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Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness: Zen Talks on the Sandokai

Shunryu Suzuki

Mel Weitsman and Michael Wenger (eds)

When Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind was published in 1972, it was enthusiastically embraced by Westerners eager for spiritual insight and knowledge of Zen. The book became the most successful treatise on ... More

When Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind was published in 1972, it was enthusiastically embraced by Westerners eager for spiritual insight and knowledge of Zen. The book became the most successful treatise on Buddhism in English, selling more than one million copies to date. This book is the first follow-up volume to the author's important work. Like Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, it is a collection of lectures that reveal the insight, humor, and intimacy with Zen that made the author such an influential teacher. The Sandokai — a poem by the eighth-century Zen master Sekito Kisen (Ch. Shitou Xiqian) — is the subject of these lectures. Given in 1970 at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, the lectures are an example of a Zen teacher in his prime elucidating a venerated, ancient, and difficult work to his Western students. The poem addresses the question of how the oneness of things and the multiplicity of things coexist (or, as expressed in this book, “things-as-it-is”). Included with the lectures are the students' questions and the author's direct answers to them, along with a meditation instruction. The book provides an example of how a modern master in the Japanese Soto Zen tradition understands this core text of Buddhism today.Less

Encountering the Dharma: Daisaku Ikeda, Soka Gakkai, and the Globalization of Buddhist Humanism

Richard Hughes Seager

This deeply personal book, illuminating the search for meaning in today's world, offers a rare insider's look at Soka Gakkai Buddhism, one of Japan's most influential and controversial religious ... More

This deeply personal book, illuminating the search for meaning in today's world, offers a rare insider's look at Soka Gakkai Buddhism, one of Japan's most influential and controversial religious movements, and one that is experiencing explosive growth around the world. Unique for its multiethnic make-up, Gakkai Buddhists can be found in more than 100 countries from Japan to Brazil to the United States and Germany. In this book, the author, an American professor of religion trying to come to terms with the death of his wife, travels to Japan in search of the spirit of the Soka Gakkai. The book tells of his journey toward understanding in a compelling narrative woven out of his observations, reflections, and interviews, including several rare one-on-one meetings with Soka Gakkai president Daisaku Ikeda. Along the way, the book also explores broad-ranging controversies arising from the Soka Gakkai's efforts to rebuild post-war Japan, its struggles with an ancient priesthood, and its motives for propagating Buddhism around the world. One turning point in his understanding comes as Ikeda and the Soka Gakkai strike an authentically Buddhist response to the events of September 11, 2001.Less

Fathering Your Father: The Zen of Fabrication in Tang Buddhism

Alan Cole

This book offers a provocative rereading of the early history of Chan Buddhism (Zen). Working from a history-of-religions point of view that asks how and why certain literary tropes were chosen to ... More

This book offers a provocative rereading of the early history of Chan Buddhism (Zen). Working from a history-of-religions point of view that asks how and why certain literary tropes were chosen to depict the essence of the Buddhist tradition to Chinese readers, this analysis focuses on the narrative logics of the early Chan genealogies—the seventh- and eighth-century lineage texts that claimed that certain high-profile Chinese men were descendants of Bodhidharma and the Buddha. This book argues that early Chan's image of the perfect-master-who-owns-tradition was constructed for reasons that have little to do with Buddhist practice, new styles of enlightened wisdom, or “orthodoxy,” and much more to do with politics, property, geography, and, of course, new forms of writing.Less

A Garland of Feminist Reflections: Forty Years of Religious Exploration

Rita Gross

The author of this book has long been acknowledged as a founder in the field of feminist theology. One of the earliest scholars in religious studies to discover how feminism affects that discipline, ... More

The author of this book has long been acknowledged as a founder in the field of feminist theology. One of the earliest scholars in religious studies to discover how feminism affects that discipline, she is recognized as preeminent in Buddhist feminist theology. The chapters in this book represent the major aspects of her work and provide an overview of her methodology in women's studies in religion and feminism. The introductory chapter, written specifically for this volume, summarizes the conclusions she has reached about gender and feminism after forty years of searching and exploring, and the autobiography, also written for this volume, narrates how those conclusions were reached. These chapters reveal the range of scholarship and reflection found in the author's work and demonstrate how feminist scholars in the 1970s shifted the paradigm away from an androcentric model of humanity and forever changed the way we study religion.Less

Imagining Karma: Ethical Transformation in Amerindian, Buddhist, and Greek Rebirth

Gananath Obeyesekere

This book embarks on a comparison of rebirth concepts across a wide range of cultures. Exploring in rich detail the beliefs of small-scale societies of West Africa, Melanesia, traditional Siberia, ... More

This book embarks on a comparison of rebirth concepts across a wide range of cultures. Exploring in rich detail the beliefs of small-scale societies of West Africa, Melanesia, traditional Siberia, Canada, and the northwest coast of North America, the book compares their ideas with those of the ancient and modern Indic civilizations and with the Greek rebirth theories of Pythagoras, Empedocles, Pindar, and Plato. This discussion decenters the popular notion that India was the origin and locus of ideas of rebirth. As the book compares responses to the most fundamental questions of human existence, it challenges readers to reexamine accepted ideas about death, cosmology, morality, and eschatology. This inquiry shows that diverse societies have come through independent invention or borrowing to believe in reincarnation as an integral part of their larger cosmological systems. It brings together into a coherent methodological framework the thought of such diverse thinkers as Weber, Wittgenstein, and Nietzsche. In a contemporary intellectual context that celebrates difference and cultural relativism, this book makes a case for disciplined comparison, a humane view of human nature, and a theoretical understanding of “family resemblances” and differences across great cultural divides.Less

Miracles of Book and Body: Buddhist Textual Culture and Medieval Japan

Charlotte Eubanks

This book explores the intersection of two key genres of sacred literature in medieval Japan: sutras, or sacred Buddhist texts; and setsuwa, or “explanatory tales,” used in sermons and collected in ... More

This book explores the intersection of two key genres of sacred literature in medieval Japan: sutras, or sacred Buddhist texts; and setsuwa, or “explanatory tales,” used in sermons and collected in written compilations. For most of East Asia, Buddhist sutras were written in classical Chinese and inaccessible to many devotees. How, then, did such devotees access these texts? The book argues that the medieval genre of “explanatory tales” illuminates the link between human body (devotee) and sacred text (sutra). The author's approach to understanding Buddhist textuality focuses on the sensual aspects of religious experience and also looks beyond Japan to explore pre-modern book history, practices of preaching, miracles of reading, and the Mahāyāna Buddhist “cult of the book.”Less

Patriarchs on Paper: A Critical History of Medieval Chan Literature

Alan Cole

The truth of Chan Buddhism—better known as “Zen”—is regularly said to be beyond language, and yet Chan authors—medieval and modern—produced an enormous quantity of literature over the centuries. To ... More

The truth of Chan Buddhism—better known as “Zen”—is regularly said to be beyond language, and yet Chan authors—medieval and modern—produced an enormous quantity of literature over the centuries. To make sense of this well-known paradox, this book explores several genres of Chan literature that appeared during the Tang and Song dynasties (c.600–1300), including genealogies, biographies, dialogues, poems, monastic handbooks, and koans. Working through this diverse body of literature, the text details how Chan authors developed several strategies to evoke images of a perfect Buddhism in which wonderfully simple masters transmitted Buddhism's final truth to one another, suddenly and easily, and, of course, independent of literature and the complexities of the Buddhist monastic system. Chan literature, then, reveled in staging delightful images of a Buddhism free of Buddhism, tempting the reader, over and over, with the possibility of finding behind the thick façade of real Buddhism—with all its rules, texts, doctrines, and institutional solidity—an ethereal world of pure spirit. This book charts the emergence of this kind of “fantasy Buddhism” and details how it interacted with more traditional forms of Chinese Buddhism in order to show how Chan's illustrious ancestors were created in literature in order to further a wide range of real-world agendas.Less

Seeing through Zen: Encounter, Transformation, and Genealogy in Chinese Chan Buddhism

John McRae

The tradition of Chan Buddhism—more popularly known as Zen—has been romanticized throughout its history. This book shows how modern critical techniques, supported by recent manuscript discoveries, ... More

The tradition of Chan Buddhism—more popularly known as Zen—has been romanticized throughout its history. This book shows how modern critical techniques, supported by recent manuscript discoveries, make possible a more skeptical, accurate, and—ultimately—productive assessment of Chan lineages, teaching, fundraising practices, and social organization. Synthesizing twenty years of scholarship, it offers analytic models for the interpretation of Chan spiritual practices and religious history. The book traces the emergence of this Chinese spiritual tradition and its early figureheads, Bodhidharma and the “sixth patriarch” Hui-Neng, through the development of Zen dialogue and koans. In addition to constructing a central narrative for the doctrinal and social evolution of the school, it examines the religious dynamics behind Chan's use of iconoclastic stories and myths of patriarchal succession. The book argues that Chinese Chan is fundamentally genealogical, both in its self-understanding as a school of Buddhism and in the very design of its practices of spiritual cultivation. Furthermore, by forgoing the standard idealization of Zen spontaneity, we can gain new insight into the religious vitality of the school as it came to dominate the Chinese religious scene, providing a model for all of East Asia—and the modern world. Ultimately, the book aims to change how we think about Chinese Chan by providing new ways of looking at the tradition.Less

Selected Works of D.T. Suzuki, Volume I: Zen

Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki

A collection of newly edited essays concerning Zen Buddhism by D. T. Suzuki, along with a new introduction by the editor concerning Suzuki’s approach to Zen.

Selected Works of D.T. Suzuki, Volume II

Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki

A collection of newly edited essays on Pure Land Buddhism by D. T. Suzuki, along with an introduction by the editor concerning the intellectual influences on Suzuki’s religious thought and his ... More

A collection of newly edited essays on Pure Land Buddhism by D. T. Suzuki, along with an introduction by the editor concerning the intellectual influences on Suzuki’s religious thought and his interpretations of Pure Land Buddhism.Less

Selected Works of D.T. Suzuki, Volume III: Comparative Religion

Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki

Richard M. Jaffe, Jeff Wilson, and Tomoe Moriya (eds)

Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki was a key figure in the introduction of Buddhism to the non-Asian world. Many outside Japan encountered Buddhism for the first time through D. T. Suzuki's writings and ... More

Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki was a key figure in the introduction of Buddhism to the non-Asian world. Many outside Japan encountered Buddhism for the first time through D. T. Suzuki's writings and teaching, and for nearly a century his work and legacy have contributed to the ongoing religious and cultural interchange between Japan and the rest of the world, particularly the United States and Europe. This third volume brings together a diverse collection of Suzuki's letters, essays, and lectures about non-Buddhist religions and his thoughts on their relation to Buddhism, as well as his reflections on the nature of religion itself. Some of these writings have been translated into English for the first time in this volume. As a long-term resident of the United States, a world traveler, and a voracious consumer of information about all forms of religion, Suzuki was one of the foremost Japanese mediators of Eastern and Western religious cultures for nearly seven decades. An introduction analyzes Suzuki's frequent encounters with texts and practitioners of many religions, considers how events in Suzuki's lifetime affected his interpretations of Christianity, Shinto, and other traditions, and demonstrates that his legacy as a scholar extends well beyond Buddhism.Less

The Sound of Two Hands Clapping: The Education of a Tibetan Buddhist Monk

Georges B.J. Dreyfus

This book is a unique insider's account of day-to-day life inside a Tibetan monastery, which reveals to Western audiences the fascinating details of monastic education. The author of this book, who ... More

This book is a unique insider's account of day-to-day life inside a Tibetan monastery, which reveals to Western audiences the fascinating details of monastic education. The author of this book, who is the first Westerner to complete the famous Ge-luk curriculum and achieve the distinguished title of geshe, weaves together eloquent and moving autobiographical reflections with an historical overview of Tibetan Buddhism and insights into its teachings. The first part of the book looks at the context of Buddhism, monasticism, and the teaching and discipline of becoming a monk in Tibet. The second part looks at Tibetan scholastic practices including literacy and memorization, the general structure of the Tibetan curriculum, two curricular models, scholasticism and orality, myth and reality, commentary and meditation, the supplement (hermeneutical or deconstructive), debate as practice, debate in the curriculum and the question: Is debate a mode of inquiry? Part three reflects on the rationality and spirit cult and on the limits of the inquiry. The book concludes with a look at past and future uncertainties.Less

Speaking the Unspeakable: Religion, Misogyny, and the Uncanny Mother in Freud's Cultural Texts

Diane Jonte-Pace

In a bold rereading of Freud's cultural texts, this book uncovers an undeveloped “counter thesis,”, one that repeatedly interrupts or subverts his well-known Oedipal master plot. The counter thesis ... More

In a bold rereading of Freud's cultural texts, this book uncovers an undeveloped “counter thesis,”, one that repeatedly interrupts or subverts his well-known Oedipal master plot. The counter thesis is evident in three clusters of themes within Freud's work: maternity, mortality, and immortality; Judaism and anti-Semitism; and mourning and melancholia. Each of these clusters is associated with “the uncanny” and with death and loss. Appearing most frequently in Freud's images, metaphors, and illustrations, the counter thesis is no less present for being unspoken—it is, indeed, “unspeakable.” The “uncanny mother” is a primary theme found in Freud's texts involving fantasies of immortality and mothers as instructors in death. In other texts, the book finds a story of Jews for whom the dangers of assimilation to a dominant Gentile culture are associated unconsciously with death and the uncanny mother. The counter thesis appears in the story of anti-Semites for whom the “uncanny impression of circumcision” gives rise not only to castration anxiety but also to matrophobia. It also surfaces in Freud's ability to mourn the social and religious losses accompanying modernity, and his inability to mourn the loss of his own mother. The unfolding of Freud's counter thesis points toward a theory of the cultural and unconscious sources of misogyny and anti-Semitism in “the unspeakable.” This book opens exciting new vistas for the feminist analysis of Freud's intellectual legacy.Less

Text as Father: Paternal Seductions in Early Mahayana Buddhist Literature

Alan Cole

This work sheds new light on the origins and nature of Mahayana Buddhism, with close readings of four well-known texts: the Lotus Sutra, Diamond Sutra, Tathagatagarbha Sutra, and Vimalakirti Nirdesa. ... More

This work sheds new light on the origins and nature of Mahayana Buddhism, with close readings of four well-known texts: the Lotus Sutra, Diamond Sutra, Tathagatagarbha Sutra, and Vimalakirti Nirdesa. Treating these sutras as literary works rather than as straightforward philosophic or doctrinal treatises, the author argues that these writings were carefully sculpted to undermine traditional monastic Buddhism, and to gain legitimacy and authority for Mahayana Buddhism as it was veering away from Buddhism's older oral and institutional forms. His analysis of the narrative structures and seductive literary strategies used in these sutras suggests that they were specifically written to encourage devotion to the written word instead of other forms of authority, be they human, institutional, or iconic.Less