Bodhidharma, meditation, and medicine

  • The present essay is devoted to a discussion and analysis of Dunhuang (敦煌) manuscript P. 3181 which features a meditation text attributed to the Buddhist saint and Chan Buddhist (Chin. chanzong 禪宗) patriarch Bodhidharma (d. c. 530). It is noteworthy because it represents a stage in the development of Chinese Buddhism in which local practitioners of meditation became increasingly influenced by Daoist beliefs and practices. As such, the manuscript under discussion documents the conflation of Chan Buddhism, Buddhist meditation generally conceived, and Daoist practices for the circulation of vital energy of the kind one later encounters in the tradition of internal alchemy (Chin. neidan 內丹). In the course of this presentation, the focus will be on Dunhuang, and how medical beliefs and practices, many of which derived from Daoism, were incorporated into the various systems of belief and practice of local Buddhism.

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Metadaten
Author:Henrik Hjort SørensenORCiDGND
URN:urn:nbn:de:hbz:294-96263
DOI:https://doi.org/10.46586/rub.br.262.239
Subtitle (English):on the message of a fragmented Buddhist medical text from Dunhuang
Series (Serial Number):BuddhistRoad Paper (3.1)
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Date of Publication (online):2023/02/01
Date of first Publication:2023/01/31
Publishing Institution:Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universitätsbibliothek
Tag:BuddhistRoad, Project ID: 725519
Pagenumber:48
Note:
BuddhistRoad, Project ID: 725519
Relation (DC):info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/H2020/725519
Institutes/Facilities:Centrum für Religionswissenschaftliche Studien (CERES)
Dewey Decimal Classification:Religion / Andere Religionen
OpenAIRE:OpenAIRE
Licence (English):License LogoCreative Commons - CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 - Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International