|
|
|||
|
||||
OverviewWhile it has long been acknowledged that Chan differs in many ways from more mainstream forms of Buddhism, recent scholarship has also resulted in an increasing awareness of the originality of early Buddhist teachings found in the Nikayas and their distinctiveness from the later doctrine of classical Theravada. This book is inspired by passages in Nikaya and early Chan texts that can be read as expressing surprisingly similar and at the same time very unconventional ideas about meditation, consciousness, and reality. While due to their unorthodox character, these passages have often been ignored or explained away when studied in the context of just one tradition, the new perspective provided by their comparative analysis allows a more direct reading to be considered, thereby drawing out their radical implications. This book argues that the unconventional concepts found in Nikaya and early Chan texts are part of a unique and coherent meditative paradigm that is very different from the one commonly associated with Buddhism and dominant in its history. One of its central ideas is that certain crucial meditative states cannot be directly attained through methods involving acts of will and mental effort such as active concentration, but their occurrence is dependent on a specific way of life, state of mind and existential condition. To make better sense of Nikaya and early Chan views that are often at odds with commonly held beliefs about mental functioning and the structure of reality, and to assess their plausibility, they are compared with relevant developments in Western philosophy and cognitive science. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Grzegorz PolakPublisher: Equinox Publishing Ltd Imprint: Equinox Publishing Ltd Weight: 0.395kg ISBN: 9781800504240ISBN 10: 1800504241 Pages: 406 Publication Date: 15 June 2024 Audience: College/higher education , Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly Format: Hardback Publisher's Status: Forthcoming Availability: Not yet available This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon its release. Table of ContentsReviewsAuthor InformationGrzegorz Polak is an associate professor in the Institute of Philosophy at the Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin. His research interests include philosophical and meditative ideas of Nikaya Buddhism, early Chan, and comparative study of Buddhism and Western philosophy. He is the author of Reexamining Jhana: Towards a Critical Reconstruction of Early Buddhist Soteriology and several articles. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |