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The Secrets of Buddhist Meditation

2021-01-31
The Secrets of Buddhist Meditation

Author: Eric M. Greene

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

ISBN: 9780824886868

Category: Religion

Page: 385

View: 633

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In the early 400s, numerous Indian and Central Asian Buddhist “meditation masters” (chanshi) traveled to China, where they established the first enduring traditions of Buddhist meditation practice in East Asia. The forms of contemplative practice that these missionaries brought with them, and which their Chinese students further developed, remained for several centuries the basic understanding of “meditation” (chan) in China. Although modern scholars and readers have long been familiar with the approaches to meditation of the Chan (Zen) School that later became so popular throughout East Asia, these earlier and in some ways more pervasive forms of practice have long been overlooked or ignored. This volume presents a comprehensive study of the content and historical formation, as well as complete English translations, of two of the most influential manuals in which these approaches to Buddhist meditation are discussed: the Scripture on the Secret Essential Methods of Chan (Chan Essentials) and the Secret Methods for Curing Chan Sickness (Methods for Curing). Translated here into English for the first time, these documents reveal a distinctly visionary form of Buddhist meditation whose goal is the acquisition of concrete, symbolic visions attesting to the practitioner’s purity and progress toward liberation. Both texts are “apocryphal” scriptures: Taking the form of Indian Buddhist sutras translated into Chinese, they were in fact new compositions, written or at least assembled in China in the first half of the fifth century. Though written in China, their historical significance extends beyond the East Asian context as they are among the earliest written sources anywhere to record certain kinds of information about Buddhist meditation that hitherto had been the preserve of oral tradition and personal initiation. To this extent they indeed divulge, as their titles claim, the “secrets” of Buddhist meditation. Through them, we witness a culture of Buddhist meditation that has remained largely unknown but which for many centuries was widely shared across North India, Central Asia, and China.

The Secrets of Tantric Buddhism

2015-02-01
The Secrets of Tantric Buddhism

Author:

Publisher: Weiser Books

ISBN: 9781609259631

Category: Religion

Page: 256

View: 989

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Unlocking the secrets of Tantra—one of the most alluring forms of Buddhism Often misunderstood, Tantrism focuses on a particular style of meditation and ritual. Having far more to do with the sacred than the sexual, Tantric Buddhism is believed to have originated around the 5th Century AD in the rich cultural basin of Bengal and spread throughout the Asian world. Today it is widely practiced in Tibet, Japan, and the West. The Secrets of Tantric Buddhism presents accessible translations of 46 classic texts found in the Carya-Giti, a collection of teachings by more than twenty famous Siddhas, or Tantric adepts, who lived during the illustrious Pala dynasty of the 10th and 11th centuries. Renowned translator and scholar Thomas Cleary unlocks the mysteries of these texts and provides commentary for each that explains the ancient teachings in a way that makes them seem fresh and contemporary. These teachings emanate from one of the most dynamic sources of Buddhism, at the height of its religious development. They are completely nonsectarian and will be greeted enthusiastically by those interested in spirituality, world religions, and classic Buddhism.

The Secrets of Chinese Meditation

1969
The Secrets of Chinese Meditation

Author: K'Uan Lu Yu

Publisher:

ISBN: UVA:X002742808

Category: Body, Mind & Spirit

Page: 260

View: 571

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The Secrets of Chinese Meditation is a classic text that presents a rare opportunity: a chance to study the ancient and original sources which are the basis for most contemporary texts on consciousness development. Lu K'uaan Yu is one of the foremost interpreters of Chinese meditation practices. This concise volume is a presentation of different methods of meditation as practiced in China, including extracts from ancient and modern classics as well as practiced and detailed suggestions for meditation. Meditation is crucial for the development of consciousness, and the Taoist art of controlling the breath is a prerequisite for training in the martial arts. The Secrets of Chinese Meditation provides students with practical instructions for controlling the breath and calming the mind- the foundation of self-realization. The way to consciousness will be different for all individuals. This classic work is a source book that encourages you to knowledgeably choose the way most useful to your chosen path.

Secrets of Meditation

2012-09-04
Secrets of Meditation

Author: Davidji

Publisher: Hay House, Inc

ISBN: 9781401940317

Category: Self-Help

Page: 240

View: 310

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For thousands of years, people have tried to tap into the stillness and silence that rests within to discover their deeper selves. In Secrets of Meditation, davidji takes you there, demystifying the practice along the way and guiding you on an epic journey into your own consciousness. Whether you are new to meditation, a “crisis meditator”, or someone who has been meditating for years, this book will take your practice, and your life, to the next level. In this insightful book, davidji shares his own journey along his path to awakening and examines the positive impact that meditation can have on your physical health, relationships, emotional well-being, and spiritual life. As the secrets to an effortless meditation practice are revealed, you will unlock the door to your own personal journey and discover what is actually supposed to happen when you close your eyes. davidji shares the wisdom of the ages in an accessible and entertaining style —loosening rigid commandments, revealing the five greatest myths of meditation, and illuminating the most powerful rituals to weave a regular practice into your day. Secrets of Meditation will have you meditating in minutes and living a happier, easier, and more fulfilling life.

A Global History of Buddhism and Medicine

2022-02-01
A Global History of Buddhism and Medicine

Author: C. Pierce Salguero

Publisher: Columbia University Press

ISBN: 9780231546072

Category: Religion

Page:

View: 805

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Medicine, health, and healing have been central to Buddhism since its origins. Long before the global popularity of mindfulness and meditation, Buddhism provided cultures around the world with conceptual tools to understand illness as well as a range of therapies and interventions for care of the sick. Today, Buddhist traditions, healers, and institutions continue to exert a tangible influence on medical care in societies both inside and outside Asia, including in the areas of mental health, biomedicine, and even in responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the global history of the relationship between Buddhism and medicine remains largely untold. This book is a wide-ranging and accessible account of the interplay between Buddhism and medicine over the past two and a half millennia. C. Pierce Salguero traces the intertwining threads linking ideas, practices, and texts from many different times and places. He shows that Buddhism has played a crucial role in cross-cultural medical exchange globally and that Buddhist knowledge formed the nucleus for many types of traditional practices that still thrive today throughout Asia. Although Buddhist medicine has always been embedded in local contexts and differs markedly across cultures, Salguero identifies key patterns that have persisted throughout this long history. This book will be informative and invaluable for scholars, students, and practitioners of both Buddhism and complementary and alternative medicine.

Chan Before Chan

2021-01-31
Chan Before Chan

Author: Eric M. Greene

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

ISBN: 9780824886875

Category: Religion

Page: 337

View: 421

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What is Buddhist meditation? What is going on—and what should be going on—behind the closed or lowered eyelids of the Buddha or Buddhist adept seated in meditation? And in what ways and to what ends have the answers to these questions mattered for Buddhists themselves? Focusing on early medieval China, this book takes up these questions through a cultural history of the earliest traditions of Buddhist meditation (chan), before the rise of the Chan (Zen) School in the eighth century. In sharp contrast to what would become typical in the later Chan School, early Chinese Buddhists approached the ancient Buddhist practice of meditation primarily as a way of gaining access to a world of enigmatic but potentially meaningful visionary experiences. In Chan Before Chan, Eric Greene brings this approach to meditation to life with a focus on how medieval Chinese Buddhists interpreted their own and others’ visionary experiences and the nature of the authority they ascribed to them. Drawing from hagiography, ritual manuals, material culture, and the many hitherto rarely studied meditation manuals translated from Indic sources into Chinese or composed in China in the 400s, Greene argues that during this era meditation and the mastery of meditation came for the first time to occupy a real place in the Chinese Buddhist social world. Heirs to wider traditions that had been shared across India and Central Asia, early medieval Chinese Buddhists conceived of “chan” as something that would produce a special state of visionary sensitivity. The concrete visionary experiences that resulted from meditation were understood as things that could then be interpreted, by a qualified master, as indicative of the mediator’s purity or impurity. Buddhist meditation, though an elite discipline that only a small number of Chinese Buddhists themselves undertook, was thus in practice and in theory constitutively integrated into the cultic worlds of divination and “repentance” (chanhui) that were so important within the medieval Chinese religious world as a whole.

Craving and Salvation

1983
Craving and Salvation

Author: Bruce Matthews

Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press

ISBN: 9780889201477

Category: Philosophy

Page: 153

View: 759

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Is there any escape form the awareness of pain and the bonds of an unending cycle of life? Why are human subject to craving" What is the nature human beings? The Buddhist understanding of salvation is based upon such queries. A thorough grasp of the function of craving in religious life is strategic to an understanding of Buddhism, yet its role in the Buddhist plan of salvation is easy to oversimplify and misinterpret. Matthews examines the concept of craving in Buddhism from both a phenomenological and religious perspective. He btings to the task a critical examination of key canonical texts of the Sutta Pitaka (Nikayas) as well as extensive travel in research of the meaning of craving for contemporary Buddhists, from learned monks to lay villagers. Having established the Buddhist perspective on how craving arises, how it affects the mind, and how it can be redirected, the volume concludes with spiritual implications of craving: crucial to awareness and freedom--emancipation--is the engagement and harnessing rather than suppression of craving. The volume will be of interest to students of Buddhism, historians of religion, and persons interested in basic human questions.

The Secrets Of Optimal Well-being

2021-03-23
The Secrets Of Optimal Well-being

Author: Tana Rion

Publisher:

ISBN: 9798727078488

Category:

Page: 206

View: 227

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How do you feel about your life today? Are you living every day in excitement? Do you love what you're doing? Do you look forward to what's coming up next? Are you living your best life? If your answer to any of the above is a no, maybe, or not sure, that means you're not living your life to the fullest. This really shouldn't be the case, because your life experience is yours to create. Why settle for anything less than what you can get? You deserve nothing but the best. In this book, you will learn: How to meditate -- from instructions for the absolute beginner to techniques for deep states of ecstasy and awakening How to eat the optimally healthy diet for both physical and mental health How to train the attention span so you can be focused and efficient all day long How to exercise so that is fun, enjoyable, and something you look forward to How to get rid of the habit of negative thinking in just one week How to live like a caveman in the modern world in order to get the most out of your genetics How to properly go to the bathroom (Yes, you have been doing it wrong) And much, much, more..

Routledge Handbook of Chinese Medicine

2022-06-20
Routledge Handbook of Chinese Medicine

Author: Vivienne Lo

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

ISBN: 9781135008970

Category: History

Page: 796

View: 199

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The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Medicine is an extensive, interdisciplinary guide to the nature of traditional medicine and healing in the Chinese cultural region, and its plural epistemologies. Established experts and the next generation of scholars interpret the ways in which Chinese medicine has been understood and portrayed from the beginning of the empire (third century BCE) to the globalisation of Chinese products and practices in the present day, taking in subjects from ancient medical writings to therapeutic movement, to talismans for healing and traditional medicines that have inspired global solutions to contemporary epidemics. The volume is divided into seven parts: Longue Durée and Formation of Institutions and Traditions Sickness and Healing Food and Sex Spiritual and Orthodox Religious Practices The World of Sinographic Medicine Wider Diasporas Negotiating Modernity This handbook therefore introduces the broad range of ideas and techniques that comprise pre-modern medicine in China, and the historiographical and ethnographic approaches that have illuminated them. It will prove a useful resource to students and scholars of Chinese studies, and the history of medicine and anthropology. It will also be of interest to practitioners, patients and specialists wishing to refresh their knowledge with the latest developments in the field. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha

2020-01-20
Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha

Author: Daniel Ingram

Publisher: Aeon Books

ISBN: 9781780498157

Category: Body, Mind & Spirit

Page: 715

View: 984

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The very idea that the teachings can be mastered will arouse controversy within Buddhist circles. Even so, Ingram insists that enlightenment is an attainable goal, once our fanciful notions of it are stripped away, and we have learned to use meditation as a method for examining reality rather than an opportunity to wallow in self-absorbed mind-noise. Ingram sets out concisely the difference between concentration-based and insight (vipassana) meditation; he provides example practices; and most importantly he presents detailed maps of the states of mind we are likely to encounter, and the stages we must negotiate as we move through clearly-defined cycles of insight. Its easy to feel overawed, at first, by Ingram's assurance and ease in the higher levels of consciousness, but consistently he writes as a down-to-earth and compassionate guide, and to the practitioner willing to commit themselves this is a glittering gift of a book.In this new edition of the bestselling book, the author rearranges, revises and expands upon the original material, as well as adding new sections that bring further clarity to his ideas.