Visions of Power Imagining Medieval Japanese Buddhism / Bernard Faure; transl. from the French by Phyllis Brooks

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Faure, Bernard

Standardized Title:

Fragments de l'imaginaire bouddhique <engl.>

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sōtōshū--Rituals.

Sōtōshū.

Keizan, 1268-1325.

Keizan.

Buddhist art and symbolism--Japan.

Buddhist art and symbolism.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xvi, 329 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Princeton, NJ Princeton Univ. Press 2000

Summary:

Bernard Faure's previous works are well known as guides to some of the more elusive aspects of the Chinese tradition of Chan Buddhism and its outgrowth, Japanese Zen. Continuing his efforts to look at Chan/Zen with a full array of postmodernist critical techniques, Faure now probes the imaginaire, or mental universe, of the Buddhist Soto Zen master Keizan Jokin (1268-1325). Although Faure's new book may be read at one level as an intellectual biography, Keizan is portrayed here less as an original thinker than as a representative of his culture and an example of the paradoxes of the Soto school. The Chan/Zen doctrine that he avowed was allegedly reasonable and demythologizing, but he lived in a psychological world that was just as imbued with the marvelous as was that of his contemporary Dante Alighieri. Drawing on his own dreams to demonstrate that he possessed the magical authority that he felt to reside also in icons and relics, Keizan strove to use these "visions of power" to buttress his influence as a patriarch. To reveal the historical, institutional, ritual, and visionary elements in Keizan's life and thought and to compare these to Soto doctrine, Faure draws on largely neglected texts, particularly the Record of Tokoku (a chronicle that begins with Keizan's account of the origins of the first of the monasteries that he established) and the kirigami, or secret initiation documents.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE Autobiographical Imagination

CHAPTER TWO Imagined Lineages

CHAPTER THREE Imagining Powers

CHAPTER FOUR Mythical Imaginaire

CHAPTER FIVE Dreaming

CHAPTER SIX Images of Death

CHAPTER SEVEN Places of the Mind

CHAPTER EIGHT The Ritual Body

CHAPTER NINE The Power of Symbols

CHAPTER TEN Iconic Imagination

CHAPTER ELEVEN Beyond Icons

EPILOGUE Imagination and Ideology

GLOSSARY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780691219561

0691219567

OCLC:

1273306109