Buddhist Literature as Philosophy Buddhist Philosophy as Literature

Can literature reveal reality? Is philosophical truth a literary artifice? How does the way we think affect what we can know? Buddhism has been grappling with these questions for centuries and this book attempts to answer them by exploring the relationship between literature and philosophy across the classical and contemporary Buddhist worlds of India Tibet China Japan Korea and North America. Written by leading scholars the book examines literary texts composed over two millennia ranging in form from lyric verse narrative poetry panegyric hymn and koan to novel hagiography (secret) autobiography autofiction treatise and sutra all in sustained conversation with topics in metaphysics ethics aesthetics and the philosophies of mind language literature and religion.. Interdisciplinary and cross-cultural this book deliberately works across and against the boundaries separating three mainstays of humanistic pursuit—literature philosophy and religion—by focusing on the multiple relationships at play between content and form in works drawn from a truly diverse range of philosophical schools literary genres religious cultures and historical eras. Overall the book calls into question the very ways in which we do philosophy study literature and think about religious texts. It shows that Buddhist thought provides sophisticated responses to some of the perennial problems regarding how we find create and apply meaning—on the page in the mind and throughout our lives.