ASIAN 4405 - [Zen Buddhism: Experience and Ideology]

(crosslisted)
(also RELST 4405) @# (CA-AS)

Spring. 4 credits. Letter grades only.

Next offered 2012–2013.

J.M. Law.

This course is an exploration of the Zen tradition, with a core focus on central religious, historical and aesthetic developments in Japan. We rely on both primary sources in translation and secondary sources by scholars in the academic study of religion and Buddhist Studies. Following a warm up by reading perhaps the most classic text on Zen for an American audience, the course gets started by situating the rise of the Ch’an tradition in China and the development of the Northern and Southern Schools, reading primary sources in translation. In Japan, we look at the establishment of Zen in the Kamakura period, focusing on the developments of both Rinzai and Soto Zen, and the early transmissions of Chinese texts and practices to Japan through Japanese emissaries. To understand the developments of these two schools, we will study the lives and writings of both Eisai (1146-1215) and Dôgen (1200-1253), and also explore how their life works and writings influenced later developments in Zen. We will also explore the work of the Tokugawa Zen figure Hakuin (1686-1769), through a focus on several of his key works, and his vision of Zen reform. In the latter part of the class, we will study the ways in which Zen has become implicated in Japanese postwar identity discourses, by focusing on a critical reading of the writings of D.T. Suzuki and other writings which create an aestheticism as a central component of Japanese national identity. Finally direct spiritual cultivation) has rooted itself in American soil. Our course will include a fieldtrip to one of the largest Zen monasteries in North America, within three hours of Ithaca. (RL)