Japanese Zen Buddhism

An accessible introduction to Zen Buddhist moral philosophy.

A survey of particularist, anti-theoretical, and other approaches to morality across traditions.

Das Buch bietet eine philosophisch kommentierte Übersetzung des altjapanischen Textes von Zeami zur Praxis und Ästhetik des Nō-Theaters. Zeami beschreibt nicht nur die Praxis des Schauspielers in verschiedenen Aspekten, sondern entwickelt auch zentrale ästhetische Kategorien für die Rezeption des Nō-Theaters. Die Übersetzung wird ergänzt durch einen Kommentar mit Worterklärungen sowie interpretierende Aufsätze zu Themen wie der Maske im Nō-Theater, dem Gebrauch des Körpers und der Ästhetik des Atmens. Der Band liefert somit eine solide Grundlage für eine philosophisch-ästhetische Auseinandersetzung mit einer (...) alten japanischen Schauspieltradition. (shrink)

西田哲学と語りえぬもの──その独創的な言語と思考の運動の、秘められた可能性の中心とは何か。西田と対話し続けた半生の記録。.

「無心」は、最高のパフォーマンスをもたらす境地であり、それは憧れの対象であり続けた。達磨の禅、世阿弥の伝書、武道の教え、石田梅岩の心学、鈴木大拙の禅研究など、異なる時代、異なる文脈の中で、「無心」はど のように問われてきたのか。「無心」という言葉のもとに育まれた思考のいとなみを描き出すことで、柔軟でしなやかな心のあり方、その融通無碍な活力の深奥にせまる。.

The tenth volume of the Frontiers of Japanese Philosophy focuses on the theme of “transition,” dealing with transitory and intermediary phenomena and practices such as translation, transmission, and transformation. Written in English, German and Japanese, the contributions explore a wide range of topics, crossing disciplinary borders between phenomenology, linguistics, feminism, epistemology, aesthetics, political history, martial arts, spiritual practice and anthropology, and bringing Japanese philosophy into cross-cultural dialogue with other philosophical traditions. As exercises in “thinking in transition,” the essays reveal novel (...) modes of doing philosophy as a way of boundary crossing that takes transition not only as an object of inquiry, but also as a method of philosophical practice itself. (shrink)

Ueda Shizuteru (born 1926) draws both on „Asian“ and „Western“ ideas to highlight the importance of silence as a mode of expression, especially in the Zen Buddhist tradition. This paper seeks to sort out the basic idea that stands behind his analysis: the idea of articulation, a term – implicitly or explicitly – taken from Wilhelm von Humboldt. Though Ueda acknowledges the importance of language, and – in line with Ernst Cassirer – of non-linguistic, i.e. symbolic forms of articulation, the (...) way in which he presents his concept of silence remains in itself opaque and contests partly his basic assumption that the human being is essentially linguistic. It will therefore be shown how Humboldt’s and Cassirer’s idea of articulation can help to clarify Ueda’s usage of the term, while its application by Ueda in a number of analyses can help to rethink the idea of articulation from its inception in voicing (Verlautlichung) and vocalizing (Verlautbarung) and hence the relation of language and silence. The paper finally aims at an interpretation of Ueda’s analysis of how silence in sitting meditation is drawn towards articulating the very idea of silent meditation in words. (shrink)

Ueda Shizuteru (born 1926) draws both on „Asian“ and „Western“ ideas to highlight the importance of silence as a mode of expression, especially in the Zen Buddhist tradition. This paper seeks to sort out the basic idea that stands behind his analysis: the idea of articulation, a term – implicitly or explicitly – taken from Wilhelm von Humboldt. Though Ueda acknowledges the importance of language, and – in line with Ernst Cassirer – of non-linguistic, i.e. symbolic forms of articulation, the (...) way in which he presents his concept of silence remains in itself opaque and contests partly his basic assumption that the human being is essentially linguistic. It will therefore be shown how Humboldt’s and Cassirer’s idea of articulation can help to clarify Ueda’s usage of the term, while its application by Ueda in a number of analyses can help to rethink the idea of articulation from its inception in voicing (Verlautlichung) and vocalizing (Verlautbarung) and hence the relation of language and silence. The paper finally aims at an interpretation of Ueda’s analysis of how silence in sitting meditation is drawn towards articulating the very idea of silent meditation in words. (shrink)

This is the definitive work on the first and greatest of Japan's twentieth-century philosophers, Nishida Kitaro. Interspersed throughout the narrative of Nishida's life and thought is a generous selection of the philosopher's own essays, letters, and short presentations, newly translated into English.

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL IN CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM ABSTRACT In his prolegomena to “the problem of evil in Christianity and Buddhism” Masao Abe compares how Christianity and Buddhism explain the conflict between good and evil, the absolute ethical imperative to do good and avoid evil, and the problem that human beings inevitably fail to comply with that imperative. Abe argues that Buddhism and Christianity agree on the absoluteness of the imperative, but that Buddhism’s notions of the relativity and interdependence of (...) good and evil and “absolute nothingness” beyond good and evil make intelligible, as Christianity does not, the necessity of evil without undermining the ethical imperative to do good, and solve the problem of the failure of to overcome the duality of good and evil at the ethical level. I explore advantages and disadvantage of the responses of Buddhism and Christianity to the problem of evil, according to Abe’s analysis. I argue that Buddhism enjoys an advantage in dealing with the origin of evil and the conflict between good and evil without the burden of Christianity’s problem of theodicy, but suffers a difficulty in explaining why commitment to the ethical imperative is a prerequisite to enlightenment. Christianity’s identification of the good with God gives an advantage in explaining the relation between the ethical imperative and the religious ultimate, but encounters the problem of explaining the origin of evil. (shrink)

The questions pursued in this essay are: What can philosophers today learn from a tradition of psychosomatic practice such as Zen Buddhism? How does such a tradition challenge the very methodology of our cerebral practice of philosophy? And finally: What would it mean to bring Western philosophy and the psychosomatic practice of Zen together, not necessarily to merge them into one, but at least to commute between them so that they may speak to and inform one another? In pursuing these (...) questions, it is demonstrated, we have much to learn from the Kyoto School of modern Japanese philosophy. The middle two sections of this essay explain how Nishida Kitarō and Nishitani Keiji challenged the disembodied methodology of Western philosophy by drawing on their psychosomatic practice of Zen. The final section of this essay critically compares and contrasts the psychosomatic practice of Zen with the pragmatist “somaesthetics” of Richard Shusterman. Shusterman himself pursued connections between his project and Zen practice, yet it will be argued that the guiding aims of his pragmatically and aesthetically orientated somaesthetics need to be distinguished from the primarily enlightening and liberative aims of the psychosomatic practice of Zen. (shrink)

This is a set of essays and translations that covers comprehensively all of Japanese philosophy.

This paper attempts to locate modern Zen and psychoanalysis in terms of contemporary philosophy of mind, particularly in view of dominant theories of cognitivism that see the mind as informational and material, with meaning being mere information in disguise. Psychoanalysis and modern Zen hold to the contrary view that the mind is “semantic,” not “syntactic,” and that the meanings we have in our heads are not reducible to the physical informational processes from which they have emerged. Meaning, as non-reducible, is (...) infinite and uncaused. However, the structure of meaning entails a split between a knower and what is known. This split creates problems in the mind which can be confronted through more, not less, engagement with the meanings in our minds, until we are self-aware and, perhaps, self-identical, with the mechanisms of consciousness that produce the meanings in our head. Such self-awareness is seen as being self-liberating rather than self-reducing. (shrink)

The work argues that the koans of Zen Buddhism have several intriguing non-accidental parallels with the short stories of Catholic author Flannery O'Connor. Both typically portray characters in a state of non-enlightenment in which they are egoistically obsessed with something which prevents them from perceiving and properly responding to the real world around them. Both present the characters with some opportunity for enlightenment, which they may or may not take up. Both come in a variety of forms, in order to (...) portray and address a rich variety of ways in which such obsessions become obstacles to human self-understanding and fulfillment. And both are ultimately presented for the sake of the listener or reader, who may recognize in the stories parallels to their own state, and perhaps take a lesson therefrom on their own journey towards what Zen calls enlightenment, or what Christians call grace. (shrink)

The central role of gestural language in Buddhism is widely acknowledged, as in the story of the Buddha pointing at the moon, the point being the student’s seeing beyond the finger to its gesture. Gesture’s role in dance is similarly central, as noted by scholars in the emerging interdisciplinary field of dance studies. Unsurprisingly, then, the intersection of these two fields is well-populated, including the formal gestures Buddhism inherited from classical Indian dance, and the masked dance of the Mani Rimdu (...) Festival. In this investigation, I will articulate a new Buddhist philosophy of gestural language, based on a new conception of emptiness that I locate in the work of contemporary U.S. choreographer Deborah Hay, as influenced by Nāgārjuna and Zen. And this, finally, suggests that contemporary Western philosophy should incorporate this compassion as a normative dimension to its own theorizing and practice. (shrink)

There exists a widely accepted opinion in Chan/Zen 禪 studies that Chan enlightenment is a mysterium ineffabile, impenetrable by human intellect. Reviewing the debate between Hu Shi 胡適 and D. T. Suzuki over Chan enlightenment and accounts of testimony by Chan masters and practitioners in history, this essay argues that Chan enlightenment can be understood rationally and intellectually. By analyzing the time-honored Chan practices that have led to enlightenment, it seeks to understand the mystery as an extraordinary mental condition in (...) which an enlightened person temporarily blocks thinking in terms of language, consciousness, and intellect, and experiences a momentary “erasing” of what has been impressed on the psyche since birth. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Sourcebook for Modern Japanese Philosophy: Selected DocumentsSteven HeineSourcebook for Modern Japanese Philosophy: Selected Documents. Translated and edited by David A. Dilworth and Valdo H. Viglielmo, with Agustin Jacinto Zavala. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1998. Pp. xx + 420.Sourcebook for Modern Japanese Philosophy: Selected Documents, translated and edited by David H. Dilworth and Valdo H. Viglielmo, with Agustin Jacinto Zavala, is a new translation of twentieth-century Japanese philosophers and (...) is the second book in a series on Resources in Asian Philosophy and Religion that had been devised and edited by the late Charles Wei-hsun Fu (the first book was Stuart D. B. Picken's Essentials of Shinto: An Analytical Guide to Principal Teachings [Westport: Greenwood Press, 1994]). Here, a team of translators who are all very well known for their expert work in the field provide a series of selections from seven philosophers, each of whom is associated with the Kyoto School approach to comparative philosophical analysis.The seven thinkers include: (1) Nishida Kitarō, the founder of the Kyoto School, which is based on a synthesis of Western thought, particularly German Idealism, and the Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophy of emptiness or universal nothingness (Nishida remains by far the most important representative of the school, and he has had numerous works translated into English, often by Dilworth and/or Viglielmo); (2) Tanabe Hajime, Nishida's first and foremost disciple, who approached the notion of absolute nothingness from the standpoint of Pure Land Buddhist other-power and repentance; (3) Kuki Shūzō, who was known for his travels to Europe and his work on aesthetics and contingency; (4) Watsuji Tetsurō, who pioneered the field of cultural anthropological history in Japan; (5) Miki Kiyoshi, who criticized Nishida in light of Pascal and Kierkegaard as well as Hegelian dialectics; (6) Tosaka Jun, a sharp Marxist critic of Nishida, who during the 1930s attacked the apparent accommodations of his colleagues with the Imperialist authorities; and (7) Nishitani Keiji, who developed the Zen perspective implicit in Nishida's philosophy by emphasizing the religious-conversion experience that emerges from a contemplative awareness of the universality of absolute nothingness.The translators provide a substantial introductory essay discussing the biographical and conceptual issues in the development of the life and thought of each philosopher. This section is very useful, and generally goes into more depth and detail than other materials available in English. The translations themselves, which cover a wide variety of styles and methods of argumentation, are clear and readable, though at times a bit imprecise and inconsistent. A main issue involved in evaluating the book has to do with the selection of thinkers and passages translated. Unfortunately, there are no philosophers represented here who are not in the circle of the Kyoto School. There is no question of the dominance of Nishida and his followers (and critics) in the realm of Japanese philosophy, but other voices reflecting the positions of Marxism, phenomenology, logic, structuralism, and postmodernism could have had some representation. One problem is that the reader is given very little indication of current trends (since the writings of Nishitani, the last philosopher [End Page 311] on this list, are already several decades old). And there is certainly nothing in this volume to point to future concerns and tendencies in Japanese philosophy.On the other hand, given the book's content, a positive feature is that the translators have fulfilled an important goal of choosing selections that have not previously appeared in English but which are nevertheless representative and crucial for understanding the overall significance of each thinker's approach. Therefore, Sourcebook for Modern Japanese Philosophy will serve as a beneficial supplement or complement to existing sources. It is a handy compendium that puts readers in touch with the full variety of Kyoto School philosophers, including those who vary from and argue with Nishida.By the late 1990s, it had become impossible to discuss Nishida and the Kyoto School without dealing at least in part with the question of political implications: to what extent, if any, were these thinkers involved in supporting and promulgating the doctrine of the imperial order, which sought hegemony throughout Asia. The key figures, especially Nishida, Tanabe... (shrink)

With the expression “apophatic aesthetics,” Amador Vega names dif-ferent cases of twentieth-century hermeneutics of negativity that show a spiritual debt to negative theology and in particular to the major mystical trends of Medieval Europe. Our aim here is to explore how this category applies to the artistic work created by the contemporary artists Arakawa and Gins. However, our focus is not on the debt of these artists to apophatism in the Christian tradition but in Buddhism, especially in Zen. Through an (...) analysis of various artworks, the article intends to determine the reminiscences of the evocation of emptiness in Zen-related arts. By so doing, despite the lack of continuity with tra-dition, it seems possible to uncover certain links with Japanese classic aesthetics. At the same time, since emptiness is a notion revisited in modern Japanese thought, the paper raises the question of its role as an ascetic way of thought, capable of avoiding conceptual limitations and thus opening new paths to philosophy. In this sense, insofar as thinkers well known as critics of modernity, such as Lyotard, Danto, or Taylor, have dialogued with Arakawa and Gins’s artistic proposal, a connection between certain aspects of Japanese philosophy and socalled postmodern thought is suggested. (shrink)

Why do human beings believe in divinities? Why do some seek eternal life, while others seek escape from recurring lives? Why do the beliefs and behaviors we typically call "religious" so deeply affect the human personality and so subtly weave their way through human society? Revised and updated in this second edition, Eight Theories of Religion considers how these fundamental questions have engaged the most important thinkers of the modern era. Accessible, systematic, and succinct, the text examines the classic interpretations (...) of religion advanced by theorists who have left a major imprint on the intellectual culture of the twentieth century. The second edition features a new chapter on Max Weber, a revised introduction, and a revised, expanded conclusion that traces the paths of further inquiry and interpretation traveled by theorists in the most recent decades.Eight Theories of Religion, Second Edition, begins with Edward Burnett Tylor and James Frazer--two Victorian pioneers in anthropology and the comparative study of religion. It then considers the great "reductionist" approaches of Sigmund Freud, Emile Durkheim, and Karl Marx, all of whom have exercised wide influence up to the present day. The discussion goes on to examine the leading challenges to reductionism as articulated by sociologist Max Weber and Romanian-American comparativist Mircea Eliade. Finally, it explores the newer methods and ideas arising from the African field studies of ethnographer E. E. Evans-Pritchard and the interpretive anthropology of Clifford Geertz. Each chapter offers biographical background, theoretical exposition, conceptual analysis, and critical assessment. This common format allows for close comparison and careful evaluation throughout. Ideal for use as a supplementary text in introductory religion courses or as the central text in sociology of religion and courses centered on the explanation and interpretation of religion, Eight Theories of Religion, Second Edition, offers an illuminating treatment of this controversial and fascinating subject. (shrink)

Steven Heine’s latest book on the history of kōans, Like Cats and Dogs: Contesting the Mu Kōan in Zen Buddhism, is his second monograph dedicated to a single kōan case record. The author’s first such offering, Shifting Shape, Shaping Text: Philosophy and Folklore in the Fox Kōan, focused on the second case record of the thirteenth-century Gateless Gate collection. Published at the end of the 1990s the text was a response, in many ways, to the two authors who dominated the (...) field of Zen studies during that decade, Bernard Faure and William Bodiford, particularly in regard to the historical relation between monastic Chan/Zen and popular forms of supernatural belief and practice... (shrink)

The Japanese dry landscape garden has long attracted—and long baffled—viewers from the West. While museums across the United States are replicating these "Zen rock gardens" in their courtyards and miniature versions of the gardens are now office decorations, they remain enigmatic, their philosophical and aesthetic significance obscured. _Reading Zen in the Rocks_, the classic essay on the _karesansui_ garden by French art historian François Berthier, has now been translated by Graham Parkes, giving English-speaking readers a concise, thorough, and beautifully illustrated (...) history of these gardens. Berthier's guided tour of the famous garden of Ryoanji in Kyoto leads him into an exposition of the genre, focusing on its Chinese antecedents and affiliations with Taoist ideas and Chinese landscape painting. He traces the roles of Shinto and Zen Buddhism in the evolution of the garden and also considers how manual laborers from the lowest classes in Japan had a hand in creating some of its highest examples. Parkes contributes an equally original and substantive essay which delves into the philosophical importance of rocks and their "language of stone," delineating the difference between Chinese and Japanese rock gardens and their relationship to Buddhism. Together, the two essays compose one of the most comprehensive and elegantly written studies of this haunting garden form. _Reading Zen in the Rocks_ is fully illustrated with photographs of all the major gardens discussed, making it a handsome addition to the library of anyone interested in gardening, Eastern philosophy, and the combination of the two that the _karesansui_ so superbly represents. Praise for the French edition: "A small book of rare depth, remarkably illustrated, on one of the most celebrated and beautiful rock gardens of the monasteries of Kyoto."—_L'Humanité_ "Through _Le Jardin de Ryoanji_, Berthier teaches us to read the zen in the rocks, to discover the language offered by the garden at Ryoanji. Enigmatic, poetic, and disconcerting, an enriching journey through a work of art of surprising modernity, _Le Jardin de Ryoanji_ is a work that will interest all the amateurs of Japanese art and Eastern philosophy."—_Lien Horticole_. (shrink)

The Japanese dry landscape garden has long attracted—and long baffled—viewers from the West. While museums across the United States are replicating these "Zen rock gardens" in their courtyards and miniature versions of the gardens are now office decorations, they remain enigmatic, their philosophical and aesthetic significance obscured. _Reading Zen in the Rocks_, the classic essay on the _karesansui_ garden by French art historian François Berthier, has now been translated by Graham Parkes, giving English-speaking readers a concise, thorough, and beautifully illustrated (...) history of these gardens. Berthier's guided tour of the famous garden of Ryoanji in Kyoto leads him into an exposition of the genre, focusing on its Chinese antecedents and affiliations with Taoist ideas and Chinese landscape painting. He traces the roles of Shinto and Zen Buddhism in the evolution of the garden and also considers how manual laborers from the lowest classes in Japan had a hand in creating some of its highest examples. Parkes contributes an equally original and substantive essay which delves into the philosophical importance of rocks and their "language of stone," delineating the difference between Chinese and Japanese rock gardens and their relationship to Buddhism. Together, the two essays compose one of the most comprehensive and elegantly written studies of this haunting garden form. _Reading Zen in the Rocks_ is fully illustrated with photographs of all the major gardens discussed, making it a handsome addition to the library of anyone interested in gardening, Eastern philosophy, and the combination of the two that the _karesansui_ so superbly represents. Praise for the French edition: "A small book of rare depth, remarkably illustrated, on one of the most celebrated and beautiful rock gardens of the monasteries of Kyoto."—_L'Humanité_ "Through _Le Jardin de Ryoanji_, Berthier teaches us to read the zen in the rocks, to discover the language offered by the garden at Ryoanji. Enigmatic, poetic, and disconcerting, an enriching journey through a work of art of surprising modernity, _Le Jardin de Ryoanji_ is a work that will interest all the amateurs of Japanese art and Eastern philosophy."—_Lien Horticole_. (shrink)

Zen and Japanese Culture is one of the twentieth century's leading works on Zen, and a valuable source for those wishing to understand its concepts in the context of Japanese life and art. In simple, often poetic, language, Daisetz Suzuki describes his conception of Zen and its historical evolution. He connects Zen to the philosophy of the samurai, and subtly portrays the relationship between Zen and swordsmanship, haiku, tea ceremonies, and the Japanese love of nature. Suzuki's contemplative work is enhanced (...) by anecdotes, poetry, and illustrations showing silk screens, calligraphy, and examples of architecture. Since its original publication in 1938, this important work has played a major role in shaping conceptions of Zen's influence on Japanese traditional arts. Richard Jaffe's introduction acquaints a new generation of readers with Suzuki's life and career in both Japan and America. Jaffe discusses how Zen and Japanese Culture was received upon its first publication and analyzes the book in light of contemporary criticism, especially by scholars of Japanese Buddhism. (shrink)

Buddhism first came to the West many centuries ago through the Greeks, who also influenced some of the culture and practices of Indian Buddhism. As Buddhism has spread beyond India, it has always been affected by the indigenous traditions of its new homes. When Buddhism appeared in America and Europe in the 1950s and 1960s, it encountered contemporary psychology and psychotherapy, rather than religious traditions. Since the 1990s, many efforts have been made by Westerners to analyze and integrate the similarities (...) and differences between Buddhism and it therapeutic ancestors, particularly Jungian psychology. Taking Japanese Zen-Buddhism as its starting point, this volume is a collection of critiques, commentaries, and histories about a particular meeting of Buddhism and psychology. It is based on the Zen Buddhism and Psychotherapy conference that took place in Kyoto, Japan, in 1999, expanded by additional papers, and includes: new perspectives on Buddhism and psychology, East and West cautions and insights about potential confusions traditional ideas in a new light. It also features a new translation of the conversation between Schin'ichi Hisamatsu and Carl Jung which took place in 1958. _Awakening and Insight_ expresses a meeting of minds, Japanese and Western, in a way that opens new questions about and sheds new light on our subjective lives. It will be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners of psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, and analytical psychology, as well as anyone involved in Zen Buddhism. (shrink)

Through a close analysis of Zen encounter dialogues and Huayan Buddhist philosophy, Buddhism and Postmodernity offers a new ethical paradigm for Buddhist-postmodern philosophy.

Religous experience is a puzzling phenomenon. It has appeared extensively throughout the history of man as a primary element in shaping his culture....I will try to examine the nature of the religious experience as it is conceived by the existential theologian Soren Kierkegaard and the Lin Chi or Rinzai school of Zen Buddhism. Further, I hope to point out the similarities of their methods in attaining this level of experience.