This book investigates the various meanings of forgetting and their ethical dimension in the Daoist classic Zhuangzi.It responds to recent scholarship in the study of the ethics of forgetting, which has only emerged within the past two decades in the wake of the widespread memory-studies of the late 20th century. This book accomplishes two goals: First, it assimilates insights from contemporary scholarship, and specifically applies Ricoeur’s three areas of ethical examinat...

The popular name for Chan Buddhism, in the West, is Zen Buddhism, as it was Japanese scholars who first introduced Chan Buddhism to the West with this translation. Indeed, chan is a shortened form of the Chinese word channa, rendered from the Sanskrit word dhyana, which denotes practices of the concentration of the mind through meditation or contemplation. Although rooted in the Indian tradition of yoga, which aims at the unification of the individual with the divine, meditative concentrat...

Buddhisms and Deconstructions considers the connection between Buddhism and Derridean deconstruction, focusing on the work of Robert Magliola. Fourteen distinguished contributors discuss deconstruction and various Buddhisms-Indian, Tibetan, and Chinese (Chan)-followed by an afterword in which Magliola responds directly to his critics.

As the first systematic attempt to probe the linguistic strategies of Daoist Zhuangzi and Chan Buddhism, this book investigates three areas: deconstructive strategy, liminology of language, and indirect communication. It bases these investigations on the critical examination of original texts, placing them strictly within soteriological contexts. Whilst focusing on language use, the study also reveals some important truths about these two traditions and challenges many conventional underst...

Too often Buddhism has been subjected to the Procrustean box of western thought, whereby it is stretched to fit fixed categories or had essential aspects lopped off to accommodate vastly different cultural norms and aims. After several generations of scholarly discussion in English-speaking communities, it is time to move to the next hermeneutical stage. Buddhist philosophy must be liberated from the confines of a quasi-religious stereotype and judged on its own merits. Hence this work wil...

The striking parallels between Derrida’s deconstruction and certain strategies eschewing oppositional hierarchies in Asian thought, especially in Buddhism and Daoism, have attracted much attention from scholars of both Western and Asian philosophy. This book contributes to this discussion by focusing on the ethical dimension and function of deconstruction in Asian thought.Examining different traditions and schools of Asian thought, including Indian Buddhism, Zen, other schools of E...

The Buddhist philosophical tradition is vast, internally diverse, and comprises texts written in a variety of canonical languages. It is hence often difficult for those with training in Western philosophy who wish to approach this tradition for the first time to know where to start, and difficult for those who wish to introduce and teach courses in Buddhist philosophy to find suitable textbooks that adequately represent the diversity of the tradition, expose students to important primary t...

Steve Coutinho explores in detail the fundamental concepts of Daoist thought as represented in three early texts: the Laozi, the Zhuangzi, and the Liezi. Readers interested in philosophy yet unfamiliar with Daoism will gain a comprehensive understanding of these works from this analysis, and readers fascinated by ancient China who also wish to grasp its philosophical foundations will appreciate the clarity and depth of Coutinho's explanations.Coutinho wri...

A richly complex study of the Yogacara tradition of Buddhism, divided into five parts: the first on Buddhism and phenomenology, the second on the four basic models of Indian Buddhist thought, the third on karma, meditation and epistemology, the fourth on the Trimsika and its translations, and finally the fifth on the Ch'eng Wei-shih Lun and Yogacara in China.

For centuries, the ancient Chinese philosophical text the Daodejing (Tao Te Ching) has fascinated and frustrated its readers. While it offers a wealth of rich philosophical insights concerning the cultivation of one's body and attaining one's proper place within nature and the cosmos, its teachings and structure can be enigmatic and obscure.Hans-Georg Moeller presents a clear and coherent description and analysis of this vaguely understood Chinese classic. He explores the ...

A magisterial overview of the philosophies of the East.'The time has come for global philosophy to move beyond the model where the West is at the centre of radiating spokes of comparison.' Challenging the notion that Western philosophy is the best or only yardstick against which to judge the so-called 'non-Western' philosophies, Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad sets up a lively debate in which the great thought systems of the East are engaged very much in their own terms. T...

The renowned psychoanalyst and New York Times –bestselling author of The Art of Loving unites philosophy from the East and West.In 1957, social philosopher and psychoanalyst Erich Fromm invited Daisetz T. Suzuki, the most famous Zen Buddhist master in the Western world, to a seminar at his new home in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Their discussion was one of the highlights of Fromm's lif...