Magliola's JAAR review (Vol.77,No.1) of J.Y. Park's Buddhism and Postmodernity (original) (raw)
Related papers
Buddhism and Postmodernity: Zen, Huayan and the Possibility of Buddhist Postmodern Ethics (2008)
2008
Buddhism and Postmodernity is a response to some of the questions that have emerged in the process of Buddhism's encounters with modernity and the West. Jin Y. Park broadly outlines these questions as follows: first, why are the interpretations and evaluations of Buddhism so different in Europe (in the nineteenth century), in the United States (in the twentieth century), and in traditional Asia; second, why does Zen Buddhism, which offers a radically egalitarian vision, maintain a strongly authoritarian leadership; and third, what ethical paradigm can be drawn from the Buddhist-postmodern form of philosophy? Park argues that, as unrelated as these questions may seem, the issues that have generated them are related to perennial philosophical themes of identity, institutional power, and ethics, respectively. Each of these themes constitutes one section of Buddhism and Postmodernity. Park discusses the three issues in the book through the exploration of the Buddhist concepts of self and others, language and thinking, and universality and particularities. Most of this discussion is drawn from the East Asian Buddhist traditions of Zen and Huayan Buddhism in connection with the Continental philosophies of postmodernism, hermeneutics, and deconstruction. Self-critical from both the Buddhist and Western philosophical perspectives, Buddhism and Postmodernity points the reader toward a new understanding of Buddhist philosophy and offers a Buddhist-postmodern ethical paradigm that challenges normative ethics of metaphysical traditions.
Journal of Buddhist Ethics The Making of Buddhist Modernism
2010
Meditation, compassion, tolerance; spirituality, freedom, rationality: why do these nouns characterize modern Buddhism? Why not temple worship, ancestral cult, or ritual propitiation? How do the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, or Chögyam Trungpa incorporate "strategic occidentalism" into open-minded versions of Buddhism compatible with scientific rationalism, feminism, democracy, ethics, agnosticism, and liberal Christianity? How do Tibetan, Zen, and vipassana "insight" schools of practice adapt for Westernizing markets, whether in Asia, America, or Europe? McMahan mixes theory with examples to explain how both West and East interpret dharma for modern audiences-schooled in abstract thought, raised with consumer capitalism, and participants in globalizing media. Using Donald S. Lopez's definition of a modern form that "stresses equality over hierarchy, the universal over the local, and often exalts the individual above the community" (8), McMahan begins his study. He shows how "non-negotiable cultural assumptions" based on the superiority of equal opportunity, non-discrimination, women's rights, and democratic access underlie a sympathizer or adherent's reception. Charles Taylor's three discourses of modernity apply: scientific rationalism, liberal Jewish and Christian monotheism, and romantic ex
Religious Studies Review, 2008
2 volumes (continuously paginated). Pp. 680. ¥ 3,100. This book is a very thorough study of an exceedingly small piece of a monumental Buddhist treatise. From the vast compendium of Buddhist doctrine known as the Yogā cā rabhū mi, Deleanu focuses on Book XIII, the Ś rā vakabhū mi, which presents mainstream Buddhist [i.e., non-bodhisattva] practices. His project is to edit, translate, and comment on the first chapter of the Ś rā vakabhū mi's fourth section, which sets forth the so-called "mundane path," comprising the practices allegedly mastered by Buddha during his early studies: the four absorptions (dhyā na), the four immaterial attainments (ā rū pyasamā patti), and the five supernatural faculties (abhijñā). The volumes contain both a diplomatic and a critical edition of the Sanskrit, an edition of the Tibetan by Jinamitra and Ye-shes-sde and of the Chinese by Xuanzang, an English translation, and a substantial introductory study. This latter covers the context of the chapter within the larger corpus, the provenance of its various versions, the textual formation of the Yogā cā rabhū mi corpus, and its legacy in later Buddhist literature and thought. A Hamburg doctoral dissertation that (after the European fashion) was sent straight to press, the book exhibits many shortcomings of that genre-in particular, a tendency to obsessively document every single claim or concept (featuring, e.g., nearly 125 pages of annotations to merely twenty pages of translation). Yet, in the final analysis, it is an unmistakably rich-if rather unwieldy-contribution to the study of this fascinating literature.