Lacan and Chan Buddhist Thought

Reflections on Buddhism in Lacan’s Seminar X and Beyond

Raul Moncayo, Yang Yu

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781000780543
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Endorsements
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Lacan and Vasubhandu (世亲菩萨)
• 2 The Second Turning of the Dharma Wheel: Nagarjuna’s Teachings on Nirvana
• 3 Rereading Freud’s Nirvana
• 4 The Pleasure, Constancy, and Nirvana Principles
• 5 Wu and Mu in the Cáodòng zōng and Línjì Schools
• 6 “No Buddha-Nature” and Buddha’s Desire
• 7 The Vacuum in Western Science
• 8 Lacan and Wu
• 9 The Paradoxical Chan Koans, Self-Reference, and Letter Jouissance
• 10 The True Body of Bodhi and Buddh(a)
• 11 The Mirror in Lacan, Chan, and Dogen’s Zen
• 12 The One, the Many, and Kuan-yin
• 13 Clinical Dream Example
• Appendix: The Practice of Thinking Non-thinking or Thinking/Meditating with the Body of the Third Jouissance
• Bibliography
• Index