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Contents: Preface. 1. Secrecy in Buddhism/Dorji Wangchuk. 2. Ethical Challenges and Hermeneutical Solutions: A Comparative Study with Special Reference to Rabbinic Literature/Daniel Sperber. 3. Praying from the Depths: Themes of Struggle and Uncertainty in Pre-Modern Accounts of Jewish Prayer/David C. Flatto. 4. The Birthe of "Mahayana Buddhism": How Shaku Soen Changed Modern Buddhist Studies/Norihisa Baba. 5. Asset markets, the Agency Problem, and Gifts to the Early Medieval Buddhist Sangh in India/P.V. Viswanath. 6. Faith in Ideology versus Academic Rationality: A Case Study/ Mahesh A. Deokar.

This volume contains six of the papers presented during a conference titled "Birds as Ornithologists: Scholarship between Faith and Reason" which took place at Namdroling monastery on July 23-25, 2017. The papers all focus on issues concerning complex themes that have often led to tension between faith and reason, as observed both in past and in present times, and from within and outside the respective traditions. Three of the papers deal with issues concerning the Buddhist tradition from within. A fourth paper deals with the issue of gifts to the early medieval Buddhist monastic community in India and offers interpretations from outside the Buddhist tradition from the perspective of the academic field of economics. The other two papers discuss issues concerning tension between faith and reason within the Jewish tradition.