Quotes4study

One of the basic tenets of Zen Buddhism is that there is no way to characterize what Zen is. No matter what verbal space you try to enclose Zen in, it resists, and spills over...

Douglas Hofstadter in Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid

Do students of Zen Buddhism do Om-work?

Fortune Cookie

LIDDON, HENRY PARRY (1829-1890), English divine, was the son of a naval captain and was born at North Stoneham, Hampshire, on the 20th of August 1829. He was educated at King's College School, London, and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated, taking a second class, in 1850. As vice-principal of the theological college at Cuddesdon (1854-1859) he wielded considerable influence, and, on returning to Oxford as vice-principal of St Edmund's Hall, became a growing force among the undergraduates, exercising his influence in strong opposition to the liberal reaction against Tractarianism, which had set in after Newman's secession in 1845. In 1864 the bishop of Salisbury (W. K. Hamilton), whose examining chaplain he had been, appointed him prebendary of Salisbury cathedral. In 1866 he delivered his Bampton Lectures on the doctrine of the divinity of Christ. From that time his fame as a preacher, which had been steadily growing, may be considered established. In 1870 he was made canon of St Paul's Cathedral, London. He had before this published _Some Words for God_, in which, with great power and eloquence, he combated the scepticism of the day. His preaching at St Paul's soon attracted vast crowds. The afternoon sermon, which fell to the lot of the canon in residence, had usually been delivered in the choir, but soon after Liddon's appointment it became necessary to preach the sermon under the dome, where from 3000 to 4000 persons used to gather to hear the preacher. Few orators belonging to the Church of England have acquired so great a reputation as Liddon. Others may have surpassed him in originality, learning or reasoning power, but for grasp of his subject, clearness of language, lucidity of arrangement, felicity of illustration, vividness of imagination, elegance of diction, and above all, for sympathy with the intellectual position of those whom he addressed, he has hardly been rivalled. In the elaborate arrangement of his matter he is thought to have imitated the great French preachers of the age of Louis XIV. In 1870 he had also been made Ireland professor of exegesis at Oxford. The combination of the two appointments gave him extensive influence over the Church of England. With Dean Church he may be said to have restored the waning influence of the Tractarian school, and he succeeded in popularizing the opinions which, in the hands of Pusey and Keble, had appealed to thinkers and scholars. His forceful spirit was equally conspicuous in his opposition to the Church Discipline Act of 1874, and in his denunciation of the Bulgarian atrocities of 1876. In 1882 he resigned his professorship and utilized his thus increased leisure by travelling in Palestine and Egypt, and showed his interest in the Old Catholic movement by visiting Döllinger at Munich. In 1886 he became chancellor of St Paul's, and it is said that he declined more than one offer of a bishopric. He died on the 9th of September 1890, in the full vigour of his intellect and at the zenith of his reputation. He had undertaken and nearly completed an elaborate life of Dr Pusey, for whom his admiration was unbounded; and this work was completed after his death by Messrs Johnston and Wilson. Liddon's great influence during his life was due to his personal fascination and the beauty of his pulpit oratory rather than to any high qualities of intellect. As a theologian his outlook was that of the 16th rather than the 19th century; and, reading his Bampton Lectures now, it is difficult to realize how they can ever have been hailed as a great contribution to Christian apologetics. To the last he maintained the narrow standpoint of Pusey and Keble, in defiance of all the developments of modern thought and modern scholarship; and his latter years were embittered by the consciousness that the younger generation of the disciples of his school were beginning to make friends of the Mammon of scientific unrighteousness. The publication in 1889 of _Lux Mundi_, a series of essays attempting to harmonize Anglican Catholic doctrine with modern thought, was a severe blow to him, for it showed that even at the Pusey House, established as the citadel of Puseyism at Oxford, the principles of Pusey were being departed from. Liddon's importance is now mainly historical. He was the last of the classical pulpit orators of the English Church, the last great popular exponent of the traditional Anglican orthodoxy. Besides the works mentioned, Liddon published several volumes of _Sermons_, a volume of Lent lectures entitled _Some Elements of Religion_ (1870), and a collection of _Essays and Addresses_ on such themes as Buddhism, Dante, &c. Entry: LIDDON

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 16, Slice 5 "Letter" to "Lightfoot, John"     1910-1911

Tibet endured as a conquering power some two centuries, and the more famous among the descendants of the founder added to the city. This-rong-de-tsan (who reigned 740-786) is said to have erected a great temple-palace of which the basement followed the Tibetan style, the middle storey the Chinese, and the upper storey the Indian--a combination which would aptly symbolize the elements that have moulded the culture of Lhasa. His son, the last of the great orthodox kings, in the next century, is said to have summoned artists from Nepal and India, and among many splendid foundations to have erected a sanctuary (at Samyé) of vast height, which had nine storeys, the three lower of stone, the three middle of brick, the three uppermost of timber. With this king the glory of Tibet and of ancient Lhasa reached its zenith, and in 822, a monument recording his treaty on equal terms with the Great T'ang emperor of China was erected in the city. There followed dark days for Lhasa and the Buddhist church in the accession of this king's brother Langdharma, who has been called the Julian of the lamas. This king rejected the doctrine, persecuted and scattered its ministers, and threw down its temples, convents and images. It was more than a century before Buddhism recovered its hold and its convents were rehabilitated over Tibet. The country was then split into an infinity of petty states, many of them ruled from the convents by warlike ecclesiastics; but, though the old monarchy never recovered, Lhasa seems to have maintained some supremacy, and probably never lost its claim to be the chief city of that congeries of principalities, with a common faith and a common language, which was called Tibet. Entry: 3

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 16, Slice 5 "Letter" to "Lightfoot, John"     1910-1911

Except for the number of buildings composing it, the palace had little to distinguish it from a nobleman's mansion. The latter consisted of a principal hall, where the master of the house lived, ate and slept, and of three suites of chambers, disposed on the north, the east and the west of the principal hall. In the northern suite the lady of the house dwelt, the eastern and western suites being allotted to other members of the family. Corridors joined the principal hall to the subordinate edifices, for as yet the idea had not been conceived of having more than one chamber under the same roof. The principal hall was usually 42 ft. square. Its centre was occupied by a "parent chamber," 30 ft. square, around which ran an ambulatory and a veranda, each 6 ft. wide. The parent chamber and the ambulatory were ceiled, sometimes with interlacing strips of bark or broad laths, so as to produce a plaited effect; sometimes with plain boards. The veranda had no ceiling. Sliding doors, a characteristic feature of modern Japanese houses, had not yet come into use, and no means were provided for closing the veranda, but the ambulatory was surrounded by a wall of latticed timber or plain boards, the lower half of which could be removed altogether, whereas the upper half, suspended from hooks, could be swung upward and outward. Privacy was obtained by blinds of split bamboo, and the parent chamber was separated from the ambulatory by similar bamboo blinds with silk cords for raising or lowering them, or by curtains. The thick rectangular mats of uniform size which, fitting together so as to present a level unbroken surface, cover the floor of all modern Japanese houses, were not yet in use: floors were boarded, having only a limited space matted. This form of mansion underwent little modification until the 12th century, when the introduction of the Zen sect of Buddhism with its contemplative practice called for greater privacy. Interiors were then divided into smaller rooms by means of sliding doors covered with thin rice-paper, which permitted the passage of light while obstructing vision; the hanging lattices were replaced by wooden doors which could be slid along a groove so as to be removable in the daytime, and an alcove was added in the principal chamber for a sacred picture or Buddhist image to serve as an object of contemplation for a devotee while practising the rite of abstraction. Thus the main features of the Japanese dwelling-house were evolved, and little change took place subsequently, except that the brush of the painter was freely used for decorating partitions, and in aristocratic mansions unlimited care was exercised in the choice of rare woods. Entry: FIG

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 15, Slice 2 "Jacobites" to "Japan" (part)     1910-1911

_History_.--The Khmers, the ancient inhabitants of Cambodia, are conjectured to have been the offspring of a fusion between the autochthonous dwellers in the Indo-Chinese peninsula, now represented by the Kouis and other savage tribes, and an invading race from the plateaus of central Asia. As early as the 12th century B.C., Chinese chronicles, which are almost the only source for the history of Cambodia till the 5th century A.D., mention a region called Fou-nan, in later times appearing under the name of Tchin-la; embracing the basin of the Menam, it extended eastwards to the Mekong and may be considered approximately coextensive with the Khmer kingdom. Some centuries before the Christian era, immigrants from the east coast of India began to exert a powerful influence over Cambodia, into which they introduced Brahmanism and the Sanskrit language. This Hinduizing process became more marked about the 5th century A.D., when, under S'rutavarman, the Khmers as a nation rose into prominence. The name _Kambuja_, whence the European form Cambodia, is derived from the Hindu _Kambu_, the name of the mythical founder of the Khmer race; it seems to have been officially adopted by the Khmers as the title of their country about this period. At the end of the 7th century the dynasty of S'rutavarman ceased to rule over the whole of Cambodia, which during the next century was divided into two portions ruled over by two sovereigns. Unity appears to have been re-established about the beginning of the 9th century, when with Jayavarman III. there begins a dynasty which embraces the zenith of Khmer greatness and the era during which the great Brahman monuments were built. The royal city of Angkor-Thorn (see ANGKOR) was completed under Yasovarman about A.D. 900. In the 10th century Buddhism, which had existed for centuries in Cambodia, began to become powerful and to rival Brahmanism, the official religion. The construction of the temple of Angkor Vat dates probably from the first half of the 12th century, and appears to have been carried out under the direction of the Brahman Divakara, who enjoyed great influence under the monarchs of this period. The conquest of the rival kingdom of Champa, which embraced modern Cochin-China and southern Annam, and in the later 15th century was absorbed by Annam, may probably be placed at the end of the 12th century, in the reign of Jayavarman VIII., the last of the great kings. War was also carried on against the western neighbours of Cambodia, and the exhaustion consequent upon all these efforts seems to have been the immediate cause of the decadence which now set in. From the last decade of the 13th century there dates a valuable description of Tchin-la[2] written by a member of a Chinese embassy thereto. The same period probably also witnessed the liberation of the Thais or inhabitants of Siam from the yoke of the Khmers, to whom they had for long been subject, and the expulsion of the now declining race from the basin of the Menam. The royal chronicles of Cambodia, the historical veracity of which has often to be questioned, begin about the middle of the 14th century, at which period the Thais assumed the offensive and were able repeatedly to capture and pillage Angkor-Thorn. These aggressions were continued in the 15th century, in the course of which the capital was finally abandoned by the Khmer kings, the ruin of the country being hastened by internal revolts and by feuds between members of the royal family. At the end of the 16th century, Lovek, which had succeeded Angkor-Thorn as capital, was itself abandoned to the conquerors. During that century, the Portuguese had established some influence in the country, whither they were followed by the Dutch, but after the middle of the 17th century, Europeans counted for little in Cambodia till the arrival of the French. At the beginning of the 17th century the Nguyen, rulers of southern Annam, began to encroach on the territory of Cochin-China, and in the course of that and the 18th century, Cambodia, governed by two kings supported respectively by Siam and Annam, became a field for the conflicts of its two powerful neighbours. At the end of the 18th century the provinces of Battambang and Siem-reap were annexed by Siam. The rivalries of the two powers were concluded after a last and indecisive war by the treaty of 1846, as a result of which Ang-Duong, the protégé of Siam, was placed on the throne at the capital of Oudong, and the Annamese evacuated the country. In 1863, in order to counteract Siamese influence there, Doudart de Lagrée was sent by Admiral la Grandière to the court of King Norodom, the successor of Ang-Duong, and as a result of his efforts Cambodia placed itself under the protectorate of France. In 1866 Norodom transferred his capital to Pnom-Penh. In 1867 a treaty between France and Siam was signed, whereby Siam renounced its right to tribute and recognized the French protectorate over Cambodia in return for the provinces of Battambang and Angkor, and the Laos territory as far as the Mekong. In 1884 another treaty was signed by the king, confirming and extending French influence, and reducing the royal authority to a shadow, but in view of the discontent aroused by it, its provisions were not put in force till several years later. In 1904 the territory of Cambodia was increased by the addition to it of the Siamese provinces of Melupré and Bassac, and the maritime district of Krat, the latter of which, together with the province of Dansai, was in 1907 exchanged for the provinces of Battambang, Siem-reap and Sisophon. By the same treaty France renounced its sphere of influence on the right bank of the Mekong. In 1904 King Norodom was succeeded by his brother Sisowath. Entry: CAMBODIA

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 5, Slice 1 "Calhoun" to "Camoens"     1910-1911

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