[.ca] Pruning the Bodhi Tree: The Storm Over Critical Buddhism (ISBN 082481908X)

Philosophical candy, metaphysical indigestion.:
I agree with every sentence of acmuller's review. However, this collection of essays can hardly be appreciated without having read "The Awakening of Mahayana Faith", translated by D.T. Suzuki in 1900. This difficult text attempted to re-introduce Indian concepts to Chinese Buddhism, which had become loaded with Confucian and Taoist ideas. "Pruning" works at trying to untangle the resulting mess of metaphysical contradictions and their (apparent) consequences. Fun reading, but my time spent on these two books would have been more constructively applied on my meditation cushion. My final conclusion is that the entire discourse plows into matters that The Buddha repeatedly treated with silence. The redeeming value of "Pruning" is that it demonstrates the value and methods of modern scholarship in the never-ending process of developing Right View in our practice.

A must-read for students of Buddhist philosophy.:
Although Buddhist thought is ostensibly grounded in a refusal to admit the reality of underlying, permanent "essences," such as a self (atman), the Buddhist tradition has continually struggled against the re-emergence of atman-like concepts in other forms. This tendency has been noted in the context of the notions of Tathagatagarbha and Buddha-nature, which came to hold great sway in East Asian Buddhism. The question is, does the appearance of such concepts represent a real break from the orthodox Buddhist tradition? Or does the East Asian tradition possess its own paradigms that allow such concepts to operate in an acceptably Buddhist manner? The editors have here selected a number of articles by leading Buddhist scholars treating this issue from various angles--an unusual treat for scholars of Buddhist thought. Please read this work for yourself, and take the chance to form your own views on this seminal problematic Buddhist issue. by Charles Muller, author of "The Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment