The Lost Way to the Good: Dionysian Platonism, Shin Buddhism, and the Shared Quest to Reconnect a Divided World

The Lost Way to the Good: Dionysian Platonism, Shin Buddhism, and the Shared Quest to Reconnect a Divided World

by Thomas Plant
The Lost Way to the Good: Dionysian Platonism, Shin Buddhism, and the Shared Quest to Reconnect a Divided World

The Lost Way to the Good: Dionysian Platonism, Shin Buddhism, and the Shared Quest to Reconnect a Divided World

by Thomas Plant

Hardcover

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Overview

The West has lost its way. But which way was it? Disoriented by postmodern relativism and critical theory, many seek refuge in older certainties of religious or political traditions. But many of these paths, author Thomas Plant maintains, are only recent forks off a wider, older road-a way that belongs as much to the East as to the West, and can unite Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and more in pursuit of the truly common Good.

This Way is the nondualistic philosophy of Eastern or "theurgic" Platonism. Claiming Indian and Egyptian roots, it entered medieval European universities through the works of Dionysius the Areopagite. Overshadowed in the West, it continued to thrive in Eastern Christian and Sufi spiritual teachings that spread along the Silk Road, providing thereby a basis for creative dialogue with Taoists and Buddhists. The Lost Way to the Good is a guidebook for a spiritual and metaphysical journey with Dionysius from Athens to Kyoto and the True Pure Land Buddhism of Shinran Shonin. Find out, by perusing its pages, where the West deviated from the track, and how even radically differing religious traditions can nonetheless unite to resist the divisive forces of Western secular modernity.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781621387916
Publisher: Angelico Press
Publication date: 11/11/2021
Pages: 270
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

THOMAS PLANT is Chaplain of Rikkyo University, Tokyo, and Fellow of the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Platonism, where he leads the Muslim-Christian research project, Metaphysics Across Borders. Since writing his doctoral thesis on the comparative philosophy of Dionysius and Shinran, he has been involved in longstanding active interfaith dialogue with Shin Buddhist clergy and academics in the UK and Japan. Plant has been a contributor to Living Church, The Mallard, The Eastern Buddhist, Faith and Worship, and Third Way. He lives in Ikebukuro with his wife and daughters, and enjoys practicing Aikido and playing the shakuhachi flute.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction xiii

1 The Lost Way 1

2 At the Areopagus 8

3 Salvation is Communal 30

4 The Consummation of Theology 37

5 A Minority Church 44

6 A Tale of Two Islams 58

7 The "Aristotelian" Turn 71

8 Confessions of a Modern Missionary 85

9 Voluntarism 91

10 Nominalism 97

11 Individualism 104

11 How I Met Shinran 116

13 Why the West hasn't Heard of Shin Buddhism 123

14 Not Just a Japanese Luther 128

15 Dualistic Buddhism? 135

16 Beyond Dualism and Non-dualism 140

17 Being, Naming, Acting 150

18 Being: Wisdom Empties Herself 152

19 Naming the Name 169

20 Hymning 178

21 The Saving Name 190

22 The Pure Land and Theosis 194

23 Christ, Revolutionary? 199

24 Getting Drunk with God 212

25 Theurgy, Reenchantment, and the Music of Purity 218

Conclusion 232

Select Bibliography 237

Index 241

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