Pruning the Bodhi Tree: The Storm Over Critical Buddhism

ISBN 10: 0824819497 / ISBN 13: 9780824819491

Published by University of Hawaii Press, 1997

About this Item

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Pruning the Bodhi Tree: The Storm Over Critical Buddhism
• Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
• Publication Date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0824819497
• ISBN 13: 9780824819491
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

What is Buddhism? According to Hakamaya Noriaki and Matsumoto Shiro, the answer lies in neither Ch’an nor Zen; in neither the Kyoto school of philosophy nor the non-duality taught in the Vimalakirti Sutra. Hakamaya contends that “criticism alone is Buddhism.”

This volume introduces and analyzes the ideas of “critical Buddhism” in relation to the targets of its critique and situates those ideas in the context of current discussions of postmodern academic scholarship, the separation of the disinterested scholar and committed religious practitioner, and the place of social activism within the academy.

Essays critical of the received traditions of Buddhist thought―many never before translated―are presented and then countered by the work of respected scholars, both Japanese and Western, who take contrary positions.

About the Author

Paul L. Swanson is a Permanent Research Fellow at the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, Nanzan University.