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This vigorously-researched publication for advanced graduate students and fellow scholars of the Chinese Pure Land tradition (Jingtu famen) in the wider context of Chinese Buddhism extends the horizon opened up by recent leading scholars to reconstruct a more insightful understanding of the Jingtu famen and the notion of zong. Focusing on previously unstudied writings of Sheng'an Shixian 省庵實賢 (1686–1734), the findings support the argument that the Jingtu famen is an advanced form of Mahāyānist meditation rooted in the Mādhyamika and Yogācāra traditions. The original English translation of Master Shixian’s writings provided also paves the way for other researchers to conduct new and extended studies.
The first scholarly monograph on Buddhist maṇḍalas in China, this book examines the Maṇḍala of Eight Great Bodhisattvas. This iconographic template, in which a central Buddha is flanked by eight attendants, flourished during the Tibetan (786–848) and post-Tibetan Guiyijun (848–1036) periods at Dunhuang. A rare motif that appears in only four cave shrines at the Mogao and Yulin sites, the maṇḍala bore associations with political authority and received patronage from local rulers. Attending to the historical and cultural contexts surrounding this iconography, this book demonstrates that transcultural communication over the Silk Routes during this period, and the religious dialogue between the Chinese and Tibetan communities, were defining characteristics of the visual language of Buddhist maṇḍalas at Dunhuang.
Zhu Xi (1130-1200) is the most influential Neo-Confucian philosopher and arguably the most important Chinese philosopher of the past millennium, both in terms of his legacy and for the sophistication of his systematic philosophy. The Buddhist Roots of Zhu Xi's Philosophical Thought combines in a single study two major areas of Chinese philosophy that are rarely tackled together: Chinese Buddhist philosophy and Zhu Xi's Neo-Confucian philosophy. Despite Zhu Xi's importance as a philosopher, the role of Buddhist thought and philosophy in the construction of his systematic philosophy remains poorly understood. What aspects of Buddhism did he criticize and why? Was his engagement limited to crit...
What, if anything, is Esoteric Pure Land Buddhism? In 1224, the medieval Japanese scholar-monk Dōhan (1179–1252) composed The Compendium on Esoteric Mindfulness of Buddha (Himitsu nenbutsu shō), which begins with another seemingly simple question: Why is it that practitioners of mantra and meditation rely on the recitation of the name of the Buddha Amitābha? To answer this question, Dōhan explored diverse areas of study spanning the whole of the East Asian Mahayana Buddhist tradition. Although contemporary scholars often study Esoteric Buddhism and Pure Land Buddhism as if they were mutually exclusive and diametrically opposed schools of Buddhism, in the present volume Aaron Proffitt e...
This title offers a complete annotated translation of the 'Fengdao Keije', accompanied by three introductory chapters that outline the development of Daoist organisations, discuss the date and compilation of the work, and introduce key issues of terminology and world view.
Since Erik Zürcher's landmark Buddhist Conquest of China, the study of earlier phases of Chinese Buddhist history has made great progress with new materials, new interpretations and new problematizations. This volume brings together 12 contributions from the leading scholars in the field offering new perspectives on this old tradition.
In this pioneering work of comparative metaphysics, Patrick Laude delves into Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Islamic, and Jewish concepts of Reality and Appearance to offer a uniquely lucid exploration of metaphysical representations of reality, relativity, appearance, and illusion. Laude includes discussions of the Absolute and the Relative in Hindu Advaita Vedānta, Kashmiri Śaivism, Sufi wahdat al-wujūd, and Madhyamaka Buddhism; the metaphysics of salvation in Buddhist and Christian traditions; and the metaphysics of evil and the distinction between Reality and Appearance in the Jewish Kabbalah, Śaivism, Christian mysticism, and the Sufi school of Ibn al-'Arabī. The book explores how a discerning and subtle apprehension of the relationship between Reality and Appearance may help contemporary readers and seekers respond to the acute predicaments of contemporary religious and spiritual consciousness.
In Thomé H. Fang, Tang Junyi and Huayan Thought, King Pong Chiu discusses Thomé H. Fang and Tang Junyi, two of the most important Confucian thinkers in twentieth-century China, who appropriated aspects of the medieval Chinese Buddhist school of Huayan to develop a response to the challenges of ‘scientism’, the belief that quantitative natural science is the only valuable part of human learning and the only source of truth. As Chiu argues, Fang’s and Tang’s selective appropriations of Huayan thought paid heed to the hermeneutical importance of studying ancient texts in order to be more responsive to modern issues, and helped confirm the values of Confucianism under the challenge of ‘scientism’, a topic widely ignored in academia.
The ERC-funded research project BuddhistRoad aims to create a new framework to enable understanding of the complexities in the dynamics of cultural encounter and religious transfer in pre-modern Eastern Central Asia. Buddhism was one major factor in this exchange: for the first time the multi-layered relationships between the trans-regional Buddhist traditions (Chinese, Indian, Tibetan) and those based on local Buddhist cultures (Khotanese, Uyghur, Tangut, Khitan) will be explored in a systematic way. The first volume Buddhism in Central Asia (Part I): Patronage, Legitimation, Sacred Space, and Pilgrimage is based on the start-up conference held on May 23rd–25th, 2018, at CERES, Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Germany) and focuses on the first two of altogether six thematic topics to be dealt with in the project, namely on “patronage and legitimation strategy” as well as "sacred space and pilgrimage."