The Zen Monastic Experience: Buddhist Practice in Contemporary Korea - Couverture rigide

Buswell Jr., Robert E.

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0691074070 ISBN 13 : 9780691074078

Editeur : Princeton University Press, 1992

Synopsis

Robert Buswell, a Buddhist scholar who spent five years as a Zen monk in Korea, draws on personal experience in this insightful account of day-to-day Zen monastic practice. Buswell's depiction of Zen reveals a religious tradition that differs radically from the stereotype prevalent in the West. Westerners exposed to Zen through English-language materials have been offered a picture of an iconoclastic religion that is bibliophobic, institutionally subversive, aesthetically sophisticated, devoted to manual labour, and intent solely on sudden enlightenment. Its most revered teachers are depicted as torching their sacred religious icons, bullying their students into enlightenment, rejecting the value of all the scriptures of Buddhism, and even denying the worth of Zen itself. In discussing the activities of the postulants, the meditation monks, the teachers and administrators, and the support monks of Songgwangsa, a major Korean Buddhist monastery, Buswell challenges much of this picture. In the "counterparadigm" of Zen offered in the daily lives of the monks, Zen's putative iconoclasts are replaced by resolute members of a community dedicated to a methodical regimen of spiritual training. Zen's apparent bibliophobia pales to reveal contemplatives learned in classical Chinese and often having extensive experience in Buddhist seminaries. And the brash challenge allegedly made to systematizations of religion, even to Zen itself, fades before monks with strong faith in the arduous way of life they have undertaken. The author's treatment relates contemporary Zen practice to the historical development of the tradition and to Korean history more generally, and his intimate, sympathetic portrayal of the life of modern Zen monks in Korea provides a look at Zen from the inside.

A propos du livre

À propos de l?auteur

Robert E. Buswell, Jr., is Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures and Director of the Center for Korean Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Among his other works is The Formation of Ch'an Ideology in China and Korea (Princeton).

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Princeton University Press
• Date d'édition: 1992
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0691074070
• ISBN 13: 9780691074078
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 284
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible