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 written by Charles B. Jones and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introductory guide to the beliefs and key concepts of Pure Land Buddhism, the most widely practiced form of Buddhism in East Asia. Pure Land is a brief introduction to the history and practices of Pure Land Buddhism, a popular and growing global tradition. Pure Land practices center on Amitābha Buddha, rebirth in his pure buddha-land, and the guaranteed attainment of buddhahood. It constitutes the dominant tradition of most Buddhists in East Asia and is the most common form of practice within immigrant Buddhist communities in America, yet it remains elusive to many general readers of Buddhism. This brief introduction summarizes the core teachings of this tradition and charts its growth throughout the world. Part of the Buddhist Foundations series, Pure Land covers the spiritual tenets behind the tradition before describing how prayer and devotion to Amitābha allow for rebirth in a realm free from suffering and ideal for progress on the path to enlightenment. It then outlines specific Pure Land practices, all the while providing historical context to account for its widespread popularity throughout East Asia. The author also covers contemporary Pure Land traditions, providing a useful touch point for modern readers. Pure Land practitioners and readers interested in Asian-American Buddhist communities now have a concise guide to the ideas, practices, and origins of this widely popular spiritual tradition.
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 The Three Pure Land Sutras written by and published by BDK America. This book was released on 2003 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The larger sutra on Amitāyus (Taishō volume 12, number 360) -- The sutra on contemplation of Amitāyus (Taishō volume 12, number 365) -- The smaller sutra on Amitāyus (Taishō volume 12, number 366).
Download or read book Pure Lands in Asian Texts and Contexts written by Georgios T. Halkias and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2019-03-31 with total page 808 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This diverse anthology of original Buddhist texts in translation provides a historical and conceptual framework that will transform contemporary scholarship on Pure Land Buddhism and instigate its recognition as an essential field of Buddhist studies. Traditional and contemporary primary sources carefully selected from Buddhist cultures across historical, geopolitical, and literary boundaries are organized by genre rather than chronologically, geographically, or by religious lineage—a novel juxtaposition that reveals their wider importance in fresh contexts. Together these fundamental texts from different Asian traditions, expertly translated by eminent and up-and-coming scholars, illustrate that the Buddhism of pure lands is not just an East Asian cult or a marginal type of Buddhism, but a pan-Asian and deeply entrenched religious phenomenon. The volume is organized into six parts: Ritual Practices, Contemplative Visualizations, Doctrinal Expositions, Life Writing and Poetry, Ethical and Aesthetic Explications, and Worlds beyond Sukhāvatī. Each part is introduced and summarized, and each translated piece is prefaced by its translator to supply historical and sectarian context as well as insight into the significance of the work. Common and less-common issues of practice, doctrine, and intra-religious transfer are explored, and deeper understandings of the meaning of “pure lands” are gained through the study of the celestial, cosmological, internal, and earthly pure lands associated with various buddhas, bodhisattvas, and devotional figures. The introduction by the volume editors ties the diverse themes of the book together and provides a historical background to Pure Land Buddhist studies. Scholars of Buddhism and Asian religion, including graduate and post-graduate students, as well as Buddhist practitioners, will appreciate the range of translated materials and accompanied discussions made accessible in one essential collection, the first of its kind to center on the formerly-neglected topic of Buddhist pure lands.
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 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 Approaching the Land of Bliss written by Richard Karl Payne and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The discourse of Buddhist studies has traditionally been structured around texts and nations (the transmission of Buddhism from India to China to Japan). And yet, it is doubtful that these categories reflect in any significant way the organizing themes familiar to most Buddhists. It could be argued that cultic practices associated with particular buddhas and bodhisattvas are more representative of the way Buddhists conceive of their relation to tradition. This volume aims to explore this aspect of Buddhism by focusing on one of its most important cults, that of the Buddha Amitabha. Approaching the Land of Bliss is a rich collection of studies of texts and ritual practices devoted to Amitabha, ranging from Tibet to Japan and from early medieval times to the present.
Download or read book Demythologizing Pure Land Buddhism written by Paul B. Watt and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2016-01-31 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The True Pure Land sect of Japanese Buddhism, or Shin Buddhism, grew out of the teachings of Shinran (1173–1262), a Tendai-trained monk who came to doubt the efficacy of that tradition in what he viewed as a degenerate age. Shinran held that even those unable to fulfill the requirements of the traditional Buddhist path could attain enlightenment through the experience of shinjin, “the entrusting mind”—an expression of the profound realization that the Buddha Amida, who promises birth in his Pure Land to all who trust in him, was nothing other than the true basis of all existence and the sustaining nature of human beings. Over the centuries, the subtleties of Shinran’s teachings were often lost. Elaborate rituals developed to focus one’s mind at the moment of death so one might travel to the Pure Land unimpeded, and a rich artistic tradition celebrated the moment when Amida and his retinue of bodhisattvas welcome the dying believer. What is more, many Western interpreters tended to reinforce this view of Pure Land Buddhism, seeing in it certain parallels to Christianity. This volume introduces the thought and selected writings of Yasuda Rijin (1900–1982), a modern Shin Buddhist thinker affiliated with the Otani, or Higashi Honganji, branch of Shin Buddhism. Yasuda sought to restate the teachings of Shinran within a modern tradition that began with the work of Kiyozawa Manshi (1863–1903) and extended through the writings of Yasuda’s teachers Kaneko Daiei (1881–1976) and Soga Ryōjin (1875–1971). These men lived through the period of Japan’s rapid modernization and viewed the Shin tradition as possessing existential significance for modern men and women. For them, and Yasuda in particular, Amida did not exist in some other-worldly paradise but rather Amida and his Pure Land were to be experienced as lived realities in the present. In the writings and lectures presented here, Yasuda draws on not only classical Shin and Mahayana Buddhist sources, but also the thought of Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945), the founder of the Kyoto School of philosophy, and modern Western philosophers such as Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Buber.
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 River of Fire River of Water written by Taitetsu Unno and published by Image. This book was released on 2010-01-13 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With great spiritual insight and unparalleled scholarship, Dr. Taitetsu Unno—the foremost authority in the United States on Shin or Pure Land Buddhism—introduces us to the most popular form of Buddhism in Japan. Unique among the various practices of Buddhism, this "new" form of spiritual practice is certain to enrich the growing practice of Buddhism in the United States, which is already quite familiar with Zen and Tibetan traditions. River of Fire, River of Water is an introduction to the practice of Pure Land Buddhism for readers with or without prior experience with it. The Pure Land tradition dates back to the sixth century c.e., when Buddhism was first introduced in Japan. Unlike Zen, its counterpart which flourished in remote monasteries, the Pure Land tradition was the form of Buddhism practiced by common people. Consequently, its practice is harmonious with the workings of daily life, making it easily adaptable for seekers today. Despite the difference in method, though, the goal of Pure Land is the same as other schools—the awakening of the true self. Certain to take its place alongside great works such as Three Pillars of Zen, The Miracle of Mindfulness, and Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind—River of Fire, River of Water is an important step forward for American Buddhism.
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 Anarchy in the Pure Land written by Justin Ritzinger and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-31 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anarchy in the Pure Land investigates the twentieth-century reinvention of the cult of Maitreya, the future Buddha, conceived by the reformer Taixu and promoted by the Chinese Buddhist reform movement. The cult presents an apparent anomaly: It shows precisely the kind of concern for ritual, supernatural beings, and the afterlife that the reformers supposedly rejected in the name of "modernity." This book shows that, rather than a concession to tradition, the reimagining of ideas and practices associated with Maitreya was an important site for formulating a Buddhist vision of modernity. Justin Ritzinger argues that the cult of Maitreya represents an attempt to articulate a new constellation of values, integrating novel understandings of the good, clustered around modern visions of utopia, with the central Buddhist goal of Buddhahood. In Part One he traces the roots of this constellation to Taixu's youthful career as an anarchist. Part Two examines its articulation in the Maitreya School's theology and its social development from its inception to World War II. Part Three looks at its subsequent decline and contemporary legacy within and beyond orthodox Buddhism. Through these investigations, Anarchy in the Pure Land develops a new framework for alternative understandings of modernity in Buddhism.
Download or read book The Buddhist Tradition of Pure Land Practice written by Stephen Wesley Willing and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Buddhism of Wisdom and Faith written by Thiền Tâm (Thích.) and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Luminous Bliss written by Georgios T. Halkias and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2012-09-30 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With an annotated English translation and critical analysis of the Orgyan-gling gold manuscript of the short Sukhāvativyūha-sūtra Pure Land Buddhism as a whole has received comparatively little attention in Western studies on Buddhism despite the importance of “buddha-fields” (pure lands) for the growth and expression of Mahāyāna Buddhism. In this first religious history of Tibetan Pure Land literature, Georgios Halkias delves into a rich collection of literary, historical, and archaeological sources to highlight important aspects of this neglected pan-Asian Buddhist tradition. He clarifies many of the misconceptions concerning the interpretation of “other-world” soteriology in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism and provides translations of original Tibetan sources from the ninth century to the present that represent exoteric and esoteric doctrines that continue to be cherished by Tibetan Buddhists for their joyful descriptions of the Buddhist path. The book is informed by interviews with Tibetan scholars and Buddhist practitioners and by Halkias’ own participant-observation in Tibetan Pure Land rituals and teachings conducted in Europe and the Indian subcontinent. Divided into three sections, Luminous Bliss shows that Tibetan Pure Land literature exemplifies a synthesis of Mahāyāna sutra-based conceptions with a Vajrayana world-view that fits progressive and sudden approaches to the realization of Pure Land teachings. Part I covers the origins and development of Pure Land in India and the historical circumstances of its adaptation in Tibet and Central Asia. Part II offers an English translation of the short Sukhāvatīvyūha-sūtra (imported from India during the Tibetan Empire) and contains a survey of original Tibetan Pure Land scriptures and meditative techniques from the dGe-lugs-pa, bKa’-brgyud, rNying-ma, and Sa-skya schools of Tibetan Buddhism. Part III introduces some of the most innovative and popular mortuary cycles and practices related to the Tantric cult of Buddha Amitābha and his Pure Land from the Treasure traditions in the bKa’-brgyud and rNying-ma schools. Luminous Bliss locates Pure Land Buddhism at the core of Tibet’s religious heritage and demonstrates how this tradition constitutes an integral part of both Tibetan and East Asian Buddhism.
Download or read book The Shin Buddhist Classical Tradition written by Alfred Bloom and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
