A01=Alan Cole
Author_Alan Cole
authority
bodhidharma
buddha
buddhism
Category=NHF
Category=QRF
chan buddhism
chan literature
chinese history
chinese society
eastern philosophy
enlightenment
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
medieval chinese buddhism
meditation
nonfiction
philosophy
power
religion
religious teacher
religious tradition
spirituality
tradition
wisdom
zen master
zen philosophy
zen tradition
Product details
- ISBN 9780520254855
- Weight: 499g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 09 Feb 2009
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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This book offers a provocative rereading of the early history of Chan Buddhism (Zen). Working from a history-of-religions point of view that asks how and why certain literary tropes were chosen to depict the essence of the Buddhist tradition to Chinese readers, this analysis focuses on the narrative logics of the early Chan genealogies - the seventh-and eighth-century lineage texts that claimed that certain high-profile Chinese men were descendents of Bodhidharma and the Buddha. This book argues that early Chan's image of the perfect-master-who-owns-tradition was constructed for reasons that have little to do with Buddhist practice, new styles of enlightened wisdom, or 'orthodoxy', and much more to do with politics, property, geography, and, of course, new forms of writing.
Alan Cole is Professor of Religious Studies at Lewis & Clark College. He is the author of Mothers and Sons in Chinese Buddhism and Text as Father: Paternal Seductions in Early Mahayana Buddhist Literature (UC Press).
