Buddhist Literature as Philosophy, Buddhist Philosophy as Literature

Description

Can literature reveal reality? Is philosophical truth a literary artifice? How does the way we think affect what we can know? Buddhism has been grappling with these questions for centuries, and this book attempts to answer them by exploring the relationship between literature and philosophy across the classical and contemporary Buddhist worlds of India, Tibet, China, Japan, Korea, and North America. Written by leading scholars, the book examines literary texts composed over two millennia, ranging in form from lyric verse, narrative poetry, panegyric, hymn, and koan, to novel, hagiography, (secret) autobiography, autofiction, treatise, and sutra, all in sustained conversation with topics in metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, and the philosophies of mind, language, literature, and religion.

Interdisciplinary and cross-cultural, this book deliberately works across and against the boundaries separating three mainstays of humanistic pursuit—literature, philosophy, and religion—by focusing on the multiple relationships at play between content and form in works drawn from a truly diverse range of philosophical schools, literary genres, religious cultures, and historical eras. Overall, the book calls into question the very ways in which we do philosophy, study literature, and think about religious texts. It shows that Buddhist thought provides sophisticated responses to some of the perennial problems regarding how we find, create, and apply meaning—on the page, in the mind, and throughout our lives.

Sujets

• Asia
• History of religions
• Comparative literature
• Buddhism

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 novembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438480725
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 15 Mo

Extrait

Buddhist Literature as
PHILOSOPHY,
Buddhist Philosophy as
LITERATURE
Buddhist Literature as
PHILOSOPHY,
Buddhist Philosophy as
LITERATURE
Edited by
RAFAL K. STEPIEN
Cover: Tibetan Calligraphy by Dharma Artist Tashi Mannox. A circular Tibetan Umed calligraphy which translates as: “The past mind has ceased, is destroyed; the future mind is not born, has not arisen; the present mind cannot be identified.” Inspired from “A Record of Mahāmudrā Instructions II” by Pema Karpo (1527–92). At the center of the circle is the word “mind” scribed in Uchen script.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2020 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Name: Stepien, Rafal K., author.
Title: Buddhist Literature as Philosophy, Buddhist Philosophy as Literature /Rafal K. Stepien.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2020] Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: ISBN 9781438480718 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438480725 (ebook)
Further information is available at the Library of Congress.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020945125
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Dedicated to C. W. ‘Sandy’ Huntington Jr. 1949–2020
Contents
Acknowledgments
A Note on Languages
Introduction: Philosophy, Literature, Religion: Buddhism as Transdisciplinary Intervention
Rafal K. Stepien
Part I: Buddhist Literature as Philosophy
Chapter 1
Transformative Vision: Coming to See the Buddha’s Reality
Amber D. Carpenter
Chapter 2
Jātakas and the Abhidhamma : Practical Compassion and Kusala Citta
Sarah Shaw
Chapter 3
Panegyric as Philosophy: Philosophical Dimensions of Indian Buddhist Hymns
Richard F. Nance
Chapter 4
Of Doctors, Poets, and the Minds of Men: Aesthetics and Wisdom in Aśvagho ṣ a’s Beautiful Nanda
Sonam Kachru
Chapter 5
Buddhist Literary Criticism in East Asian Literature
Francisca Cho
Chapter 6
The Green Bamboo Is the Dharmakāya : Waka Poetry and the Buddhist Imagination in Heian Japan
Ethan Bushelle
Part II: Buddhist Philosophy as Literature
Chapter 7
The Scandal of the Speaking Buddha: Performative Utterance and the Erotics of the Dharma
Natalie Gummer
Chapter 8
The Original Mind Is the Literary Mind, the Original Body Carves Dragons
Rafal K. Stepien
Chapter 9
On Resolving Disputes between Literary ( Wenzi ) and Nonliterary ( Wuzi ) Approaches to Expressing Zen Buddhist Philosophy
Steven Heine
Chapter 10
Where “Philosophy” and “Literature” Converge: Exploring Tibetan Buddhist Writings about Reality
Yaroslav Komarovski
Chapter 11
The Repa and the Chan Devotee: Hagiography, Polemic, and the Taxonomies of Philosophical Literature
Massimo Rondolino
Chapter 12
The Autobiographical No-Self
C. W. Huntington Jr.
Contributors
Index
Acknowledgments
The seeds of the book you are holding were sown at Harvard University in 2016. The American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) was hosting its annual meeting there, while I had just completed the final year of my doctorate at Harvard on an exchange scholarship from Columbia University. In order to encourage sustained, comprehensive discussion and debate of thematically coherent topics, the ACLA structures its annual meeting around seminars, each treating a single issue and running over two or three days, instead of the more loosely aligned individual panels or papers characteristic of many other large scholarly conventions. I therefore organized a seminar titled, aptly enough, “Buddhist Literature as Philosophy, Buddhist Philosophy as Literature” and comprising panels on “Literature, Literary Theory, and Philosophy,” “Buddhist Philosophy as Literature,” and “Buddhist Literature as Philosophy.” Almost all of the contributors to the present volume took part at that meeting, and as discussion deepened it became ever more apparent to everyone present that the approach we were taking was not only novel but needful. This book is the final fruit of that first collaborative effort.
By the time the ACLA convention took place, I had taken up a position at Hampshire College down the road in Amherst. Since then, this project has followed me to the University of Oxford, Heidelberg University, and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. There are many people to thank at all these places, but in relation to the present work I would like to express my deep gratitude to the following wonderful people in particular for all the personal and professional support, intellectual stimulation, and laughter I enjoyed from and with them: At Hampshire, Alan Hodder, and in the surrounding Five College Buddhist Studies cohort, Jay Garfield, Maria Heim, and Andy Rotman; at Oxford, Richard Gombrich, Richard Sorabji, and Jan Westerhoff; and at Heidelberg, Michael Radich. I would also like to acknowledge my gratitude to the Berggruen Institute and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for funding at Oxford and Heidelberg respectively that enabled completion of this work. At SUNY Press, especial thanks go to Chris Ahn, whose interest in the project kept it going; to James Peltz and Eileen Nizer, who shepherded it through to publication; and of course to the peer reviewers, whose comments improved it immeasurably. My most profound thanks must go, however, to the contributors themselves, who believed in this work from the start, and without whose energy and insight none of this could have come to fruition.
Finally, however, and with a heavy heart, it befalls me to dedicate this book to C. W. ‘Sandy’ Huntington Jr., who passed away unbeknownst to me on the very day I sent him the final proofs of his contribution to this book, and whom I feel honored to have known as a colleague, mentor, and friend. Knowing in advance, as he put it, that he had “less time than I would prefer to set my affairs in order,” Sandy had been working on a collection of essays titled What I Don’t Know About Death . May the final words of his Preface there serve as a fitting ma ṅ gala proem to the present work:
In the final analysis, one might say that this book explores a particular kind of truth at once religious, philosophical, and literary, a way—one way—of seeking to live authentically in the face of our limited time on earth.
Rafal K. Stepien
Singapore, 2020
A Note on Languages
This book contains terms from Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Pāli, Sanskrit, and Tibetan. These have been transliterated according to standard systems: Pinyin for Chinese, Hepburn for Japanese, McCune-Reischauer for Korean, ALA-LC for Pāli and Sanskrit, and THL Wylie for Tibetan. Text in Chinese appears in simplified or traditional characters in accordance with the usage of the relevant source.
Introduction
Philosophy, Literature, Religion
Buddhism as Transdisciplinary Intervention
R AFAL K. S TEPIEN
Buddhist Literature as Philosophy, Buddhist Philosophy as Literature
This book will upset many people. It is meant to, for it challenges many ideas cherished by philosophers and literati alike. In this Introduction, my aim is to detail some of the overarching structures and strictures that have hitherto framed, and thereby limited, philosophical and literary study in the West. In so doing, I hope to clear the way to allowing the Buddhist case to complicate, even invalidate, but at the very least expose, generally accepted notions as to what philosophy and literature are and do.
Before upsetting anyone, however, surely, as any Sophist would say, it is wise as well as prudent to get them on board, to make them feel the ride is worth their while. To be clear, then: Buddhist Literature as Philosophy, Buddhist Philosophy as Literature is the first book in any language to comprehensively examine the relationship between literature and philosophy in the Buddhist context. It comprises chapters written by leading scholars of Buddhism that cover material composed over some two millennia (up to and including the present day) across the Buddhist worlds of India, Tibet, China, Japan, and Korea. Literary texts ranging in form among lyric verse, narrative poetry, panegyric, hymn, song, ritual chant, biography, hagiography, (secret) autobiography, autobiographical fiction, autofiction, novel, play, commentary, and treatise feature, in conversation with philosophical topics in ontology, epistemology, logic, ethics, aesthetics, and philosophy of language, as well as with related issues in literary theory, intellectual history, and even psychoanalysis. This book both affords anyone interested in Buddhism the opportunity to engage with current ideas in Western literary theory and philosophy of literature, and allows the specificities of Buddhist texts to illuminate debates hitherto largely restricted to the Western canon. Its impact, as I see it, will thus be significant not only on the study of Buddhist literature and philosophy, but also on any work dealing with the myriad modes of interplay among three mainstays of humanistic pursuit: literature, philos