Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Tracking Bodhidharma: A Journey to the Heart of Chinese Culture
    Unavailable
    Tracking Bodhidharma: A Journey to the Heart of Chinese Culture
    Unavailable
    Tracking Bodhidharma: A Journey to the Heart of Chinese Culture
    Ebook502 pages8 hours

    Tracking Bodhidharma: A Journey to the Heart of Chinese Culture

    By Andy Ferguson

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    A fresh take on the life and legacy of the “founding father” of Zen.
     
    The life of Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen Buddhism, has, with the passing of time, been magnified to the scale of myth, turning history into the stuff of legend. Known as the First Patriarch, Bodhidharma brought Zen from South India into China in 500 CE, changing the country forever. In Tracking Bodhidharma, Andrew Ferguson recreates the path of Bodhidharma, traveling through China to the places where the First Patriarch lived and taught. This sacred trail takes Ferguson deep into ancient China, and allows him to explore the origins of Chan [Zen] Buddhism, the cultural aftermath that Bodhidharma left in his wake, and the stories of a man who shaped a civilization.
     
    Tracking Bodhidharma offers a previously unheard perspective on the life of Zen’s most important religious leader, while simultaneously showing how that history is relevant to the rapidly developing super-power that is present-day China. By placing Zen Buddhism within the country’s political landscape, Ferguson presents the religion as a counterpoint to other Buddhist sects, a catalyst for some of the most revolutionary moments in China’s history, and as the ancient spiritual core of a country that is every day becoming more an emblem of the modern era.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateApr 12, 2012
    ISBN9781619020795
    Unavailable
    Tracking Bodhidharma: A Journey to the Heart of Chinese Culture

    Read more from Andy Ferguson

    Related to Tracking Bodhidharma

    Related ebooks

    Religious Biographies For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Book Briefs

      Dec 6, 2022

      WE CALL SHAKYAMUNI the “historical Buddha,” yet mostly treat him as a quasi-mythic figure who transcends time and space, whose actual existence on our planet is but a faint memory. Xinru Liu, a historian of ancient India, would beg to differ. In Earl

      4 min read

    • Article

      Chan Luminaries

      Sep 27, 2022

      A semi-legendary figure, Bodhidharma is credited as the first Chan patriarch who brought Buddhism to China in the fifth or sixth century. He’s commonly depicted as a profusely bearded man of South or Central Asian origin, wrapped in a robe, and sitti

      3 min read

    • Article

      Book Briefs

      Jun 5, 2020

      The story of how Prince Siddhartha Gautama became the Buddha is nothing new for the readers of Buddhadharma. What The Life of the Buddha (Shambhala Bala Kids 2020), a storybook by Heather Sanche with illustrations by Tara Di Gesu, offers is not exact

      4 min read

    • Article

      Book Briefs

      May 8, 2018

      Without tsewa, is there any other source of happiness?” This is the question posed by Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche in TRAINING IN TENDERNESS (Shambhala 2018). Always circling back to this Tibetan word meaning love, tenderness, or warmth, Kongtrul pushes

      4 min read

    • Article

      Women Who Show Us The Way

      Mar 23, 2021

      Women Who Show Us The Way
      6 min read

    • Article

      Why Buddhanature Matters

      Sep 20, 2023

      Why Buddhanature Matters
      12 min read

    • Article

      Lots Of Buddhas

      Sep 22, 2020

      Lots Of Buddhas
      5 min read

    • Article

      Book Briefs

      May 7, 2019

      N 1940 IN NEPAL, Chittadhar Hrdaya was arrested for publishing poems in the Newari language, an act regarded as subversive by Nepal’s ruling Rana dynasty. During his subsequent five-year imprisonment, he wrote The Epic of the Buddha: His Life and Tea

      4 min read

    • Article

      Starting from Enlightenment

      Nov 12, 2019

      Starting from Enlightenment
      6 min read

    • Article

      Why Do Buddhas Look So Different?

      Nov 23, 2021

      When Buddhism spread from Siddhartha Gautama’s birthplace in today’s Nepal to many parts of Asia, texts were often translated into local languages to make the teachings of the Buddha accessible to different peoples. Was Buddhist art and imagery also

      4 min read

    • Article

      Book Briefs

      Mar 8, 2022

      BUDDHADASA BHIKKHU (1906–1993), one of Thailand’s most revered monks of the twentieth century, wants us all to be problem solvers. In an edited series of his lectures recently published as Seeing with the Eye of Dhamma: The Comprehensive Teaching of

      4 min read

    • Article

      Wisdom Of The Sages

      Oct 19, 2023

      In 2009, I came to Shanghai from Iran. My fate in China began with a car accident in which my friend injured his hand. Although it could not be cured by Western medicine, it was cured through acupuncture. The effectiveness of the treatment led me to

      2 min read

    • Article

      Book Briefs

      Aug 7, 2018

      Ajahn Jayasaro’s STILLNESS FLOWING: THE LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF AJAHN CHAH (Abhayagiri 2017) is a remarkable testament to the legacy of the Thai Buddhist teacher Ajahn Chah (1918–1992). Over eight hundred pages in length, the book begins with Ajahn Cha

      4 min read

    • Article

      Book Briefs

      Dec 7, 2021

      FIRST PUBLISHED in 2001 when the author was seventy-eight, Setouchi Jakucho’s memoir Places (Hawai’i) has finally been translated into English, by Liza Dalby. Setouchi, now ninety-nine, is perhaps Japan’s most famous Buddhist nun; before she was orda

      4 min read

    • Article

      Book Briefs

      Feb 6, 2018

      Should Vajrayana practitioners eat meat? Tibetans have long wrestled with this question, as Geoffrey Barstow elucidates in FOOD OF SINFUL DEMONS: MEAT, VEGETARIANISM, AND THE LIMITS OF BUDDHISM IN TIBET (Columbia 2017). In their discussions of ethica

      4 min read

    • Article

      What’s Daoism Got to Do with It?

      Nov 3, 2020

      What’s Daoism Got to Do with It?
      6 min read

    • Article

      Javanese Spiritual Life

      Aug 9, 2021

      Javanese Spiritual Life
      11 min read

    • Article

      Learning Is the Path Forward

      Sep 27, 2022

      THERE IS NO END to learning. The Chinese philosopher Xunzi says that he once spent a whole day ruminating but that it was not as good as a moment’s learning. The best kind of learning gets us out of the head. The Buddhist monk and poet Kenko observed

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Art Of Awakening

      Nov 23, 2021

      The Art Of Awakening
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Sutta Pitaka

      Jul 19, 2022

      The Sutta Pitaka
      6 min read

    • Article

      Book Briefs

      Mar 2, 2021

      IF representation matters, then who gets to represent “American Buddhism”? Chenxing Han’s stirring ethnographic memoir Be the Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists (North Atlantic) vocalizes the indignation felt by the Asian American

      4 min read

    • Article

      Zen In Vietnam: The Making Of A Tradition

      Jun 28, 2022

      Zen In Vietnam: The Making Of A Tradition
      11 min read

    • Article

      Book Briefs

      Sep 14, 2021

      WHEN DEATH CEASES to be an abstraction and becomes an inevitability, rumination upon its imminence requires a rare act of courage. Such is the exquisite fortitude exhibited by the late scholar C. W. Huntington Jr. in his posthumously published What I

      4 min read

    Reviews for Tracking Bodhidharma

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words