Explore the seminal Platform Sutra, with one of the greatest living Zen masters as a guide. A lodestone of Zen Buddhism, the Platform Sutra presents the life, work, and wisdom of Eno, or Huineng, the fascinating and much-loved seventh-century Sixth Patriarch of Chinese Zen. An illiterate woodcutter who famously attained enlightenment after only hearing a single line of a sutra, and who went on to decisively upstage senior monks with a poem that demonstrated the depth and clarity of his insight, (...) his example has demonstrated to generations of students and spiritual seekers worldwide that enlightenment is attainable regardless of education or social standing. His exhortations to directly perceive one's true nature, right here and now, still reverberate in contemporary Zen. There is no bodhi tree, Nor stand of a mirror bright. Since all is void, Where can the dust alight? Shodo Harada Roshi's fresh reading of the Platform Sutra offers both the history behind the work and the lived experience of its wisdom. In a plain-English, conversational voice, Shodo Harada brings the sutra to life for his students, discussing and explaining its central points chapter by chapter and illustrating it with his own beautiful calligraphy. This is far from a collection of dry lectures; it is an essential Buddhist text brought to life. (shrink)

During 1980–90, Japan's annual real GDP growth rate was 4.6%, but which declined to 1.2% in the 1990s. While the drop in itself is a problem, at the same time it exacerbated many other problems, namely inequality, budget deficits, and the increasing burden of an aging society.

Mental imagery of movement is a potentially valuable rehabilitation task, but its therapeutic efficacy may depend on the specific cognitive strategy employed. Individuals use two main strategies to perform the hand mental rotation task, which involves determining whether a visual image depicts a left or right hand. One is the motor imagery strategy, which involves mentally simulating one’s own hand movements. In this case, task performance as measured by response time is subject to a medial–lateral effect wherein the RT is (...) reduced when the fingertips are directed medially, presumably as the actual motion would be easier. The other strategy is to employ visual imagery, which involves mentally rotating the picture and is not subject to this medial–lateral effect. The rehabilitative benefits of the HMRT are thought to depend on the MI strategy, so it is essential to examine the effects of individual factors such as age, image perspective, and innate ability on the strategy adopted. When presented with pictures of the palm, all subjects in the current study used the MI strategy, regardless of age and ability. In contrast, when subjects were presented with pictures of the back of the hand, the VI strategy predominated among the young age group regardless of performance, while the strategy used by middle-age and elderly groups depended on performance ability. In the middle-age and elderly groups, the VI approach predominated in those with high performance skill, whereas the MI strategy predominated among those with low performance skill. Thus, higher-skill middle-aged and elderly individuals may not necessarily form a motion image during the HMRT, potentially limiting rehabilitation efficacy. (shrink)

Japan's remarkable economic success especially from the 1960s to the 1980s has attracted extensive worldwide attention. However, the world's admiration has plummeted since the 1990s, when the Bubble Economy burst, bringing on chronic stagnation. Since then, the world has regarded the Japanese economy less as a desirable model and more as an evident failure with many lessons for other economies. These external judgments, positive and negative, have also affected how the Japanese perceive their own economy. This article reviews how these (...) domestic and international perceptions of Japan's economy have varied. It situates the companion articles by Hwang (2012) and Harada (2012) in the historical context of studies of the Japanese economy. This article especially discusses one recurring fixation that muddles comprehension of factors underpinning Japan's economic success and failure: the tendency to overestimate characteristics that supposedly are specific to Japan and different from other market-oriented economies. From the 1960s through the 1980s, scholars, commentators, policy-makers, and the public insisted these characteristics were singular and significant contributors to Japan's remarkable economic development. Since the 1990s, they have considered them the root causes of Japan's remarkable stagnation. Both are exaggerations. Although some singularly Japanese attributes perhaps contributed to Japan's economic ascent and decline, it is equally plausible they did not. It is more likely that poorly conceived and executed macroeconomic policies, especially monetary policy, had greater influence on Japan's post-1990s stagnation. (shrink)

This reviewer had read Kristeva in October, 2016 in this Journal (and the review is freely available online and had garnered some small publicity). Over the last one year this reviewer has taken a very short view of her tautological work. Having read her carefully this reviewer has decided that she should be rejected as a psychoanalyst, notwithstanding her huge popularity as a feminist. But this reviewer through a nuanced critique of theoretical psychoanalysis find her and her ilk lacking caritas.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Zen War StoriesSteven HeineZen War Stories. By Brian Daizen Victoria. London and New York: Routledge-Curzon, 2003. Pp. xviii + 268. Hardcover $124.95. Paper $34.95.Brian Daizen Victoria's Zen War Stories, following his highly acclaimed but also highly provocative Zen at War (Weatherhill, 1997), continues his withering attack on the embracing of wartime ideology by leading Zen masters and practitioners in Japan. Victoria seeks to show that the attitude characteristic (...) of numerous examples of prominent Zen monks and scholars was not simply a matter of benignly resisting, or even passively accepting, the rhetoric of Imperial Way Buddhism by clergy who were under pressure and powerless to stand up to the authorities. Nor was it an example of innocently recognizing historical and ideological affinities between Zen monastic discipline and military training.On the contrary, the Zen masters discussed here eagerly and enthusiastically endorsed some of the most excessive and reprehensible aspects of imperial ideology in the name of a corrupted vision of spiritual realization as a tool to spread the doctrine of the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere. They also used Zen wedded to hyper-nationalism and imperialism as a tool to misread the historical records of their own tradition and to help transport Japanese supremacy to China and Korea, while refusing to acknowledge or repent for their actions with the defeat of Japan. This outlook also infected numerous politicians and military figures, who turned to Buddhism as a way of explaining away or masking their roles leading up to, as well as during and after, World War II.In part 1 of Zen War Stories Victoria documents several masters who have become icons in the West for their apparent adherence to a Zen tradition linked with an ability to address contemporary culture. After showing in chapter 4 that Ōmori [End Page 345] Sōgen, praised for his prowess in swordsmanship and other arts, had a fascistic, "Mr. Hyde" side as manifested in the founding in 1932 of the Kinnō Ishin Dōmei (League for Loyalty to the Emperor and the Restoration), Victoria turns to the case of Yasutani Haku'un. In chapter 5, "Zen Master Dōgen Goes to War," we find that Yasutani, known as the teacher of Philip Kapleau and the inspiration for The Three Pillars of Zen, wanted to smash all universities for being traitors. He was a fanatical militarist who "transformed the life and thought of Zen Master Dōgen (1200-1253), the thirteenth-century founder of the Sōtō Zen sect in Japan, into a propaganda tool for Japanese militarism" (p. 68).In particular, Yasutani tried to argue that Dōgen's famed pilgrimage to Song China in 1223 was triggered not by a longing for the Buddhist Dharma but by a disgust with the new shogunate and an infatuation with preserving the Imperial House. According to Victoria, Yasutani's corrupted spirituality did not end with a support for militarism. He was also even more "ethnic chauvinist, sexist, and anti-Semitic" (p. 68) than his teacher Harada Daiun Sōgaku, whose "most memorable wartime quote is: '[If ordered to] march: tramp, tramp, or shoot: bang, bang. This is the manifestation of the highest Wisdom [of enlightenment]"' (pp. 66-67).After discussing in chapter 7, "Zen 'Selflessness' in Japanese Militarism," how Zen's historical relation to the samurai was misinterpreted to support the imperial ideology concerning the acceptance of death by D. T. Suzuki and other prominent representatives of Zen, including former Eiheiji temple abbot Kumazawa Taizen, part 2 takes up examples of the involvement with Buddhist thought by military and political leaders. While this section is less devastating as a critique of Zen than of Japanese Buddhism and society in general, Victoria explains in chapter 10, "Buddhism-The Last Refuge of War Criminals," how easily the moral basis of religion can be distorted and subverted. For example, as recollected by Buddhist studies scholar Hanayama Shinshō, seven Class A war criminals who had been condemned to death continued, while on death row, to cling hypocritically to Buddhism to find some feeling of solace. For instance, Hirota Kōki never abandoned his attachment to Zen and the warrior class and... (shrink)

The process of allorecognition consists of an ability to discriminate self from non‐self. This discrimination is used either to identify non‐self cells and reject them (“non‐self histocompatibility”) or to identify self cells and reject them (as in the avoidance of self‐fertilization by hermaphrodites (“self incompatibility”). The molecular basis governing these two distinct systems has been studied recently in hermaphroditic ascidian urochordates. Harada et al.1 postulated two highly polymorphic self‐incompatibility loci, Themis (A and B), that are transcribed from both strands, (...) forward to yield sperm (s‐) trans‐membrane antigen, and reverse to yield the egg vitelline coat (v‐) receptor. De Tomaso et al.2 characterized a candidate histocompatibility locus, encoding a highly variable immunoglobulin. Nyholm et al.3 isolated its candidate allorecognition receptor, fester. Only a minute similarity was found in the structure of the genes involved. It appears that ascidian harbor two very separate types of labeling and recognition genetic systems: one for self and the other for non‐self. BioEssays 30:1048–1051, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Political Philosophy in Japan: Nishida, the Kyoto School, and Co-ProsperityMichiko YusaPolitical Philosophy in Japan: Nishida, the Kyoto School, and Co-Prosperity. By Christopher S. Goto-Jones. London and New York: Routledge, 2005. Pp. 192. Hardcover $105.00.If it is the case that scholars who engage the Kyoto School philosophy in any serious manner may risk their reputation by "being tarred with the brush of fascism" (p. 4), then Christopher Goto-Jones is (...) certainly courageous to set out to redress the predicament that Nishida Kitarō 's thought (Nishida tetsugaku) is apparently in. Indeed, Goto-Jones' effort is to be highly commended. He contends that Nishida tetsugaku "ought to have been liberated from the oppression of the ultra-nationalist orthodoxy of wartime Japan" by "the allied victory," but instead it has been "oppressed under the new weight of post-war historiography" (p. 2). The author hopes to help change the present-day academic environment that still condemns Nishida tetsugaku or Kyoto School philosophy for complicity with the agenda of fascists and ultranationalists, a formidable force in Japan from the mid-1930s through the end of the Pacific War.Believing that Nishida tetsugaku qua political philosophy should gain its rightful place in the academic discourse, Goto-Jones embarks on this task. The way to liberate Nishida tetsugaku, he suggests, is to avoid the approach taken by apologists whose arguments, ultimately "unconvincing," were "not finally rooted in Nishida's philosophy but in his diaries and correspondence" (p. 4). He hopes to bring out the "cultural and political pluralism" that is at the heart of Nishida's political philosophy and to demonstrate that the contribution of Nishida's thought is to "relativize the political conceptualizations of Western philosophy" (p. 5). The strategy is to "re-politicize" Nishida tetsugaku and allow his (political) texts to speak for themselves. Goto-Jones contends that Nishida's political philosophy, properly understood, is neither ultranationalism nor liberalism, but "may be termed radical liberalism" (p. 137 n. 11).In chapter 2, the author proposes to situate Nishida's political thought "in the context of some of its earlier formulations," just as "[m]uch of Western political philosophy partakes in conversations initiated by the Greeks" (p. 28). He therefore begins with the seventeen-article constitution of Prince Shōtoku as the Ur-official text, and then turns his attention to the Japanese Buddhist and Confucian traditions. En route, Goto-Jones tries to connect such ideas as the honji suijaku theory with Nishida's dialectics, or the Tendai meditation practice of ichinen sanzen with the ideology of hakkō ichiu. Whether this approach clarifies Nishida's thought or adds further complications is left to the judgment of the reader. [End Page 361]Contrary to the view that Nishida underwent a "turn" in the early 1930s, Goto- Jones attempts to prove in chapters 3 and 4 that Nishida's political philosophy remained consistent throughout his life. To demonstrate this point, he examines the several theories of good discussed by Nishida in part 3 of Zen no kenkyū (An inquiry into the good), written ca. 1906, and the 1937 lecture "Rekishiteki shintai" (Historical body). The author's evidence to sustain his argument seems to rest on Nishida's personal protest against the intervention of the state in the affairs of education, as well as his lament that his thought was never properly understood.Because the scope of the book extends to Nishida's one-time students (such as Tosaka Jun, Miki Kiyoshi, Kōsaka Masaaki, Kōyama Iwao, and Nishitani Keiji as well as Harada Kumao and Kido Kōichi)1 and his colleagues (such as Tanabe Hajime and Watsuji Tetsurō ), to undertake this project Goto-Jones took on the weighty task of studying biographical information about Nishida and his colleagues as well as their vastly varying political approaches. The author's project is far more serious than a mere debate on the semantics of, for instance, the word "liberal," which, when applied to Nishida-and I tend to agree with him here-is "inappropriate and ahistor-ical" (p. 7), or the term "universal(ism)," which seems to have become another term of contention by sheer chance.The fact that... (shrink)

While Weber’s distinction between ‘ideal’ and ‘material’ interests is one of the most enduring aspects of his theoretical legacy, it has been subjected to little critical commentary. In this article, we revisit the theoretical legacy of interest-based explanation in social theory, with an eye to clarifying Weber’s place in this tradition. We then reconsider extant critical commentary on the ideal/material interest distinction, noting the primarily Parsonian rendering of Weber and the unproductive allegiance to ‘generic need’ readings of Weber’s action theory. (...) We reconstruct the basis of the ideal/material interest distinction in the work of Rudolph von Ihering and provide a sounder basis for its analytic role in Weber’s ‘grand’ project. (shrink)

While discovery of error provides personal gain for the entrepreneur, does this process automatically allocate value equitably among all stakeholders? We argue that the entrepreneurial process can be used to generate or maintain an entrepreneur’s personal wealth through the exploitation of a stakeholder group. Thus entrepreneurship can be both an equilibrating and a disequilibrating process and that both the visible hand of government and the decisions of an entrepreneur can speed or slow our movement toward value equilibrium. Speed toward value (...) equilibrium is likely to be important to a victimized stakeholder group and deserves further scholarly attention. (shrink)

Research papers, chiefly on ancient Indic philosophy, and a few on Indian civilization.

On the method of Saint Giovanni Bosco, 1815-1888, in guidance and counselling.

Is there any link between the doctrine of logical fatalism and prime numbers? What do logic and prime numbers have in common? The book adopts truth-functional approach to examine functional properties of finite-valued Łukasiewicz logics Łn+1. Prime numbers are defined in algebraic-logical terms and represented as rooted trees. The author designs an algorithm which for every prime number n constructs a rooted tree where nodes are natural numbers and n is a root. Finite-valued logics Kn+1 are specified that they have (...) tautologies if and only if n is a prime number. It is discovered that Kn+1 have the same functional properties as Łn+1 whenever n is a prime number. Thus, Kn+1 are 'logics' of prime numbers. Amazingly, combination of logics of prime numbers led to uncovering a law of generation of classes of prime numbers. Along with characterization of prime numbers author also gives characterization, in terms of Łukasiewicz logical matrices, of powers of primes, odd numbers, and even numbers. (shrink)

Work on Mimamsa philosophy; includes Āśutoṣiṇī commentary and Hindi translation.

This volume contains the English translation of Felix Kaufmann's (1895-1945) main work Methodenlehre der Sozialwissenschaften (1936). In this book, Kaufmann develops a general theory of knowledge of the social sciences in his role as a cross-border commuter between Husserl's phenomenology, Kelsen's pure theory of law and the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle. This multilayered inquiry connects the value-oriented reflections of a general philosophy of science with the specificity of the methods and theories of the social sciences, as opposed to (...) abstract natural science and psychology. The core focus of the study is the attempt to elucidate how and under what conditions scientific knowledge about social facts, empirically justified and theoretically embedded, can be obtained. The empirical basis of knowledge within the social sciences forms a phenomenological concept of experience. According to Kaufmann, this concept of experience exhibits a complex structure. Within the meaning-interpretation of human action as the core of knowledge in the social sciences, this structure reaches out across the isolated act of verification toward the synthesis of external and internal experiences. The book opens with a detailed and useful introduction by Ingeborg K. Helling, which introduces the historical and theoretical background of Kaufmann's study and specifically illuminates his relation to Alfred Schütz and John Dewey. Finally, it contains interviews with and letters to members of his family, colleagues and students. (shrink)

On elements of science in Bhagavadgītā, Hindu philosophical classic.