The Monastery of Jade Mountain

The Monastery of Jade Mountain PDF Author: Peter Goullart
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description

The Monastery of Jade Mountain

The Monastery of Jade Mountain PDF Author: Peter Goullart
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Get Book Here

Book Description


Jade Mountains and Cinnabar Pools

Jade Mountains and Cinnabar Pools PDF Author: James M. Hargett
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295744480
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
First-hand accounts of travel provide windows into places unknown to the reader, or new ways of seeing familiar places. In Jade Mountains and Cinnabar Pools, the first book-length treatment in English of Chinese travel literature (youji), James M. Hargett identifies and examines core works in the genre, from the Six Dynasties period (220–581), when its essential characteristics emerged, to its florescence in the late Ming dynasty (1368–1644). He traces the dynamic process through which the genre, most of which was written by scholars and officials, developed, and shows that key features include a journey toward an identifiable place; essay or diary format; description of places, phenomena, and conditions, accompanied by authorial observations, comments, and even personal feelings; inclusion of sensory details; and narration of movement through space and time. Travel literature’s inclusion of a variety of writing styles and purposes has made it hard to delineate. Hargett finds, however, that classic pieces of Chinese travel literature reveal much about the author, his values, and his view of the world, which in turn tells us about the author’s society, making travel literature a rich source of historical information.

The Taoist Experience

The Taoist Experience PDF Author: Livia Kohn
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791415795
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
Containing sixty translations from a large variety of texts, this is an accessible yet thorough introduction to the major concepts, doctrines, and practices of Taoism. It presents the philosophy, rituals, and health techniques of the ancients as well as the practices and ideas of Taoists today. Divided into four sections, it follows the Taoist Path: The Tao, Long Life, Eternal Vision, and Immortality. It shows how the world of the Tao is perceived from within the tradition, what fervent Taoists did, and how practitioners saw their path and goals. The Taoist Experience is unique in that it presents the whole of Taoist tradition in the very words of its active practitioners. It conveys not only a sense of the depth of the Taoist religious experience but also of the underlying unity of the various schools and strands.

The Haunted Monastery

The Haunted Monastery PDF Author: Robert van Gulik
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226849082
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Judge Dee and his entourage, seeking refuge from a mountain storm, become trapped in a Taoist monastery, where the Abbott Jade mysteriously dies after delivering an ecstatic sermon. The monks call it a supernatural experience, but the judge calls it murder. Recalling the allegedly accidental deaths of three young women in the same monastery, Judge Dee seeks clues in the eyes of a cat to solve cases of impersonation and murder. A painting by one of the victims reveals the truth about the killings, propelling the judge on a quest for justice and revenge. "Entertaining, instructive, and impressive."—Times Literary Supplement

Adventures with the Buddha

Adventures with the Buddha PDF Author: Jeffery Paine
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393059069
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
Paine has assembled the adventures of nine Westerners in a book that yields an understanding of Buddhism, not by its metaphysics or rituals, but through real characters and true stories as dramatic as those in the most imaginative novel.

Guan Yu

Guan Yu PDF Author: Barend J. ter Haar
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192525433
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
Guan Yu was a minor general in the early third century CE, who supported one of numerous claimants to the throne. He was captured and executed by enemy forces in 219. He eventually became one the most popular and influential deities of imperial China under the name Lord Guan or Emperor Guan, of the same importance as the Buddhist bodhisattva Guanyin. This is a study of his cult, but also of the tremendous power of oral culture in a world where writing became increasingly important. In this study, we follow the rise of the deity through his earliest stage as a hungry ghost, his subsequent adoption by a prominent Buddhist monastery during the Tang (617-907) as its miraculous supporter, and his recruitment by Daoist ritual specialists during the Song dynasty (960-1276) as an exorcist general. He was subsequently known as a rain god, a protector against demons and barbarians, and, eventually, a moral paragon and almost messianic saviour. Throughout his divine life, the physical prowess of the deity, more specifically Lord Guan's ability to use violent action for doing good, remained an essential dimension of his image. Most research ascribes a decisive role in the rise of his cult to the literary traditions of the Three Kingdoms, best known from the famous novel by this name. This book argues that the cult arose from oral culture and spread first and foremost as an oral practice.

East-West Exchange and Late Modernism

East-West Exchange and Late Modernism PDF Author: Zhaoming Qian
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813940680
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
In East-West Exchange and Late Modernism, Zhaoming Qian examines the nature and extent of Asian influence on some of the literary masterpieces of Western late modernism. Focusing on the poets William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, and Ezra Pound, Qian relates captivating stories about their interactions with Chinese artists and scholars and shows how these cross-cultural encounters helped ignite a return to their early experimental modes. Qian’s sinuous readings of the three modernists’ last books of verse—Williams’s Pictures from Brueghel (1962), Moore’s Tell Me, Tell Me (1966), and Pound’s Drafts and Fragments of Cantos CX-CXVII (1969)—expand our understanding of late modernism by bringing into focus its heightened attention to meaning in space, its obsession with imaginative sensibility, and its increased respect for harmony between humanity and nature.

Asceticism

Asceticism PDF Author: Vincent L. Wimbush
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198034512
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 678

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Book Description
From meditation and fasting to celibacy and anchoritism, the ascetic impulse has been an enduring and complex phenomenon throughout history. Offering a sweeping view of this elusive and controversial aspect of religious life and culture, Asceticism looks at the ascetic impulse from a unique vantage point. Cross-cultural, cross-religious, and multidisciplinary in nature, these essays provide a broad historical and comparative perspective on asceticism--a subject rarely studied outside the context of individual religious traditions. The work represents the input of more than forty preeminent scholars in a wide range of fields and disciplines, and analyzes asceticism from antiquity to the present in European, Near Eastern, African, Asian, and North American settings. Asceticism is organized around four major themes that cut across religious traditions: origins and meanings of asceticism, which explores the motivations and impulses behind ascetic behaviors; hermeneutics of asceticism, which looks at texts and rhetorics and their presuppositions; aesthetics of asceticism, which documents responses evoked by ascetic impulses and practices, as well as the arts of ascetic practices themselves; and politics of asceticism, which analyzes the power dynamics of asceticism, especially as regards gender, cultural, and ethnic differences. Critical responses to the major papers ensure the focus upon the themes and unify the discussion. Two general addresses on broad philosophical and historical-interpretive issues suggest the importance of the subject of asceticism for wide-ranging but serious cultural-critical discussions. An Appendix, Ascetica Miscellanea, includes six short papers on provocative topics not related to the four major themes, and a panel discussion on the practices and meanings of asceticism in contemporary religious life and culture. A selected bibliography and an index are also included. The only comprehensive reference work on asceticism with a multicultural, multireligious, and multidisciplinary perspective, Asceticism offers a model not only for an understanding of a most important dimension of religious life, but also for future interdisciplinary study in general.

Modernism Revisited

Modernism Revisited PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9401204888
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
Offering essays from some of the leading academic writers and younger scholars in the field of American studies from both the United States and Europe, this volume constitutes a rich and varied reconsideration of Modernist American poetry. Its contributions fall into two general categories: new and original discussions of many of the principal figures of the movement (Frost, Pound, Eliot, Williams, Cummings and Stevens) and reflections on the phenomenon of Modernism within a broader cultural context (the influence of Haiku, parallels and connections with Surrealism, responses to the Modernist accomplishment by later American poets). Because of its mixture of European and American perspectives, Modernism Revisited will be of vital interest to students and scholars of American literature and Modernism in general and of twentieth-century comparative literature and art.

Burmese Supernaturalism

Burmese Supernaturalism PDF Author:
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 9781412819015
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
Though the people of Burma, now called Myanmar, are formally Buddhist, their folk religion a type of animism or supernaturalism is so unlike classical Buddhism that it seems contradictory. For years scholars of religion and anthropology have debated the questions: Do these folk beliefs make up a separate religious system? Or is there a subtle merging of supernaturalism and Buddhism, a kind of syncretism? In either case, how exactly does folk religion fit into the overall religious pattern? Melford Spiro's Burmese Supernaturalism has been one of the major works in this debate, both for its position on the "two religions" question and for its arguments concerning the psychological basis of religion. The book begins with an introduction to the study of supernaturalism. The next section of the work covers various types of supernaturalism, including witches, ghost, and demons. Other areas of discussion include supernaturally caused illness and its treatment, the shaman, the exorcist, and the relationship between supernaturalism and Buddhism. In the introduction to this expanded edition Spiro further develops the underlying logic of his argument and evaluates the most recent contributions to the field of the anthropology of religion. Burmese Supernaturalism is an intriguing study and will provide insightful reading for anthropologists, sociologists, theologians, as well as those interested in supernaturalism in Burma (Myanmar) and other cultures. Melford E. Spiro is professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of California, San Diego, where he founded the Anthropology Department in 1968. His other works include Gender and Culture, Oedipus in the Trobriands, and Culture and Human Nature.