Download or read book Thirteen Buddhas written by Steven J Hutchins and published by Vivlia Limited. This book was released on 2015-07-16 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Thirteen Buddha Rites are a series of funeral rites and premortem offerings made to thirteen Buddhist deities on specific dates that have become strongly affiliated with the Shingon sect of Esoteric Buddhism. In this groundbreaking study, Steven.J.Hutchins draws on years of research to trace their historical development and interpret their hidden meanings and symbolism.
Download or read book The Narrow Door and the Great Vehicle written by François-Marie Périer and published by BoD - Books on Demand. This book was released on 2024-09-20 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An independent research opens a revolutionary perspective in the history of religions and sheds new light on the still unexplained emergence of the buddhist Great Vehicle in the 1st century CE, demonstrating the influence of the early Christians, in the strongly hellenized area of the Kushan Empire (China, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir, Northern India), heir of Alexander's conquests on the Silk Road, where Greek and Aramaïc were the two main languages currently spoken and written. Two millenia ago, the simultaneous spread of Christianity in the West and the Middle East, and Mahayana Buddhism in the East redrew the World map, but could it be only coincidence? Why did new sutras emphasizing compassion, devotion, voidness, sacrifice and universal salvation emerge in the first decades of our era in the Buddhism of the Origins? Why did, at the same time as Greek-Buddhist art, a 'Western triad' of buddhas appear in Gandhara, composed by a buddha of infinite light, Amitabha, a white bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteshvara, the Tibetan Chenrezig, emanated out of Infinite Compassion by the later, and a third one, bringer of power and inspiration, Mahasthamaprapta? Did Zoroastrism and Mithraism played a role in this spiritual revolution and why are some Gnostic texts of Nag-Hammadi so close to the Mahayanist cosmogonies, notions and terms? Furthermore, the sudden and abundant literature and iconography of the Great Vehicle, saw in the same years the appearance of a messianic buddha, Maitreya, of a feminine and salvific figure, embodiment of Wisdom, the Prajnaparamita, that would become Târâ, and of the Western Paradise of the Pure Land, making them very close. In this new turning of the wheel of Dharma, the bodhisattva renouncing Nirvana and sacrifying himelf to free the whole of Humanity kind became the ultimate value. Here are some of the interrogations, among many others, raised by this research and answered in a way never done before.
Download or read book A Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms written by William Edward Soothill and published by Motilal Banarsidass Publ.. This book was released on 1977 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is an outstanding work for which two eminent scholars of Chinese Buddhism separated by 2000 miles of ocean collaborated for complete ten years during which the manuscript crossed the Atlantic four times. The authors aim has been to provide a key for the student with which to unlock a closed door and which does serve to reveal the riches of the great Buddhist thesaurus in China. In the absence of a dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms it was small wonder that the translation of Chinese texts has made little progress important thought these are to the understanding of Mahayana buddhism especially in its Far Eastern development.
Download or read book The Gods of Northern Buddhism written by Alice Getty and published by . This book was released on 1914 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Dunhuang Art written by Wenjie Duan and published by Abhinav Publications. This book was released on 1994 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dunhuang Although Internationally Known Is Infrequently Visited. The Mogao Shrine At Dunhuang Is A Cluster Of 492 Caves, Containing 45,000 Square Metres Of Frescoes And 2,415 Stucco Statues. These Caves Were Created, Renovated And Maintained Continually With Devotion And Care From The 4Th Upto The 14Th Century. In This Volume We Have Provided An English Translation Of Selected Writings Of Prof. Duan Wenjie, Director Of The Dunhuang Academy Who Has Given A Chronological Study Of The Contents Inside The Mogao Caves With Several Decades Of Research Of The Dunhuang Academy Under His Command. Prof. Tan Chung, The Editor, Has Furnished An Illuminating Introduction, While Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan, The Driving Spirit Behind This Volume, Has Made Succinct Comments In Her Foreword . A Valuable Information On All The Mogao Caves Has Been Added. Colour And Black And White Photographs And Fine Sketches By Vineet Kumar Supplement The Text. The Indira Gandhi National Centre For The Arts Is Committed To Exploring All Dimensions Of Art. It Feels Privileged To Place Before Art Historians And Art Lovers Of The English-Speaking World First-Hand Information About His Unique Art Gallery Going Back To One-And-A-Half Millennia.
Download or read book Complete Poison Blossoms from a Thicket of Thorn written by Hakuin Zenji and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2017-12-20 with total page 1337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following his translation of just over half the original text in 2014, Norman Waddell presents the complete teaching record of Zen master Hakuin, now available in English with extensive explanations, notes, and even the wry, helpful comments that students attending Hakuin’s lectures inscribed in their copies of the text With this volume, Norman Waddell completes his acclaimed translation of the teaching record of one of the greatest Zen masters of all time, Hakuin Ekaku (1685–1769). Hakuin lived at a time when Japanese Buddhism as a whole and his own Rinzai sect in particular were at low ebb. Through tremendous force of character and creative energy, he initiated a reform movement that swept the country, and today, all Rinzai Zen masters trace their lineage through him. This outcome is all the more extraordinary because Hakuin’s base of operations was a small temple in the country town of Hara, where he grew up, not in one of the nation's political, cultural, or commercial centers. This book represents the first full publication of the Keisō Dokuzui in any foreign language. Inspired by the enthusiastic reception that greeted his 2014 selections from the text, Waddell returned to work and now gives us the opportunity to examine the entirety of Hakuin's record and to benefit as never before from the example and instruction of this exuberant personality and remarkable teacher. Poison Blossoms contains a highly diverse set of materials: formal and informal presentations to monastic and lay disciples, poems, practice instructions, inscriptions for paintings, comments on koans, letters, and funeral orations. While most items are brief, easily read in a quick sitting, the book also includes extended commentaries on the Heart Sutra, one of Mahayana Buddhism’s central texts; on the famously difficult Five Ranks of Tung–shan; and on the accomplishments of his eminent predecessor Gudō Tōshoku. Having devoted himself for more than three decades to the study and translation of Hakuin's works, Norman Waddell is peerless when it comes to conveying into English the vital, sometimes elegant, often earthy voice of this outstanding teacher. His command of the subject enables Waddell to elucidate the vast array of idioms and images that Hakuin employed to enliven his poetry and prose—historical and mythological elements, street slang, doctrinal and cultural allusions that would otherwise place these writings beyond the grasp of anyone but a specialist. Waddell's five previous Hakuin translations, each important in its own right, can now be recognized as stepping stones to this towering achievement.
Download or read book Transforming the Void written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-05-02 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Transforming the Void: Embryological Discourse and Reproductive Imagery in East Asian Religions considers paths to self-cultivation and salvation that are patterned on human embryological development or procreative imagery in the religions of China and Japan. Focusing on Taoism, Esoteric Buddhism, Shinto, Shugendō, and local religious traditions, the contributors to the volume provide new insight into how the body’s generative processes are harnessed as powerful metaphors for spiritual attainment. This volume offers an in-depth examination of the religious dimensions of embryology and reproductive imagery, topics that have been hitherto solely approached through the lens of the history of medicine. Contributors include: Brigitte Baptandier, Catherine Despeux, Grégoire Espesset, Christine Mollier, Fabrizio Pregadio, Dominic Steavu, Lucia Dolce, Bernard Faure, Iyanaga Nobumi, Anna Andreeva, Kigensan Licha, Gaynor Sekimori.
Download or read book The Other Side of Zen written by Duncan Ryūken Williams and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Popular understanding of Zen Buddhism typically involves a stereotyped image of isolated individuals in meditation, contemplating nothingness. This book presents the "other side of Zen," by examining the movement's explosive growth during the Tokugawa period (1600-1867) in Japan and by shedding light on the broader Japanese religious landscape during the era. Using newly-discovered manuscripts, Duncan Ryuken Williams argues that the success of Soto Zen was due neither to what is most often associated with the sect, Zen meditation, nor to the teachings of its medieval founder Dogen, but rather to the social benefits it conveyed. Zen Buddhism promised followers many tangible and attractive rewards, including the bestowal of such perquisites as healing, rain-making, and fire protection, as well as "funerary Zen" rites that assured salvation in the next world. Zen temples also provided for the orderly registration of the entire Japanese populace, as ordered by the Tokugawa government, which led to stable parish membership. Williams investigates both the sect's distinctive religious and ritual practices and its nonsectarian participation in broader currents of Japanese life. While much previous work on the subject has consisted of passages on great medieval Zen masters and their thoughts strung together and then published as "the history of Zen," Williams' work is based on care ul examination of archival sources including temple logbooks, prayer and funerary manuals, death registries, miracle tales of popular Buddhist deities, secret initiation papers, villagers' diaries, and fund-raising donor lists.
Download or read book The Material Culture of Death in Medieval Japan written by Karen Margaret Gerhart and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2009-07-29 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study is the first in the English language to explore the ways medieval Japanese sought to overcome their sense of powerlessness over death. By attending to both religious practice and ritual objects used in funerals in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, it seeks to provide a new understanding of the relationship between the two. Karen Gerhart looks at how these special objects and rituals functioned by analyzing case studies culled from written records, diaries, and illustrated handscrolls, and by examining surviving funerary structures and painted and sculpted images. The work is divided into two parts, beginning with compelling depictions of funerary and memorial rites of several members of the aristocracy and military elite. The second part addresses the material culture of death and analyzes objects meant to sequester the dead from the living: screens, shrouds, coffins, carriages, wooden fences. This is followed by an examination of implements (banners, canopies, censers, musical instruments, offering vessels) used in memorial rituals. The final chapter discusses the various types of and uses for portraits of the deceased, focusing on the manner of their display, the patrons who commissioned them, and the types of rituals performed in front of them. Gerhart delineates the distinction between objects created for a single funeral—and meant for use in close proximity to the body, such as coffins—and those, such as banners, intended for use in multiple funerals and other Buddhist services. Richly detailed and generously illustrated, Gerhart introduces a new perspective on objects typically either overlooked by scholars or valued primarily for their artistic qualities. By placing them in the context of ritual, visual, and material culture, she reveals how rituals and ritual objects together helped to comfort the living and improve the deceased’s situation in the afterlife as well as to guide and cement societal norms of class and gender. Not only does her book make a significant contribution in the impressive amount of new information that it introduces, it also makes an important theoretical contribution as well in its interweaving of the interests and approaches of the art historian and the historian of religion. By directly engaging and challenging methodologies relevant to ritual studies, material culture, and art history, it changes once and for all our way of thinking about the visual and religious culture of premodern Japan.
Download or read book Visions of Power written by Bernard Faure and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bernard Faure's previous works are well known as guides to some of the more elusive aspects of the Chinese tradition of Chan Buddhism and its outgrowth, Japanese Zen. Continuing his efforts to look at Chan/Zen with a full array of postmodernist critical techniques, Faure now probes the imaginaire, or mental universe, of the Buddhist Soto Zen master Keizan Jokin (1268-1325). Although Faure's new book may be read at one level as an intellectual biography, Keizan is portrayed here less as an original thinker than as a representative of his culture and an example of the paradoxes of the Soto school. The Chan/Zen doctrine that he avowed was allegedly reasonable and demythologizing, but he lived in a psychological world that was just as imbued with the marvelous as was that of his contemporary Dante Alighieri. Drawing on his own dreams to demonstrate that he possessed the magical authority that he felt to reside also in icons and relics, Keizan strove to use these "visions of power" to buttress his influence as a patriarch. To reveal the historical, institutional, ritual, and visionary elements in Keizan's life and thought and to compare these to Soto doctrine, Faure draws on largely neglected texts, particularly the Record of Tokoku (a chronicle that begins with Keizan's account of the origins of the first of the monasteries that he established) and the kirigami, or secret initiation documents.
Download or read book The Creed of Half Japan written by Arthur Lloyd and published by . This book was released on 1912 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Neanderthal Legacy written by Stan Gooch and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-04-18 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A direct appeal for a revolution in our educational system to restore the connection with our Neanderthal heritage • Examines the genetic evidence for Neanderthal/Cro-Magnon crossbreeding and the dual-nature effects this hybrid cross produced • Explains the influence of the Neanderthal’s enlarged cerebellum on our modern brain function and psychic and paranormal abilities In The Neanderthal Legacy, eminent psychologist and paranormal researcher Stan Gooch brings together the wide-ranging investigative strands of his lifetime of study of the human brain. One of the world’s leading experts on the influence of Neanderthal Man on the cultural and biological development of humanity, Gooch contends that the Neanderthals’ enlarged cerebellum was a source of deep connection with the psychic and dream worlds, which remains extant in modern man in paranormal phenomena that conventional science cannot explain. Gooch offers new scientific evidence of the crossbreeding between Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons that is responsible for the dichotomous nature of our feelings, thoughts, impressions, beliefs, and even our cultural mores and politics. The “hybrid vigor” produced by this mating has gifted modern man with abilities and sensibilities that the scientific establishment and conventional educational system entirely ignore. The author explores the legacy of our Neanderthal ancestors in an effort to awaken their virtues and qualities, which are so needed in our modern world.
Download or read book World of the Buddha written by Lucien Stryk and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 541 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Selections from the most significant texts in the body of Buddhist literature. For readers who want a deeper understanding of Buddhism, this is a rich, varied, and comprehensive collection in one volume. It includes the most significant texts from the vast body of Buddhist literature, and includes translations from Pali, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, and Lao. For the benefit of the newcomer to Buddhism—or for those using it in an academic context—the pieces are arranged in chronological order, and each chapter is preceded by a separate commentary. In addition, there is a comprehensive description of life in India at the time of the Buddha and an outline of his life and mission. “The best available translations.” —Library Journal
Download or read book Living Buddhist Statues in Early Medieval and Modern Japan written by S. Horton and published by Springer. This book was released on 2007-10-01 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of the surprising functions of Buddhist statues, which helped disseminate Buddhist beliefs among the populace in Tenth- and Eleventh-century Japan. Using ethnographic data drawn from present-day fieldwork and marshalling ancient textual evidence, Horton reveals the historical origins and development of modern Japanese beliefs and practices.
Download or read book The Three Treasures written by Edward Kamens and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2023-01-25 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An updated, augmented, and illustrated study and translation of this landmark collection of Buddhist tales
Download or read book The Rhetoric of Immediacy written by Bernard Faure and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through a highly sensitive exploration of key concepts and metaphors, Bernard Faure guides Western readers in appreciating some of the more elusive aspects of the Chinese tradition of Chan Buddhism and its outgrowth, Japanese Zen. He focuses on Chan's insistence on "immediacy"--its denial of all traditional mediations, including scripture, ritual, good works--and yet shows how these mediations have always been present in Chan. Given this apparent duplicity in its discourse, Faure reveals how Chan structures its practice and doctrine on such mental paradigms as mediacy/immediacy, sudden/gradual, and center/margins.
Download or read book Religions of Japan in Practice written by George J. Tanabe Jr. and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 583 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This anthology reflects a range of Japanese religions in their complex, sometimes conflicting, diversity. In the tradition of the Princeton Readings in Religions series, the collection presents documents (legends and miracle tales, hagiographies, ritual prayers and ceremonies, sermons, reform treatises, doctrinal tracts, historical and ethnographic writings), most of which have been translated for the first time here, that serve to illuminate the mosaic of Japanese religions in practice. George Tanabe provides a lucid introduction to the "patterned confusion" of Japan's religious practices. He has ordered the anthology's forty-five readings under the categories of "Ethical Practices," "Ritual Practices," and "Institutional Practices," moving beyond the traditional classifications of chronology, religious traditions (Shinto, Confucianism, Buddhism, etc.), and sects, and illuminating the actual orientation of people who engage in religious practices. Within the anthology's three broad categories, subdivisions address the topics of social values, clerical and lay precepts, gods, spirits, rituals of realization, faith, court and emperor, sectarian founders, wizards, and heroes, orthopraxis and orthodoxy, and special places. Dating from the eighth through the twentieth centuries, the documents are revealed to be open to various and evolving interpretations, their meanings dependent not only on how they are placed in context but also on how individual researchers read them. Each text is preceded by an introductory explanation of the text's essence, written by its translator. Instructors and students will find these explications useful starting points for their encounters with the varied worlds of practice within which the texts interact with readers and changing contexts. Religions of Japan in Practice is a compendium of relationships between great minds and ordinary people, abstruse theories and mundane acts, natural and supernatural powers, altruism and self-interest, disappointment and hope, quiescence and war. It is an indispensable sourcebook for scholars, students, and general readers seeking engagement with the fertile "ordered disorder" of religious practice in Japan.
