The Nature And Rationale Of Zen Chan And Enlightenment
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The Nature and Rationale of Zen/Chan and Enlightenment
This book initiates a paradigm shift away from Zen/Chan as quintessentially Buddhist and examines what makes Chan thought and practice unique and original through an interdisciplinary investigation of the nature and rationale of Chan and its enlightenment. Exploring how enlightenment is achieved through Chan practice and how this differs from other forms of Buddhism, the book offers an entirely new view of Chan that embraces historical scholarship, philosophical inquiry, textual analysis, psychological studies, Chan practice, and neuroscientific research and locates the core of Chan in its founder Huineng’s theory of no thinking which creatively integrates the Taoist ideas of zuowang (forgetting in seated meditation) and xinzhai (fast of heart-mind) with his personal experiences of enlightenment. It concludes that Chan is the crystallization of an innovative synthesis of Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism as well as other resources of somatic and spiritual cultivation, and that enlightenment is a momentary return to the mental state of a baby before birth. This book will appeal to students and scholars of religion, philosophy, and neuroscience. It will also offer new insights to thinkers, writers, artists, therapists and neuroscientists as well as those practicing Zen, Mindfulness, and psychotherapy.
How Zen Became Zen
Author: Morten Schlutter
language: en
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Release Date: 2010-04-30
How Zen Became Zen takes a novel approach to understanding one of the most crucial developments in Zen Buddhism: the dispute over the nature of enlightenment that erupted within the Chinese Chan (Zen) school in the twelfth century. The famous Linji (Rinzai) Chan master Dahui Zonggao (1089–1163) railed against "heretical silent illumination Chan" and strongly advocated kanhua (koan) meditation as an antidote. In this fascinating study, Morten Schlütter shows that Dahui’s target was the Caodong (Soto) Chan tradition that had been revived and reinvented in the early twelfth century, and that silent meditation was an approach to practice and enlightenment that originated within this "new" Chan tradition. Schlütter has written a refreshingly accessible account of the intricacies of the dispute, which is still reverberating through modern Zen in both Asia and the West. Dahui and his opponents’ arguments for their respective positions come across in this book in as earnest and relevant a manner as they must have seemed almost nine hundred years ago. Although much of the book is devoted to illuminating the doctrinal and soteriological issues behind the enlightenment dispute, Schlütter makes the case that the dispute must be understood in the context of government policies toward Buddhism, economic factors, and social changes. He analyzes the remarkable ascent of Chan during the first centuries of the Song dynasty, when it became the dominant form of elite monastic Buddhism, and demonstrates that secular educated elites came to control the critical transmission from master to disciple ("procreation" as Schlütter terms it) in the Chan School.
Zen Enlightenment
Author: Heinrich Dumoulin
language: en
Publisher: Weatherhill, Incorporated
Release Date: 1979
History and essence are tightly interwoven in Zen Buddhism. Zen Buddhists trace their school's way of enlightenment back to the terrains of India and the founder of the Buddhist religion, Shakyamuni. InZen Enlightenment: Origins and Meaning, Heinrich Dumoulin explains how Mahayana Buddhism, originating in the spiritual legacy of India, met with Chinese Taoism, an encounter essential to the birth of Zen, the meditation school of Mahayana. And there, primarily through the activity of the great masters of the T'ang period (618-906), Zen acquired its distinctly Chinese character. Beautiful quotations from Chinese Zen literature and nuanced chronicles of contemporary Zen students, along with compilations of koans and sayings of the masters, add color and perspective to the fascinating picture we have of the early Chinese Zen movement.