In an attempt to reconstruct an elusive aspect of the medieval Chinese imagination, The Eminent Monk examines biographies of Chinese Buddhist monks, from the uncompromising ascetic to the unfathomable wonder-worker.
While analyzing images of the monk in medieval China, the author addresses some questions encountered along the way: What are we to make of accounts in “eminent monk” collections of deviant monks who violate monastic precepts? Who wrote biographies of monks and who read them? How did different segments of Chinese society contend for the image of the monk...
In an attempt to reconstruct an elusive aspect of the medieval Chinese imagination, The Eminent Monk examines biographies of Chinese Buddhist monks...
The essays in this collection are an interdisciplinary examination of various aspects of Buddhism during the Kamakura era, including religious practice, literature, and institutional history. They work toward a synchronic historiography and thus provide a broader understanding and appreciation of the complexity and richness of Buddhism during the Kamakura era and of Japanese Buddhism as a whole.
Contributors: Richard K. Payne, James C. Dobbins, George S. Tanabe, Mark T. Unno, Jacqueline I. Stone, Robert E. Morrell, James H. Foard
The essays in this collection are an interdisciplinary examination of various aspects of Buddhism during the Kamakura era, including religious prac...
This study of Tsung-mi is part of the Studies in East Asian Buddhism series. Author Peter Gregory makes extensive use of Japanese secondary sources, which complements his work on the complex Chinese materials that form the basis of the study.
This study of Tsung-mi is part of the Studies in East Asian Buddhism series. Author Peter Gregory makes extensive use of Japanese secondary sources, w...
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...
Original enlightenment thought (hongaku shiso) dominated Buddhist intellectual circles throughout Japan’s medieval period. Enlightenment, th...
An examination of medieval Chinese Buddhist thanatonic practices. Bridging area studies and the history of religions, Teiser explores the concerns, practices and beliefs of 9th- and 10th-century Chinese Buddhists.
An examination of medieval Chinese Buddhist thanatonic practices. Bridging area studies and the history of religions, Teiser explores the concerns, pr...
Burning for the Buddha is the first book-length study of the theory and practice of abandoning the body(self-immolation) in Chinese Buddhism. It examines the hagiographical accounts of all those who made offerings of their own bodies and places them in historical, social, cultural, and doctrinal context. Rather than privilege the doctrinal and exegetical interpretations of the tradition, which assume the central importance of the mind and its cultivation, James Benn focuses on the ways in which the heroic ideals of the bodhisattva present in scriptural materials such as the Lotus Sutra played...
Burning for the Buddha is the first book-length study of the theory and practice of abandoning the body(self-immolation) in Chinese Buddhism. It exami...
In modern Chinese Buddhism, Dizang is especially popular as the sovereign of the underworld. Often represented as a monk wearing a royal crown, Dizang helps the deceased faithful navigate the complex underworld bureaucracy, avert the punitive terrors of hell, and arrive at the happy realm of rebirth. The author is concerned with the formative period of this important Buddhist deity, before his underworldly aspect eclipses his connections to other religious expressions and at a time when the art, mythology, practices, and texts of his cult were still replete with possibilities. She begins...
In modern Chinese Buddhism, Dizang is especially popular as the sovereign of the underworld. Often represented as a monk wearing a royal crown, Diz...
