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, 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.
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, Volume:
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.
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.
An engaging introduction to Zen Buddhism, featuring a new English translation of one of the earliest Zen textsLeading Buddhist scholar Sam van Schaik explores the history and essence of Zen, based on ...a new translation of one of the earliest surviving collections of teachings by Zen masters. These teachings, titledThe Masters and Students of the Lanka, were discovered in a sealed cave on the old Silk Road, in modern Gansu, China, in the early twentieth century. All more than a thousand years old, the manuscripts have sometimes been called the Buddhist Dead Sea Scrolls, and their translation has opened a new window onto the history of Buddhism.Both accessible and illuminating, this book explores the continuities between the ways in which Zen was practiced in ancient times, and how it is practiced today in East Asian countries such as Japan, China, Korea, and Vietnam, as well as in the emerging Western Zen tradition.
Zen in Brazil Rocha, Cristina
2005, 2006., 20060101, 2006, Volume:
23
eBook
Widely perceived as an overwhelmingly Catholic nation, Brazil has experienced in recent years a growth in the popularity of Buddhism among the urban, cosmopolitan upper classes. In the 1990s Buddhism ...in general and Zen in particular were adopted by national elites, the media, and popular culture as a set of humanistic values to counter the rampant violence and crime in Brazilian society. Despite national media attention, the rapidly expanding Brazilian market for Buddhist books and events, and general interest in the globalization of Buddhism, the Brazilian case has received little scholarly attention. Cristina Rocha addresses that shortcoming in Zen in Brazil. Drawing on fieldwork in Japan and Brazil, she examines Brazilian history, culture, and literature to uncover the mainly Catholic, Spiritist, and Afro-Brazilian religious matrices responsible for this particular indigenization of Buddhism. In her analysis of Japanese immigration and the adoption and creolization of the Sôtôshû school of Zen Buddhism in Brazil, she offers the fascinating insight that the latter is part of a process of "cannibalizing" the modern other to become modern oneself. She shows, moreover, that in practicing Zen, the Brazilian intellectual elites from the 1950s onward have been driven by a desire to acquire and accumulate cultural capital both locally and overseas. Their consumption of Zen, Rocha contends, has been an expression of their desire to distinguish themselves from popular taste at home while at the same time associating themselves with overseas cultural elites.
Zen and Japanese Cultureis a classic that has influenced generations of readers and played a major role in shaping conceptions of Zen's influence on Japanese traditional arts. In simple and poetic ...language, Daisetz Suzuki describes Zen and its historical evolution. He connects Zen to the philosophy of the samurai, and subtly portrays the relationship between Zen and swordsmanship, haiku, tea ceremonies, and the Japanese love of nature. Suzuki uses anecdotes, poetry, and illustrations of silk screens, calligraphy, and architecture. The book features an introduction by Richard Jaffe that acquaints readers with Suzuki's life and career and analyzes the book's reception in light of contemporary criticism, especially by scholars of Japanese Buddhism.Zen and Japanese Cultureis a valuable source for those wishing to understand Zen in the context of Japanese life and art, and remains one of the leading works on the subject.
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.
