Book Reviews

MEDITATION IN ACTION by Chogyam Trungpa.

(Stuart and Watkins. 15s.).

Review by J. C. Cooper.

Source: Studies in Comparative Religion, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Winter, 1970) © World Wisdom, Inc.
www.studiesincomparativereligion.com

The size of this book of seventy-four pages is in inverse proportion to its importance and value. Being a transcription from tape-recorded lectures its message is conveyed more in the spoken than the written style, but the appearance of simplicity is deceptive; there is profound teaching in these pages, in fact as little, or as much, as the understanding and perception of the reader himself can bring to them.

Stress is laid on the Buddhist teaching of the necessity of experience of truth, rather than mere learning from books and teachers or indulging in useless speculation. Books and an educational system condition our minds as to "what to think, rather than to do real research from within ourselves". We need "to get beyond the pattern of mental concepts we have formed; not that this implies a drastic abandonment of these concepts, but, instead, to "go through" them to an understanding of them and oneself.

There is a full and felicitous use of allegory and parable which brings home the point as only these methods can. For example there is the story of the woman who, suffering from hunger, followed the Buddha for food. Buddha insisted that she should first learn to refuse the food offered, and in the difficulty of this act "she realized that the real hunger inside her was the desire to own, grasp, possess and want". What better introduction to the doctrine of Buddhism could there be than this apparently simple parable?

In these days of so much pinchbeck Hindu and Buddhist writing, it is a relief and a privilege to be given the real gold.

aya
in Islam, a “sign” or “mark” of Allah’s existence or power, especially a miracle; also refers to a "verse" of the Koran

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idea
in non-technical use the term refers to the visual aspect of anything; for Plato and Platonists, it is the highest noetic entity, the eternal unchanging Form, the archetype of the manifested material thing; in Plato, idea is a synonim of eidos, but in Neoplatonism these two terms have a slightly different meaning.

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mana

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Maya
"artifice, illusion"; in Advaita Vedānta, the beguiling concealment of Brahma in the form or under the appearance of a lower reality.

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philosophy
love of wisdom; the intellectual and ‘erotic’ path which leads to virtue and knowledge; the term itself perhaps is coined by Pythagoras; the Hellenic philosophia is a prolongation, modification and ‘modernization’ of the Egyptian and Near Eastern sapiential ways of life; philosophia cannot be reduced to philosophical discourse; for Aristotle, metaphysics is prote philosophia, or theologike, but philosophy as theoria means dedication to the bios theoretikos, the life of contemplation – thus the philosophical life means the participation in the divine and the actualization of the divine in the human through the personal askesis and inner transformation; Plato defines philosophy as a training for death ( Phaed.67cd); the Platonic philosophia helps the soul to become aware of its own immateriality, it liberates from passions and strips away everything that is not truly itself; for Plotinus, philosophy does not wish only ‘to be a discourse about objects, be they even the highest, but it wishes actually to lead the soul to a living, concrete union with the Intellect and the Good’; in the late Neoplatonism, the ineffable theurgy is regarded as the culmination of philosophy.

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Amida Buddha
The Buddha of Eternal Life and Infinite Light; according to the Pure Land teaching the Buddha who has established the way to Enlightenment for ordinary people; based on his forty-eight Vows and the recitation of his name Namu-Amida-Butsu one expresses devotion and gratitude.

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birth in the Pure Land
"Symbolic expression for the transcendence of delusion. While such a birth was thought to come after death in traditional Pure Land thought, Shinran spoke of its realization here and now; for example he states, ‘although my defiled body remains in samsara, my mind and heart play in the Pure Land.’" ( Taitetsu Unno, taken from his Key Terms of Shin Buddhism, in the essay (contained in this volume) entitled, "The Practice of Jodo-shinshu.")

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Bodhisattva
Literally, "enlightenment-being;" in Mahāyāna Buddhism, one who postpones his own final enlightenment and entry into Nirvāṇa in order to aid all other sentient beings in their quest for Buddhahood.

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Honen
Founder of the independent school of Pure Land (Jodo) Buddhism in Japan. He maintained that the traditional monastic practices were not effective in the Last Age (mappo) nor universal for all people, as intended by Amida’s Vow. He incurred opposition from the establishment Buddhism and went into exile with several disciples, including Shinran. His major treatise, which was a manifesto of his teaching, was Senchaku hongan nembutsu shu (Treatise on the Nembutsu of the Select Primal Vow, abbreviated to Senchakushu).

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Jodo
(A) Japanese term for "Pure Land." Though all Buddhas have their Pure Lands, the Land of Amida Buddha became the most well-known and desired in China and Japan because of its comprehensive nature, its popular propagation, and its ease of entry through recitation of his Name. (B) "pure land"; the untainted, transcendent realm created by the Buddha Amida (Amitabha in Sanskrit), into which his devotees aspire to be born in their next life.

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nembutsu
(A) "The practice of reciting Namu-Amida-Butsu (the Name of Amida) is known as recitative nembutsu. There is also meditative nembutsu, which is a method of contemplation. Nembutsu is used synonymously with myogo, or the Name." (Unno) (B) "remembrance or mindfulness of the Buddha," based upon the repeated invocation of his Name; same as buddhānusmriti in Sanskrit and nien-fo in Chinese.

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nirvana
In Buddhism (and Hinduism), ultimate liberation from samsara (the cycles of rebirths or the flow of cosmic manifestation), resulting in absorption in the Absolute; the extinction of the fires of passion and the resulting, supremely blissful state of liberation from attachment and egoism.

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Pure Land
"Translation from the Chinese ching-t’u (jodo in Japanese). The term as such is not found in Sanskrit, the closest being the phrase ‘purification of the Buddha Land.’ Shinran describes it as the ‘Land of Immeasurable Light,’ referring not to a place that emanates light, but a realization whenever one is illumined by the light of compassion." (Unno)

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Shinran
Shinran (1173-1262): attributed founder of the Jodo Shin school of Buddhism.

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sutra
Literally, "thread;" a Hindu or Buddhist sacred text; in Hinduism, any short, aphoristic verse or collection of verses, often elliptical in style; in Buddhism, a collection of the discourses of the Buddha.

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Tradition
(as the term is used by "Traditionalists" and in the "Perennial Philosopy":) Divine Revelation and the unfolding and development of its sacred content, in time and space, such that the forms of society and civilization maintain a "vertical" connection to the meta-historical, transcendental substance from which revelation itself derives.

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adam
In Sufism this expression includes on the one hand the positive sense of non-manifestation, of a principial state beyond existence or even beyond Being, and on the other hand a negative sense of privation, of relative nothingness.

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Vasubandhu
In Shin Buddhism, the second great teacher in Shinran’s lineage. A major Mahayana teacher who laid the foundation of the Consciousness-Only school. In Pure Land tradition his commentary to the Larger Pure Land Sutra is a central text. To Zen Buddhism, he is the 21st Patriarch. Vasubandhu lived in fourth or fifth century (C.E.) India.

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zazen
a Japanese word used to describe sitting meditation practiced in Zen Buddhism.

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humanism
The intellectual viewpoint increasingly prevalent in the West since the time of the Renaissance; it replaced the traditional Christian view of God as the center of all things by a belief in man as the measure of all things.

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natura naturans
Literally, “nature naturing”; the active power that constitutes and governs the phenomena of the physical world.

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natura naturata
Literally, “nature natured”; the phenomena of the physical world considered as the effect of an inward and invisible power.

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psyche
(usually transcribed as psyche): soul; breath of life, life-stuff; Homer distinguishes between a free soul as a soul of the dead, corresponding with psuche (and still regarded as an eidolon), and body souls, corresponding with thumos, noos and menos: following the Egyptian theological patterns, the Pythagoreans constituted the psuche as the reflection of the unchanging and immortal principles; from Plato onwards, psuchai are no longer regarded as eidola, phantoms or doubles of the body, but rather the human body is viewed as the perishable simulacrum of an immaterial and immortal soul; there are different degrees of soul (or different souls), therefore anything that is alive has a soul (Aristotle De anima 414b32); in Phaedrus 248b the soul is regarded as something to be a separate, self-moving and immortal entity (cf.Proclus Elements of Theology 186); Psuche is the third hupostasis of Plotinus.

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Radhakrishnan
(1888 -1975 C.E.) An eminent Hindu philosopher and a prolific writer, who is known for interpreting Hinduism to the west.

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ratio
literally, "calculation"; the faculty of discursive thinking, to be distinguished from intellectus, "Intellect."

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Vedanta
"End or culmination of the Vedas," a designation for the Upanishads (Upaniṣāds) as the last portion ("end") of the Vedas; also one of the six orthodox (āstika) schools of Hindu philosophy who have their starting point in the texts of the Upanishads (Upaniṣāds), the Brahma-Sūtras (of Bādarāyana Vyāsa), and the Bhagavad Gītā ; over time, Vedānta crystallized into three distinct schools: Advaita (non-dualism), associated with Shankara (ca.788-820 C.E.); Viśiṣṭādvaita (qualified non-dualism), associated with Rāmānuja (ca.1055-1137 C.E.); and Dvaita (dualism), associated with Madhva (ca.1199-1278 C.E.); see "Advaita."

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