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Reveals dimensions of the interaction between Buddhism and Taoism in medieval China. This book demonstrates the competition and complementarity of the two great Chinese religions in their quest to address personal and collective fears of diverse ills, including sorcery, famine, and untimely death.
The Lotus Sutra has been the most widely read and most revered Buddhist scripture in East Asia since its translation in the third century. The miracles and parables in the "king of sutras" inspired a variety of images in China, in particular the sweeping compositions known as transformation tableaux that developed between the seventh and ninth centuries. Surviving examples in murals painted on cave walls or carved in relief on Buddhist monuments depict celestial journeys, bodily metamorphoses, cycles of rebirth, and the achievement of nirvana. Yet the cosmos revealed in these tableaux is strikingly different from that found in the text of the sutra. Shaping the Lotus Sutra explores this visual world. Challenging long-held assumptions about Buddhist art, Eugene Wang treats it as a window to an animated and spirited world. Rather than focus on individual murals as isolated compositions, Wang views the entire body of pictures adorning a cave shrine or a pagoda as a visual mapping of an imaginary topography that encompasses different temporal and spatial domains. He demonstrates that the text of the Lotus Sutra does not fully explain the pictures and that a picture, or a series of them, constitutes its own "text." In exploring how religious pictures sublimate cultural aspirations, he shows that they can serve both political and religious agendas and that different social forces can co-exist within the same visual program. These pictures inspired meditative journeys through sophisticated formal devices such as mirroring, mapping, and spatial programming - analytical categories newly identified by Wang. The book examines murals in cave shrines at Binglingsi and Dunhuang in northwestern China and relief sculptures in the grottoes of Yungang in Shanxi, on stelae from Sichuan, and on the Dragon-and-Tiger pagoda in Shandong, among other sites. By tracing formal impulses in medieval Chinese picture-making, such as topographic mapping and pictorial illusionism, the author pieces together a wide range of visual evidence and textual sources to reconstruct the medieval Chinese cognitive style and mental world. The book is ultimately a history of the Chinese imagination. Read an interview with the author: http: //dgeneratefilms.com/cinematalk/cinematalk-interview-with-professor-eugene-wang-on-chinese-art-and-film/
The issue of sinification—the manner and extent to which Buddhism and Chinese culture were transformed through their mutual encounter and dialogue—has dominated the study of Chinese Buddhism for much of the past century. Robert Sharf opens this important and far-reaching book by raising a host of historical and hermeneutical problems with the encounter paradigm and the master narrative on which it is based. Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism is, among other things, an extended reflection on the theoretical foundations and conceptual categories that undergird the study of medieval Chinese Buddhism. Sharf draws his argument in part from a meticulous historical, philological, and philosophical analysis of the Treasure Store Treatise (Pao-tsang lun), an eighth-century Buddho-Taoist work apocryphally attributed to the fifth-century master Seng-chao (374–414). In the process of coming to terms with this recondite text, Sharf ventures into all manner of subjects bearing on our understanding of medieval Chinese Buddhism, from the evolution of T’ang "gentry Taoism" to the pivotal role of image veneration and the problematic status of Chinese Tantra. The volume includes a complete annotated translation of the Treasure Store Treatise, accompanied by the detailed exegesis of dozens of key terms and concepts.
The premise of The Tao of Zen is that Zen is really Taoism in the disguise of Buddhism—an assumption being made by more and more Zen scholars. This is the first Zen book that links the long-noted philosophical similarities of Taoism and Zen. The author traces the evolution of Ch'an The The Tao of Zen is a fascinating book that will be read and discussed by anyone interested in both Taoism and Zen
A celebration of Taoist art traces the influence of philosophy on the visual arts in China.
A beautifully compelling and liberating guide to the original nature of Zen in ancient China by renowned author and translator David Hinton. Buddhism migrated from India to China in the first century C.E., and Ch'an (Japanese: Zen) is generally seen as China's most distinctive and enduring form of Buddhism. In China Root, however, David Hinton shows how Ch'an was in fact a Buddhist-influenced extension of Taoism, China's native system of spiritual philosophy. Unlike Indian Buddhism's abstract sensibility, Ch'an was grounded in an earthy and empirically-based vision. Exploring this vision, Hinton describes Ch'an as a kind of anti-Buddhism. A radical and wild practice aspiring to a deeply ecological liberation: the integration of individual consciousness with landscape and with a Cosmos seen as harmonious and alive. In China Root, Hinton describes this original form of Zen with his trademark clarity and elegance, each chapter exploring in enlightening ways a core Ch'an concept--such as meditation, mind, Buddha, awakening--as it was originally understood and practiced in ancient China. Finally, by examining a range of standard translations in the Appendix, Hinton reveals how this original understanding and practice of Ch'an/Zen is almost entirely missing in contemporary American Zen, because it was lost in Ch'an's migration from China through Japan and on to the West. Whether you practice Zen or not, taking this journey on the wings of Hinton's remarkable insight and powerful writing will transform how you understand yourself and the world.
Zhu Xi (1130-1200) is the most influential Neo-Confucian philosopher and arguably the most important Chinese philosopher of the past millennium, both in terms of his legacy and for the sophistication of his systematic philosophy. The Buddhist Roots of Zhu Xi's Philosophical Thought combines in a single study two major areas of Chinese philosophy that are rarely tackled together: Chinese Buddhist philosophy and Zhu Xi's Neo-Confucian philosophy. Despite Zhu Xi's importance as a philosopher, the role of Buddhist thought and philosophy in the construction of his systematic philosophy remains poorly understood. What aspects of Buddhism did he criticize and why? Was his engagement limited to criticism (informed or otherwise) or did Zhu also appropriate and repurpose Buddhist ideas to develop his own thought? If Zhu's philosophical repertoire incorporated conceptual structures and problematics that are marked by a distinct Buddhist pedigree, what implications does this have for our understanding of his philosophical project? The five chapters that make up The Buddhist Roots of Zhu Xi's Philosophical Thought present a rich and complex portrait of the Buddhist roots of Zhu Xi's philosophical thought. The scholarship is meticulous, the analysis is rigorous, and the philosophical insights are fresh. Collectively, the chapters illuminate a greatly expanded range of the intellectual resources Zhu incorporated into his philosophical thought, demonstrating the vital role that models derived from Buddhism played in his philosophical repertoire. In doing so, they provide new perspectives on what Zhu Xi was trying to achieve as a philosopher, by repurposing ideas from Buddhism. They also make significant and original contributions to our understanding of core concepts, debates and conceptual structures that shaped the development of philosophy in East Asia over the past millennium.
A guide for achieving an enlightened mind through the art of non-doing • Details meditation practices, focused on stillness of the mind, along with Patanjali’s yoga methods to maintain a consciousness referred to as “being in the zone” • Builds on Taoist, Confucian, and Hindu principles along with scientific findings to support wu-wei--the art of non-doing, non-forcing--as a way of life • Explains how wu-wei practitioners cultivate intelligent spontaneity and effortless action to allow the natural harmony of the cosmos to prevail The practice of non-doing, non-forcing is an essential aspect of Taoism known as wu-wei. Attributed to the great sage Lao-tzu, the philosophy of wu-wei teaches you how to develop a natural state of consciousness not bound by thought or preconceived limitations. Experienced by the greatest artists, athletes, musicians, and writers, this heightened state of consciousness, referred to as “being in the zone,” is where intelligent spontaneity and effortless action flourish via a practice rooted in permitting the natural harmony of the cosmos to prevail. Merging Taoist philosophy, Hindu principles, and Confucianism along with scientific findings, Jason Gregory outlines the practice of wu-wei as a vehicle to realize our innate freedom, revealing that when we release our ego and allow life to unfold as it will, we align ourselves more closely with our goals and cultivate skill and mastery along the way. Equating “being in the zone” with a stillness of the mind, Gregory shares meditation practices coupled with yoga exercises from Patanjali that allow you to approach life with a mastery of acceptance, releasing deluded beliefs of how to achieve success that make your mind “sticky” and poised for conflict. The author shows how practicing wu-wei paradoxically empowers you to accomplish all that you desire by having no intention to do so, as well as allowing you to become receptive to nature’s blueprint for expressing beauty. Revealing wisdom utilized by renowned sages, artists, and athletes who have adapted “being in the zone” as a way of life, the author shows that wu-wei can yield a renewed sense of trust in many aspects of your daily life, making each day more effortless. As an avid wu-wei practitioner, he provides keen insight on how you, too, can experience the beauty of achieving an enlightened, effortless mind while reveling in the process of life’s unfolding.
A highly esteemed Buddhist treatise on realizing your divine nature. This concise treatise by the eleventh-century Tibetan Buddhist philosopher Rongzom Chökyi Zangpo sets out to prove the provocative point that everything that appears is actually deity manifest. Many books on Tibetan Buddhism address the important themes of mind training, compassion, and proper conduct, but this book goes beyond that in its aim to bring the reader face to face with his or her divine and pure nature. Transformation not only of one's identity but also of one's environment is an important principle in Tantric Buddhist philosophy. In Tantric scriptures one is instructed to visualize oneself as a deity, a divine identity who resides in a perfect sphere. By repeatedly training in this visualization, one perfects the transformation and ultimately becomes the deity itself. Establishing Appearances as Divine seeks to unravel the interplay between rationality, truth, and divinity, bringing to light the view that underlies Tantric Buddhist practices.
Translated here for the first time into any language, Mountain Doctrine is a seminal fourteenth-century Tibetan text on the nature of reality. The author, Dol-bo-ba Shay-rap-gyel-tsen, was on of the most influential figures of that dynamic period of doctrinal formulation, and his text is a sustained argument about the buddha-nature, also called the matrix-of-one-gone-thus. Dol-bo-ba recognizes two important types of emptiness—self-emptiness and other-emptiness—and shows how other-emptiness is the actual ultimate truth. He justifies this controversial formulation by arguing that it was the favored system of all the early outstanding figures of the Great Vehicle. The translator's introduction includes a short biography of Dol-bo-ba and an exposition of nine focal topics in his religious philosophy. Note: The hardcover edition of Mountain Doctrine includes a "Detailed Outline in Tibetan" that is omitted in the eBook edition.