Visions of Awakening Space and Time: Dōgen and the Lotus Sutra

ISBN-13: 9780195320930 / Angielski / Twarda / 2007 / 208 str.

Taigen Daniel Leighton; Taigen Dan Leighton

Opis

As a religion concerned with universal liberation, Zen grew out of a Buddhist worldview very different from the currently prevalent scientific materialism. Indeed, says Taigen Dan Leighton, Zen cannot be fully understood outside of a worldview that sees reality itself as a vital, dynamic agent of awareness and healing. In this book, Leighton explicates that worldview through the writings of the Zen master Eihei D?gen (1200-1253), considered the founder of the Japanese S?t? Zen tradition, which currently enjoys increasing popularity in the West.

The Lotus Sutra, arguably the most important Buddhist scripture in East Asia, contains a famous story about bodhisattvas (enlightening beings) who emerge from under the earth to preserve and expound the Lotus teaching in the distant future. The story reveals that the Buddha only appears to pass away, but actually has been practicing, and will continue to do so, over an inconceivably long life span.

Leighton traces commentaries on the Lotus Sutra from a range of key East Asian Buddhist thinkers, including Daosheng, Zhiyi, Zhanran, Saigyo, My?e, Nichiren, Hakuin, and Ry?kan. But his main focus is Eihei D?gen, the 13th century Japanese S?t? Zen founder who imported Zen from China, and whose profuse, provocative, and poetic writings are important to the modern expansion of Buddhism to the West.

D?gen's use of this sutra expresses the critical role of Mahayana vision and imagination as the context of Zen teaching, and his interpretations of this story furthermore reveal his dynamic worldview of the earth, space, and time themselves as vital agents of spiritual awakening.

Leighton argues that D?gen uses the images and metaphors in this story to express his own religious worldview, in which earth, space, and time are lively agents in the bodhisattva project. Broader awareness of D?gen's worldview and its implications, says Leighton, can illuminate the possibilities for contemporary approaches to primary Mahayana concepts and practices.

Recenzje

Among the eminent Buddhist figures of premodern Japan, perhaps none has drawn more attention in the West than the Zen master Dogen (1200-1253). In a fresh approach, this volume moves beyond Dogen's explicitly Zen heritage to explore his indebtedness to the imagery and rhetorical strategies of the Lotus Sutra in articulating his vision of practice. Leighton is sensitive to the playfulness and creativity of Dogen's hermeneutics. His study will be welcomed by readers interested in the Mahayana as literature and in situating Dogen within the broader intellectual currents of his day.