Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism (Studies in East Asian Buddhism, 31)
Jacqueline I. Stone
From Joseph Burridge Books, Chadwell Heath, United Kingdom
AbeBooks Seller Since April 23, 2010
Quantity: 1From Joseph Burridge Books, Chadwell Heath, United Kingdom
AbeBooks Seller Since April 23, 2010
Quantity: 1About this Item
xxi, 544 pages ; 24 cm. Contents: CHARTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS ix PREFACE xi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xv ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS xix Part One: Perspectives and Problems Chapter One: What Is "Original Enlightenment Thought"? 3 (52) Chapter Two: Tendai Hongaku Thought and the New Kamakura Buddhism: Rival Theories 55 (42) Part Two: The World of Medieval Tendai Chapter Three: The Culture of Secret Transmission 97 (56) Chapter Four: Hermeneutics, Doctrine, and "Mind-Contemplation" 153 (37) Chapter Five: Tendai Hongaku Thought and the New Kamakura Buddhism: A Reappraisal 190 (49) Part Three: Nichiren and His Successors Chapter Six: Nichiren and the New Paradigm 239 (61) Chapter Seven: Hokke-Tendai Interactions and the Emergence of a Nichiren Hongaku Discourse 300 (56) Conclusion 356 (13) NOTES 369 (92) CHARACTER GLOSSARY 461 (20) BIBLIOGRAPHY 481 (42) INDEX 523. Seller Inventory # 17jbew737
Bibliographic Details
Title: Original Enlightenment and the ...
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Publication Date: 2003
Binding: Soft cover
Condition: Fine
Edition: 1st Edition
About this title
Original enlightenment thought (hongaku shiso) dominated Buddhist intellectual circles throughout Japan s medieval period. Enlightenment, this discourse claims, is neither a goal to be achieved nor a potential to be realized but the true status of all things. Every animate and inanimate object manifests the primordially enlightened Buddha just as it is. Seen in its true aspect, every activity of daily life—eating, sleeping, even one s deluded thinking—is the Buddha s conduct. Emerging from within the powerful Tendai School, ideas of original enlightenment were appropriated by a number of Buddhist traditions and influenced nascent theories about the kami (local deities) as well as medieval aesthetics and the literary and performing arts.
Scholars and commentators have long recognized the historical importance of original enlightenment thought but differ heatedly over how it is to be understood. Some tout it as the pinnacle of the Buddhist philosophy of absolute non-dualism. Others claim to find in it the paradigmatic expression of a timeless Japanese spirituality. According other readings, it represents a dangerous anti-nomianism that undermined observance of moral precepts, precipitated a decline in Buddhist scholarship, and denied the need for religious discipline. Still others denounce it as an authoritarian ideology that, by sacralizing the given order, has in effect legitimized hierarchy and discriminative social practices. Often the acceptance or rejection of original enlightenment thought is seen as the fault line along which traditional Buddhist institutions are to be differentiated from the new Buddhist movements (Zen, Pure Land, and Nichiren) that arose during Japan s medieval period.
Jacqueline Stone s groundbreaking study moves beyond the treatment of the original enlightenment doctrine as abstract philosophy to explore its historical dimension. Drawing on a wealth of medieval primary sources and modern Japanese scholarship, it places this discourse in its ritual, institutional, and social contexts, illuminating its importance to the maintenance of traditions of lineage and the secret transmission of knowledge that characterized several medieval Japanese elite culture. It sheds new light on interpretive strategies employed in pre-modern Japanese Buddhist texts, an area that hitherto has received a little attention. Through these and other lines of investigation, Stone problematizes entrenched notions of corruption in the medieval Buddhist establishment. Using the examples of Tendai and Nichiren Buddhism and their interactions throughout the medieval period, she calls into question both overly facile distinctions between old and new Buddhism and the long-standing scholarly assumptions that have perpetuated them. This study marks a significant contribution to ongoing debates over definitions of Buddhism in the Kamakura era (1185–1333), long regarded as a formative period in Japanese religion and culture. Stone argues that original enlightenment thought represents a substantial rethinking of Buddhist enlightenment that cuts across the distinction between old and new institutions and was particularly characteristic of the medieval period.
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