The Hongzhou School of Chan Buddhism in Eighth- through Tenth-Century China

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Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 0791481425
Total Pages : 238 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (914 download)

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Book Synopsis The Hongzhou School of Chan Buddhism in Eighth- through Tenth-Century China by : Jinhua Jia

Download or read book The Hongzhou School of Chan Buddhism in Eighth- through Tenth-Century China written by Jinhua Jia and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive study of the Hongzhou school of Chan Buddhism, long regarded as the Golden Age of this tradition, using many previously ignored texts, including stele inscriptions.

Ordinary Mind as the Way

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0198043201
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (98 download)

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Book Synopsis Ordinary Mind as the Way by : Mario Poceski

Download or read book Ordinary Mind as the Way written by Mario Poceski and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2007-04-13 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Under the leadership of Mazu Daoyi (709-788) and his numerous disciples, the Hongzhou School emerged as the dominant tradition of Chan (Zen) Buddhism in China during the middle part of the Tang dynasty(618-907). Mario Poceski offers a systematic examination of the Hongzhou School's momentous growth and rise to preeminence as the bearer of Chan orthodoxy, and analyzes its doctrines against the backdrop of the intellectual and religious milieus of Tang China. Poceski demonstrates that the Hongzhou School represented the first emergence of an empire-wide Chan tradition that had strongholds throughout China and replaced the various fragmented Schools of early Chan with an inclusive orthodoxy. Poceski's study is based on the earliest strata of permanent sources, rather than on the later apocryphal "encounter dialogue" stories regularly used to construe widely-accepted but historically unwarranted interpretations about the nature of Chan in the Tang dynasty. He challenges the traditional and popularly-accepted view of the Hongzhou School as a revolutionary movement that rejected mainstream mores and teachings, charting a new path for Chan's independent growth as a unique Buddhist tradition. This view, he argues, rests on a misreading of key elements of the Hongzhou School's history. Rather than acting as an unorthodox movement, the Hongzhou School's success was actually based largely on its ability to mediate tensions between traditionalist and iconoclastic tendencies. Going beyond conventional romanticized interpretations that highlight the radical character of the Hongzhou School, Poceski shows that there was much greater continuity between early and classical Chan-and between the Hongzhou School and the rest of Tang Buddhism-than previously thought.

The Hongzhou School of Chan Buddhism During the Mid-Tang Period

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 596 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis The Hongzhou School of Chan Buddhism During the Mid-Tang Period by : Mario Poceski

Download or read book The Hongzhou School of Chan Buddhism During the Mid-Tang Period written by Mario Poceski and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Historical Dictionary of Chan Buddhism

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Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1538105527
Total Pages : 387 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (381 download)

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Book Synopsis Historical Dictionary of Chan Buddhism by : Youru Wang

Download or read book Historical Dictionary of Chan Buddhism written by Youru Wang and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-06-27 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The popular name for Chan Buddhism, in the West, is Zen Buddhism, as it was Japanese scholars who first introduced Chan Buddhism to the West with this translation. Indeed, chan is a shortened form of the Chinese word channa, rendered from the Sanskrit word dhyāna, which denotes practices of the concentration of the mind through meditation or contemplation. Although rooted in the Indian tradition of yoga, which aims at the unification of the individual with the divine, meditative concentration became integrated into the Buddhist path to enlightenment as one of the three learnings (sanxue) of Buddhism. Early Buddhist (or the so-called Hinayana Buddhist) scriptures include the teachings on four stages of meditation, four divine abodes, four formless meditations, the tranquility (samatha) and insight (vipassanā) meditations, and so on. Early Buddhist communities commonly practiced these meditations, along with the moral disciplines and the study of the scriptures and doctrines. Mahayana Buddhism, in India and East Asia, continued the practice of meditation as one of the six perfections (or virtues) of the bodhisattva path. In this general context, some eminent monks might have composed scriptures/treatises for the training of meditation or have become more famed with meditation. However, the school of Chan is more than just a group of meditation practitioners. As one of the Chinese Buddhist schools, it involves its own ideology, its own community, and its own genealogical history, serving to establish its own identity. 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 other practices. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Chan Buddhism.

The Mystique of Transmission

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Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231510020
Total Pages : 595 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis The Mystique of Transmission by : Wendi L. Adamek

Download or read book The Mystique of Transmission written by Wendi L. Adamek and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2007-05-15 with total page 595 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mystique of Transmission is a close reading of a late-eighth-century Chan/Zen Buddhist hagiographical work, the Lidai fabao ji (Record of the Dharma-Jewel Through the Generations), and is its first English translation. The text is the only remaining relic of the little-known Bao Tang Chan school of Sichuan, and combines a sectarian history of Buddhism and Chan in China with an account of the eighth-century Chan master Wuzhu in Sichuan. Chinese religions scholar Wendi Adamek compares the Lidai fabao ji with other sources from the fourth through eighth centuries, chronicling changes in the doctrines and practices involved in transmitting medieval Chinese Buddhist teachings. While Adamek is concerned with familiar Chan themes like patriarchal genealogies and the ideology of sudden enlightenment, she also highlights topics that make Lidai fabao ji distinctive: formless practice, the inclusion of female practitioners, the influence of Daoist metaphysics, and connections with early Tibetan Buddhism. The Lidai fabao ji was unearthed in the early twentieth century in the Mogao caves at the Silk Road oasis of Dunhuang in northwestern China. Discovery of the Dunhuang manuscripts has been compared with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, as these documents have radically changed our understanding of medieval China and Buddhism. A crucial volume for students and scholars, The Mystique of Transmission offers a rare glimpse of a lost world and fills an important gap in the timeline of Chinese and Buddhist history.

Seeing Through Zen

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Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 9780520237971
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (379 download)

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Book Synopsis Seeing Through Zen by : John R. McRae

Download or read book Seeing Through Zen written by John R. McRae and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Table of contents

Enlightenment in Dispute

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199895562
Total Pages : 478 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (998 download)

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Book Synopsis Enlightenment in Dispute by : Jiang Wu

Download or read book Enlightenment in Dispute written by Jiang Wu and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-12 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Enlightenment in Dispute is the first comprehensive study of the revival of Chan Buddhism in seventeenth-century China. Focusing on the evolution of a series of controversies about Chan enlightenment, Jiang Wu describes the process by which Chan reemerged as the most prominent Buddhist establishment of the time. He investigates the development of Chan Buddhism in the seventeenth century, focusing on controversies involving issues such as correct practice and lines of lineage. In this way, he shows how the Chan revival reshaped Chinese Buddhism in late imperial China. Situating these controversies alongside major events of the fateful Ming-Qing transition, Wu shows how the rise and fall of Chan Buddhism was conditioned by social changes in the seventeenth century.

History of the Development of Chinese Chan Thought

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Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 9819956862
Total Pages : 692 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (199 download)

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Book Synopsis History of the Development of Chinese Chan Thought by : Tianxiang Ma

Download or read book History of the Development of Chinese Chan Thought written by Tianxiang Ma and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-10-13 with total page 692 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book aims to describe the history of Chan (Japanese Zen) School thought from the standpoint of social history. Chan, a school of East Asian Buddhism, was influential on all levels of societies in the region because of its intellectual and aesthetic appeal. In China, Chan infiltrated all levels of society, mainly because it engaged with society and formed the mainstream of Buddhism from the tenth or eleventh centuries through to the twentieth century. This book, taking a critical stance, examines the entire history of Chan thought and practice from the viewpoint of a modern Chinese scholar, not a practitioner, but an intellectual historian who places ideological developments in social contexts. The author suggests that core elements of Chan have their origins in Daoist philosophers, especially Zhuangzi, and not in Indian Buddhist concepts. Covering the period from the sixth century into the twentieth century, it deals with Chan interactions with neo-Confucianism, Quanzhen Daoism, and Gongyang new text philology, as well as with literature and scholarship, its fusion with Pure Land Buddhism, and its syncretic tendencies. Chan’s exchanges with emperors from the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing Dynasty, as well as the motives of some loyalists of the Ming Dynasty for joining Chan after the fall of the Ming, are described. The book concludes with an examination of the views of Chan of Hu Shi, D.T. Suzuki, and the scholar-monk Yinshun.

Buddhisms in Asia

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Publisher : SUNY Press
ISBN 13 : 1438475853
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

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Book Synopsis Buddhisms in Asia by : Nicholas S. Brasovan

Download or read book Buddhisms in Asia written by Nicholas S. Brasovan and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2019-09-01 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide to Buddhism’s rich variety of traditions and cultural expressions for educators who would like to include Buddhism in their undergraduate courses. Over its long history, Buddhism has never been a simple monolithic phenomenon, but rather a complex living tradition—or better, a family of traditions—continually shaped by and shaping a vast array of social, economic, political, literary, and aesthetic contexts across East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Written by undergraduate educators, Buddhisms in Asia offers a guide to Buddhism’s rich variety of traditions and cultural expressions for educators who would like to include Buddhism in their undergraduate courses. It introduces fundamental yet often underrepresented Buddhist texts, concepts, and material in their historical contexts; presents the major “ecologies” of Buddhist belief, practice, and cultural expression; and provides methodological insights regarding how best to infuse Buddhist content into undergraduate courses in the humanities and social sciences. The text aims to represent “Buddhisms” by approaching the subject from a broad range of disciplinary perspectives, including art history, anthropology, history, literature, philosophy, religious studies, and pedagogy. “I teach an introductory course on Buddhism on a regular basis, and every single chapter of this book gave me ideas for materials I could incorporate, new modules I might develop, and/or better ways I might organize and present existing content to students. I think that the book will be particularly useful to educators in Asian studies who are not themselves specialized in areas of Buddhism or religion. The collection gives them the information on Buddhist philosophy, doctrine, and practice that they would need to better incorporate the role of Buddhism into classes on Asian culture, history, society, and politics.” — Leah Kalmanson, coeditor of Buddhist Responses to Globalization

Gender, Power, and Talent

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Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231545495
Total Pages : 228 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis Gender, Power, and Talent by : Jinhua Jia

Download or read book Gender, Power, and Talent written by Jinhua Jia and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-13 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Tang dynasty (618–907), changes in political policies, the religious landscape, and gender relations opened the possibility for Daoist women to play an unprecedented role in religious and public life. Women, from imperial princesses to the daughters of commoner families, could be ordained as Daoist priestesses and become religious leaders, teachers, and practitioners in their own right. Some achieved remarkable accomplishments: one wrote and transmitted texts on meditation and inner cultivation; another, a physician, authored a treatise on therapeutic methods, medical theory, and longevity techniques. Priestess-poets composed major works, and talented priestess-artists produced stunning calligraphy. In Gender, Power, and Talent, Jinhua Jia draws on a wealth of previously untapped sources to explain how Daoist priestesses distinguished themselves as a distinct gendered religious and social group. She describes the life journey of priestesses from palace women to abbesses and ordinary practitioners, touching on their varied reasons for entering the Daoist orders, the role of social and religious institutions, forms of spiritual experience, and the relationships between gendered identities and cultural representations. Jia takes the reader inside convents and cloisters, demonstrating how they functioned both as a female space for self-determination and as a public platform for both religious and social spheres. The first comprehensive study of the lives and roles of Daoist priestesses in Tang China, Gender, Power, and Talent restores women to the landscape of Chinese religion and literature and proposes new methodologies for the growing field of gender and religion.

Yongming Yanshou's Conception of Chan in the Zongjing Lu

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Publisher : OUP USA
ISBN 13 : 0199760314
Total Pages : 392 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (997 download)

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Book Synopsis Yongming Yanshou's Conception of Chan in the Zongjing Lu by : Albert Welter

Download or read book Yongming Yanshou's Conception of Chan in the Zongjing Lu written by Albert Welter and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2011-05-11 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yongming Yanshou ranks among the great figures of the Chinese and East Asian Buddhist tradition. His main work, the one-hundred fascicle Zongjing lu (Records of the Source-Mirror), is regularly cited but has been subjected to little systematic investigation. Through a vivid reconstruction of the environment in which Yanshou lived and wrote, Welter aims to prove that Yanshou's conception of Chan was a vital contribution to the determination of Chan's future direction. Welter also draws evidence from the Zongjing lu's record of Chan master's teaching fragments, an important but frequently overlooked early source. This book provides thorough documentation and analysis of the Chan master's teaching fragments in the Zongjing lu.

Through Forests of Every Color

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Publisher : Shambhala Publications
ISBN 13 : 161180986X
Total Pages : 209 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (118 download)

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Book Synopsis Through Forests of Every Color by : Joan Sutherland

Download or read book Through Forests of Every Color written by Joan Sutherland and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2022-06-21 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intimate spiritual and literary journey exploring how Zen koans make us permeable to the joys and the anguish of this life—and to the primordial mystery we glimpse behind the veil of the everyday. In Through Forests of Every Color, renowned Zen teacher Joan Sutherland reimagines the koan tradition with allegiance to the root spirit of the koans and to their profound potential for vivifying, subverting, and sanctifying our lives. Her decades of practicing with koans and of translating them from classical Chinese imbues this text with a warm familiarity, an ease still suffused with awe. Interlinked essays on “koans as art,” “keeping company with koans,” and “walking the koan way” intersperse with beautifully translated renditions of dozens of traditional Zen koans. Sutherland also shares innovative koans culled from Western literature, as well as teachings on how to create idiosyncratic koans or "turning words" from the circumstances of one's own life. “First honored is your yearning, the preparation made on faith that there is something that will receive you if you make yourself ready,” writes Sutherland of the koan seeker. “Bathed—attended to, washed free of complications—and then aspiring to the deepest kind of beauty—receptive, brave, dedicated, openhearted. Already you’ve begun to look like the thing you’re looking for.”

The Linji Lu and the Creation of Chan Orthodoxy

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0198044097
Total Pages : 253 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (98 download)

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Book Synopsis The Linji Lu and the Creation of Chan Orthodoxy by : Albert Welter

Download or read book The Linji Lu and the Creation of Chan Orthodoxy written by Albert Welter and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-02-28 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Linji lu, or Record of Linji, ranks among the most famous and influential texts of the Chan and Zen traditions. Ostensibly containing the teachings of the Tang dynasty figure Linji Yixuan, the text has generally been accepted at face value, as reliable records of the teachings of this historical figure. In this book, Albert Welter offers the first systematic study of the Linji lu in a western language. Welter places the Linji lu in its historical context, showing how the text was manipulated over time by the Linji faction. Rather than recording the teachings of the illustrious patriarch of legend, the text reflects the motivations of Linji-faction descendants in the Song dynasty (9601279). The story of the Linji lu is not simply the story of one heroic figure, Linji Yixuan, but the story of an entire movement that sought validation through retrospective image making. The success of this effort is seen in Chan's rise to prominence. Drawing on the findings of Japanese scholars, Welter moves beyond the minutiae of textual analysis to place the development of Linji lu within the broader forces shaping the development of the Chinese Records of Sayings literary genre as a whole.

Dao Companion to Chinese Buddhist Philosophy

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Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 9048129397
Total Pages : 440 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (481 download)

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Book Synopsis Dao Companion to Chinese Buddhist Philosophy by : Youru Wang

Download or read book Dao Companion to Chinese Buddhist Philosophy written by Youru Wang and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-01-31 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Too often Buddhism has been subjected to the Procrustean box of western thought, whereby it is stretched to fit fixed categories or had essential aspects lopped off to accommodate vastly different cultural norms and aims. After several generations of scholarly discussion in English-speaking communities, it is time to move to the next hermeneutical stage. Buddhist philosophy must be liberated from the confines of a quasi-religious stereotype and judged on its own merits. Hence this work will approach Chinese Buddhism as a philosophical tradition in its own right, not as an historical after-thought nor as an occasion for comparative discussions that assume the west alone sets the standards for or is the origin of philosophy and its methodologies. Viewed within their own context, Chinese Buddhist philosophers have much to contribute to a wide range of philosophical concerns, including metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of religion, even though Western divisions of philosophy may not exhaust the rich contents of Chinese Buddhist philosophy. .

Patriarchs on Paper

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Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520284070
Total Pages : 340 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (22 download)

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Book Synopsis Patriarchs on Paper by : Alan Cole

Download or read book Patriarchs on Paper written by Alan Cole and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2016-11 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Chan Buddhism--better known as 'Zen'--produced an enormous amount of literature, and yet many Chan advocates, medieval and modern, insist that Chan and its truths can be found in neither language nor literature. Patriarchs on Paper explores this paradox by considering 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. Looking carefully at this body of literature, Alan Cole shows how Chan authors gradually constructed, in ever more artful portrayals, images of the perfectly simple masters of the past, best known for their freedom from literature and cultural norms. Patriarchs on Paper explores how this kind of 'fantasy Buddhism' interacted with its more traditional Chinese forms and in so doing sheds new light on how Chan's illustrious ancestors were created in literature to satisfy a wide range of agendas"--Provided by publisher.

Numinous Awareness Is Never Dark

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Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824867424
Total Pages : 346 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (248 download)

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Book Synopsis Numinous Awareness Is Never Dark by :

Download or read book Numinous Awareness Is Never Dark written by and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2016-10-31 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Numinous Awareness Is Never Dark examines the issue of whether enlightenment in Zen Buddhism is sudden or gradual—that is, something intrinsic to the mind that is achieved in a sudden flash of insight or something extrinsic to it that must be developed through a sequential series of practices. This “sudden/gradual issue” was one of the crucial debates that helped forge the Zen school in East Asia, and the Korean Zen master Chinul’s (1158–1210) magnum opus, Excerpts, offers one of the most thorough treatments of it in all of premodern Buddhist literature. According to Chinul’s analysis, enlightenment is both sudden and gradual. Zen practice must begin with a sudden awakening to the “numinous awareness”—the “sentience,” or buddha-nature—that is inherent in all “sentient” beings. Such an awareness does not need to be developed but must simply be recognized (or better “re-cognized”), through the unmediated experience of insight. Even after this initial awakening, however, deeply engrained proclivities of thought and conduct may continue to disturb the practitioner; these can only be removed gradually as his or her practice matures. Chinul’s “sudden awakening/gradual cultivation” soteriology became emblematic of the Buddhist tradition in Korea. Excerpts, translated here in its entirety by the preeminent Western specialist in the Korean Buddhist tradition, goes on to examine Chinul’s treatments of many of the quintessential practices of Zen Buddhism, including nonconceptualization, or no-thought, and the concurrent development of meditation and wisdom, as well as, for the first time in Korean Zen, “examining meditative topics” (kanhwa Sŏn)—what we in the West know better as kōans, after its later Japanese analogues. Fitting this new technique into his preferred soteriological schema of sudden awakening/gradual cultivation was no simple task for Chinul. Numinous Awareness Is Never Dark offers an extensive study of the contours of the sudden/gradual debate in Buddhist thought and practice and traces the influence of Chinul’s analysis of this issue throughout the history of the Korean tradition. Copiously annotated, the work contains extensive selections from the two traditional Korean commentaries to the text. In Buswell’s treatment, Chinul’s Excerpts emerges as the single most influential work written by a Korean Buddhist author.

The Records of Mazu and the Making of Classical Chan Literature

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Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190463759
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (94 download)

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Book Synopsis The Records of Mazu and the Making of Classical Chan Literature by : Mario Poceski

Download or read book The Records of Mazu and the Making of Classical Chan Literature written by Mario Poceski and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-08-12 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Records of Mazu and the Making of Classical Chan Literature explores the growth, makeup, and transformation of Chan (Zen) Buddhist literature in late medieval China. The volume analyzes the earliest extant records about the life, teachings, and legacy of Mazu Daoyi (709-788), the famous leader of the Hongzhou School and one of the principal figures in Chan history. While some of the texts covered are well-known and form a central part of classical Chan (or more broadly Buddhist) literature in China, others have been largely ignored, forgotten, or glossed over until recently. Poceski presents a range of primary materials important for the historical study of Chan Buddhism, some translated for the first time into English or other Western language. He surveys the distinctive features and contents of particular types of texts, and analyzes the forces, milieus, and concerns that shaped key processes of textual production during this period. Although his main focus is on written sources associated with a celebrated Chan tradition that developed and rose to prominence during the Tang era (618-907), Poceski also explores the Five Dynasties (907-960) and Song (960-1279) periods, when many of the best-known Chan collections were compiled. Exploring the Chan School's creative adaptation of classical literary forms and experimentation with novel narrative styles, The Records of Mazu and the Making of Classical Chan Literature traces the creation of several distinctive Chan genres that exerted notable influence on the subsequent development of Buddhism in China and the rest of East Asia.