ZEN MESTEREK ZEN MASTERS
« Zen főoldal
« vissza a Terebess Online nyitólapjára
Alan Cole (1964-)
Alan Cole is an independent scholar who has taught at Lewis & Clark College, Harvard University, the University of Illinois, the University of Oregon, and the National University of Singapore.
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=0odXD4IAAAAJ&hl=en
https://independent.academia.edu/ColeAlan
PDF: Fathering Your Father: The Zen of Fabrication in Tang Buddhism
By Alan Cole
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. 368 p.
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.
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Healthy Skepticism, and a Field Theory for the Emergence of Chan Literature
2. The State of Enlightenment: The Empire of Truth in Zhiyi's Legacy and Xinxing's Sect of the Three Levels
3. Owning It: Shaolin Monastery's In-house Buddha
4. The Future of an Illusion: Du Fei Hijacks Shaolin's Truth-Fathers
5. My Life as a Buddha: Jingjue's Version of the Truth-Fathers
6. Shenhui's “Stop Thief” Bid to Be the Seventh Son
Conclusion: Assessing the Hole at the Beginning of It All
Chinese Glossary
References
IndexFormation and Fabrication in the History and Historiography of Chan Buddhism
by James RobsonReview of
Fathering Your Father: The Zen of Fabrication in Tang Buddhism
by Alan Cole.
How Zen Became Zen: The Dispute over Enlightenment and the Formation of Chan Buddhism in Song-Dynasty China
by Morten Schlütter.
PDF: Conspiracy’s Truth: The Zen of Narrative Cunning in the Platform Sutra
By Alan Cole
Asia Major, 2015, pp. 145-175.
PDF: Patriarchs On Paper: A Critical History of Medieval Chan Literature
By Alan Cole
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2016. Pp. xvii + 320.
The truth of Chan Buddhism—better known as “Zen”—is regularly said to be beyond language, and yet Chan authors—medieval and modern—produced an enormous quantity of literature over the centuries. To make sense of this well-known paradox, Patriarchs on Paper explores several genres of Chan literature that appeared during the Tang and Song dynasties (c. 600–1300), including genealogies, biographies, dialogues, poems, monastic handbooks, and koans. Working through this diverse body of literature, Alan Cole details how Chan authors developed several strategies to evoke images of a perfect Buddhism in which wonderfully simple masters transmitted Buddhism’s final truth to one another, suddenly and easily, and, of course, independent of literature and the complexities of the Buddhist monastic system. Chan literature, then, reveled in staging delightful images of a Buddhism free of Buddhism, tempting the reader, over and over, with the possibility of finding behind the thick façade of real Buddhism—with all its rules, texts, doctrines, and institutional solidity—an ethereal world of pure spirit. Patriarchs on Paper charts the emergence of this kind of “fantasy Buddhism” and details how it interacted with more traditional forms of Chinese Buddhism in order to show how Chan’s illustrious ancestors were created in literature in order to further a wide range of real-world agendas.
Table of Contents
Preface
A Note on References to the Chinese Buddhist Canon
Introduction: Chan—What Is It?
1. Making History: Chan as an Art Form
2. Plans for the Past: Early Accounts of How Perfect Truth Came to China
3. Portable Ancestors: Bodhidharma Gets Two New Families
4. More Local Buddhas Appear: Jingjue, Huineng, Shenhui
5. Truth, Conspiracy, and Careful Writing: A New Version of Huineng
6. The Platform Sutra and Other Conspiracy Theories
7. Chan “Dialogues” from the Tang Dynasty
8. Chan Compendiums from the Song Dynasty
9. Rules for Purity: Handbooks for Running Chan Monasteries
10. Koans and Being There
Conclusions: Chan, a Buddhist Beauty
Bibliography
Glossary
Index
