Download or read book Shifting Shape Shaping Text written by Steven Heine and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 1999-12-01 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to the fox koan, the second case in the Wu-men kuan koan collection, Zen master Pai-chang encounters a fox who claims to be a former abbot punished through endless reincarnations for denying the efficacy of karmic causality. In the end he is liberated by Pai-chang's turning word, which asserts the inexorability of cause-and-effect. Most traditional interpretations of the koan focus on the philosophical issue of causality in relation to earlier Buddhist doctrines, such as dependent origination and emptiness. Dogen, the founder of the Japanese Soto school, devoted two fascicles of the Shobogenzo exclusively to the fox koan. One fascicle supports a paradoxical view of causality and non-causality, the two being "two sides of the same coin"; the second strongly attacks this interpretation and defends a literal reading that asserts causality and denies non-causality. Dogen's apparent change of heart on this topic has inspired scholars of the recent Critical Buddhist methodology to evaluate the merits and weaknesses in Zen's attitude toward ethical issues and social affairs. Shifting Shape, Shaping Text examines the fox koan in relation to philosophical and institutional issues facing the Ch'an/Zen tradition in both Sung China and medieval and contemporary Japan. Steven Heine integrates his own philological analysis of the koan, textual analysis of koan collections and related literary genres in T'ang and Sung China, folklore studies, recent discourse theory, Dogen studies, and research on monastic codes and institutional history to craft an original and compelling work. More specifically, he illuminates a fascinating dimension of the entire Ch'an/Zen tradition as he carefully lays out the philosophical issues in the koan concerning causality/karma and enlightenment, the ethical issues contained therein, the bearing that certain interpretations of causality had on the creation of monastic codes and institutional security in China, the relation between Zen and folk religion as revealed by the koan, and the issue of possible antinomianism in Zen, especially as grappled with by later thinkers such as Dogen and contemporary representatives of Critical Buddhism. Finally he applies theories of "high" and "low" religion and contemporary discourse and in the process rethinks the theories and their applicability across cultures. Far-reaching yet rigorous, Shifting Shape, Shaping Text will not only attract the interest of Ch'an/Zen specialists, but also those studying folklore, popular religion, and issues concerning the nature of discourse and the relation between "high" and "low" religions.
Download or read book Opening a Mountain written by Steven Heine and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-02-26 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the growing popularity of Zen Buddhism in the West, virtually everyone knows, or thinks they know, what a koan is: a brief and baffling question or statement that cannot be solved by the logical mind and which, after sustained concentration, can lead to sudden enlightenment. But the truth about koans is both simpler--and more complicated--than this. In Opening a Mountain, Steven Heine shows that koans, and the questions we associate with them--such as "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"--are embedded in larger narratives and belong to an ancient Buddhist tradition of "encounter dialogues." These dialogues feature dramatic and often inscrutable contests between masters and disciples, or between masters and an array of natural and supernatural forces: rouge priests, "wild foxes," hermits, wizards, shapeshifters, magical animals, and dangerous women. To establish a new monastery, "to open a mountain," the Zen master had to tame these wild forces in regions most remote from civilization. In these extraordinary encounters, fingers and arms are cut off, pitchers are kicked over, masters appear in and interpret each other's dreams, and seemingly absurd statements are shown to reveal the deepest insights. Heine restores these koans to their original traditions, allowing readers to see both the complex elements of Chinese culture and religion that they reflect and the role they played in Zen's transformation of local superstitions into its own teachings. Offering a fresh approach to one of the most crucial elements of Zen Buddhism, Opening a Mountain is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the full story behind koans and the mysterious worlds they come from.
Download or read book Illusory Abiding written by Natasha Heller and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-05-11 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking monograph on Yuan dynasty Buddhism, Illusory Abiding offers a cultural history of Buddhism through a case study of the eminent Chan master Zhongfeng Mingben. Natasha Heller demonstrates that Mingben, and other monks of his stature, developed a range of cultural competencies through which they navigated social and intellectual relationships. They mastered repertoires internal to their tradition—for example, guidelines for monastic life—as well as those that allowed them to interact with broader elite audiences, such as the ability to compose verses on plum blossoms. These cultural exchanges took place within local, religious, and social networks—and at the same time, they comprised some of the very forces that formed these networks in the first place. This monograph contributes to a more robust account of Chinese Buddhism in late imperial China, and demonstrates the importance of situating monks as actors within broader sociocultural fields of practice and exchange.
Download or read book Like Cats and Dogs written by Steven Heine and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Steven Heine offers a compelling examination of the Mu Koan, widely considered to be the single best known and most widely circulated and transmitted koan record of the Zen school of Buddhism.
Download or read book The Fox s Craft in Japanese Religion and Culture written by Michael Bathgate and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-03 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than a millennium, the fox has been a ubiquitous figure at the margins of the Japanese collective imagination. In the writings of the nobility and the motifs of popular literature, the fox is known as a shapeshifter, able to assume various forms in order to deceive others. Focusing on recurring themes of transformation and duplicity in folklore, theology, and court and village practice, The Fox's Craft explores the meanings and uses of shapeshifter fox imagery in Japanese history. Michael Bathgate finds that the shapeshifting powers of the fox make it a surprisingly fundamental symbol in the discourse of elite and folk alike, and a key component in formulations of marriage and human identity, religious knowledge, and the power of money. The symbol of the shapeshifter fox thus provides a vantage point from which to understand the social practice of signification.
Download or read book How Zen Became Zen written by Morten Schlutter and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2010-04-30 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How Zen Became Zen takes a novel approach to understanding one of the most crucial developments in Zen Buddhism: the dispute over the nature of enlightenment that erupted within the Chinese Chan (Zen) school in the twelfth century. The famous Linji (Rinzai) Chan master Dahui Zonggao (1089–1163) railed against "heretical silent illumination Chan" and strongly advocated kanhua (koan) meditation as an antidote. In this fascinating study, Morten Schlütter shows that Dahui’s target was the Caodong (Soto) Chan tradition that had been revived and reinvented in the early twelfth century, and that silent meditation was an approach to practice and enlightenment that originated within this "new" Chan tradition. Schlütter has written a refreshingly accessible account of the intricacies of the dispute, which is still reverberating through modern Zen in both Asia and the West. Dahui and his opponents’ arguments for their respective positions come across in this book in as earnest and relevant a manner as they must have seemed almost nine hundred years ago. Although much of the book is devoted to illuminating the doctrinal and soteriological issues behind the enlightenment dispute, Schlütter makes the case that the dispute must be understood in the context of government policies toward Buddhism, economic factors, and social changes. He analyzes the remarkable ascent of Chan during the first centuries of the Song dynasty, when it became the dominant form of elite monastic Buddhism, and demonstrates that secular educated elites came to control the critical transmission from master to disciple ("procreation" as Schlütter terms it) in the Chan School.
Download or read book Buddhist Studies from India to America written by Damien Keown and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-01-16 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles Prebish is Professor of Buddhism, Pennsylvania State University, US – a leading international scholar and co-founder of what is now the ‘Buddhism section’ of the American Academy of Religion, and served an additional term on the steering committee. Prebish is well known in N. America, and this book should attract readers in the region The author of the book, (Damien Keown), and Charles Prebish are editors of the Critical Studies in Buddhism series published by Routledge. Contributors are well-known international scholars whose participation guarantees that the academic quality of the work is high and the standard even throughout
Download or read book Zen Skin Zen Marrow written by Steven Heine and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2007-12-31 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since Zen Buddhism first captivated the attention of Western seekers the dominant discourse about this sect has been romantic, idealistic, and utopian. Some scholars have begun to examine Zen through the lenses of historical and cultural criticism, producing a sharp challenge to the traditional view. This text investigates.
Download or read book Dogen written by Steven Heine and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2012-02-29 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays explore the life and thought of Zen Master Dōgen (1200-1253), the founder of the Japanese Soto sect. Through both textual and historical analysis, the volume shows Dōgen in context of the Chinese Chan tradition that influenced him and demonstrates the tremendous, lasting impact he had on Buddhist thought and culture in Japan. Special attention is given to the Shobogenzo and several of its fascicles, which express Dōgen's views on such practices and rituals as using supranormal powers (jinzu), reading the sutras (kankin), diligent training in zazen meditation (shikan taza), and the koan realized in everyday life (genjōkōan). It also analyzes the historical significance of this seminal figure: for instance, Dōgen's methods of appropriating or contrasting with Chan sources, as well as how Dōgen was understood and examined in later periods, including modern times.
Download or read book The Cult of the Fox written by Xiaofei Kang and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than five centuries the shamanistic fox cult has attracted large portions of the Chinese population and appealed to a wide range of social classes. Deemed illicit by imperial rulers and clerics and officially banned by republican and communist leaders, the fox cult has managed to survive and flourish in individual homes and community shrines throughout northern China. In this new work, the first to examine the fox cult as a vibrant popular religion, Xiaofei Kang explores the manifold meanings of the fox spirit in Chinese society. Kang describes various cult practices, activities of worship, and the exorcising of fox spirits to reveal how the Chinese people constructed their cultural and social values outside the gaze of offical power and morality.
Download or read book The Zen Canon written by David B and Mary H Gamble Professor of Religious Studies and Asian Studies Dale S Wright and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2004-03-25 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a collection of essays, which argue that Zen Buddism actually has a rich and varied literary heritage. Among the significant texts are hagiographic accounts and recorded sayings of individual Zen masters, koan collections and commentaries and rules for monastic life.
Download or read book Sino Japanese Reflections written by Joshua A. Fogel and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2022-05-09 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sino-Japanese Reflections offers ten richly detailed case studies that examine various forms of cultural and literary interaction between Japanese and Chinese intellectuals from the late Ming to the early twentieth century. The authors consider efforts by early modern scholars on each side of the Yellow Sea to understand the language and culture of the other, to draw upon received texts and forms, and to contribute to shared literary practices. Whereas literary and cultural flow within the Sinosphere is sometimes imagined to be an entirely unidirectional process of textual dissemination from China to the periphery, the contributions to this volume reveal a more complex picture: highlighting how literary and cultural engagement was always an opportunity for creative adaptation and negotiation. Examining materials such as Chinese translations of Japanese vernacular poetry, Japanese engagements with Chinese supernatural stories, adaptations of Japanese historical tales into vernacular Chinese, Sinitic poetry composed in Japan, and Japanese Sinology, the volume brings together recent work by literary scholars and intellectual historians of multiple generations, all of whom have a strong comparative interest in Sino-Japanese studies.
Download or read book Visions of Awakening Space and Time written by Taigen Dan Leighton and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-12-31 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a religion concerned with universal liberation, Zen grew out of a Buddhist worldview very different from the currently prevalent scientific materialism. Indeed, says Taigen Dan Leighton, Zen cannot be fully understood outside of a worldview that sees reality itself as a vital, dynamic agent of awareness and healing. In this book, Leighton explicates that worldview through the writings of the Zen master Eihei D?gen (1200-1253), considered the founder of the Japanese S?t? Zen tradition, which currently enjoys increasing popularity in the West. The Lotus Sutra, arguably the most important Buddhist scripture in East Asia, contains a famous story about bodhisattvas (enlightening beings) who emerge from under the earth to preserve and expound the Lotus teaching in the distant future. The story reveals that the Buddha only appears to pass away, but actually has been practicing, and will continue to do so, over an inconceivably long life span. Leighton traces commentaries on the Lotus Sutra from a range of key East Asian Buddhist thinkers, including Daosheng, Zhiyi, Zhanran, Saigyo, My?e, Nichiren, Hakuin, and Ry?kan. But his main focus is Eihei D?gen, the 13th century Japanese S?t? Zen founder who imported Zen from China, and whose profuse, provocative, and poetic writings are important to the modern expansion of Buddhism to the West. D?gen's use of this sutra expresses the critical role of Mahayana vision and imagination as the context of Zen teaching, and his interpretations of this story furthermore reveal his dynamic worldview of the earth, space, and time themselves as vital agents of spiritual awakening. Leighton argues that D?gen uses the images and metaphors in this story to express his own religious worldview, in which earth, space, and time are lively agents in the bodhisattva project. Broader awareness of D?gen's worldview and its implications, says Leighton, can illuminate the possibilities for contemporary approaches to primary Mahayana concepts and practices.
Download or read book Buddhism in the Modern World Adaptations of an Ancient Tradition written by Steven Heine Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Asian Studies Florida International University and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2003-08-14 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of Buddhism has been characterized by an ongoing tension between attempts to preserve traditional ideals and modes of practice and the need to adapt to changing cultural conditions. Many developments in Buddhist history, such as the infusion of esoteric rituals, the rise of devotionalism and lay movements, and the assimilation of warrior practices, reflect the impact of widespread social changes on traditional religious structures. At the same time, Buddhism has been able to maintain its doctrinal purity to a remarkable degree. This volume explores how traditional Buddhist communities have responded to the challenges of modernity, such as science and technology, colonialism, and globalization. Editors Steven Heine and Charles S. Prebish have commissioned ten essays by leading scholars, each examining a particular traditional Buddhist school in its cultural context. The essays consider how the encounter with modernity has impacted the disciplinary, textual, ritual, devotional, practical, and socio-political traditions of Buddhist thought throughout Asia. Taken together, these essays reveal the diversity and vitality of contemporary Buddhism and offer a wide-ranging look at the way Buddhism interacts with the modern world.
Download or read book Chan Buddhism in Ritual Context written by Bernard Faure and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-09-27 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this volume attempt to place the Chan and Zen tradition in their ritual and cultural contexts, looking at various aspects heretofore largely (and unduly) ignored. In particular, they show the extent to which these traditions, despite their claim to uniqueness, were indebted to larger trends in East Asian Buddhism, such as the cults of icons, relics and the monastic robe. The book emphasises the importance of ritual for a proper understanding of this allegedly anti-ritualistic form of Buddhism. In doing so, it deconstructs the Chan/Zen 'rhetoric of immediacy' and its ideological underpinnings.
Download or read book Did Dogen Go to China written by Steven Heine and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2006-05-25 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dogen (1200-1253), the founder of the Soto Zen sect in Japan, is especially known for introducing to Japanese Buddhism many of the texts and practices that he discovered in China. Heine reconstructs the context of Dogen's travels to and reflections on China by means of a critical look at traditional sources both by and about Dogen in light of recent Japanese scholarship. While many studies emphasize the unique features of Dogen's Japanese influences, this book calls attention to the way Chinese and Japanese elements were fused in Dogen's religious vision. It reveals many new materials and insights into Dogen's main writings, including the multiple editions of the Shobogenzo, and how and when this seminal text was created by Dogen and was edited and interpreted by his disciples. This book is the culmination of the author's thirty years of research on Dogen and provides the reader with a comprehensive approach to the master's life works and an understanding of the overall career trajectory of one of the most important figures in the history of Buddhism and Asian religious thought.
Download or read book The Koan written by Steven Heine and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2000-04-20 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Koans are enigmatic spiritual formulas used for religious training in the Zen Buddhist tradition. Arguing that our understanding of the koan tradition has been severely limited, contributors to this collection examine previously unrecognized factors in the formation of this tradition, and highlight the rich complexity and diversity of koan practice and literature.
