Download or read book Interpretation of the Buddha Land The written by Bandhuprabha and published by BDK America. This book was released on 2002-06 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fourth-century commentary on the Buddhabhûmi-sûtra is one of the earliest texts of the Yogâcâra tradition. It includes an introductory description of the setting in which it was preached by the Buddha; the main body of the text, which treats the five factors that constitute a Buddha land, i.e., the Pure Dharma Realm and the four wisdoms: mirror wisdom, equality wisdom, discernment wisdom, and duty-fulfillment wisdom; and a concluding section of two illustrative similes and four summary verses. The overall theme of these texts is that the Pure Land is not a physical location, but a symbol of the mind of wisdom - constituted by the five factors of the Pure Dharma Realm and the four wisdoms. These four wisdoms, grounded in the Pure Dharma Realm, present the varied structure of wisdom as conceived by Yogacara thinkers. Mirror wisdom and equality wisdom are nondiscriminative, while discernment wisdom and duty-fulfillment wisdom distinguish the nature of bodhisattva tasks and carry them out in the world. Thus the overarching context for these texts is the tension created between the critical awareness and "deliteralization" tendency of Yogacara, and the Pure Land cultus, with its veneration of many Pure Land Buddhas and its hopes of being born in the Pure Land.
Download or read book Toward a Contemporary Understanding of Pure Land Buddhism written by Dennis Hirota and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2000-03-31 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the potential significance of Japanese Pure Land Buddhist Thought in the contemporary world, and provides a new model of interreligious dialogue as Buddhist thinkers engage with Christian theologians concerned with the present-day significance of their own tradition.
Download or read book Chinese Pure Land Buddhism written by Charles B. Jones and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2019-09-30 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chinese Pure Land Buddhism: Understanding a Tradition of Practice is the first book in any western language to provide a comprehensive overview of Chinese Pure Land Buddhism. Even though Pure Land Buddhism was born in China and currently constitutes the dominant form of Buddhist practice there, it has previously received very little attention from western scholars. In this book, Charles B. Jones examines the reasons for the lack of scholarly attention and why the few past treatments of the topic missed many of its distinctive features. He argues that the Chinese Pure Land tradition, with its characteristic promise of rebirth in the Pure Land to even non-elite or undeserving practitioners, should not be viewed from the perspective of the Japanese Pure Land tradition, which differs greatly. More accurately contextualizing Chinese Pure Land Buddhism within the landscape of Chinese Buddhism and the broader global Buddhist tradition, this work celebrates Chinese Pure Land, not as a school or sect, but as a unique and inherently valuable “tradition of practice.” This volume is organized thematically, clearly presenting topics such as the nature of the Pure Land, the relationship between “self-power” and “other-power,” the practice of nianfo (buddha-recollection), and the formation of the line of “patriarchs” that keep the tradition grounded. It guides us in understanding the vigorous debates that Chinese Pure Land Buddhism evoked and delves into the rich apologetic literature that it produced in its own defense. Drawing upon a wealth of previously unexamined primary source materials, as well as modern texts by contemporary Chinese Pure Land masters, the author provides lucid translations of resources previously unavailable in English. He also shares his lifetime of experience in this field, enlivening the narrative with personal anecdotes of his visits to sites of Pure Land practice in China and Taiwan. The straightforward and nontechnical prose makes this book a standby resource for anyone interested in pursuing research in this lively, sophisticated, and still-evolving religious tradition. Scholars—including undergraduates—specializing in East Asian Buddhism, as well as those interested in Buddhism or Chinese religion and history in general, will find this book invaluable.
Download or read book Pure Land Real World written by Melissa Anne-Marie Curley and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2017-02-28 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For close to a thousand years Amida’s Pure Land, a paradise of perfect ease and equality, was the most powerful image of shared happiness circulating in the Japanese imagination. In the late nineteenth century, some Buddhist thinkers sought to reinterpret the Pure Land in ways that would allow it speak to modern Japan. Their efforts succeeded in ways they could not have predicted. During the war years, economist Kawakami Hajime, philosopher Miki Kiyoshi, and historian Ienaga Saburō—left-leaning thinkers with no special training in doctrinal studies and no strong connection to any Buddhist institution—seized upon modernized images of Shinran in exile and a transcendent Western Paradise to resist the demands of a state that was bearing down on its citizens with increasing force. Pure Land, Real World treats the religious thought of these three major figures in English for the first time. Kawakami turned to religion after being imprisoned for his involvement with the Japanese Communist Party, borrowing the Shinshū image of the two truths to assert that Buddhist law and Marxist social science should reinforce each other, like the two wings of a bird. Miki, a member of the Kyoto School who went from prison to the crown prince’s think tank and back again, identified Shinran’s religion as belonging to the proletariat: For him, following Shinran and working toward building a buddha land on earth were akin to realizing social revolution. And Ienaga’s understanding of the Pure Land—as the crystallization of a logic of negation that undermined every real power structure—fueled his battle against the state censorship system, just as he believed it had enabled Shinran to confront the world’s suffering head on. Such readings of the Pure Land tradition are idiosyncratic—perhaps even heretical—but they hum with the same vibrancy that characterized medieval Pure Land belief. Innovative and refreshingly accessible, Pure Land, Real World shows that the Pure Land tradition informed twentieth-century Japanese thought in profound and surprising ways and suggests that it might do the same for twenty-first-century thinkers. The critical power of Pure Land utopianism has yet to be exhausted.
Download or read book Aspiring to Enlightenment written by Richard D. McBride II and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2020-08-31 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Centered on the practice of seeking rebirth in the Pure Land paradise Sukhāvatī, the Amitābha cult has been the dominant form of Buddhism in Korea since the middle of the Silla period (ca. 300–935). In Aspiring to Enlightenment, Richard McBride combines analyses of scriptural, exegetical, hagiographical, epigraphical, art historical, and literary materials to provide an episodic account of the cult in Silla times and its rise in an East Asian context through the mutually interconnected perspectives of doctrine and practice. McBride demonstrates that the Pure Land tradition emerging in Korea in the seventh and eighth centuries was vibrant and collaborative and that Silla monk-scholars actively participated in a shared, international Buddhist discourse. Monks such as the exegete par excellence Wŏnhyo and the Yogācāra proponent Kyŏnghŭng did not belong to a specific sect or school, but like their colleagues in China, they participated in a broadly inclusive doctrinal tradition. He examines scholarly debates surrounding the cults of Maitreya and Amitābha, the practice of buddhānusmṛti, the recollection of Amitābha, the “ten recollections” within the larger Mahāyāna context of the bodhisattva’s path of practice, the emerging Huayan intellectual tradition, and the influential interpretations of medieval Chinese Pure Land proponents Tanluan and Shandao. Finally, his work illuminates the legacy of the Silla Pure Land tradition, revealing how the writings of Silla monks continued to be of great value to Japanese monks for several centuries. With its fresh and comprehensive approach to the study of Pure Land Buddhism, Aspiring to Enlightenment is important for not only students and scholars of Korean history and religion and East Asian Buddhism, but also those interested in the complex relationship between doctrinal writings and devotional practice “on the ground.”
Download or read book Finding Our True Home written by Thich Nhat Hanh and published by Parallax Press. This book was released on 2001-08-09 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finding Our True Home presents a new definitive translation of the Amitabha Sutra along with Thich Nhat Hanh’s first commentary on one of the most practiced forms of Buddhism in the world, the Pure Land school. Introduced in the Buddha’s own lifetime, Pure Land practice puts us in touch with the beauty in our own world and brings us the security, solidity, and freedom we need in order to truly enjoy it. Realizing that Buddha is within us, we see that the Pure Land (paradise) is here and now, rather than in the future. Finding Our True Home will open a new Dharma door to many students of meditation.
Download or read book A Buddha Land in This World written by Lajos Brons and published by punctum books. This book was released on 2022-04-13 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early twentieth century, Uchiyama Gudō, Seno'o Girō, Lin Qiuwu, and others advocated a Buddhism that was radical in two respects. Firstly, they adopted a more or less naturalist stance with respect to Buddhist doctrine and related matters, rejecting karma or other supernatural beliefs. And secondly, they held political and economic views that were radically anti-hegemonic, anti-capitalist, and revolutionary. Taking the idea of such a "radical Buddhism" seriously, A Buddha Land in This World: Philosophy, Utopia, and Radical Buddhism asks whether it is possible to develop a philosophy that is simultaneously naturalist, anti-capitalist, Buddhist, and consistent. Rather than a study of radical Buddhism, then, this book is an attempt to radicalize it. The foundations of this "radicalized radical Buddhism" are provided by a realist interpretation of Yogācāra, elucidated and elaborated with some help from thinkers in the broader Tiantai/Tendai tradition and American philosophers Donald Davidson and W.V.O. Quine. A key implication of this foundation is that only this world and only this life are real, from which it follows that if Buddhism aims to alleviate suffering, it has to do so in this world and in this life. Twentieth-century radical Buddhists (as well as some engaged Buddhists) came to a similar conclusion, often expressed in their aim to realize "a Buddha land in this world." Building on this foundation, but also on Mahāyāna moral philosophy, this book argues for an ethics and social philosophy based on a definition of evil as that what is or should be expected to cause death or suffering. On that ground, capitalism should be rejected indeed, but utopianism must be treated with caution as well, which raises questions about what it means - from a radicalized radical Buddhist perspective - to aim for a Buddha land in this world. Lajos Brons is a Dutch philosopher and social scientist living in Japan. After receiving a PhD from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands for a dissertation on an aspect of the history and philosophy of the social sciences, he gradually moved further and further into philosophical territory. Currently, Lajos is teaching logic, ethics, and philosophy at a university in Tokyo. His research interests are divided over two broad areas in philosophy: one is in the overlap of (meta-)ethics and social/political philosophy; the other is in the intersection of philosophy of language, metaphysics, and epistemology. Research in the former focuses on the relations between death, suffering, and compassion. Research in the latter concerns the relations between language, thought, and reality, and is heavily influenced by the philosophies of Donald Davidson and W.V.O. Quine, and by Buddhist philosophy. More information about publications and research interests, as well as Lajos's blog can be found at www.lajosbrons.net
Download or read book The Buddha Within written by S. K. Hookham and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1991-01-01 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tathagatagarbha -- Buddha Nature -- is a central concept of Mahayana Buddhism crucial to all the living practice traditions of Tibetan and Zen Buddhism. Its relationship to the concept of emptiness has been a subject of controversy for seven hundred years. Dr. Hookam's work investigates the divergent interpretations of these concepts and the way the Tibetan tradition is resolving them. In particular she does this with reference to the only surviving Indian commentary on the Tathagatagarbha doctrine, the Ratnagotravibhaga. This text addresses itself directly to the issue of how to relate the doctrine of emptiness (the illusory nature of the world) to that of the truly existing, changeless Absolute (the Buddha Nature). This is the first work by a Western writer to present an analysis of the Shentong tradition based on previously untranslated sources. The Shentong view rests on meditative experience that is inaccessible to the conceptualizing mind. It is deeply rooted in the sutra tradition of Indian Buddhism and is central to an understanding of the Mahamudra and Dzogchen traditions and Tantric practice among Kagyupas and Hyingmapas.
Download or read book The Land of Bliss The Paradise of the Buddha of Measureless Light written by Luis O. Gomez and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 1996-05-01 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a free translation of two Buddhist texts on what is arguably the most popular of all Buddhist conceptions of an ideal world, the "Land of Bliss" of the Buddha Amitabha, the Buddha of Infinite Light. The two texts, known to Western students of Buddhism as the "Smaller" and "Larger" Sukhavatiyuha Sutra, explain the conditions that lead to rebirth in the Pure Land and the manner in which human beings are reborn there.
Download or read book The Buddha Speaks of Amitabha Sutra written by Hsuan Hua and published by Buddhist Text Translation Society. This book was released on 2013-07-23 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The so-called ‘’shorter’’ Amitabha Sutra has been and is a foundation of spirituality for millions of Buddhist believers throughout the ages. The Sutra describes the magnificent Buddhist “heaven,” the Pure Land, where conditions are perfect for the practice of the Buddhist path. The sutra also describes the method for being reborn to that land, namely mindfulness of its Buddha, Amitabha. Tripitaka Master Hsuan Hua’s accompanying commentary amplifies the text and explains its main concepts by providing many interesting anecdotes involving the Buddha and his disciples. This volume, combining the Sutra with Master Hua’s commentary, succeeds not only in introducing the practice and thought of Pure Land Buddhism, also referred to as Mahayana Buddhism, but effectively presents a lucid introduction to this Buddhism as it is practiced today.
Download or read book Buddhism written by Edward P. H. Woo and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2008-12 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Buddhism: The Big Picture Explained answers the common questions a beginning and inquisitive learner might have regarding this seemingly complex religion. In easy-to-understand terms, Edward Woo first demonstrates the ideas and concepts behind this often misunderstood faith and then provides explanations for both basic and intricate questions including: What is a religion? Why is Buddhism a religion? What does Buddhism teach us? What constitutes the basic principle of Buddhism? What is the most important of Buddhist teachings? What precisely it means to get enlightened? Why is Buddhism meaningful? How does Buddhism change our way of life? In a sometimes unpredictable world, Buddhism: The Big Picture Explained explores the benefit this great religion has on global peace and harmony, promotes the idea of being good to others and the environment, and teaches us that we are the masters of our own destiny.Buddhism: The Big Picture Explained answers the common questions a beginning and inquisitive learner might have regarding this seemingly complex religion. In easy-to-understand terms, Edward Woo first demonstrates the ideas and concepts behind this often misunderstood faith and then provides explanations for both basic and intricate questions including: What is a religion? Why is Buddhism a religion? What does Buddhism teach us? What constitutes the basic principle of Buddhism? What is the most important of Buddhist teachings? What precisely it means to get enlightened? Why is Buddhism meaningful? How does Buddhism change our way of life? In a sometimes unpredictable world, Buddhism: The Big Picture Explained explores the benefit this great religion has on global peace and harmony, promotes the idea of being good to others and the environment, and teaches us that we are the masters of our own destiny.
Download or read book Buddhism for Today written by Nikkyō Niwano and published by Weatherhill, Incorporated. This book was released on 1976 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Critical Readings on Pure Land Buddhism in Japan written by Galen Amstutz and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-06-08 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pure Land was one of the main fields of mythopoesis and discourse among the Asian Buddhist traditions, and in Japan of central cultural importance from the Heian period right up to the present. The pieces reproduced in this set have been chosen as linchpin works accentuating the diversity and evolution of Pure Land Buddhism. These selections of previously published articles will serve as an essential starting-point for anyone interested in this perhaps underestimated area of Buddhist studies.
Download or read book The Pure Land Tradition written by James Harlan Foard and published by Jain Publishing Company. This book was released on 1996 with total page 559 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection includes the scholarship on one of the most important strains of Buddhism, the Pure Land Tradition. The essays trace its historical evolution from its origins in India through its development in China to medieval Japan.
Download or read book Interpreting Amida written by Galen Dean Amstutz and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the history of Japanese Pure Land Buddhism and how orientalist assumptions have caused the West to ignore this important tradition.
Download or read book The Essential Shinran written by Shinran and published by World Wisdom, Inc. This book was released on 2007 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shinran (1173-1262) is the founder of the Jodo Shinshu Pure Land Buddhist tradition in Japan during the Kamakura period. This movement, once set in motion, eventually became the largest Buddhist sect in Japan and spread to the West at the end of the nineteenth century. Renowned scholar of Shin Buddhism, Alfred Bloom, presents the life and spiritual legacy of Shinran Shonin, the influential religious reformer and founder of Pure Land Buddhism, the most popular school of Buddhism in Japan today. Bloom presents a wide selection of Shinran's essential writings on the key Shin Buddhist idea of true entrusting (shinjin) to the Other-Power of Amida Buddha through His Vow to save all sentient beings. The Essential Teachings of Shinran, also, includes a foreword by Shin Buddhist scholar, Rueben Habito, a detailed glossary of foreign terms, and a select bibliography for further reading.
Download or read book The Origins and Development of Pure Land Buddhism written by Mark L. Blum and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2002-03-21 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Mark Blum offers a critical look at the thought and impact of the late 13th-century Buddhist historian Gyonen (1240-1321) and the emergent Pure Land school of Buddhism founded by Honen (1133-1212). Blum also provides a clear and fully annotated translation of Gyonen's Jodo homon genrusho, the first history of Pure Land Buddhism.
