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The Chinese Buddhist canon is a systematic collection of all
translated Buddhist scriptures and related literatures created in
East Asia and has been regarded as one of the "three treasures" in
Buddhist communities. Despite its undisputed importance in the
history of Buddhism, research on this huge collection has remained
largely the province of Buddhologists focusing on textual and
bibliographical studies. We thus aim to initiate methodological
innovations to study the transformation of the canon by situating
it in its modern context, characterized by intricate interactions
between East and West as well as among countries in East Asia.
During the modern period the Chinese Buddhist canon has been
translated, edited, digitized, and condensed as well as
internationalized, contested, and ritualized. The well-known
accomplishment of this modern transformation is the compilation of
the Taisho Canon during the 1920s. It has become a source of both
doctrinal orthodoxy as well as creativity and its significance has
greatly increased as Buddhist scholarship and devotionalism has
utilized the canon for various ends. However, it is still unclear
what led to the creation of the modern editions of the Buddhist
canon in East Asia. This volume explores the most significant and
interesting developments regarding the Chinese Buddhist canon in
modern East Asia including canon formation, textual studies,
historical analyses, religious studies, ritual invention, and
digital research tools and methods.
Perched on a steep, wooded hillside west of Dunedin in a South
Island rainforest in New Zealand is Waipori Falls Village. The
"reflections" in this volume were inspired by living in the
splendid isolation of this remote village surrounded by a scenic
reserve. Perhaps that's why I was there - to rediscover my balance,
to get things into perspective. There in the magical isolation of
Waipori we could reflect upon life, on our experiences in the
different parts of the world where we have lived, finding our way
again after so much wandering. After our combined Waipori
reflections, there are my reflections back in Clashnessie, my
one-time home in the Highlands of Scotland, followed by my
reflections during the summer of 2008, which I spent "on the edge
of the sea" in Nova Scotia. The book encompasses the three locales,
and all the reflections, wherever they are set, have been inspired
by my time in Waipori, which began the whole process. -Charles
Muller
When the diffident and ineffectual Derek Mann loses his teaching
job in a girls' grammar school in England and drifts from one
temporary post to another, one of his precocious pupils gives him
her grandfather's wartime diary with a mission to return to
Apartheid South Africa and find the opal mine she believes to be
her rightful inheritance. Intrigue and violence bedevil the quest
that ends in a desert under the Southern Cross. The wry, often
laconic style gives full reign to the characters' latent sexuality.
While the novel takes the form of a thriller, it is also a love
story. The plot pivots round the war-diary of a man whose bomber
was shot down in action in Egypt in 1941. The man had invested
money in partnership with his wartime friend in an opal mine in a
place designated by the letters 'C.P.' in 'S.A.'. His
granddaughter's search for the mine affects her own as well as her
former teacher's destiny.
The moral purpose of Charles Kingsley's novels is pronounced
because he was a preacher, and more specifically, a teacher. He was
above all a preacher of stirring didactic sermons. It is the
didactic content of his writings-in his sermons, his novels, and
his essays on natural theology-which is the study of this work. One
forgets that Kingsley was not, in the first instance, a social and
political reformer. As a preacher, and as a writer, he was
pre-eminently a teacher. He was not an evangelical preacher, yet
the Christian gospel was at the heart of his teachings and his
moral exhortations. This work attempts to look at the Christian
message that was the inspiration behind his socio-religious gospel.
Writing at the time of Charles Darwin, Kingsley saw no reason to
lose his sound Christian faith with the emergence of Darwin's
theory of evolution. Instead, he could accept it as a means to a
divine end, another example of how Providence might bring about the
Kingdom of God on earth.
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Love in a Nutbag (Paperback)
Lisa Ammerman; Foreword by Charles Muller
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R399
R341
Discovery Miles 3 410
Save R58 (15%)
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The Brahma’s Net Sutra plays an important niche role in the
development of East Asian Mahayana Buddhism. It is the primary
extant Vinaya text that articulates the precepts from a Mahayana
perspective. That is, it takes its main audience to be
“bodhisattva practitioners,” mainly householders who remain
engaged with society rather than becoming renunciant monks or nuns.
The Vinayas, and especially the discourse in this sutra, show
monastic and lay Buddhist practitioners engaged at every level of
society, from top to bottom. Buddhist practitioners were involved
in military affairs, political intrigues, matchmaking, and every
other sort of “mundane” social activity. The Vinaya texts
reveal how the Buddhist community in its time judged and dealt with
such matters. The Brahma’s Net Sutra was written in two
fascicles, each radically different in structure, content, theme,
grammar, etc., from the other. The first fascicle discusses the
forty Mahayana stages: the ten departures toward the destination,
the ten nourishing states of mind, the ten adamantine states of
mind, and the ten bodhisattva grounds. The second fascicle explains
the ten grave precepts and the forty-eight minor precepts. These
came to be referred to as the “bodhisattva precepts,” the
“great Brahma’s Net precepts,” the “buddha precepts,” and
so forth. The second fascicle has been especially esteemed,
studied, and circulated separately for more than a millennium as
the scriptural authority for the Mahayana bodhisattva precepts.
[Adapted from the Translators' Introduction.]
This volume makes available in English the seminal treatises in
Korea's greatest interreligious debate of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries. On Mind, Material Force, and Principle and An
Array of Critiques of Buddhism by Confucian statesman Chong Tojon
(1342-1398) and Exposition of Orthodoxy by Son monk Kihwa
(1376-1433) are presented here with extensive annotation. A
substantial introduction provides a summary and analysis of the
philosophical positions of both Neo-Confucianism and Buddhism as
well as a germane history of the interactions between these two
traditions in East Asia, offering insight into religious tensions
that persist to this day. Translator A. Charles Muller shows how,
from the time Confucianism and Buddhism met in China, these thought
systems existed, along with Daoism, in a competing relationship
that featured significant mutual influence. A confrontative
situation eventually developed in China, wherein Confucian leaders
began to criticize Buddhism. During the late-Koryo and early-Choson
periods in Korea, the Neo-Confucian polemic became the driving
force in the movement to oust Buddhism from its position as Korea's
state religion. In his essays, Chong drew together the gamut of
arguments that had been made against Buddhism throughout its long
history in Korea. Kihwa's essay met Neo-Confucian contentions with
an articulate Buddhist response. Thus, in a rare moment in the
history of religions, a true philosophical debate ensued. This
debate was made possible based upon the two religions' shared
philosophical paradigm: essence-function (ch'e-yong). This
traditional East Asian way of interpreting society, events,
phenomena, human beings, and the world understands all things to
have both essence and function, two contrasting yet wholly
contiguous and mutually containing components. All three East Asian
traditions took this as their underlying philosophical paradigm,
and it is through this paradigm that they evaluated and criticized
each other's doctrines and practices. Specialists in philosophy,
religion, and Korean studies will appreciate Muller's exploration
of this pivotal moment in Korean intellectual history. Because it
includes a broad overview of the interactive history of East Asian
religions, this book can also serve as a general introduction to
East Asian philosophical thought.
Leading East Asian Buddhist thinkers of the seventh century
compared, analyzed, and finalized seminal epistemological and
soteriological issues that had been under discussion in India and
East Asia for centuries. Among the many doctrinal issues that came
to the fore was the relationship between the Tathagatagarbha (or
"Buddha-nature") understanding of the human psyche and the view of
basic karmic indeterminacy articulated by the new stream of Indian
Yogacara introduced through the translations and writings of
Xuanzang and his disciples. The great Silla scholiast Wonhyo
(617-686), although geographically located on the periphery in the
Korean peninsula, was very much at the center of the intense
discussion and debate that occurred on these topics. Through the
force of his writings, he became one of the most influential
figures in resolving doctrinal discrepancies for East Asian
Buddhism. Although many of Wonhyo's writings are lost, through his
extant work we are able to get a solid glimpse of his profound and
learned insights on the nature and function of the human mind. We
can also clearly see his hermeneutical approaches and methods of
argumentation, which are derived from apophatic Madhyamika
analysis, the newly introduced Buddhist logic, as well as various
indigenous East Asian approaches. This volume includes four of
Wonhyo's works that are especially revelatory of his treatment of
the complex flow of ideas in his generation: System of the Two
Hindrances (Yijang ui), Treatise on the Ten Ways of Resolving
Controversies (Simmun hwajaeng non), Commentary on the
Discrimination between the Middle and the Extremes (Chungbyon
punbyollon so), and the Critical Discussion on Inference (P'an
piryang non).
This volume makes available in English the seminal treatises in
Korea's greatest interreligious debate of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries. On Mind, Material Force, and Principle and An
Array of Critiques of Buddhism by Confucian statesman Ch?ng Toj?n
(1342-1398) and Exposition of Orthodoxy by S?n monk Kihwa
(1376-1433) are presented here with extensive annotation. A
substantial introduction provides a summary and analysis of the
philosophical positions of both Neo-Confucianism and Buddhism as
well as a germane history of the interactions between these two
traditions in East Asia, offering insight into religious tensions
that persist to this day. Translator A. Charles Muller shows how,
from the time Confucianism and Buddhism met in China, these thought
systems existed, along with Daoism, in a competing relationship
that featured significant mutual influence. A confrontative
situation eventually developed in China, wherein Confucian leaders
began to criticize Buddhism. During the late-Kory? and early-Chos?n
periods in Korea, the Neo-Confucian polemic became the driving
force in the movement to oust Buddhism from its position as Korea's
state religion. In his essays, Ch?ng drew together the gamut of
arguments that had been made against Buddhism throughout its long
history in Korea. Kihwa's essay met Neo-Confucian contentions with
an articulate Buddhist response. Thus, in a rare moment in the
history of religions, a true philosophical debate ensued. This
debate was made possible based upon the two religions' shared
philosophical paradigm: essence-function (ch'e-yong). This
traditional East Asian way of interpreting society, events,
phenomena, human beings, and the world understands all things to
have both essence and function, two contrasting yet wholly
contiguous and mutually containing components. All three East Asian
traditions took this as their underlying philosophical paradigm,
and it is through this paradigm that they evaluated and criticized
each other's doctrines and practices. Specialists in philosophy,
religion, and Korean studies will appreciate Muller's exploration
of this pivotal moment in Korean intellectual history. Because it
includes a broad overview of the interactive history of East Asian
religions, this book can also serve as a general introduction to
East Asian philosophical thought.
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