Chan before chan: meditation, repentance, and visionary experience in Chinese Buddhism
"Chan Before Chan is a cultural history of the earliest traditions of Buddhist meditation (chan) in China during the era before the rise of the "Chan School" (better known as "Zen") of the eighth-century and beyond, with a particular focus on the semiotics of meditative and...
| Published in: | Studies in East Asian buddhism |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Print Book |
| Language: | English |
| Subito Delivery Service: | Order now. |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Honolulu
University of Hawai'i Press
[2021]
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| In: |
Studies in East Asian buddhism (28)
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| Series/Journal: | Studies in East Asian buddhism
28 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
China
/ Zen Buddhism
/ Meditation
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| RelBib Classification: | BL Buddhism |
| Further subjects: | B
Zen Buddhism (China)
B Meditation Zen Buddhism |
| Online Access: |
Inhaltsverzeichnis (Aggregator) |
| Summary: | "Chan Before Chan is a cultural history of the earliest traditions of Buddhist meditation (chan) in China during the era before the rise of the "Chan School" (better known as "Zen") of the eighth-century and beyond, with a particular focus on the semiotics of meditative and especially visionary experience. Drawing from hagiography, ritual manuals, material culture, and above all the many (but rarely studied by modern scholars) Chinese Buddhist meditation manuals translated from Indic sources into Chinese or composed in China during the 400s, it argues that during this era meditation and the mastery of meditation came for the first time to occupy a real place within the Chinese Buddhist social world. Heirs to wider traditions that during this ere were shared across of the Indian and Central Asian Buddhist worlds, early medieval Chinese Buddhists conceived of "chan" as something that would produce a special state of visionary sensitivity. The concrete visionary experiences that resulted from meditation were understood as being things that could then be interpreted, by a qualified master, as indicative of the meditator's purity or impurity. Buddhist meditation, though an elite practice, was in this way in practice and in theory constitutively integrated into the cultic worlds of divination and "repentance" (chanhui) that were so important within medieval Chinese Buddhism as a whole"-- |
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| Item Description: | Includes bibliographical references and index |
| ISBN: | 0824884434 |