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Esoteric Pure Land Buddhism (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R2,033
Discovery Miles 20 330
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Esoteric Pure Land Buddhism (Hardcover)
Series: Pure Land Buddhist Studies
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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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, diametrically opposed,
schools of Buddhism, in the present volume Aaron Proffitt examines
Dōhan’s Compendium in the context of the eastward flow of
Mahayana Buddhism from India to Japan and uncovers Mahayana
Buddhists employing multiple, overlapping, so-called esoteric
approaches along the path to awakening. Proffitt divides his study
into two parts. In Part I he considers how early Buddhologists,
working under colonialism, first constructed Mahayana Buddhism,
Pure Land Buddhism, and Esoteric Buddhism as discrete fields of
inquiry. He then surveys the flow of Indian Buddhist spells,
dhāraṇī, and mantra texts into China and Japan and the diverse
range of Buddhist masters who employed these esoteric techniques to
achieve rebirth in Sukhāvatī, the Pure Land of Bliss. In Part II,
he considers the life of Dōhan and analyzes the monk’s
comprehensive view of buddhānusmṛti as a form of ritual
technology that unified body and mind, Sukhāvatī as a
this-worldly or other-worldly soteriological goal synonymous with
nirvana itself, and the Buddha Amitābha as an object of devotion
beyond this world of suffering. The work concludes with the first
full translation of Dōhan’s Himitsu nenbutsu shō into a modern
language.
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