“The Place of Multiple Meanings”: The Dragon Daughter Rereads the Lotus Sutra

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Keller
Keyword(s):  
Lotus Sutra ◽  
Multiple Meanings ◽  
Sentient Beings ◽  
The Buddha

This chapter examines the Lotus Sutra, a 2,000-year-old sutra recognized by the Chinese Buddhist master Zhi Yi as the ultimate teaching of the Tiantai lineage. Lotus Sutra announces the true dharma of compassion to all sentient beings, as distinguished from the inferior dharma of mere personal liberation. The compassion is boundless, infinite, encompassing all beings, all worlds, in their fathomless multiplicity. The Buddha of Lotus Sutra declares the Dharma of Innumerable Meanings. The chapter shows that the means of Lotus Sutra epitomize entangled difference: the buddhas “know that nothing exists independently/And that buddha-seeds arise interdependently.” It also considers how these far-flung intercarnations give rise to some unexpectedly current entanglements.

The Graciousness of the Buddha to Sentient Beings

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chamnong Kanthik ◽  
Sudaporn Khiewngamdee
Keyword(s):  
Sentient Beings ◽  
The Buddha

The Graciousness of the Buddha to Sentient Beings

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 333-341
Author(s):  
Chamnong Kanthik ◽  
Sudaporn Khiewngamdee
Keyword(s):  
Sentient Beings ◽  
The Buddha

Curing Diseases of Belief and Desire: Buddhist Philosophical Therapy

2010 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 187-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Burton
Keyword(s):  
Medical Diagnosis ◽  
Mental Illnesses ◽  
Therapeutic Regimen ◽  
Doctor Who ◽  
The Third ◽  
Sentient Beings ◽  
The Buddha

It seems uncontroversial that Buddhism is therapeutic in intent. The word ‘therapy’ is often used, however, to denote methods of treating medically defined mental illnesses, while in the Buddhist context it refers to the treatment of deep-seated dissatisfaction and confusion that, it is claimed, afflict us all. The Buddha is likened to a doctor who offers a medicine to cure the spiritual ills of the suffering world. In the Pāli scriptures, one of the epithets of the Buddha is ‘the Great Physician’ and the therapeutic regimen or healing treatment is his teaching, the Dhamma. This metaphor is continued in later literature, most famously in the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka Sūtra, where the Buddha is said to be like a benevolent doctor who attempts to administer appropriate medicine to his sons. In the Mahāyāna pantheon, one of the most popular of the celestial Buddhas is Bhaiṣajyaguru, the master of healing, who is believed to offer cures for both the spiritual and more mundane ailments of sentient beings. The four truths, possibly the most pervasive of all Buddhist teachings, are expressed in the form of a medical diagnosis. The first truth, that there is suffering (dukkha), is the diagnosis of the disease. The second truth, that suffering arises from a cause (or causes), seeks to identify the root source of the disease. The third truth, that suffering can be ended, is a prognosis that the disease is curable. The fourth truth describes the path to end suffering, and is the prescription of treatment.

scholarly journals Filial Piety with a Zen Twist: Universalism and Particularism Surrounding the Sutra on the Difficulty of Reciprocating the Kindness of Parents

2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-62
Author(s):  
Michel Mohr
Keyword(s):  
Filial Piety ◽  
True Nature ◽  
Tokugawa Period ◽  
Sentient Beings ◽  
The Buddha ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract This article examines the Sutra on the Difficulty of Reciprocating the Kindness of Parents and its reinterpretation by the Japanese Rinzai Zen monk Tōrei Enji 東嶺圓慈 (1721-1792). In the context of the Tokugawa period (1600-1867) where filial piety was upheld as one of the pillars of morality and Neo-confucian orthodoxy, Tōrei’s commentary of this sutra skillfully combined the particularist understanding of filiality as limited to one’s relatives with its broader construal as a universal attitude of reverence directed toward all sentient beings. The father is envisioned as the wisdom and the excellence of the Buddha, the mother as the compassionate vows of the Bodhisattva, and the children as those who emit the thought of awakening. Tōrei further pushed this interpretation by adding the distinct Zen idea that the initial insight into one’s true nature needs to be surpassed and refined by perfecting the going beyond (kōjō 向上) phase of training, where the child/disciple’s legacy and his indebtedness towards his spiritual mentors is recast in terms of overcoming one’s attainments and attachment to them.

Scenes from the Lotus Sutra. An Old Uygur Temple Banner with Cartouche Inscriptions

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-19
Author(s):  
Peter Zieme ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Text ◽  
Lotus Sutra ◽  
The Buddha ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Temple

The temple banner IB 4781 of the former Ethnological Museum in Berlin (today: Hermitage Museum ВД 585) originates from Qočo (Dakianusšahri: afterwards D 222). A. Grünwedel gave its detailed description, but after his publication in 1905 it remained more or less untouched. The picture is based on an overall composition in which individual passages from the sutra have been integrated. The groups of figures arranged in the cloud scenes were examined in detail in Grünwedel's description. They are mostly bodhisattvas. In depicting the figures sitting around the Buddhas the painter has included figures seen from behind, so that one can correctly imagine a circle, which of course should indicate that all the figures are concentrated on the Buddha. The 10 text cartouches contain quotations in Old Uygur based on the Chinese text of the Lotus sutra. They are read here for the first time. In the paper these cartouche texts are studied as well as the names of the donors on the bottom of the temple banner.

Buddhist concept of emptiness

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Williams
Keyword(s):  
Tibetan Buddhism ◽  
Ultimate Truth ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Sentient Beings ◽  
The Buddha ◽  
The Way

‘Emptiness’ or ‘voidness’ is an expression used in Buddhist thought primarily to mark a distinction between the way things appear to be and the way they actually are, together with attendant attitudes which are held to be spiritually beneficial. It indicates a distinction between appearance and reality, where the paradigm for that distinction is ‘x is empty (śūnya) of y’, and emptiness (śūnyatā) is either the fact of x’s being empty of y or the actual absence itself as a quality of x. It thus becomes an expression for the ultimate truth, the final way of things. Śūnya is also a term which can be used in the nontechnical contexts of, for example, ‘The pot is empty of water’. These terms, however, are not univocal in Buddhist thought. If x is empty of y, what this means will depend upon what is substituted for ‘x’ and ‘y’. In particular, any simplistic understanding of ‘emptiness’ as the Buddhist term for the Absolute, approached through a sort of via negativa, would be quite misleading. We should distinguish here perhaps four main uses of ‘empty’ and ‘emptiness’: (1) all sentient beings are empty of a Self or anything pertaining to a Self; (2) all things, no matter what, are empty of their own inherent or intrinsic existence because they are all relative to causes and conditions, a view particularly associated with Nāgārjuna and the Mādhyamika school of Buddhism; (3) the flow of nondual consciousness is empty of hypostasized subject–object duality, the Yogācāra view; (4) the Buddha-nature which is within all sentient beings is intrinsically and primevally empty of all defilements, a notion much debated in Tibetan Buddhism.

Numinous Awareness Is Never Dark

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert E. Buswell Jr.
Keyword(s):  
Zen Buddhism ◽  
Extensive Study ◽  
Buddhist Literature ◽  
Buddhist Tradition ◽  
Korean Buddhism ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Gradual Development ◽  
Sentient Beings ◽  
The Buddha ◽  
Annotated Translation

Numinous Awareness is Never Dark examines the issue of whether enlightenment in Zen Buddhism is sudden or gradual: that is, something achieved in a sudden flash of insight, or through the gradual development of a sequential series of practices. In Excerpts, the Korean Zen master Chinul (1158-1210) offers one of the most thorough treatments of this “sudden/gradual issue” in all of premodern East Asian Buddhist literature, including extensive quotations from a wide range of his predecessors in Chinese and Korean Buddhism on the sudden/gradual issue. In Chinul’s analysis, enlightenment is actually both sudden and gradual: an initial sudden awakening to the numinous awareness, the buddha-nature, that is inherent in all sentient beings, followed by gradual cultivation that removes the deep-seated habitual proclivities of thought and conduct that continue to appear even after awakening. Chinul’s preferred approach of “sudden awakening/gradual cultivation” becomes emblematic of the subsequent Korean Buddhist tradition. In addition to an extensive study of the contours of the sudden/gradual debate in Buddhist thought and practice, the book also includes a complete, copiously annotated translation of Chinul’s magnum opus. In Buswell’s treatment, Chinul’s Excerpts emerges as the single most influential work ever written by a Korean Buddhist author.

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