Esoteric Pure Land Buddhism
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Esoteric Pure Land Buddhism
(Pure Land Buddhist studies)
University of Hawaiʻi Press, c2023
- : hardback
Available at 5 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
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  Switzerland
  France
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  United States of America
Note
Content Type: text (rdacontent), Media Type: unmediated (rdamedia), Carrier Type: volume (rdacarrier)
Includes bibliographical references (p. 385-441) and index
Contents of Works
- An introduction to Esoteric Pure Land Buddhism
- Sukhāvatī in the Secret Piṭaka
- Early Japanese Esoteric Pure Land Buddhism
- Dōhan and the Esoteric Pure Land culture of Kōyasan
- Dōhan's major works and Kamakura Buddhism
- Toward an introduction to the Himitsu nenbutsu shō
- The Buddha Amitābha in the Himitsu nenbutsu shō
- Buddhānusmṛti in the Himitsu nenbutsu shō
- Sukhāvatī in the Himitsu nenbutsu shō
- Himitsu nenbutsu shō = 秘密念佛鈔 / by Dōhan
Description and Table of Contents
Description
What, if anything, is Esoteric Pure Land Buddhism? In 1224, the medieval Japanese scholar-monk Dohan (1179-1252) composed The Compendium on Esoteric Mindfulness of Buddha (Himitsu nenbutsu sho), which begins with another seemingly simple question: Why is it that practitioners of mantra and meditation rely on the recitation of the name of the Buddha Amitabha? To answer this question, Dohan explored diverse areas of study spanning the whole of the East Asian Mahayana Buddhist tradition. Although contemporary scholars often study Esoteric Buddhism and Pure Land Buddhism as if they were mutually exclusive, diametrically opposed, schools of Buddhism, in the present volume Aaron Proffitt examines Dohan's Compendium in the context of the eastward flow of Mahayana Buddhism from India to Japan and uncovers Mahayana Buddhists employing multiple, overlapping, so-called esoteric approaches along the path to awakening.
Proffitt divides his study into two parts. In Part I he considers how early Buddhologists, working under colonialism, first constructed Mahayana Buddhism, Pure Land Buddhism, and Esoteric Buddhism as discrete fields of inquiry. He then surveys the flow of Indian Buddhist spells, dharani, and mantra texts into China and Japan and the diverse range of Buddhist masters who employed these esoteric techniques to achieve rebirth in Sukhavati, the Pure Land of Bliss. In Part II, he considers the life of Dohan and analyzes the monk's comprehensive view of buddhanusmrti as a form of ritual technology that unified body and mind, Sukhavati as a this-worldly or other-worldly soteriological goal synonymous with nirvana itself, and the Buddha Amitabha as an object of devotion beyond this world of suffering. The work concludes with the first full translation of Dohan's Himitsu nenbutsu sho into a modern language.
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