Gleanings In Buddha-Fields (Kegan Paul Japan Library) [Hardcover]

Lafcadio Hearn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 27, 2006 | ISBN-10: 0710311222 | ISBN-13: 978-0710311221

The third book of Lafcadio Hearn's Japanese period, Gleanings in Buddha-Fields is a volume of philosophical essays and sketches inspired by the teachings of Buddha. Through a series of loosely connected essays, the author offers readers a wealth of insights into Japanese life, art and religion. When the book was first published in 1897, it attracted the attention of The New York Times: "It is only Mr. Hearn who has made us understand something of the Japanese way of looking at life and things, something of that religion which is the very soul and substance of Japanese existence, thought, and action." Today's readers are sure to recognize the elegance and depth of thought which have made the work a classic.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

COSIMO CLASSICS offers distinctive titles by the great authors and thinkers who have inspired, informed and engaged readers throughout the ages.

Covering a diverse range of subjects that include Health & Science, Eastern Philosophy, Mythology & Sacred Texts, Philosophy & Spirituality, and Business & Economics these newly revitalized treasures are now available to contemporary readers. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Lafacdio Hearn was born in Greece to an Irish father and a Greek mother. After working as a journalist in New Orleans, he later moved to Japan, where he took on the name Koizumi Yagumo. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Routledge (January 27, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0710311222
• ISBN-13: 978-0710311221
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,432,660 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Things never changed since the Time of the Gods: The flowing of water, the Way of Love.", November 1, 2009

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Crazy Fox (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gleanings In Buddha-Fields (Kegan Paul Japan Library) (Hardcover)

As of 1897, Lafcadio Hearn had already published several books eloquently introducing Japan to the English-reading world, capturing an unfamiliar glimpse of the country and its culture at a critical juncture during the Meiji years in the process. What was there left to glean? A rich harvest, in fact. "Gleanings in Buddha-Fields" is an elegant and evocative and yet imminently informative collection of diaphanously linked essays. The variety of Hearn's points of focus flow with a peculiar rhythm all his own--literature, travelogue, folklore, or the oxygen-thin heights of Buddhist philosophy--but the undertow remains his abiding interest in Japanese religion and spirituality in its many differing manifestations. From themes of karma and rebirth in contemporary love poetry and working songs to heady explications of Nirvana and Emptiness, from the old cultural capital of Kyoto to the bustling commercial center of Osaka, Hearn unfolds this topic delicately in a seemingly rambling roundabout manner in rich (sometimes just a bit overly so) language crafted to entertain, inspire, and perhaps even enlighten. Many works written about Japan by Westerners in Hearn's time hold interest nowadays merely as historical fossils of cultural interaction and tend to be embarrassingly unreliable, something not true of Hearn and his work here, combining as it does a scholarly knowledge unusual in his day, a keenly discerning eye just as rare today, and most of all a genuinely deep and abiding regard for the nation he ended up adopting as his own.