Scholarship Corner: Chán Buddhism in Dūnhuáng and Beyond

Part of the issue in studying Zen is the copyright wall between the internet and academia. This copyright wall undoubtedly contributes to the ongoing belief by people outside Buddhist academia that "Zen is meditation" when the non-sectarian consensus is "nope, not ever":

The [Dogenism] school holds that shikantaza [Zazen] originated in China and was transmitted to the founder of [Dogenism], Dōgen Kigen 道元希玄 (1200–1253), by his Chinese teacher Tiantong Rujing 天童如淨 (1163–1228). However, the term shikantaza does not appear in surviving Chinese documents, and most nonsectarian scholars now approach [Zazen] “simply sitting” as a Japanese innovation... (Sharf, Mindfulness and Mindlessness in Early Chan, 2014)

In today's Scholarship Corner, a new book by the now infamous Christopher Anderl of Patriarchs Hall fame:

Chán Buddhism in Dūnhuáng and Beyond: A Study of Manuscripts, Texts, and Contexts, 2021

Table of Contents

Introduction: Chán Buddhism in an Inter-religious and Cross-linguistic Perspective * Christoph Anderl

1. Early Chán Revisited: A Critical Reading of Dàoxuān’s Hagiographies of Bodhidharma, Huìkě and Their Associates
   • John Jorgensen
2. Northern Chán and the Siddhaṃ Songs
   • Christoph Anderl and Henrik H. Sørensen
3. The Old Uigur Translation of the Siddhaṃ Songs
   • Peter Zieme
4. Reconsidering Tibetan Chán
   • Sam van Schaik
5. The Great Master Tōnglǐ: The Texts by a Liáo Buddhist Master among the Khara-Khoto Findings
   • Kirill Solonin
6. The Meeting and Conflation of Chán and Esoteric Buddhism during the Táng
   • Henrik H. Sørensen
7. Buddhist-Daoist Interaction as Creative Dialogue: The Mind and Dào in Twofold Mystery Teaching
   • Friederike Assandri
8. John R. McRae: A Bibliography
   • Compiled by Christian Wittern and Christoph Anderl

Talking Points:

1. Some new names
2. Some new admissions which will likely revise the narrative about what exactly "Zen" is, including the "attributing" of some texts.
   • Discussion of texts attributed to the Patriarchs
3. Some new admissions about the 4 statements
   • Pushes the 4 statements back, at least in part, to 690 CE
   • Thatkir brought this to my attention, a great late addition to https://www.mediafire.com/file/zyjh8kpb7akwjyw/The+Four+Statements+of+Zen+by+ewk.pdf/file
4. Second Patriarch arm chopping figures in... in full support of the "Bandit Theory"! Plus a second guy gets his arm chopped off, and the two guys w/o arms argue about it.
5. There's likely more... but I already have a job.

Submitted June 29, 2022 at 08:57AM by ewk https://ift.tt/Htp6Uub