The Mystique of Transmission

The Mystique of Transmission
Author: Wendi L. Adamek
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 595
Release: 2007-05-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0231510020

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The Mystique of Transmission is a close reading of a late-eighth-century Chan/Zen Buddhist hagiographical work, the Lidai fabao ji (Record of the Dharma-Jewel Through the Generations), and is its first English translation. The text is the only remaining relic of the little-known Bao Tang Chan school of Sichuan, and combines a sectarian history of Buddhism and Chan in China with an account of the eighth-century Chan master Wuzhu in Sichuan. Chinese religions scholar Wendi Adamek compares the Lidai fabao ji with other sources from the fourth through eighth centuries, chronicling changes in the doctrines and practices involved in transmitting medieval Chinese Buddhist teachings. While Adamek is concerned with familiar Chan themes like patriarchal genealogies and the ideology of sudden enlightenment, she also highlights topics that make Lidai fabao ji distinctive: formless practice, the inclusion of female practitioners, the influence of Daoist metaphysics, and connections with early Tibetan Buddhism. The Lidai fabao ji was unearthed in the early twentieth century in the Mogao caves at the Silk Road oasis of Dunhuang in northwestern China. Discovery of the Dunhuang manuscripts has been compared with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, as these documents have radically changed our understanding of medieval China and Buddhism. A crucial volume for students and scholars, The Mystique of Transmission offers a rare glimpse of a lost world and fills an important gap in the timeline of Chinese and Buddhist history.


The Mystique of Transmission
Language: en
Pages: 595
Authors: Wendi L. Adamek
Categories: Religion
Type: BOOK - Published: 2007-05-15 - Publisher: Columbia University Press

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The Mystique of Transmission is a close reading of a late-eighth-century Chan/Zen Buddhist hagiographical work, the Lidai fabao ji (Record of the Dharma-Jewel T
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Authors: Wendi L. Adamek
Categories: Religion
Type: BOOK - Published: 2011-09-20 - Publisher: Columbia University Press

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The Record of the Dharma-Jewel Through the Generations (Lidai fabao ji) is a little-known Chan/Zen Buddhist text of the eighth century, rediscovered in 1900 at
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Authors: Bernard Faure
Categories: Philosophy
Type: BOOK - Published: 2005-09-27 - Publisher: Routledge

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The essays in this volume attempt to place the Chan and Zen tradition in their ritual and cultural contexts, looking at various aspects heretofore largely (and
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Type: BOOK - Published: 2010-03-25 - Publisher: BRILL

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A study of the Northern Song Chan monk Qisong and his writings on Chan lineage, this book offers new arguments about Buddhist patriarchs, challenges assumptions
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Language: en
Pages: 368
Authors: Alan Cole
Categories: Religion
Type: BOOK - Published: 2009-02-09 - Publisher: Univ of California Press

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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 ce