Tathagata-garbha Thought in Chinese Buddhism

Language and Ontology in Early Chinese Thought*

According to Chad Hansen’s “mass noun hypothesis,” the semantics of Classical Chinese nouns is similar to that of English mass nouns, and this helps to explain why ancient Chinese theories of language are nominalist. Mass nouns, Hansen suggests, are most naturally interpreted as denoting mereological wholes, a construal that intuitively tends to motivate a nominalist theory of language. The pap...

Buddhism Architecture in Northwestern Iran

Architecture is not only a complex including materials and methods to provide a shelter for human beings, but also it is an expression of the society, which created that. Its form will be the reflection of values and religious orientation besides social maturity of the related society and its structure will narrate the nature, power and different dimensions of mythical and psychological aspects...

A Review of Critical Buddhism: Engaging with Modern Japanese Buddhist Thought

Mapping in Thought and Language as Evidenced in Chinese

The recent studies on metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson 1980; Johnson 1987; Lakoff & Turner 1989; Sweetser 1990) have proved it to be an important language device that reflects the cognitive source of human thinking. These experientialists claim that metaphors in our languages mirror our ordinary conceptual system and treat metaphors as conventionalized cognitive structure. Adopting the experientialis...

Idealism in Yogācāra Buddhism

In the last fifty years or so, since Yogācāra texts have been available to western academics, there has been a debate as to how Yogācāra Buddhism should be interpreted. This article seeks to establish that Yogācāra Buddhism is most properly interpreted as an idealist school of Buddhist thought. Specifically, it challenges the arguments that have been put forth in recent years that suggest a phe...