zen skin,zen marrow by steven heine - terebess.hu

1、Zen Skin, Zen Marrow Will the Real Zen Buddhism Please Stand Up?STEVEN HEINEOxford University Press. New York. 2008.http://www.questia.com/read/121531242/zen-skin-zen-marrow-will-the-real-zen-buddhism http://books.google

2、.hu/books?id=33ymadXmyRkC&printsec=frontcover&hl=hu&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false PrefaceThe idea and inspiration for this book came to me while I was presiding at a panel at

3、a national conference dealing with applications of Zen Buddhist and other forms of East Asian thought to the realm of ethics. As the presider, my role was simply to announce and to keep time for the presenters and to

4、moderate the discussion part of the session. The panelists gave outstanding presentations on how traditional Zen thought was highly appropriate and adaptable to the relativism of the postmodern world and to environmen

5、talism in an era experiencing the threat of global warming, etc. After a little over two hours of lectures and response by the discussant, I opened up the panel for questions from the floor after observing a very atte

6、ntive and patient audience, most of whom had stayed in the room for the entire session (rather than the usual coming and going).The first question came from a scholar known as a harsh critic of the behavior of some as

7、pects of the Zen institution, who challenged just about everything the main speakers had been saying. Here, I thought, was a moment either of great intellectual challenge and debate or of embarrassment in that one sid

8、e of the argument, representing a defense of Zen, or the other side, representing a critique, would easily put away the other party’s claims. However, I was quickly surprised to see that neither of these options was a

9、ctually the case. Instead, the conversation deteriorated into an instance of two parties talking past each other. A couple of speakers responded by denying the validity of the question by maintaining that they were fo

10、cusing on theory rather than practice, and to be fair to them it became clear that the inquirer was repeating verbiage used in other contexts and had not tried to adjust his query to what had been presented during the

11、 panel. In short, neither side tried to engage the other in a stimulating, thought-provoking roundtable. Instead, there was a I Fore Play The Relativity of Truth and Uncertainty of MethodWar: What Is It Good For?In rece

12、nt years, the history and thought of Zen Buddhism has been examined and dissected from critical perspectives which use a variety of methodologies to probe and undermine the traditional self-definition and thereby crea

13、te significant discussion and debate about what constitutes the “real” Zen. In the current environment of controversy and contest, it is fair to say that nearly everyone agrees that Zen is generally rather sorely misu

14、nderstood and is in desperate need of clarification, although this situation is not necessarily unusual or surprising, given the problematic field of studies of the Orient. Because of the legacies of colonialism and R

15、omanticism that affect diverse Western intellectual endeavors, various forms of Buddhism along with more general cultural arenas in the East have been misappropriated repeatedly, and from different angles, as part of

16、the phenomenon of Orientalism.1The Battle over OrientalismFrom the standpoint of identifying and deconstructing the roots and effects of Orientalism as initiated by Edward Said and carried out in diverse permutations b

17、y dozens of other scholars, Western discourse is often criticized for stereotyping Oriental culture based on thinly disguised imperialist, hegemonic agendas.2 The colonial West has portrayed the East as a Hades on ear

18、th, an inferior and fearsome realm of moral decay and a degree of social degeneracy reaching nearly apocalyptic proportions, or as a yellow peril badly in need of being dominated by a more rational and ethical civiliz

19、ation.3 Conversely, a product of Romanticism is the seemingly opposite pattern of thought known as reverse Orientalism (or Occidentalism), whereby the stereotyping is inverted to assert the superiority of the Orient.4

20、 From this standpoint, Asia is depicted as a blissful Shangri-la, or a serene and beatific land of transcendental lotus eaters dwelling in a romanticized image of perfection and offering solace and a possible cure for

21、 the world’s problems. Or, as in the case of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, based on a story by Pierre Loti, and its many variations, there seems to be a bit of the worst of both elements. In a land of charming, graceful

22、—yet complacent and compliant—women, an exotic and erotic, but subservient and wholly submissive Japanese bride is led to a tragic suicide when she discovers that she has been betrayed by her coarse, indifferent, and

23、patronizing American husband.As part of the vacillation between the extreme views of condemnation and praise, which share an unwillingness to deal realistically or forthrightly with the East and a propensity to view it