Original enlightenment and the transformation of medieval Japanese Buddhism /
"Original enlightenment thought (hongaku shiso) dominated Buddhist intellectual circles throughout Japan's medieval period. Enlightenment, this discourse claims, is neither a goal to be achieved nor a potential to be realized but the true status of all things."--Jacket
Author / Creator: | |
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Format: | eBook Electronic |
Language: | English |
Language notes: | In English. |
Imprint: | Honolulu, Hawaii : University of Hawai'i Press, 1999. |
Series: | Studies in East Asian Buddhism ;
no. 12. |
Subjects: | |
Online Access: | Click here for full text at JSTOR |
Summary: | "Original enlightenment thought (hongaku shiso) dominated Buddhist intellectual circles throughout Japan's medieval period. Enlightenment, this discourse claims, is neither a goal to be achieved nor a potential to be realized but the true status of all things."--Jacket "Jacqueline Stone's study moves beyond the treatment of the original enlightenment doctrine as abstract philosophy to explore its historical dimension. Drawing on a wealth of medieval primary sources and modern Japanese scholarship, it places this discourse in its ritual, institutional, and social contexts, illuminating its importance to the maintenance of traditions of lineage and the secret transmission of knowledge that characterized medieval Japanese elite culture. It sheds new light on interpretive strategies employed in premodern Japanese Buddhist texts, an area that hitherto has received little attention."--Jacket Original enlightenment thought (hongaku shiso) dominated Buddhist intellectual circles throughout Japan's medieval period. Enlightenment, this discourse claims, is neither a goal to be achieved nor a potential to be realized but the true status of all things. Every animate and inanimate object manifests the primordially enlightened Buddha just as it is. Seen in its true aspect, every activity of daily life--eating, sleeping, even one's deluded thinking--is the Buddha's conduct. Emerging from within the powerful Tendai School, ideas of original enlightenment were appropriated by a number of Buddhist traditions and influenced nascent theories about the kami (local deities) as well as medieval aesthetics and the literary and performing arts. |
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Item Description: | Print version record. |
Physical Description: | 1 online resource (xix, 544 pages) |
Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 481-521) and index. |
ISBN: | 082484050X 9780824840501 |
Author Notes: | Jacqueline I. Stone is professor of religion at Princeton University. |