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The remarkable fact is, that we have here set forth a view of religion entirely independent of the soul theories, on which all the various philosophies and religions then current in India were based; entirely free from the idolatries and superstitions of the day.... We are struck at once with the analogy between it and the ideals of the last pagan thinkers in Europe before the rise of Christianity, and of some of the most advanced thinkers to-day. And the similarity is no mere chance.-from "The Signs, the Path, and the Fetters"What firsthand sources of information do we have about the life of the Buddha? What are the stages of the Wheel of Life? How well do modes of Eastern and Western thoug...
The encounter between Buddhism and American literature has been a powerful one for both parties. While Buddhism fueled the Beat movement's resounding critique of the United States as a spiritually dead society, Beat writers and others have shaped how Buddhism has been presented to and perceived by a North American audience. Contributors to this volume explore how Asian influences have been adapted to American desires in literary works and Buddhist poetics, or how Buddhist practices emerge in literary works. Starting with early aesthetic theories of Ernest Fenollosa, made famous but also distorted by Ezra Pound, the book moves on to the countercultural voices associated with the Beat movement and its friends and heirs such as Ginsberg, Kerouac, Snyder, Giorno, Waldman, and Whalen. The volume also considers the work of contemporary American writers of color influenced by Buddhism, such as Maxine Hong Kingston, Charles Johnson, and Lan Cao. An interview with Kingston is included.
Looks at a variety of Buddhist sacred writings as literature and includes insights from literary theory.
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Concludes that the closest thing in Western culture to the Middle Way of Buddhism is not any sort of theory or philosophy, but the practice of literature.
Can literature reveal reality? Is philosophical truth a literary artifice? How does the way we think affect what we can know? Buddhism has been grappling with these questions for centuries, and this book attempts to answer them by exploring the relationship between literature and philosophy across the classical and contemporary Buddhist worlds of India, Tibet, China, Japan, Korea, and North America. Written by leading scholars, the book examines literary texts composed over two millennia, ranging in form from lyric verse, narrative poetry, panegyric, hymn, and koan, to novel, hagiography, (secret) autobiography, autofiction, treatise, and sutra, all in sustained conversation with topics in m...
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