Purifying Zen : Watsuji Tetsuro's Shamon Dogen

by Tetsuro, Watsuji; Bein, Steve; Kasulis, Thomas P.

• ISBN13: 9780824835101
• ISBN10: 0824835107
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-07-31
• Publisher: Univ of Hawaii Pr

Summary

In 1223 the monk D?gen Kigen (1200-1253) came to the audacious conclusion that Japanese Buddhism had become hopelessly corrupt. He undertook a dangerous pilgrimage to China to bring back a purer form of Buddhism and went on to become one of the founders of S?t? Zen, still the largest Zen sect in Japan. Seven hundred years later, the philosopher Watsuji Tetsur? (1889-1960) also saw corruption in the Buddhism of his day. Watsuji's efforts to purify the religion sent him not across the seas but searching Japan's intellectual past, where he discovered writings by D?gen that had been hidden away by the monk's own sect. Watsuji later penned Shamon D?gen (D?gen the monk), which single-handedly rescued D?gen from the brink of obscurity, reintroducing Japan to its first great philosophical mind. Purifying Zen is the first English translation of Watsuji's landmark book. The work delves into the complexities of individuals in social relationships, lamenting the stark egoism and loneliness of life in an increasingly westernized Japan. In addition to an introduction that provides biographical details on Watsuji and D?gen, the translation is supplemented with a brief guide to the themes and ideas of Shamon D?gen, beginning with a consideration of the nature of faith and the role of responsibility in Watsuji's vision of D?gen's Zen.