For many people attracted to Eastern religions (particularly Zen Buddhism), Asia seems the source of all wisdom. As Bernard Faure examines the study of Chan/Zen from the standpoint of postmodern ...human sciences and literary criticism, he challenges this inversion of traditional "Orientalist" discourse: whether the Other is caricatured or idealized, ethnocentric premises marginalize important parts of Chan thought. Questioning the assumptions of "Easterners" as well, including those of the charismatic D. T. Suzuki, Faure demonstrates how both West and East have come to overlook significant components of a complex and elusive tradition. Throughout the book Faure reveals surprising hidden agendas in the modern enterprise of Chan studies and in Chan itself. After describing how Jesuit missionaries brought Chan to the West, he shows how the prejudices they engendered were influenced by the sectarian constraints of Sino-Japanese discourse. He then assesses structural, hermeneutical, and performative ways of looking at Chan, analyzes the relationship of Chan and local religion, and discusses Chan concepts of temporality, language, writing, and the self. Read alone or with its companion volume, The Rhetoric of Immediacy, this work offers a critical introduction not only to Chinese and Japanese Buddhism but also to "theory" in the human sciences.
The Ways of Zen Tsai, C. C; Bruya, Brian
2021, 2021-07-27, Letnik:
21
eBook
From bestselling cartoonist C. C. Tsai, a delightfully illustrated collection of classic Zen Buddhist stories that enlighten as they entertain C. C. Tsai is one of Asia's most popular cartoonists, ...and his editions of the Chinese classics have sold more than 40 million copies in over twenty languages. In The Ways of Zen, he has created an entertaining and enlightening masterpiece from the rich collections of the Zen Buddhist tradition, bringing classic stories to life in delightful language and vividly detailed comic illustrations. Combining all the stories previously published in Tsai's Wisdom of the Zen Masters and Zen Speaks, this is the artist's largest collection of selections from the most important and famous Zen texts.The story of the illiterate wood-peddler Huineng, who improbably rises to become the most famous Zen patriarch, is joined by others that trace the development of the five major sects of Zen Buddhism through other masters such as Mazu, Linji, and Yunmen. A shattered antique, a blind man carrying a lantern, sutras set on fire, a cow jumping through a window—each story leads the reader to reflect on fundamental Buddhist ideas. The Ways of Zen also features the original Chinese text in side columns on each page, enriching the book for readers and students of Chinese without distracting from the English-language cartoons.Filled with memorable anecdotes and disarming wisdom, The Ways of Zen is a perfect introduction to Zen Buddhism and an essential addition to any Zen collection.
Through a highly sensitive exploration of key concepts and metaphors, Bernard Faure guides Western readers in appreciating some of the more elusive aspects of the Chinese tradition of Chan Buddhism ...and its outgrowth, Japanese Zen. He focuses on Chan's insistence on "immediacy"--its denial of all traditional mediations, including scripture, ritual, good works--and yet shows how these mediations have always been present in Chan. Given this apparent duplicity in its discourse, Faure reveals how Chan structures its practice and doctrine on such mental paradigms as mediacy/immediacy, sudden/gradual, and center/margins.
The truth of Chan Buddhism-better known as "Zen"-is regularly said to be beyond language, and yet Chan authors-medieval and modern-produced an enormous quantity of literature over the centuries. To ...make sense of this well-known paradox,Patriarchs on Paperexplores several genres of Chan literature that appeared during the Tang and Song dynasties (c. 600-1300), including genealogies, biographies, dialogues, poems, monastic handbooks, and koans. Working through this diverse body of literature, Alan Cole details how Chan authors developed several strategies to evoke images of a perfect Buddhism in which wonderfully simple masters transmitted Buddhism's final truth to one another, suddenly and easily, and, of course, independent of literature and the complexities of the Buddhist monastic system. Chan literature, then, reveled in staging delightful images of a Buddhism free of Buddhism, tempting the reader, over and over, with the possibility of finding behind the thick façade of real Buddhism-with all its rules, texts, doctrines, and institutional solidity-an ethereal world of pure spirit.Patriarchs on Papercharts the emergence of this kind of "fantasy Buddhism" and details how it interacted with more traditional forms of Chinese Buddhism in order to show how Chan's illustrious ancestors were created in literature in order to further a wide range of real-world agendas.
Zen Evangelist McRae, John R; Robson, James; Sharf, Robert H ...
08/2023, Letnik:
12
eBook
Huineng (638-713), author and hero of the Platform Sutra, is
often credited with founding the Southern school of Chan Buddhism
and its radical doctrine of "sudden enlightenment." However,
manuscripts ...discovered at Dunhuang at the beginning of the
twentieth century reveal that the real architect of the Southern
school was Huineng's student Shenhui (684-758). An ardent
evangelist for his master's teaching and a sharp critic of rival
meditation teachers of his day, Shenhui was responsible for
Huineng's recognition as the "sixth patriarch," for the promotion
and eventual triumph of the sudden teaching, and for a somewhat
combative style of Chan discourse that came to be known as
"encounter dialogue." Shenhui's historical importance in the rise
and success of Chan is beyond dispute, yet until now there has been
no complete translation of his corpus into English. This volume
brings together John McRae's lifetime of work on the Shenhui
corpus, including extensively annotated translations of all five of
Shenhui's texts discovered at Dunhuang as well as McRae's seminal
studies of Shenhui's life, teachings, and legacy. McRae's research
explores the degree to which the received view of the Northern
school teachings is a fiction created by Shenhui to score
rhetorical points and that Northern and Southern teachings may have
been closer to one another than the canonical narrative depicts.
McRae explains Shenhui's critical role in shaping what would later
emerge as "classical Chan," while remaining skeptical about the
glowing image of Shenhui as an effective mentor and inspired
revolutionary. This posthumously published book is the fulfillment
of McRae's wish to make Shenhui's surviving writings accessible
through carefully annotated English translations, allowing readers
to form their own opinions.
Chán Buddhism in Dūnhuáng and Beyond traces the development of early Chán in the Northern region, based on a study of Chinese, Tibetan, Uighur and Tangut manuscripts.
Dahui's Letters is a compilation of letters of the Linji Chan teacher Dahui Zonggao (1089-1163) to forty scholar-officials and two Chan masters. Each of the letters to laymen is fascinating as a ...document directed at a specific scholar-official with his distinctive social niche and relative level of spiritual development. Dahui's style of practice became dominant throughout East Asia.
Esoteric Zen Licha, Stephan Kigensan
2023, Letnik:
73
eBook
Despite their starkly contrasting images, premodern Japanese Zen and tantric Buddhism were closely entwined movements. Based on recently discovered manuscript materials and covering the 13th to the ...17th century, Esoteric Zen offers the first comprehensive account of their multi-faceted relationship.
Attention, self-consciousness, insight, wisdom, emotional maturity: how Zen teachings can illuminate the way our brains function and vice-versa.
When neurology researcher James Austin began Zen ...training, he found that his medical education was inadequate. During the past three decades, he has been at the cutting edge of both Zen and neuroscience, constantly discovering new examples of how these two large fields each illuminate the other. Now, in Selfless Insight, Austin arrives at a fresh synthesis, one that invokes the latest brain research to explain the basis for meditative states and clarifies what Zen awakening implies for our understanding of consciousness. Austin, author of the widely read Zen and the Brain, reminds us why Zen meditation is not only mindfully attentive but evolves to become increasingly selfless and intuitive. Meditators are gradually learning how to replace over-emotionality with calm, clear objective comprehension. In this new book, Austin discusses how meditation trains our attention, reprogramming it toward subtle forms of awareness that are more openly mindful. He explains how our maladaptive notions of self are rooted in interactive brain functions. And he describes how, after the extraordinary, deep states of kensho-satori strike off the roots of the self, a flash of transforming insight-wisdom leads toward ways of living more harmoniously and selflessly. Selfless Insight is the capstone to Austin's journey both as a creative neuroscientist and as a Zen practitioner. His quest has spanned an era of unprecedented progress in brain research and has helped define the exciting new field of contemplative neuroscience.
