatrist) and one as a patient. The authenticity of the human encounter, albeit within certain professional constraints, forms the basis for an effective therapeutic alliance.

Psychological therapies are another focus for entanglement with spirituality. Prayer has caused concern in the literature, particularly in respect of boundary issues arising when clinicians pray with patients, but the nature of prayer is explored here rather as a way of giving attention to things that are most desired. Scientific evidence suggests that prayer is a form of positive religious coping for patients. Mindfulness, with its roots in Buddhism, is widely applied as a secular spiritual intervention that is helpful in a range of mental health conditions. Silence has long been recognised as a significant and meaningful phenomenon within psychotherapy, but also has its place in contemplative spiritual practices. A theme running through these three practices is that of careful attentiveness, in which spiritual and psychological concerns become entangled. Good clinical practice requires careful attention-giving, so there is a sense in which treatment planning in psychiatry can be considered a kind of prayer, understood as careful attentiveness to what is most desired by patients. Examples are drawn from Christian, Islamic and Buddhist spirituality and practice.

This chapter presents an examination of central commitments found in some Buddhist traditions. The aim is to identify a Buddhist worldview that differs from the others considered in this study and thus constitutes a genuine alternative to them.

This chapter explores the influence on folk religion of China’s ‘Three Teachings’ – Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. Their influence was most apparent in the solemn community rituals that are conducted by priests, monks, and other ritual specialists. It reviews the argument that Daoism provided the ritual framework for folk religion. The chapter demonstrates that the jiao and other rites did not disappear completely until the mid 1960s. In relation to Buddhism, the chapter explores merit-making rituals and funerary rites and the growth of women-led sutra-reading groups and groups to recite the Buddha’s name, the latter an expression of the increasing feminization of folk religion during the Mao era. It also examines the role of pilgrimage in folk religious culture. The last two sections explore Confucianism in its popular forms, especially in relation to folk entertainment and folk morality, as evinced in morality books and precious scrolls.

A shared relationship to the city of Paterson, New Jersey, provided common ground for Ginsberg and William Carlos Williams. A key figure in modernist poetry, Williams helped to modernize Ginsberg’s verse through both example and personal instruction. The influence is especially notable in the early work collected in Ginsberg’s Empty Mirror and in poems of the mid 1950s, leading up to Howl, published with an introduction by Williams. Eventually, the two diverged over the structure of the poetic line and the relation of the poet to popular culture. Nevertheless, both in his poetry and in his teaching, Ginsberg continued to honor Williams as one of his masters.

While Ginsberg was certainly influenced by earlier generations of writers stretching back to the Metaphysical Poets, contemporary writers were also instrumental in helping him craft his own poetic vision. Foremost among them was his friend Jack Kerouac, who became a source of inspiration, guidance, and mentorship for Ginsberg throughout his life. This chapter explores the twenty-five years of profound yet tumultuous relationship that developed between the two writers, from their encounter in New York City in 1944 to Kerouac’s death in 1969. While their passionate and sometimes turbulent friendship sparked Ginsberg’s creative energy, Ginsberg drew heavily on Kerouac’s themes and stylistics – including his writing method of “spontaneous prose” – which became central to his own poetical voice. Though their relationship eventually fractured in the 1960s owing to political differences and rivalry, Kerouac continued to play a crucial role in shaping Ginsberg’s growth both as a writer and as an individual.

The publication of Allen Ginsberg in Context marks a dramatic shift in Ginsberg Studies (and Beat Studies), clearing important new ground for scholarship on the poet. This volume offers a crucial reminder of the need for continued study of Ginsberg’s full body of work and widest range of influences. The case for Ginsberg’s importance has not always been as clear. Ginsberg’s considerable popular readership has not translated often enough into serious attention from scholars. Allen Ginsberg in Context signals to the larger critical community that Ginsberg’s life and work are essential to the study of twentieth- and twenty-first-century poetry, culture, and political activism. This book starts the necessary conversation as to why Ginsberg’s poetry can still matter. Ginsberg’s body of work might find its big-bang moment in the 1956 publication of “Howl” and the poem’s subsequent triumph against obscenity charges the following year, but his work in its totality can be seen as a primer for how to live and speak freely in a world that increasingly is bent upon state surveillance and restrictions upon movement and expression.

Chapter 6 describes Gao Pian’s carrot-and-stick strategy for winning the second war against Nanzhao. “Securing the Dadu” narrates his rout of the invading army, their expulsion across the Dadu river, the symbolic frontier with Nanzhao running through a wide border zone in southern Sichuan. Gao consolidates his military advantage by reinforcing the border defenses and reforming the Sichuan military, among other measures, through the bloody suppression of a militia mutiny in 875 (“Mutiny and Malediction”). Sichuan was the historical birthplace of Daoism. “The Cradle of Daoism” illustrates the general’s increased recourse there to Daoist ritual and occult strategy. In “A Letter to Shilong,” an intimidating and peremptory missive addressed to the king of Nanzhao, Gao reminds the ruler of his past defeats in Annan and on the banks of the Dadu, and threatens further punitive action. In stark contrast with his public stance, Gao’s “Tantric Diplomacy” opens a parallel, secret channel of diplomacy through which his envoy, a Buddhist monk, conveys a conciliatory peace proposal to the Tantric kingdom.

Although rarely acknowledged, Buddhist monastics are among the most active lawmakers and jurists in Asia, operating sophisticated networks of courts and constitutions while also navigating – and shaping – secular legal systems. This chapter surveys the entanglements of Buddhist monastic law and state law in Sri Lanka while also providing a general overview of Sri Lanka as a multi-religious, multi-legal site. It introduces readers to the key methods and arguments advanced in this book, including arguments about how and why one should analyse legal pluralism ‘as a practice.’

How is monastic law practised in modern-day Sri Lanka? How do contemporary monastic jurists reckon with multi-legality? This chapter draws on archival and ethnographic research with Sri Lanka’s third-largest monastic community, the Rāmañña Nikāya, to answer these questions and explore the operation of monastic law today. It introduces readers to the Rāmañña constitution, court system, judicial training materials, jurisprudential texts and other features of monastic legal practice. It argues that monastic judges practise legal pluralism in ways that both resist and embrace the parallels between monastic and state law, engaging in a form of ‘double speak’ that, on the one hand, places monastic law ‘on the scale’ of Sri Lankan law while, at the same time, highlighting its superior, more-than-human status.

How should scholars and policymakers think about legal pluralism? In this Conclusion, I reflect on that topic, insisting that analysts should move beyond the question of whether laws, themselves, are or are not compatible. Instead, they should look at the practices of legal pluralism that make such compatibility seem natural or permissible, exceptional or impossible. I argue that inter-legal harmony is not a technical feat, but a social, political, and emotional achievement – one that is often precarious. Legal pluralism, therefore, implicates more than just the ‘stuff’ of law, but involves the shifting and recursive processes that help us to assemble normative worlds, reckon with diverse obligations, and find meaningful pathways forward through a changing and complex life.