Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. Small gift message in front. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> A serendipitous assignment by Midland Bank London to the bank’s Tokyo dealing room in 1989 was the means by which this patristically-trained investment banker was introduced for the first time to the world of Buddhism. Acquaintance with Zen came gradually and by a roundabout route but having encountered first the Heart Sutra I eventually stumbled upon Nishijima Roshi and his weekly lectures on Dogen. Moving to work for Temple University in Tokyo I was privileged to learn more about Zen from colleagues in Religious Studies espe- cially Steve Antinoff. There was not time then to follow up systematically the intriguing similarities I found in Buddhism and Zen in particular to the negative theology I had studied years before in Oxford; the present work is the fruition both of that time of discovery and of the opportunity afforded me by King Alfred’s College Winchester upon my return to the UK to carry out that systematic study. The work began then with a simple question: whether the apparent similarities in the way these two sets of very different religious texts make use of negative language are in fact merely apparent or whether there is some shared logic of negation between them; and if so what exactly that negation aims to achieve. The texts I wanted to study were the ones that already fascinated me: the works of Dionysius the Areopagite and of Dogen Zenji. But it quickly became clear that there was already a body of work on the negative ways of Zen and the Christian mystics a body of work which focused upon the medieval mystics Eckhart in particular; and that my own interest in the earlier Christian tradition might be able to add something of value to the existing debate. It also became clear that Maximus’ contribution to the development of Christian apophasis was not merely to ensure the survival of the Dionysian work but to add a distinctive vision of his own a vision that demanded equal treatment (LL)