Lacan and Chan Buddhist Thought provides a close reading of how Lacan mobilizes concepts from Chan Buddhist philosophy, culture, and practice in his later teachings. The book emerged from the three co-authors’ engagement with Lacan’s 1962–1963 Seminar on Anxiety, and the significance of Lacan’s original interpretation of the Buddhist principle that desire is the cause of suffering. The book reads key Lacanian concepts – such as the objet a, jouissance, the real, Nirvana, and the mirror – through ancient Buddhist teachings and koans. With this focused exploration of psychoanalysis and Chan Buddhism, the authors offer a philosophically grounded cross-cultural approach to the theory and practice of psychoanalysis in Asian countries. Lacan and Chan Buddhist Thought will be a rich resource for psychoanalysts, academics, and students interested in Lacan and religion, the intellectual and cultural relationship between Asian and Western thought, and Mahayana Buddhism more generally.

Lacan and Chan Buddhist Thought provides a close reading of how Lacan mobilizes concepts from Chan Buddhist philosophy, culture, and practice in his later teachings. The book emerged from the three co-authors' engagement with Lacan's 1962-1963 Seminar on Anxiety, and the significance of Lacan's original interpretation of the Buddhist principle that desire is the cause of suffering. The book reads key Lacanian concepts - such as the objet a, jouissance, the real, Nirvana, and the mirror - through ancient Buddhist teachings and koans. With this focused exploration of psychoanalysis and Chan Buddhism, the authors offer a philosophically grounded cross-cultural approach to the theory and practice of psychoanalysis in Asian countries. Lacan and Chan Buddhist Thought will be a rich resource for psychoanalysts, academics, and students interested in Lacan and religion, the intellectual and cultural relationship between Asian and Western thought, and Mahayana Buddhism more generally.

Presents a comparative study of the ninth-century Chinese poet and recluse Han Shan (Cold Mountain) and Gary Snyder, an American poet and environmental activist. This book explains how Chan Buddhism has the potential to be recognized as an important voice in contemporary ecopoetry.

This book initiates a paradigm shift away from Zen/Chan as quintessentially Buddhist and examines what makes Chan thought and practice unique and original through an interdisciplinary investigation of the nature and rationale of Chan and its enlightenment. Exploring how enlightenment is achieved through Chan practice and how this differs from other forms of Buddhism, the book offers an entirely new view of Chan that embraces historical scholarship, philosophical inquiry, textual analysis, psychological studies, Chan practice, and neuroscientific research and locates the core of Chan in its founder Huineng’s theory of no thinking which creatively integrates the Taoist ideas of zuowang (forgetting in seated meditation) and xinzhai (fast of heart-mind) with his personal experiences of enlightenment. It concludes that Chan is the crystallization of an innovative synthesis of Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism as well as other resources of somatic and spiritual cultivation, and that enlightenment is a momentary return to the mental state of a baby before birth. This book will appeal to students and scholars of religion, philosophy, and neuroscience. It will also offer new insights to thinkers, writers, artists, therapists and neuroscientists as well as those practicing Zen, Mindfulness, and psychotherapy.

This book includes essays by some of the finest practicing analysts and teachers of psychoanalysis in the Lacanian community today. The writings offer an essential introduction to the later teachings of Jacques Lacan, illuminate the theoretical developments introduced by the later Lacan, and explore their clinical implications with remarkable acumen.

Nishida Kitarō (1870-1945) is considered Japan’s greatest modern philosopher. As the founder of the Kyoto School, he initiated a rigorous philosophical engagement with Western philosophy, including the work of Karl Marx. Bradley Kaye explores the political aspects of Nishida’s thought, placing his work in connection with Marxism and Zen. Developing concepts of self-awareness, Basho, dialectical materialism, circulation, will, nothingness, and the state. Nishida’s thought offers an ethics of personal will that radical awakening that offers clarity in a seemingly hopeless world.

Exploring how a Freudian-Lacanian approach to psychoanalysis intersects with social and cultural theory, Lacan, Jouissance, and the Social Sciences demonstrates the significance of subjectivity as a concept for the study of leadership, social psychology, culture, and political theory. Raul Moncayo examines Lacan’s notion of surplus jouissance in relation to four types of socio-economic value: Productive Value, Exchange Value, Surplus Value, and Profit. Also drawing on the work of Slavoj Žižek, Moncayo contends that surplus production cannot be reduced to alienated labor but rather includes various levels of jouissance-value. In this way, the jouissance that drives capitalization and organization can be theorized as constructive rather than destructive and encompass satisfaction and prosperity rather than individual suffering and asceticism or living with less. This volume will be of great interest to psychoanalysts both in practice and in training and to academics and scholars of psychoanalytic studies, Lacanian studies, and social sciences.