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Author Faure, Bernard.

Title Visions of power : imagining medieval Japanese Buddhism / Bernard Faure ; translated from the French by Phyllis Brooks
Published Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, [1996]
©1996

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Location Call no. Vol. Availability
 W'PONDS  294.3927 Fau/Vop  AVAILABLE
Description xvi, 329 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Contents Ch. 1. Autobiographical Imagination -- Ch. 2. Imagined Lineages -- Ch. 3. Imagining Powers -- Ch. 4. Mythical Imaginaire -- Ch. 5. Dreaming -- Ch. 6. Images of Death -- Ch. 7. Places of the Mind -- Ch. 8. The Ritual Body -- Ch. 9. The Power of Symbols -- Ch. 10. Iconic Imagination -- Ch. 11. Beyond Icons -- Epilogue: Imagination and Ideology
Summary Drawing on his own dreams to demonstrate that he possessed the magical authority that he felt to reside also in icons and relics, Keizan strove to use these "visions of power" to buttress his influence as a patriarch. To reveal the historical, institutional, ritual, and visionary elements in Keizan's life and thought and to compare these to Soto doctrine, Faure draws on largely neglected texts, particularly the Record of Tokoku (a chronicle that begins with Keizan's account of the origins of the first of the monasteries that he established) and the kirigami, or secret initiation documents
Continuing his efforts to look at Chan/Zen with a full array of postmodernist critical techniques, Faure now probes the imaginaire, or mental universe, of the Buddhist Soto Zen master Keizan Jokin (1268-1325). Although Faure's new book may be read at one level as an intellectual biography, Keizan is portrayed here less as an original thinker than as a representative of his culture and an example of the paradoxes of the Soto school. The Chan/Zen doctrine that he avowed was allegedly reasonable and demythologizing, but he lived in a psychological world that was just as imbued with the marvelous as was that of his contemporary Dante Alighieri
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages [299]-321) and index
Subject Keizan, 1268-1325.
SÅtÅshÅ« -- Rituals
Sōtōshū -- Rituals.
Buddhist art and symbolism -- Japan.
LC no. 95037197
ISBN 0691037582 (acid-free paper)
Other Titles Fragments de l'imaginaire bouddhique. English