Buddhism and postmodernity : Zen, Huayan, and the possibility of Buddhist postmodern ethics

Buddhism and Postmodernity is a response to some of the questions that have emerged in the process of Buddhism's encounters with modernity and the West. Jin Y. Park broadly outlines these questions as follows: first, why are the interpretations and evaluations of Buddhism so different in Europe (in the nineteenth century), in the United States (in the twentieth century), and in traditional Asia; second, why does Zen Buddhism, which offers a radically egalitarian vision, maintain a strongly authoritarian leadership; and third, what ethical paradigm can be drawn from the Buddhist-postmodern form of philosophy? Park argues that, as unrelated as these questions may seem, the issues that have generated them are related to perennial philosophical themes of identity, institutional power, and ethics, respectively. Each of these themes constitutes one section of Buddhism and Postmodernity. Park discusses the three issues in the book through the exploration of the Buddhist concepts of self and others, language and thinking, and universality and particularities. Most of this discussion is drawn from the East Asian Buddhist traditions of Zen and Huayan Buddhism in connection with the Continental philosophies of postmodernism, hermeneutics, and deconstruction. Self-critical from both the Buddhist and Western philosophical perspectives, Buddhism and Postmodernity points the reader toward a new understanding of Buddhist philosophy and offers a Buddhist-postmodern ethical paradigm that challenges normative ethics of metaphysical traditions. Cover 1 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Dedication Page 6 Table of Contents 8 Abbreviations 10 Acknowledgments 12 Introduction 14 Part I: Centripetality: Buddhism and Metaphysics 22 Chapter 1: The Silence of the Buddha 24 Chapter 2: Hegel and Buddhism 44 Chapter 3: The Logic of Nothing and A-Metaphysics 60 Part Two: Centrifugality: Language and Violence 78 Chapter 4: Language and Thinking: Subjectivity and Zen Huatou Meditation 80 Chapter 5: Thinking and Violence: Zen Hermeneutics 114 Chapter 6: Violence Institutionalized: The Social Dimension of Zen Language 134 Part Three: The Tension: Buddhism and The Politics of Postmodernity 158 Chapter 7: Modernity, Postmodernity, and the Question of Legitimation 160 Chapter 8: Postmodern Small Discourses and the Huayan World of Mutually Non-interfering Phenomena 174 Chapter 9: Envisioning Zen Ethics through Huayan Phenomenology 202 Chapter 10: The Ethics of Tension: Toward Buddhist-Postmodern Ethics 218 Notes 236 Glossary of Chinese Characters 264 Bibliography 268 Index 286 About the Author 296 Through a close analysis of Zen encounter dialogues (gong'ans) and Huayan Buddhist philosophy, Buddhism and the Politics of Postmodernity offers a new ethical paradigm for Buddhist-postmodern philosophy