Looks at a variety of Buddhist sacred writings as literature and includes insights from literary theory.

Introduces Paramānand, one of India’s poet-saints, his work, and this work’s use in ritual.

Using the life and work of influential Chinese writer Guo Moruo (1892–1978), reflects on China’s encounters with modernity, Communism, and capitalism.

Contemporary critical theory is brought to the consideration of caste in the Pañcatantra, one of the best-known cycles of Indian tales.

A study of the seminal Tibetan Buddhist work, Gateway to Learning.

Explores the issue of the perfectibility of nature in philosophy, psychology, and a variety of world religions.

Takes the reader on a pilgrimage to Mount Kōya, the holy Buddhist mountain in Japan.

Brings Asian theories of consciousness into dialogue with Western psychotherapeutic practices.

A comprehensive study of the Hongzhou school of Chan Buddhism, long regarded as the Golden Age of this tradition, using many previously ignored texts, including stele inscriptions.

Explores the ritual practice of Buddhist preaching.

Examines the practice of relic veneration in a variety of forms of Buddhism.

Explores the practice of taking ritual vows in South Asia, a lay tradition prevalent in the region’s religions.

Looks at the contributions of a major figure in Buddhism and provides translations of his writings.

A fascinating look at a Zen convent throughout its history.

Explores a wide range of Confucian-based cultures of authority in China.

A Hindu bioethics of reproductive technology that references the Mahābhārata.

Explores how the flood myths of early China provided a template for that society’s major social and political institutions.

Explores the rewriting of early Chinese texts in the wake of new archaeological evidence.

Shows how the emerging Chinese empire purposely reconceived but was also constrained by basic spatial units such as the body, the household, the region, and the world.

Discusses interpretations of the Yijing (the I Ching or Book of Changes) during the Northern Song period and how these illuminate the momentous changes in Chinese society during this era.

A new reading of Daoism, arguing that it originated in a particular textual tradition distinct from Confucianism and other philosophical traditions of early China.

A new interpretation of the Confucian classic, the Mencius, based on both traditional sources and newly discovered documents.

Explores deep sleep (susupti), one of the three states of consciousness in Advaita Vedanta, and the major role it plays in this philosophy.

A wonderful new translation of the poetry of Basho—Zen monk, poet of nature, and master of the haiku form.

Presents the various religious approaches to Yoga described by Haribhadra, the eighth-century sage, who held a universal view of religion. Includes a translation of his original text on Yoga.

Presents wide-ranging and up-to-date interpretations of the Zhuangzi, the Daoist classic and one of the most elusive works ever written.

Explores proper timing and the arts of rulership in the work that inspired China's first emperor.

A concise guide to the key practice systems of the East Asian Meditational schools Ch'an, Son, and Zen.

Using a wide variety of original sources, this book examines how and why early Taoists carried out such ascetic practices as fasting, celibacy, sleep deprivation, and wilderness seclusion.

Enlarges our understanding of Jainism, one of the oldest yet least-studied of the world's living religions, by challenging the standard scholarly portraits of both Jains and South Asian religion and culture.

Provides many new translations of original texts formative of Mahayana concepts of Enlightenment and resolves the 1200-year-old controversy between Indian and Tibetan views of the meaning of buddhahood.

Describes the historical background and philosophy of the reform-minded, eighteenth-century Korean thinker, Chong Yagyong.

This new and revised edition provides a comprehensive dictionary of Indian philosophical terms. Terms are provided in both devanagari and roman transliteration along with their English translations.

Liberating Intimacy dramatically reevaluates the teachings and practice of Ch'an Buddhism. Considering Buddha's insight that everything is empty or absent of a permanent and independent "self nature," ...

Presents a complete, annotated translation of Dogen's writing on Zen monasticism and the spirit of community practice. Dogen (1200-1253) is Japan's greatest Zen master.

Enlarges our understanding of the term "scripture" through a comparative study of Veda and Torah.

This is a study of the most significant debate in Korean Neo-Confucianism between the two most eminent Neo-Confucian thinkers, summarizing their philosophies and providing refreshing insights into Confucian language and culture.

This book clarifies the relationship between God and the creation for Gaudapada, Bhartrhari, and Shankara, and by doing so, demonstrates a major continuity of thought from Gaudapada through Bhartrhari to Abhinavagupta and Kashmir Shaivism.

This book presents a wide range of information about Ganapati or Ganesh, the Hindu Lord of Beginnings, the Remover of Obstacles, the Keeper of the Threshold, and the Master of the Mind. He is elephant-headed, plump, and loveable, but who is he really?

Utpaladeva's poetry serves, and has for a thousand years served, as a guidebook for the spiritual path, providing words to express the otherwise ineffable experiences of personal transformation.

This is the first English translation of the earliest Chinese Buddhist text, but it is more than a translation. Keenan shows that Mou-tzu's Treatise on Alleviating Doubt is a Buddhist hermeneutic on the ...

In India, religion continues to be an absolutely vital source for social as well as personal identity. All manner of groups--political, occupational, and social--remain grounded in specific religious ...

Taking language as its general theme, this book explores how the tradition of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist philosophical speculation exemplifies the character of scholasticism.

Scholasticism, as an abstract ...

This book is an annotated translation, with introduction and commentary, of the correspondence between Yi Hwang (T'oegye, 1500-1570) and Ki Taesung (Kobong, 1527-1572) and between Yi I (Yulgok, 1536-1584) ...

Religious discourse uses ordinary language in an extraordinary way. This book surveys Western and Indian discussions of the nature and aspects of religious discourse. It presents the first cross-cultural ...

This book is a sequel to Self as Body in Asian Theory and Practice (SUNY, 1992) and anticipates a third book, Self as Image in Asian Theory and Practice. In order to address issues as diverse as the promotion ...

Composed in 2 B. C., as "The I Ching revised and enlarged," The Elemental Changes is a divination manual providing a clear method for distinguishing alternative courses of action. Structured in 81 tetragrams ...

This book has three major goals in critically examining the historical and philosophical relation between the writings of Dōgen and the Zen koan tradition. First, it introduces and evaluates recent Japanese ...

This basic guide and resource book targets four fields—religious studies, history, world literature, and ethnic or migration studies—in which Sikhism is now receiving greater attention. The authors ...

In this volume, leading American, European, and Indian scholars including John E. Cort, Friedhelm Hardy, Padmanabh S. Jaini, Laurie L. Patton, A. K. Ramanujan, Velcheru Narayana Rao, and David Shulman ...

This is the best introduction to Vedanta and to Śaṅkara's philosophy. The Upadeśasāhasrī, or A Thousand Teachings consists of a metrical part and a prose part. In the metrical part, Sankara discusses ...

In this new translation and commentary, LaFargue interprets the concept of "Tao" in the Tao Te Ching as a spiritual state of mind cultivated in a particular school in ancient China‚ a state of mind ...

Nishida Kitaro's reformulation of the major issues of Western philosophy from a Zen standpoint of "absolute nothingness" and "absolutely contradictory self-identity" represents the boldest speculative ...