Zen Buddhism: A History : India and China With a New Supplement on the Northern School of Chinese Zen (Nanzan Studies in Religion and Culture)
by Heinrich Dumoulin
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Book Summary Information
Author: Heinrich DumoulinEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1994-11
ISBN: 0028971094
Number of pages: 386
Publisher: MacMillan Publishing Company
Book Reviews of Zen Buddhism: A History : India and China With a New Supplement on the Northern School of Chinese Zen (Nanzan Studies in Religion and Culture)
Book Review: Formidable
Summary: 5 Stars
A detailed survey that begins in India with the historic Buddha, Sakyamuni, and finishes with the decline of Zen in China. The amount of detail would be overwhelming if Dumoulin hadn't digested it so well and hadn't written so well. Packed no only with historical events and persons, there are many observations and insights that reveal not only how Zen developed but the extent of diversity and challenges within it.
There were some highlights for me: the roots of Zen in yoga (hence the emphasis on the lotus pose for zazen), the importance of the Mahayana sutras with all the work to translate them into Chinese, the interplay of Buddhism with Taoism in China that led to Zen, the persecution of Buddhism in China that only Zen and Pure Land survived, and the settling down into the methods of regular zazen and koan practice. The differing views on enlightenment and other key Buddhist concepts as well as on meditation practice reveals that Zen was ever exploratory and many things to many of its masters and those who followed them.
Remarkably NeoConfucianism eventually gathered strength so as to be able to successfully pushed Zen into decline. This volume closes with Chinese Zen in a decline from which it never recovered. Dumoulin explains how NeoConfucianist scholars were able to weaken the hold of Zen upon the Chinese such that Zen only was able to progress outside of China. Thar Zen later prospered in Japan did not lead to its rehabiilation within China so one is left wondering if Japanese Zen largely succeeded due to not facing a NeoConfucian challenge within Japan: all the more reason to read carefully Dumoulin's history of why Zen declined in China. I find it impossible to wonder if Japanese Zen, however much it flourished there, did so to some extent by avoiding the challenges that Zen faced in China. Any such questions may be answered by a careful reading of both this Volume 1 and the companion but consensus seem less to be found than a struggle by many that shaped the tradition without bringing it closure.
Zen Buddhism, Volume 2: A History (Japan) (Treasures of the World's Religions)
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