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Chinul (1158–1210) was the founder of the Korean tradition of Zen. He provides one of the most lucid and accessible accounts of Zen practice and meditation to be found anywhere in East Asian literature. Tracing Back the Radiance, an abridgment of Buswell’s Korean Approach to Zen: The Collected Works of Chinul, combines an extensive introduction to Chinul’s life and thought with translations of three of his most representative works.
Robert Buswell, a Buddhist scholar who spent five years as a Zen monk in Korea, draws on personal experience in this insightful account of day-to-day Zen monastic practice. In discussing the activities of the postulants, the meditation monks, the teachers and administrators, and the support monks of the monastery of Songgwang-sa, Buswell reveals a religious tradition that differs radically from the stereotype prevalent in the West. The author's treatment lucidly relates contemporary Zen practice to the historical development of the tradition and to Korean history more generally, and his portrayal of the life of modern Zen monks in Korea provides an innovative and provocative look at Zen from the inside.
Korea has one of the most diverse religious cultures in the world today, with a range and breadth of religious practice virtually unrivaled by any other country. This volume in the Princeton Readings in Religions series is the first anthology in any language, including Korean, to bring together a comprehensive set of original sources covering the whole gamut of religious practice in both premodern and contemporary Korea. The book's thirty-two chapters help redress the dearth of source materials on Korean religions in Western languages. Coverage includes shamanic rituals for the dead and songs to quiet fussy newborns; Buddhist meditative practices and exorcisms; Confucian geomancy and ancesto...
Soon after the inception of Buddhism in the sixth or fifth century B.C.E., the Buddha ordered his small band of monks to wander forth for the welfare and weal of the many, a command that initiated one of the greatest missionary movements in world religious history. But this account of a monolithic missionary movement spreading outward from the Buddhist homeland of India across the Asian continent is just one part of the story. The case of East Asian Buddhism suggests another tale, one in which the dominant eastward current of diffusion creates important eddies, or countercurrents, of influence that redound back toward the center. These countercurrents have had significant, even profound, imp...
Wŏnhyo (617–686) is the dominant figure in the history of Korean Buddhism and one of the most influential thinkers in the Korean philosophical tradition. Koreans know Wŏnhyo in his various roles as Buddhist mystic, miracle worker, social iconoclast, religious proselytist, and cultural hero. Above all else, Wŏnhyo was an innovative thinker and prolific writer, whose works cover the gamut of Indian and Sinitic Buddhist materials: Some one hundred treatises and commentaries are attributed to him, twenty-three of which are extant today. Wŏnhyo’s importance is not limited to the peninsula, however. His writings were widely read in China and Japan, and his influence on the overall developm...
Uncovering hidden histories, this book focuses on Korean Buddhist nuns and laywomen from the fourth century to the present. Today, South Korea's Buddhist nuns have a thriving monastic community under their own control, and they are well known as meditation teachers and social service providers. However, little is known of the women who preceded them. Using primary sources to reveal that which has been lost, forgotten, or willfully ignored, this work reveals various figures, milieux, and activities of female adherents, clerical and lay. Contributors consider examples from the early days of Buddhism in Korea during the Three Kingdoms and Unified Silla periods (first millennium CE); the Koryŏ period (982–1392), when Buddhism flourished as the state religion; the Chosŏn period (1392–1910), when Buddhism was actively suppressed by the Neo-Confucian Court; and the contemporary resurgence of female monasticism that began in the latter part of the twentieth century.
"The study of apocryphal texts is probably the single most important task facing Chinese Buddhist studies today. This volume has done much to get it off on the right foot." --Journal of Asian Studies 50 (1991) "Few books of scholarly essays are this ambitious. The editor ... intends to introduce not just new studies, but a new field of study.... However, rather than marking the birth of Buddhist apocrypha studies, the book ... successfully demonstrates its early maturity." --Monumenta Serica 40 (1992) "The essays are without exception meticulous in scholarship and path-finding in significance." --Journal of Chinese Religions 20 (1992)
It is often said that enlightenment means "crossing over to the other shore," that far-off place where we can at last be free from suffering. Likewise, it is said that Buddhist teachings are the raft that takes us there. In this sparkling collection from one of the most vital teachers of modern Korean Buddhism, Zen Master Daehaeng shows us that there is no raft to find and, truly, no river to cross. She extends her hand to the Western reader, beckoning each of us into the unfailing wisdom accessible right now, the enlightenment that is always, already, right here. A Zen (or seon, as Korean Zen is called) master with impeccable credentials, Daehaeng has developed a refreshing approach; No River to Cross is surprisingly personal. It's disarmingly simple, yet remarkably profound, pointing us again and again to our foundation, our "True Nature" - the perfection of things just as they are.
Despite the significance of Korea in world Christianity and the crucial role Christianity plays in contemporary Korean religious life, the tradition has been little studied in the West. Christianity in Korea seeks to fill this lacuna by providing a wide-ranging overview of the growth and development of Korean Christianity and the implications that development has had for Korean politics, interreligious dialogue, and gender and social issues. The volume begins with an accessibly written overview that traces in broad outline the history and development of Christianity on the peninsula. This is followed by chapters on broad themes, such as the survival of early Korean Catholics in a Neo-Confuci...