A Summary of The Sweet Dews of Ch'an This is a book about Meditation in various aspects, including fundamental principles, techniques, applications, and stages of advanced practice. First of all, it enunciates the Essentials of Ch'an Buddhist meditation in Chapter 1, followed by explicating some basic concepts and terms about meditation (Chapter 2). And then in Chapter 3 it goes on to delineate the Advanced Meditations, including 1. The Four Contemplations (i.e. the Contemplations on the Body, Sensations, Mind, and Dharma). 2. The Contemplation on the Four Elements (Earth, Water, Fire, and Air) 3. The Contemplation on the Mind. 4. The Contemplation on Buddha Nature. Chapter 4 presents the Five Flavors of Ch'an (i.e. the Five genres of meditation): e.g. (1) the Worldly Meditation, (2) Other Religion's Meditation, (3) Hinayana Ch'an, (4) Bodhisattva Ch'an, and (5) Tathagata Ch'an. In Chapter 5 it treats the Five Contemplations for Ceasing the Perturbed Mind: 1. Anapanasmrti (the Breath Contemplation) 2. The Contemplation on Uncleanliness 3. The Contemplation on the Twelve Causality Links 4. The Contemplation on Compassion 5. The Contemplation on Buddha's Merits. The above are the most important techniques in Buddhist Meditation. Then the following three chapters are the development of the 2nd item above; they are the Three Visualizations: 1. the Contemplation on Defilement (Chapter 6) 2. the Nine Visualizations on a Corpse (Chapter 7) 3. the White-Bone Visualization And then in Chapters 9 and 10, the Five Stages in Realizing Dhyana are depicted at length. These further include 3 steps: Step 1: to denounce the Five Desires Step 2: to renounce to Five Shrouds Step 3: to execute the Five Cultivations Finally, in the last chapter, it relates the legend of Running Meditation and the Incense Board. In fine, this book, though not really big in bulk, it virtually treats almost all the significant aspects that a serious practitioner needs to know concerning Buddhist meditation, both theoretically and practically, and it should be very helpful and informative as a personal practice guide book, or as a textbook or reference book for group practice.

Not everyone is fortunate enough to attend a meditation retreat with a Chan master, yet everyone can benefit from this handbook that explains the essential principals of chan meditation as taught by the late Tripitika Master Hsuan Hua, former instructor at Nan Hua Monastery in Canton, China, the bodhimanda of the Sixth Patriarch Hui Neng. Compiled from Chinese and translated into English, these talks span a 40 year period during retreats in China and America. Topics covered include - What are the benefits of meditation? - How do we sit in meditation? - What are the states of meditation? - How do we reach nirvana? - What is absolute enlightenment?

Japanese Zen often implies that textual learning (gakumon) in Buddhism and personal experience (taiken) in Zen are separate, but the career and writings of the Chinese Tang dynasty Chan master Guifeng Zongmi (780-841) undermine this division. For the first time in English, Jeffrey Broughton presents an annotated translation of Zongmi's magnum opus, the Chan Prolegomenon, along with translations of his Chan Letter and Chan Notes. The Chan Prolegomenon persuasively argues that Chan "axiom realizations" are identical to the teachings embedded in canonical word and that one who transmits Chan must use the sutras and treatises as a standard. Japanese Rinzai Zen has, since the Edo period, marginalized the sutra-based Chan of the Chan Prolegomenon and its successor text, the Mind Mirror (Zongjinglu) of Yongming Yanshou (904-976). This book contains the first in-depth treatment in English of the neglected Mind Mirror, positioning it as a restatement of Zongmi's work for a Song dynasty audience. The ideas and models of the Chan Prolegomenon, often disseminated in East Asia through the conduit of the Mind Mirror, were highly influential in the Chan traditions of Song and Ming China, Korea from the late Koryo onward, and Kamakura-Muromachi Japan. In addition, Tangut-language translations of Zongmi's Chan Prolegomenon and Chan Letter constitute the very basis of the Chan tradition of the state of Xixia. As Broughton shows, the sutra-based Chan of Zongmi and Yanshou was much more normative in the East Asian world than previously believed, and readers who seek a deeper, more complete understanding of the Chan tradition will experience a surprising reorientation in this book.

Yongming Yanshou ranks among the great figures of the Chinese and East Asian Buddhist tradition. His main work, the one-hundred fascicle Zongjing lu (Records of the Source-Mirror), is regularly cited but has been subjected to little systematic investigation. Through a vivid reconstruction of the environment in which Yanshou lived and wrote, Welter aims to prove that Yanshou's conception of Chan was a vital contribution to the determination of Chan's future direction. Welter also draws evidence from the Zongjing lu's record of Chan master's teaching fragments, an important but frequently overlooked early source. This book provides thorough documentation and analysis of the Chan master's teaching fragments in the Zongjing lu.

Cultivating the Empty Field is a modern translation of the core of Chinese Ch'an master Hongzhi's Extensive Record. First to articulate the meditation method known to contemporary Zen practitioners as shikantaza ("just sitting") Chinese Zen master Hongzhi is one of the most influential poets in all of Zen literature. This translation of Hongzhi's poetry, the only such volume available in English, treats readers to his profound wisdom and beautiful literary gift. In addition to dozens of Hongshi's religious poems, translator Daniel Leighton offers an extended introduction, placing the master's work in its historical context , as well as lineage charts and other information about the Chinese influence on Japanese Soto Zen. Both spiritual literature and meditation instruction, Cultivating the Empty Field is sure to inspire and delight.

The seventeenth century is generally acknowledged as one of the most politically tumultuous but culturally creative periods of late imperial Chinese history. Scholars have noted the profound effect on, and literary responses to, the fall of the Ming on the male literati elite. Also of great interest is the remarkable emergence beginning in the late Ming of educated women as readers and, more importantly, writers. Only recently beginning to be explored, however, are such seventeenth-century religious phenomena as "the reinvention" of Chan Buddhism—a concerted effort to revive what were believed to be the traditional teachings, texts, and practices of "classical" Chan. And, until now, the role played by women in these religious developments has hardly been noted at all. Eminent Nuns is an innovative interdisciplinary work that brings together several of these important seventeenth-century trends. Although Buddhist nuns have been a continuous presence in Chinese culture since early medieval times and the subject of numerous scholarly studies, this book is one of the first not only to provide a detailed view of their activities at one particular moment in time, but also to be based largely on the writings and self-representations of Buddhist nuns themselves. This perspective is made possible by the preservation of collections of "discourse records" (yulu) of seven officially designated female Chan masters in a seventeenth-century printing of the Chinese Buddhist Canon rarely used in English-language scholarship. The collections contain records of religious sermons and exchanges, letters, prose pieces, and poems, as well as biographical and autobiographical accounts of various kinds. Supplemental sources by Chan monks and male literati from the same region and period make a detailed re-creation of the lives of these eminent nuns possible. Beata Grant brings to her study background in Chinese literature, Chinese Buddhism, and Chinese women’s studies. She is able to place the seven women, all of whom were active in Jiangnan, in their historical, religious, and cultural contexts, while allowing them, through her skillful translations, to speak in their own voices. Together these women offer an important, but until now virtually unexplored, perspective on seventeenth-century China, the history of female monasticism in China, and the contributionof Buddhist nuns to the history of Chinese women’s writing.

As the first systematic attempt to probe the linguistic strategies of Daoist Zhuangzi and Chan Buddhism, this book investigates three areas: deconstructive strategy, liminology of language, and indirect communication. It bases these investigations on the critical examination of original texts, placing them strictly within soteriological contexts. Whilst focusing on language use, the study also reveals some important truths about these two traditions and challenges many conventional understandings of them. Responding to recent critiques of Daoist and Chan Buddhist thought, it brings these two traditions into a constructive dialogue with contemporary philosophical reflection. It discovers Zhuangzian and Chan perspectives and sheds light on issues such as the relationship between philosophy and non-philosophy, de-reification of words, relativising the limit of language, structure of indirect communication, and use of paradox, tautology and poetic language.

Chan has a long tradition of the gongan, the direct and often humorous stories of the enlightened conversations between Buddhist practitioners. In Chan Heart, Chan Art, Venerable Master Hsing Yun retells one hundred classic gongans in approachable and lively prose. Each gongan is complimented by a striking painting done in the classical Chan style by the renowned husband and wife team of Gao Ertai and Pu Xiaoyu. Winner of Foreword Magazine's 2007 Book of the Year Award for Religious Fiction, this handsome volume is perfect for lovers of quiet solemnity and sublime beauty alike.