In The Diamond Sutra in Chinese Culture, Venerable Yong You examines the varied history of the Diamond Sutra and its profound effect upon Chinese Buddhism, as well as its wide-ranging impact on Chinese religion, culture, art, literature, folklore, and technology. Beginning from the introduction of the Diamond Sutra in China until the Song dynasty, Venerable Yong You delves deeply into the Dunhuang collections, comprised of the oldest Chinese Buddhist manuscripts in the world, to offer insightful new research and a compelling perspective on the influence of this very important text.
The Diamond Sutra is the one that has been widely circulated and has the most translated versions and commentaries in Chinese. Among them, the translation of the Diamond Sutra by Master Kumarajiva is the most widely circulated of all translations.The Diamond Sutra presents the Buddhist wisdom of emptiness in the form of a dialogue between the Buddha and his disciple Subhuti in the Jetavana Garden of ancient India. The root cause of our suffering is that we do not see things as they are, as emptiness. If we can see, understand, and practice emptiness in our lives, then we will have a life free of worry, no matter what our fate might be.Buddhism believes that everything that we are aware of, including our thoughts, is conditioned. When the conditions disappear, the things also disappear.The Buddhist criterion of real existence is that the existence of this fixation must be unconditionally arising, and that this thing cannot change in any way. According to this criterion, all things in the universe, including ourselves, do not exist in the ultimate level, but are only temporary phenomena that arise conditionally. Therefore, all phenomena are not truly existing, but exist only at a relative level. When we have something in our mind that we cannot let go, we have to remind ourselves of the Buddhist theory of emptiness and learn to let go. It is not worth it to worry about something that is not real, does not truly exist. In this way, we can live happier and more freely. The Buddhist theory of emptiness lays the foundation for the theory behind letting go.
Contextualizing the sutra within a milieu of intense religious and cultural experimentation, this volume unravels the sudden rise of Diamond Sutra devotion in the Tang dynasty against the backdrop of a range of social, political, and literary activities. Through the translation and exploration of a substantial body of narratives extolling the efficacy of the sutra, it explores the complex social history of lay Buddhism by focusing on how the laity might have conceived of the sutra and devoted themselves to it. Corroborated by various sources, it reveals the cult’s effect on medieval Chinese religiosity in the activities of an empowered laity, who modified and produced parasutraic texts, prompting the monastic establishment to accommodate to the changes they brought about.
How to realize Enlightenment Here & Now through anactive experience of Life?The Diamond Sutra bothcommented upon and noted in this book, as well asexplained with operative chapters, provides answers in apractical, usable way to this deep, intimate question.
One of the most popular scriptures, the Vajra Sutra explains how the Bodhisattva relies on the perfection of wisdom to teach and transform beings. Then Subhutti, upon hearing the Sutra spoken, and deeply understanding its purport, wept and said to the Buddha, "How rare, World Honored One, is this Sutra so profoundly spoken by the Buddha. From the time I obtained the Wisdom Eye until the present I have never before heard such a Sutra. World Honored One, if someone hears the Sutra with a pure heart of faith then he realizes the real mark. That person should be known to have accomplished the foremost and most rare merit and virtue."
Hui-neng (638–713) is perhaps the most beloved and respected figure in Zen Buddhism. An illiterate woodcutter who attained enlightenment in a flash, he became the Sixth Patriarch of Chinese Zen, and is regarded as the founder of the "Sudden Enlightenment" school. He is the supreme exemplar of the fact that neither education nor social background has any bearing on the attainment of enlightenment. This collection of his talks, also known as the Platform or Altar Sutra, is the only Zen record of its kind to be generally honored with the appellation sutra, or scripture. The Sutra of Hui-neng is here accompanied by Hui-neng's verse-by-verse commentary on the Diamond Sutra—in its very first published English translation ever.
This volume covers Chinese art during the reign of the Sui and Tang Dynasties during which the various disciplines of plastic and performing arts all entered a stage of unprecedented prosperity and development. It also traces new explorations in calligraphy, painting, and mural art and highlights architectural achievements during the historic period. A General History of Chinese Art comprises six volumes with a total of nine parts spanning from the Prehistoric Era until the 3rd year of Xuantong during the Qing Dynasty (1911). The work provides a comprehensive compilation of in-depth studies of the development of art throughout the subsequent reign of Chinese dynasties and explores the emergence of a wide range of artistic categories such as but not limited to music, dance, acrobatics, singing, story telling, painting, calligraphy, sculpture, architecture, and crafts. Unlike previous reference books, A General History of Chinese Art offers a broader overview of the notion of Chinese art by asserting a more diverse and less material understanding of arts, as has often been the case in Western scholarship.
Chinese Writing and the Rise of the Vernacular in East Asia is a wide-ranging study of vernacularization in East Asia--not only China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, but also societies that no longer exist, such as the Tangut and Khitan empires. Peter Kornicki takes the reader from the early centuries of the common era, when the Chinese script was the only form of writing and Chinese Buddhist, Confucian, and medical texts spread throughout East Asia, through the centuries when vernacular scripts evolved, right up to the end of the nineteenth century when nationalism created new roles for vernacular languages and vernacular scripts. Through an examination of oral approaches to Chinese texts, it shows how highly-valued Chinese texts came to be read through the prism of the vernaculars and ultimately to be translated. This long process has some parallels with vernacularization in Europe, but a crucial difference is that literary Chinese was, unlike Latin, not a spoken language. As a consequence, people who spoke different East Asian vernaculars had no means of communicating in speech, but they could communicate silently by means of written conversation in literary Chinese; a further consequence is that within each society Chinese texts assumed vernacular garb: in classes and lectures, Chinese texts were read and declaimed in the vernaculars. What happened in the nineteenth century and why are there still so many different scripts in East Asia? How and why were Chinese texts dethroned, and what replaced them? These are some of the questions addressed in Chinese Writing and the Rise of the Vernacular in East Asia.
