The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1682 page)

 
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(Jap., ‘thought beads’). A Japanese Buddhist
rosary
. The name of a
Buddha
, especially
Amida
, is recited with each bead.

 
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see
FESTIVALS AND FASTS (JAPANESE)
.

 
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Neo-Catechumenate
.

Roman Catholic
movement for the renewal of traditional faith. The movement was founded in 1964 by K. Arguello, in order to resist the increasing
secularization
of society and the erosion of traditional understandings of faith and practice. Reverting to the practice of the early Church of training
catechumens
before
baptism
, the Neo-Catechumenate, more simply called ‘The Way’, establishes teams of trained people who are dispersed into parishes in order to train others. They in turn move into other parishes to continue the movement. While some (including the pope,
John Paul II
) welcome this as a renewal of informed commitment, others see it as destructive of parish community, because it creates an élite with its own structure (including separate activities and
masses
) in the midst of what might otherwise be regarded as a united church.

 
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Neo-Confucianism
.

The revived form of
Confucianism
which became dominant in China especially after the 10th cent. CE, under the leadership of a succession of great philosophers of the 11th cent., including Chou Tun-yi,
Ch’eng
Hao, Ch’eng Yi (see
CH’ENG HAO
), and Chang Tsai, as well as the later synthesizer
Chu
Hsi (1130–1200), all of the Sung dynasty. Neo-Confucianism attempted to offer certain explanations of the problems of the universe and of human existence, developing a cosmology of the Great Ultimate (
T’ai-chi
, Chou Tunyi), a doctrine explaining the rise of evil in human nature (Chang Tsai and Ch’eng Yi), grounded in the metaphysics of
li
(principle) and
ch’i
(matter-energy), and a practical teaching of cultivation which regards as important intellectual pursuit as well as moral progress (Ch’eng Yi and Chu Hsi). As a philosophical movement, it is usually described as having at least two principal branches, the ‘realist’ school of Chu Hsi with its emphasis on li or principle, and the ‘idealist’ school of
Wang
Yang-ming (1472–1529), with its preference for the subjective
hsin
(mind-and-heart). Neo-Confucianism spread from China to Yi Korea and Tokugawa Japan, which also witnessed local developments of the Chu Hsi schools (and, in the case of Japan, of the Yang-ming school also).

 
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