Download or read book Zen in the Vernacular written by Peter Coyote and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2024-03-19 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: • Shows how Zen offers a creative problem-solving mechanism and moral guide ideal for the stresses and problems of daily life • Shares the author’s secular, vernacular interpretations of the Four Noble Truths, the Three Treasures, the Eightfold Path, and other fundamental Buddhist ideas During the nearly 3,000 years since the Buddha lived, his teachings have spread widely around the globe. In each culture where Buddhism was introduced, the Buddha’s teachings have been pruned and modified to harmonize with local customs, laws, and cultures. We can refer to these modifications as “gift wrapping,” translating the gifts of Buddha’s teachings in ways sensible to particular cultures in particular times. This gift-wrapping explains why Indian, Tibetan, Vietnamese, Japanese, Chinese, and Indonesian Buddhism have significant differences. In this engaging guide to Zen Buddhism, award-winning actor, narrator, and Zen Buddhist priest Peter Coyote helps us peer beneath the Japanese gift-wrapping of Zen teachings to reveal the fundamental teachings of the Buddha and show how they can be applied to contemporary daily life. The author explains that the majority of Western Buddhists are secular and many don’t meditate, wear robes, shave their heads, or believe in reincarnation. He reminds us that the mental/physical states achieved by Buddhist practice are universal human states, ones we may already be familiar with but perhaps never considered as possessing spiritual dimensions. Exploring Buddha’s core teachings, the author shares his own secular and accessible interpretations of the Four Noble Truths, the Three Treasures, and the Eightfold Path within the context of his lineage and the teachings of his teacher and the teachers before him. He looks at Buddha’s teachings on our singular reality that appears as a multiplicity of things and on the “self” that perceives reality, translating powerful spiritual experience into the vernacular of modern life. Revealing the practical usefulness of Buddhist philosophy and practice, Zen in the Vernacular shows how Zen offers a creative problem-solving mechanism and moral guide ideal for the stresses and problems of everyday life.
Download or read book The Matter of Zen written by Paul Wienpahl and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-05 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, first published in 1964, concerns the practice of Zen Buddhism. The practice is a particular form of meditation. In Japan, the only country in which it is any longer seriously pursued, the practice is called zazen. The author directs attention to zazen because it is being overlooked in the current interest in Zen.
Download or read book Zen Dictionary written by Ernest Wood and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2019-12-17 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A helpful A-to-Z guide to the terms, central concepts, and history of Zen Buddhism by the acclaimed scholar and author of Concentration. From the seemingly unlimited field of knowledge and sayings by Zen masters, theosophist Ernest Wood has carefully compiled a reference guide that details the most important Zen ideas, along with a general history of the growth of Zen in China and Japan. Presenting names and terms in alphabetical order, Zen Dictionary is an ideal reference text for any student of Zen. From the seemingly unlimited field of knowledge and sayings by Zen masters, theosophist Ernest Wood has carefully compiled a reference guide that details the most important Zen ideas, along with a general history of the growth of Zen in China and Japan. Presenting names and terms in alphabetical order, Zen Dictionary is an ideal reference text for any student of Zen.
Download or read book The Zen Collection written by Ernest Wood and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2019-12-17 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two classic texts essential to understanding Zen Buddhism—its ideas, history, and profound cultural legacy. In Zen Dictionary, theosophist Ernest Wood offers a comprehensive guide to the most important Zen ideas, along with a general history of the growth of Zen in China and Japan. Presenting names and terms in alphabetical order, Zen Dictionary is an ideal reference text for any student of Zen. More than just a survey of Zen and Shinto, Dr. Chikao Fujisawa’s Zen and Shinto is an impassioned plea to restore Shinto as the cornerstone of Japanese life and thought. Fujisawa offers new insight into the depth and vitality of Japanese culture, demonstrating its remarkable capacity to assimilate foreign thought and ideas, and thus contribute to the world’s hope for permanent peace.
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.
Download or read book Zen Sand written by Victor Sogen Hori and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2003-02-28 with total page 785 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Zen Sand is a classic collection of verses aimed at aiding practitioners of kôan meditation to negotiate the difficult relationship between insight and language. As such it represents a major contribution to both Western Zen practice and English-language Zen scholarship. In Japan the traditional Rinzai Zen kôan curriculum includes the use of jakugo, or "capping phrases." Once a monk has successfully replied to a kôan, the Zen master orders the search for a classical verse to express the monk’s insight into the kôan. Special collections of these jakugo were compiled as handbooks to aid in that search. Until now, Zen students in the West, lacking this important resource, have been severely limited in carrying out this practice. Zen Sand combines and translates two standard jakugo handbooks and opens the way for incorporating this important tradition fully into Western Zen practice. For the scholar, Zen Sand provides a detailed description of the jakugo practice and its place in the overall kôan curriculum, as well as a brief history of the Zen phrase book. This volume also contributes to the understanding of East Asian culture in a broader sense.
Download or read book Cosmopolitan and Vernacular in the World of Wen written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-05-30 with total page 631 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sheldon Pollock’s work on the history of literary cultures in the ‘Sanskrit Cosmopolis’ broke new ground in the theorization of historical processes of vernacularization and served as a wake-up call for comparative approaches to such processes in other translocal cultural formations. But are his characterizations of vernacularization in the Sinographic Sphere accurate, and do his ideas and framework allow us to speak of a ‘Sinographic Cosmopolis’? How do the special typology of sinographic writing and associated technologies of vernacular reading complicate comparisons between the Sankrit and Latinate cosmopoleis? Such are the questions tackled in this volume. Contributors are Daehoe Ahn, Yufen Chang, Wiebke Denecke, Torquil Duthie, Marion Eggert, Greg Evon, Hoduk Hwang, John Jorgensen, Ross King, David Lurie, Alexey Lushchenko, Si Nae Park, John Phan, Mareshi Saito, and S. William Wells.
Download or read book Zen Sanctuary of Purple Robes written by Sachiko Kaneko Morrell and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Zen Sanctuary of Purple Robes examines the affairs of Rinzai Zen's Tōkeiji Convent, founded in 1285 by nun Kakusan Shidō after the death of her husband, Hōjō Tokimune. It traces the convent's history through seven centuries, including the early nuns' Zen practice; Abbess Yōdō's imperial lineage with nuns in purple robes; Hideyori's seven-year-old daughter—later to become the convent's twentieth abbess, Tenshu—spared by Tokugawa Ieyasu at the Battle for Osaka Castle; Tōkeiji as "divorce temple" during the mid-Edo period and a favorite topic of senryu satirical verse; the convent's gradual decline as a functioning nunnery but its continued survival during the early Meiji persecution of Buddhism; and its current prosperity. The work includes translations, charts, illustrations, bibliographies, and indices. Beyond such historical details, the authors emphasize the convent's "inclusivist" Rinzai Zen practice in tandem with the nearby Engakuji Temple. The rationale for this "inclusivism" is the continuing acceptance of the doctrine of "Skillful Means" (hōben) as expressed in the Lotus Sutra—a notion repudiated or radically reinterpreted by most of the Kamakura reformers. In support of this contention, the authors include a complete translation of the Mirror for Women by Kakusan's contemporary, Mujū Ichien.
Download or read book The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism written by Robert E. Buswell Jr. and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-24 with total page 1304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With more than 5,000 entries totaling over a million words, this is the most comprehensive and authoritative dictionary of Buddhism ever produced in English. It is also the first to cover terms from all of the canonical Buddhist languages and traditions: Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Unlike reference works that focus on a single Buddhist language or school, The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism bridges the major Buddhist traditions to provide encyclopedic coverage of the most important terms, concepts, texts, authors, deities, schools, monasteries, and geographical sites from across the history of Buddhism. The main entries offer both a brief definition and a substantial short essay on the broader meaning and significance of the term covered. Extensive cross-references allow readers to find related terms and concepts. An appendix of Buddhist lists (for example, the four noble truths and the thirty-two marks of the Buddha), a timeline, six maps, and two diagrams are also included. Written and edited by two of today's most eminent scholars of Buddhism, and more than a decade in the making, this landmark work is an essential reference for every student, scholar, or practitioner of Buddhism and for anyone else interested in Asian religion, history, or philosophy. The most comprehensive dictionary of Buddhism ever produced in English More than 5,000 entries totaling over a million words The first dictionary to cover terms from all of the canonical Buddhist languages and traditions--Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Detailed entries on the most important terms, concepts, texts, authors, deities, schools, monasteries, and geographical sites in the history of Buddhism Cross-references and appendixes that allow readers to find related terms and look up equivalent terms in multiple Buddhist languages Includes a list of Buddhist lists, a timeline, and maps Also contains selected terms and names in Thai, Burmese, Vietnamese, Lao, Khmer, Sinhalese, Newar, and Mongolian
Download or read book Zen Classics written by Steven Heine and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2006 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A companion volume to 'The Koan' and 'The Zen Canon' this text concentrates primarily on texts from Korea and Japan that brought the Zen tradition to fruition.
Download or read book Zen Is Right Here written by David Chadwick and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2007-10-09 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shunryu Suzuki’s extraordinary gift for conveying traditional Zen teachings using ordinary language is well known to the countless readers of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. In Zen Is Right Here, his teachings are brought to life powerfully and directly through stories told about him by his students. These living encounters with Zen are poignant, direct, humorous, paradoxical, and enlightening; and their setting in real-life contexts makes them wonderfully accessible. Like the Buddha himself, Suzuki Roshi gave profound teachings that were skilfully expressed for each moment, person, and situation he encountered. He emphasized that while the ungraspable essence of Buddhism is constant, the expression of that essence is always changing. Each of the stories presented here is an example of this versatile and timeless quality, showing that the potential for attaining enlightenment exists right here, right now, in this very moment.
Download or read book Zen Art for Meditation written by Stewart W. Holmes and published by Tuttle Publishing. This book was released on 2015-11-03 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about emptiness and silence—the mind-expanding emptiness of Zen painting, and the reverberating silence of haiku poetry. Through imaginative participation in the visions of painters and poets, its readers are led to the realization that, in the author's words, "emptiness, silence, is not nothingness, but fullness. Your fullness." This cultural tradition has informed many distinguished lives and works of art. The work of painters like Niten, Liang K'ai, and Toba, and of painters like Basho, Buson, and Issa reflects the wholeness, spontaneity, and humanity of the Zen vision. Those who desire a glimpse into the world of intuitive contact with nature offered by Zen meditation will find these paintings, commentaries, and haiku poems especially rewarding. They enable the reader to experience the unique power of Zen art—it's capacity to fuse esthetic appreciation, personal intuition, and knowledge of life into one creative event.
Download or read book Zen Elegies written by Andrei Bronnikov and published by . This book was released on 2010-05 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Andrei Bronnikov belongs to the new generation of postmodernist poets. Mixing antiquity and modernity, interchanging signs, symbols and paradigms, in his latest book Zen Elegies the author explores obscure metaphysical landscapes, creating a powerful and melancholic image of the new reality. The book is recommended for all interested in contemporary poetry.
Download or read book Placing the Modern Chinese Vernacular in Transnational Literature written by G. Zhou and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-01-31 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book to concentrate not only on the triumph of the vernacular in modern China but also on the critical role of the rise of the vernacular in world literature, invoking parallel cases from countries throughout Europe and Asia.
Download or read book Zen and Material Culture written by Pamela D. Winfield and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Expanding on previous studies of Zen art history, material/visual culture, and religious practice, Zen and Material Culture focuses on the vast range of ""stuff"" in Japanese Zen, including beads, bowls, buildings, staffs, statues, rags, robes and even popular retail commodities distributed in America.
Download or read book Record of the Transmission of Illumination written by T. Griffith Foulk and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2021-11-30 with total page 748 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book of this two-volume set consists largely of an annotated translation of the Record of the Transmission of Illumination (Denkōroku 傳光録) by Zen Master Keizan Jōkin 瑩山紹瑾 (1264–1325), presented together with the original Japanese text on which the English translation is based. That text is the recension of the Denkōroku published in Shūten Hensan Iinkai 宗典編纂委員会, ed., Taiso Keizan Zenji senjutsu Denkōroku 太祖瑩山禅師撰述伝光録 (Tokyo: Sōtōshū Shūmuchō 曹洞宗宗務庁, 2005). The Shūmuchō edition of the Denkōroku includes some items of Front Matter from earlier published editions, which are included in the English translations. Volume 1 also contains an Introduction that addresses such matters as the life of Keizan, the contents of the Denkōroku, the provenance of that work, and the textual history of its various recensions. In addition, Volume 1 includes a Bibliography that lists many works of modern Japanese- and English-language scholarship that are relevant to the academic study of the Denkōroku. The second volume contains a Glossary in two parts. Part One explains all of the Buddhist technical terms and Zen sayings that appear in the annotated translation of the Shūmuchō edition of the Denkōroku, found in Volume 1. Part Two treats all of the people, places, and texts that are named in that annotated translation. The Glossary also contains a wealth of material pertaining to the study of Chinese Chan, Japanese Zen, and East Asian Buddhist traditions at large, providing a broader historical context for understanding Keizan’s Denkōroku. Published in association with Sōtōshū Shūmuchō, Tokyo.
Download or read book Traveling Texts and the Work of Afro Japanese Cultural Production written by William H. Bridges, IV and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2015-06-24 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes the complex conversations taking place in texts of all sorts traveling between Africans, African diasporas, and Japanese across disciplinary, geographic, racial, ethnic, and cultural borders.
