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Mark Lussier, "Enlightenment
West and East, or An Introduction
to Romanticism and Buddhism"
Buddhism
emerged
into
European
consciousness
during
the
late
eighteenth
and
nineteenth
centuries,
a
temporal
period
long
associated
with
Romanticism.
The
historical
conditions
leading
to
this
emergence
were
rather
complex,
being
bound
up
with
both
colonialism
and
orientalism,
and
the
process
was
quite
gradual,
actually
unfolding
across
almost
two
hundred
years
of
encounters
and
engagements.
This
emergence
was
futher
complicated
by
the
inability
of
those
at
the
vanguard
of
early
contact
to
fully
distinguish "Buddhism" from "Hinduism," since
the
body
of
thought
and
practice
now
termed "Buddhism" had
been
virtually
eradicated
from
its
homeland
in
northern
India
and
since
the textual
body
of
the
dharma
was
dispersed
across
several
languages,
primarily
Pali,
Sanskrit,
and
Tibetan,
but
also
embedded
in
several
Chinese
dialects
as
well.
However,
once
British
colonial
authority
began
to
move
further
north
into
the
transhimalayan
regions
of
Nepal
and
Tibet,
and
once
the
development
of
linguistic
oprientalism
was
sufficiently
well-developed
to
recognize
the
importance
of
the
religion
of
the
Buddha,
the
necessary
elements
of
intellectual
information
were
in
place
to
assure
the
full
flowering
of
the
dharma
into
western
consciousness
during
the
last
half
of
the
nineteenth
century.
[go
to essay]
Louise Economides, "Blake,
Heidegger, Buddhism and
Deep Ecology"
This
article
engages
with
debates
regarding
Deep
Ecology,
especially
the
charge
that
this
branch
of
environmental
philosophy
constitutes
a
dangerously
Romantic
form
of
eco-fascism.
This
study
makes
a
case
for
the
necessity
of
Deep
Ecology's
challenge
to
anthropocentric
humanism,
while
acknowledging
the
risks
of
this
enterprise
from
an
historical
vantage
point.
Parallels
between
Deep
Ecology
and
Buddhism
are
examined
in
order
to
illuminate
non-occidental
sources
of
thought
which
influence
the
DEA
(Deep
Ecological
Approach).
Finally,
Deep
Ecology's
endebtedness
to
Romanticism—specifically
to
William
Blake
and
Martin
Heidegger's
phenomenology
of
poiesis—is
also
acknowledged,
but
in
a
manner
that
resists
a
reductive
interpretation
of
what
is
at
stake
in
these
discourses.
[go
to essay]
Timothy Morton, "Hegel on Buddhism"
Hegel
derived
his
understanding
of
Buddhism
from
a
particular
sect
of
Tibetan
Buddhism
which
emphasizes
the
notion
of
emptiness.
This
sect
had
recently
gained
political
power
in
Tibet
to
the
exclusion
of
other
legitimate
views
of
the
Dharma.
This
essay
demonstrates
the
signficance
of
Hegel's
misprision
of
Buddhism
for
his
thought
and
for
Western
philosophy
in
general.
In
particular,
Hegel
radically
misreads
Buddhist
meditation
as
an
immersion
in "self" ("Insichsein"),
and
construes
Buddhism
as
a
dangerous
feminine
principle,
either
too
sexual
or
strangely
asexual
or
autoerotic
(as
the
current
Pope
has also
stated).
Using
a
combination
of
Buddhist
scholarship
and
philosophy
and
deconstruction
(ways
of
analyzing
that
go
together
quite
well),
I
discover
a
fatal
and
phobic
fascination
with
Buddhism
in
Hegel's
thought,
a
fascination
which
leads
him
to
develop
the
idea
of "nothingness." "Nothingness" becomes
an
evocative
term
which
Western
philosphy
after
Hegel
will
try
to
include,
exclude
and
police
in
numerous
ways.
Most
recently,
the
systematic
and
shocking
(deliberate?)
misunderstandings
of
Buddhism
by
Slavoj
Zizek
have
been
based
on
this
idea
of
nothingness. "Hegel
on
Buddhism" shows
how
this
idea
is
nothing
more
than
a
paper
tiger,
a
construct
which
tells
us
more
about
Western
philosophy
than
it
does
about
Buddhism.
[go to essay]
John Rudy, "Shelley's
Golden Wind: Zen Harmonics
in A
Defence of Poetry and
"Ode
to the West Wind"
Early
in
his
Defence
of
Poetry,
Shelley
undertakes
to
define
art
in
relation
to
a "principle" of "harmony" that "acts
otherwise
than
in
the
lyre," the
Aeolian
image
he
deploys
to
explicate
his
thesis
that
poetry
is "the
expression
of
the Imagination" and
that
it
is "connate
with
the
origin
of
man." This
principle
of
harmony
undermines
all
notions
of
perspective
in
art,
all
presumptions
of
there
being
anything
like
a
separate
poetic
self
or
a
separate
cosmic
force
creative
in
itself
and
inaugural
of
human
productivity.
The
aesthetic
base
of
this
harmony,
if
it
can
be
said
to
have
a
base
at
all,
is
meditative
unfolding
rather
than
hermeneutic
perception.
Art
for
Shelley
is
a
journey
from
selfhood
(a
relational
mode
of
subject-object
dissociation)
to
full
personhood
(an
opening
process
aligned
with
interdependent
origination).
The
method
of
this
journey
is
not
self-affirmation
or
self-projection,
as
the
term "expression
of
the Imagination" may
imply,
but
self-emptying
exposure
to
a
prior
Buddhistic
oneness
with
all
beings,
an "origin" dislocated
in
time
and
space
yet
forever
emergent
in
the
moment
and
accessible
through
poetry
as
a
mode
of
spiritual
practice.
This
article
explores
the
theoretical
features,
the
practical
functions,
and
the
critical
implications
of
this "origin" through
a
Zen
Buddhist
reading
of
A
Defence
of
Poetry
and "Ode
to
the
West
Wind."
[go
to essay]
Dennis McCort, "Kafka
and the Coincidence of Opposites"
This
study
traces
the
age-old
mystical
idea
of
the
coincidence
of
opposites
through
Kafka's
short
fiction
as
well
as
through
his
letters
and
diaries.
Its
aim
is
to
demonstrate
convincingly
that
Kafka
was
first
and
foremost
a
spiritual
writer
who
composed
innumerable
variations
on
the
paradox
of
the
One
and/in
the
many
in
order
to
spark
in
his
reader
insight
into
the
mystery
of
Being.
Along
the
way,
I
allude
occasionally
to
the
kindred
paradoxical
wisdom
and
dark
humor
of
Zen
to
illuminate
Kafka's
parables.
All
in
all,
the
essay
constitutes
a
kind
of
cautionary
argument
against
current
cultural-constructivist
interpretations
that
mean
to
undermine
the
view
of
Kafka's
literary
sensibility
as
essentially
spiritual.
[go
to essay]
Norman Dubie, "Tantric
Master, Lord Marpa, Twice
Dreamt of the Prophet,
William Blake"
This poem, bringing together the two streams of Romanticism and Buddhism, was written at the request of the editor to be included with this volume. It reflects the poet's long-term engagement with Buddhist philosophy, and his practice in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.
[go
to poem]
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