Evil and/or/as the Good

Download or read book Evil and/or/as the Good written by Brook Ziporyn and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-10-26 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Other than the devil, there is no Buddha; other than the Buddha, there is no devil.” The Chinese monk Siming Zhili (960–1028) uttered this remark as part of his justification for his self-immolation. An exposition of the intent, implications, and resonances of this one sentence, this book expands and unravels the context in which the seeming paradox of the ultimate identity of good and evil is to be understood. In analyzing this idea, Brook Ziporyn provides an overview of the development of Tiantai thought from the fifth through the eleventh centuries in China and contributes to our understanding of Chinese intellectual culture and Chinese Buddhism, as well as to basic ontological, epistemological, and axiological issues of interest in modern philosophy.