Joan Stambaugh(1932 - 2013)
Joan Stambaugh was an American philosopher and professor of philosophy at City University of New York. She was an interpreter and translator of Martin Heidegger's writings, specifically known for her translation of Being and Time into English. She is the author of several works dealing with Buddhist and Existentialist topics, including Impermanence is Buddha-Nature: Dogen’s Understanding of Temporality (1990), The Other Nietzsche (1994), and The Formless Self (1999). (Source Accessed April 1, 2020)
Library Items
Impermanence Is Buddha-Nature: Dōgen's Understanding of Temporality
Dōgen Zenji was a Japanese Zen Buddhist teacher born in Kyōto, and the founder of the Sōtō school of Zen in Japan after travelling to China and training under the Chinese Caodong lineage there. Dōgen is known for his extensive writing including the Treasury of the Eye of the True Dharma or Shōbōgenzō, a collection of ninety-five fascicles concerning Buddhist practice and enlightenment.
The primary concept underlying Dōgen's Zen practice is “oneness of practice-enlightenment”. In fact, this concept is considered so fundamental to Dōgen's variety of Zen—and, consequently, to the Sōtō school as a whole—that it formed the basis for the work Shushō-gi, which was compiled in 1890 by Takiya Takushō of Eihei-ji and Azegami Baisen of Sōji-ji as an introductory and prescriptive abstract of Dōgen's massive work, the Shōbōgenzō (“Treasury of the Eye of the True Dharma”).
Stambaugh, Joan. Impermanence Is Buddha-Nature: Dōgen's Understanding of Temporality. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1990.
Stambaugh, Joan. Impermanence Is Buddha-Nature: Dōgen's Understanding of Temporality. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1990.;Impermanence Is Buddha-Nature: Dōgen's Understanding of Temporality;The doctrine of buddha-nature in Japanese Buddhism;Zen - Chan;Dōgen;Joan Stambaugh;Impermanence Is Buddha-Nature: Dōgen's Understanding of Temporality
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Impermanence Is Buddha-Nature: Dōgen's Understanding of Temporality-Review by Lusthaus
Few premodern Japanese thinkers have received as much attention from Western philosophical circles as the thirteenth century Sōtō Zen master Dōgen. This interest has been sparked and facilitated by insightful English translations of key portions of Dōgen's masterful collected work, the Shōbōgenzō (especially those by Norman Waddell and Masao Abe), and by several book-length studies of Dōgen's thought—most notably those by Hee-jin Kim, Steven Heine, and Carl Bielefeldt. Kim and Heine, in particular, have examined Dōgen from a cross-cultural philosophic perspective.
Professor Stambaugh, whose background is primarily German Philosophy of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, first turned to Dōgen in the climactic chapter of her book The Real in Not the Rational [Albany, NY, 1986]. Also the author of The Problem of Time in Nietzsche [Lewisburg, 1987], she has combined in her present work many of the concerns and issues raised in these previous works while embarking on several new avenues of investigation. She is genuinely impressed with Dōgen, and portrays him as a strong and critical voice capable of insights that frequently go beyond the formulations proffered by the Western philosophers whim whom she compares him, philosophers such as Aristotle, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger.
Generally her method of argument in each chapter consists of setting out basic categories—such as transcendence-immanence, identity-difference, etc.— or sketching the view of a particular philosopher—such as Hegel's notion of dialectic—and then allowing Dōgen to either supplement or supplant what has been introduced. In the earlier chapter this method proves fruitful and she repeatedly zeroes in on crucial passages from Dōgen's seminal works: Uji ('"Being Time"), Genjokōan ("Actualizing the Kōan"), Busshō ("Buddha-nature"), Gyōji ("Ceaseless Practice"), and so on. She is a careful reader, sensitive to many of the philosophical subtleties of Dōgen's writings, and her insights are frequently illuminating and lucid. This is no mean task, given the difficult and unusual language Dōgen uses to express himself.
She is particularly effective, I think, in her discussion of the Buddha-nature fascicle, clearly explaining why, for Dōgen, Buddha-nature is neither something that someone possesses nor a potentiality that someone develops or brings to fruition. (Lusthaus, review, 69-70) (Lusthaus, Review of Impermanence Is Buddha-Nature, 69-70)
Professor Stambaugh, whose background is primarily German Philosophy of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, first turned to Dōgen in the climactic chapter of her book The Real in Not the Rational [Albany, NY, 1986]. Also the author of The Problem of Time in Nietzsche [Lewisburg, 1987], she has combined in her present work many of the concerns and issues raised in these previous works while embarking on several new avenues of investigation. She is genuinely impressed with Dōgen, and portrays him as a strong and critical voice capable of insights that frequently go beyond the formulations proffered by the Western philosophers whim whom she compares him, philosophers such as Aristotle, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger.
Generally her method of argument in each chapter consists of setting out basic categories—such as transcendence-immanence, identity-difference, etc.— or sketching the view of a particular philosopher—such as Hegel's notion of dialectic—and then allowing Dōgen to either supplement or supplant what has been introduced. In the earlier chapter this method proves fruitful and she repeatedly zeroes in on crucial passages from Dōgen's seminal works: Uji ('"Being Time"), Genjokōan ("Actualizing the Kōan"), Busshō ("Buddha-nature"), Gyōji ("Ceaseless Practice"), and so on. She is a careful reader, sensitive to many of the philosophical subtleties of Dōgen's writings, and her insights are frequently illuminating and lucid. This is no mean task, given the difficult and unusual language Dōgen uses to express himself.
She is particularly effective, I think, in her discussion of the Buddha-nature fascicle, clearly explaining why, for Dōgen, Buddha-nature is neither something that someone possesses nor a potentiality that someone develops or brings to fruition. (Lusthaus, review, 69-70) (Lusthaus, Review of Impermanence Is Buddha-Nature, 69-70)
Lusthaus, Dan. Review of Impermanence Is Buddha-Nature: Dōgen's Understanding of Temporality, by Joan Stambaugh. Chanoyu Quarterly 69 (1992): 69–72.
Lusthaus, Dan. Review of Impermanence Is Buddha-Nature: Dōgen's Understanding of Temporality, by Joan Stambaugh. Chanoyu Quarterly 69 (1992): 69–72.;Impermanence Is Buddha-Nature: Dōgen's Understanding of Temporality-Review by Lusthaus;The doctrine of buddha-nature in Japanese Buddhism;Dōgen;Stambaugh, J.;Dan Lusthaus;  
Affiliations & relations
- City University of New York · workplace affiliation
