Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism (Studies in East Asian Buddhism)
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press; Univ of Hawaii Pr
Published: October 1999
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 544
ISBN-13: 9780824820268
Subjects: Asian / Middle Eastern history: c 500 to c 1500; Buddhism; Philosophy of religion; Social history; Japan; Religion; Religion - World Religions; History; Buddhahood; Buddhism - General; 1185-1600; Doctrines; Tendai (Sect)
Description: "Original enlightenment thought (hongaku shiso) dominated Buddhist intellectual circles throughout Japan's medieval period. Enlightenment, this discourse claims, is neither a goal to be achieved nor a potential to be realized but the true status of all things."--BOOK JACKET.

"Jacqueline Stone's study moves beyond the treatment of the original enlightenment doctrine as abstract philosophy to explore its historical dimension. Drawing on a wealth of medieval primary sources and modern Japanese scholarship, it places this discourse in its ritual, institutional, and social contexts, illuminating its importance to the maintenance of traditions of lineage and the secret transmission of knowledge that characterized medieval Japanese elite culture.

It sheds new light on interpretive strategies employed in premodern Japanese Buddhist texts, an area that hitherto has received little attention."--BOOK JACKET.