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.
Esoteric Zen Licha, Stephan Kigensan
2023, Volume:
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.
In the early part of this century, the discovery of a walled-up
cave in northwest China led to the retrieval of a lost early Ch'an
(Zen) literature of the T'ang dynasty (618-907). One of the
...recovered Zen texts was a seven-piece collection, the
Bodhidharma Anthology . Of the numerous texts attributed to
Bodhidharma, this anthology is the only one generally believed to
contain authentic Bodhidharma material. Jeffrey L. Broughton
provides a reliable annotated translation of the Bodhidharma
Anthology along with a detailed study of its nature, content,
and background. His work is especially important for its rendering
of the three Records, which contain some of the earliest Zen
dialogues and constitute the real beginnings of Zen literature. The
vivid dialogues and sayings of Master Yuan, a long-forgotten member
of the Bodhidharma circle, are the hallmark of the
Records . Master Yuan consistently criticizes reliance on
the Dharma, on teachers, on meditative practice, and on scripture,
all of which lead to self-deception and confusion, he says.
According to Master Yuan, if one has spirit and does not seek
anything, including the teachings of Buddhism, then one will attain
the quietude of liberation. The boldness in Yuan's utterances
prefigures much of the full-blown Zen tradition we recognize today.
Broughton utilizes a Tibetan translation of the Bodhidharma
Anthology as an informative gloss on the Chinese original.
Placing the anthology within the context of the Tun-huang Zen
manuscripts as a whole, he proposes a new approach to the study of
Zen, one that concentrates on literary history, a genealogy of
texts rather than the usual genealogy of masters.
A seasoned Zen practitioner and neurologist looks more deeply at mindfulness, connecting it to our subconscious and to memory and creativity.
This is a book for readers who want to probe more deeply ...into mindfulness. It goes beyond the casual, once-in-awhile meditation in popular culture, grounding mindfulness in daily practice, Zen teachings, and recent research in neuroscience. In Living Zen Remindfully, James Austin, author of the groundbreaking Zen and the Brain, describes authentic Zen training—the commitment to a process of regular, ongoing daily life practice. This training process enables us to unlearn unfruitful habits, develop more wholesome ones, and lead a more genuinely creative life.
Austin shows that mindfulness can mean more than our being conscious of the immediate “now.” It can extend into the subconscious, where most of our brain's activities take place, invisibly. Austin suggests ways that long-term meditative training helps cultivate the hidden, affirmative resource of our unconscious memory. Remindfulness, as Austin terms it, can help us to adapt more effectively and to live more authentic lives.
Austin discusses different types of meditation, meditation and problem-solving, and the meaning of enlightenment. He addresses egocentrism (self-centeredness) and allocentrism (other-centeredness), and the blending of focal and global attention. He explains the remarkable processes that encode, store, and retrieve our memories, focusing on the covert, helpful remindful processes incubating at subconscious levels. And he considers the illuminating confluence of Zen, clinical neurology, and neuroscience. Finally, he describes an everyday life of “living Zen,” drawing on the poetry of Basho, the seventeenth-century haiku master.
The Historical Dictionary of Chan Buddhism contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 400 cross-referenced entries on important ...personalities, schools, texts, vocabularies, doctrines, rituals, temples, events, and otherpractices.
The Ways of Zen Tsai, C. C; Bruya, Brian
2021, 2021-07-27, Volume:
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.
Healing lies at the heart of Zen in the home, as Paula Arai discovered in her pioneering research on the ritual lives of Zen Buddhist laywomen. She reveals a vital stream of religious practice that ...flourishes outside the bounds of formal institutions through sacred rites that women develop and transmit to one another. Everyday objects and common materials are used in inventive ways. For example, polishing cloths, vivified by prayer and mantra recitation, become potent tools. The creation of beauty through the arts of tea ceremony, calligraphy, poetry, and flower arrangement become rites of healing.
Bringing Zen Homebrings a fresh perspective to Zen scholarship by uncovering a previously unrecognized but nonetheless vibrant strand of lay practice. The creativity of domestic Zen is evident in the ritual activities that women fashion, weaving tradition and innovation, to gain a sense of wholeness and balance in the midst of illness, loss, and anguish. Their rituals include chanting, ingesting elixirs and consecrated substances, and contemplative approaches that elevate cleaning, cooking, child-rearing, and caring for the sick and dying into spiritual disciplines. Creating beauty is central to domestic Zen and figures prominently in Arai's analyses. She also discovers a novel application of the concept of Buddha nature as the women honor deceased loved ones as "personal Buddhas."
One of the hallmarks of the study is its longitudinal nature, spanning fourteen years of fieldwork. Arai developed a "second-person," or relational, approach to ethnographic research prompted by recent trends in psychobiology. This allowed her to cultivate relationships of trust and mutual vulnerability over many years to inquire into not only the practices but also their ongoing and changing roles. The women in her study entrusted her with their life stories, personal reflections, and religious insights, yielding an ethnography rich in descriptive and narrative detail as well as nuanced explorations of the experiential dimensions and effects of rituals.
InBringing Zen Home,the first study of the ritual lives of Zen laywomen, Arai applies a cutting-edge ethnographic method to reveal a thriving domain of religious practice. Her work represents an important contribution on a number of fronts-to Zen studies, ritual studies, scholarship on women and religion, and the cross-cultural study of healing.
