Overview

In Reimagining Zen in a Secular Age André van der Braak offers an account of the exciting but also problematic encounter between enchanted Japanese Zen Buddhism and secular Western modernity over the past century, using Charles Taylor’s magnum opus A Secular Age as an interpretative lens. As the tenuous compromises of various forms of “Zen modernism” are breaking down today, new imaginings of Zen are urgently needed that go beyond both a Romantic mystical Zen and a secular “mindfulness” Zen. As a Zen scholar-practitioner, André van der Braak shows that the Zen philosophy of the 13th century Zen master Dōgen offers much resources for new hermeneutical, embodied, non-instrumental and communal approaches to contemporary Zen theory and practice in the West.

Full Product Details

Author:   André van der Braak
Publisher:   Brill
Imprint:   Brill
Volume:   64
Weight:   0.416kg
ISBN:  

9789004435070

ISBN 10:   9004435077
Pages:   260
Publication Date:   06 August 2020
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Available To Order  
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Table of Contents

 AcknowledgementsXI  Introduction  1 Beyond Buddhist Modernism  2 Reimagining Zen in the West  3 Cross-cultural Hermeneutics  4 A Secular Age  5 Outline of This Book Part 1: Zen and the Immanent Frame 1 Zen Transmissions and Reimaginings  1 Reimagining Indian Buddhism as Chinese Chan  1.1 Sudden Enlightenment versus Gradual Cultivation  1.2 Beyond Language versus within Language  1.3 Koan Practice versus Silent Illumination  2 Reimagining Chinese Chan as Japanese Zen  3 Zen Imaginings in the West  4 Discussion 2 A Secular Age  1 Introduction  2 Fullness  3 Beyond Subtraction Stories  4 Disenchantment  5 The Buffered Self  6 The Immanent Frame  7 A Three-Cornered Battle  8 Discussion 3 Cross Pressures in the Immanent Frame  1 The General Malaise of Immanence  2 Enlightenment as a New Form of Fullness  3 Disenchantment versus Re-enchantment  4 Beyond Transcendence and Immanence  5 Open versus Closed Zen Practice  6 Discussion Part 2: Zen Modernism 4 Universalization: Zen as Universal Mysticism  1 The Birth of Buddhism as a World Religion  2 Universal Zen  3 Pure Experience  4 Criticizing the Universality of Pure Experience  5 Against Perennialism: Criticism of Universal Mysticism  6 Zen as Non-mysticism  7 Back to Language: Dōgen’s Mystical Hermeneutics  8 Zen Meditation as Universal Dharma Practice  9 Discussion 5 Psychologization: The Zen Experience  1 Psychologization  2 Disenchanting the Bodhisattvas  3 Questioning the Zen Experience  4 Beyond Religious Experience  5 Going Beyond Excarnation and the Buffered Self  6 Dōgen’s Embodied Realization  7 Discussion 6 The Therapeutic Turn: Zen as Therapy  1 From Conversion to Healing  2 The Reaffirmation of Ordinary Life  3 Zen and the Affirmation of Ordinary Life  4 Dōgen on the Affirmation of Ordinary Life  5 The Medicalization of the Moral  6 Instrumentalization versus No Gain  7 Discussion 7 The Rise of Expressive Individualism: Zen as Global Spirituality  1 The Rise of Expressive Individualism  2 Personal Spirituality versus Communal Religious Practice  3 Religious Belonging  4 Zen Belonging in the West  5 Pure Zen versus Buddhist Zen  6 Zen Ritual as Communal Practice  7 Discussion Part 3: Beyond Zen Modernism 8 Batchelor’s Secular Buddhism  1 The Search for the Human Buddha  2 Beyond Karma  3 Reimagining Enlightenment  4 Discussion 9 Reimagining Emptiness: Toward a Subtler Language of Fullness  1 The Kyoto School  2 Śūnyatā as Zen Fullness  3 Nishitani and Śūnyatā201  4 Hisamatsu and Oriental Nothingness  5 Masao Abe  6 David Loy’s New Buddhist Path  7 Deconstructing Enlightenment: Beyond Transcendence and Immanence  8 Evolution: A New Enchanted Buddhist Worldview  9 Ethics: Reimagining the Bodhisattva Path  10 Discussion 10 Engaging Dōgen’s Zen  1 Back to Buddhist Scriptures  2 An Enchanted Zen  3 Zen Fullness as Ongoing Practice-Realization  4 From Individual Pure Zen to Communal Bodhisattva Zen  5 Dōgen’sShushōgi227  6 Repenting and Eliminating Bad Karma  7 Receiving Precepts and Joining the Ranks  8 Making the Vow to Benefit Beings  9 Discussion  10 The Future of Zen Literature Index

Reviews

Andre van der Braak's Reimagining Zen in a Secular Age is a provocative, deeply textured, and inspiring assessment of the possibilities of Zen practice in an increasingly secular epoch. Writing as a scholar-practitioner, the author confronts Charles Taylor's influential characterization of the fate of religious practice and attempts to move beyond it through a hermeneutical and cross cultural exercise in what is now sometimes called Buddhist critical-constructive reflection. In so doing, he lucidly reviews the history of the transmission of Buddhist practice to the West, the current impasse between its traditional teachers and scholarly skeptics, and then turns, with an eye trained on both the tradition and contemporary needs and opportunities, to new developments and directions, including the work of the Kyoto School, Stephen Batchelor, David Loy, and especially the promise latent in Dogen Zen. This work is a gift to scholars and practitioners alike. - Jason M. Wirth, Seattle University, author of Nietzsche and Other Buddhas. It is rare to find works on Zen Buddhism that effectively conjoin scholarship and the standpoint of practice. Reimagining Zen in a Secular Age is one of those rarities. Starting from the premise that the spread of Buddhism to the West is inevitably connected with modernism, Andre van der Braak's incisive study critically investigates the numerous underlying assumptions about modernism. Magisterially engaging philosophical perspectives ranging from the medieval Zen master Dogen to the contemporary hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Charles Taylor, this important book not only examines the philosophy of Zen through its various relations to other traditions and worldviews, it also opens up the theoretical aspects of Zen to the fundamental nonthinking dimension of practice. - Shudo Brian Schroeder, Professor and Chair, Department of Philosophy, Rochester Institute of Technology.

"Andr� van der Braak's Reimagining Zen in a Secular Age is a provocative, deeply textured, and inspiring assessment of the possibilities of Zen practice in an increasingly secular epoch. Writing as a scholar-practitioner, the author confronts Charles Taylor's influential characterization of the fate of religious practice and attempts to move beyond it through a hermeneutical and cross cultural exercise in what is now sometimes called ""Buddhist critical-constructive reflection."" In so doing, he lucidly reviews the history of the transmission of Buddhist practice to the West, the current impasse between its traditional teachers and scholarly skeptics, and then turns, with an eye trained on both the tradition and contemporary needs and opportunities, to new developments and directions, including the work of the Kyoto School, Stephen Batchelor, David Loy, and especially the promise latent in Dōgen Zen. This work is a gift to scholars and practitioners alike. - Jason M. Wirth, Seattle University, author of Nietzsche and Other Buddhas. It is rare to find works on Zen Buddhism that effectively conjoin scholarship and the standpoint of practice. Reimagining Zen in a Secular Age is one of those rarities. Starting from the premise that the spread of Buddhism to the West is inevitably connected with modernism, Andr� van der Braak's incisive study critically investigates the numerous underlying assumptions about modernism. Magisterially engaging philosophical perspectives ranging from the medieval Zen master Dōgen to the contemporary hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Charles Taylor, this important book not only examines the philosophy of Zen through its various relations to other traditions and worldviews, it also opens up the theoretical aspects of Zen to the fundamental nonthinking dimension of practice. - Shūdō Brian Schroeder, Professor and Chair, Department of Philosophy, Rochester Institute of Technology."

Author Information

André van der Braak, Ph.D. (2004), Radboud University Nijmegen, is Professor of Buddhist Philosophy in Dialogue with other World Views at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He published various monographs and articles including Nietzsche and Zen: Self-Overcoming without a Self (Lexington, 2011).

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