Zen and Comparative Studies

By Masao Abe

Book Overview

This volume concludes the two-volume sequel to Masao Abe's Zen and Western Thought. Like its companion, Buddhism and Interfaith Dialogue, this work contains many previously published essays and papers by Abe. Here he clarifies the true meaning of Buddhist emptiness in comparison with the Aristotelian notion of substance and the Whiteheadean notion of process.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0824818326
• ISBN13: 9780824818326
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
• Length: 280 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

The most accessible of Abe's books (IMHO)

Having read all the rest of Masao Abe's books, I had begun to despair of ever truly feeling as if I'd understood any of them. His writing is certainly not kid stuff. It's very serious, very dense theology and philosophy from the buddhist perspective. If you are fluent with the works of Tillich, Heideger, Nietzche, and others than you are likely to get much more out of them than I did. Despite the fact that much of what I read was so incredibly far over my head, I still occasionally ran into ideas and thoughts that kept me exploring his work. This work (Zen and Comparative Studies), however, is written in such a way that even a philosophical-theological neophyte such as myself can understand all of it. And in addition, it is (in my opinion) much richer in insights then his other works. But who knows, maybe I only feel that way because for once I understood (I believe) what I was reading! Excellent work