The Nature and Rationale of Zen/Chan and Enlightenment: The Mind of a Pre-Natal Baby [Paperback]

Introduction: One Mans Journey to Zen/Chan  Chapter 1: A Paradigm Shift for Zen/Chan Studies  Chapter 2: Is Zen/Chan a Mysterium Ineffabile?  Chapter 3: Is Zen/Chan a School of Buddhism?  Chapter 4: What Is the Authentic Nature of Chan School?  Chapter 5: Enlightenment as Momentary Return to Pre-Natal Mind  Chapter 6: A Neuroscientific Approach to Zen/Chan and Enlightenment  Chapter 7: What Makes Zen/Chan Thought Unique and Original?  Chapter 8: Ideology, Mindfulness, and Transcultural Religion  Conclusion: Zen/Chan Is the Dao/Tao of No Thinking

This book initiates a paradigm shift away from Zen/Chan as quintessentially Buddhist and examines what makes Chan thought and practice unique and original through an interdisciplinary investigation of the nature and rationale of Chan and its enlightenment.

This book constitutes an ambitious, refreshingly new, intensely personal, and intellectually stimulating approach to Chan/Zen. By examining the presuppositions of traditional scholarship and Orientalist interpretations, the author reintroduces Chan into Western philosophical discourse and opens it to recent developments in neuroscience. His central argument, namely that Chan enlightenment is a momentary return to the prenatal mental state prior to language, may explain the importance of embryological discourse in Buddhism. Readers will definitely leave the book with a new understanding of Chan/Zen thought and practice. - Bernard Faure, Columbia University, USA

In his distinguished career, Ming Dong Gu has startled the academy with his rare ability to wed scholarly rigor with bottomless originality and novel insight. This monograph on Chan gives us a window on the capacious oeuvre of Gu as one of the world's most prlãÔ