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Dreaming and Self-Cultivation in China, 300 BCE–800 CE
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Dreaming and Self-Cultivation in China, 300 BCE–800 CE
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See moreIn Dreaming and Self-Cultivation in China, 300 BCE–800 CE, Robert Ford Campany examines how dreaming was addressed in texts produced and circulated by practitioners of Daoist, Buddhist, Confucian, and other self-cultivational disciplines. He uncovers paradigms by which dreams are viewed and shows how they underlay diverse religious texts.
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Description
Practitioners of any of the paths of self-cultivation available in ancient and medieval China engaged daily in practices meant to bring their bodies and minds under firm control. They took on regimens to discipline their comportment, speech, breathing, diet, senses, desires, sexuality, and even their dreams. Yet, compared with waking life, dreams are incongruous and unpredictable—in a word, strange. How, then, did these regimes of self-fashioning grapple with dreaming, a lawless yet ubiquitous domain of individual experience?
In Dreaming and Self-Cultivation in China, 300 BCE–800 CE, Robert Ford Campany examines how dreaming was addressed in texts produced and circulated by practitioners of Daoist, Buddhist, Confucian, and other self-cultivational disciplines. Working through a wide range of scriptures, essays, treatises, biographies, commentaries, fictive dialogues, diary records, interpretive keys, and ritual instructions, Campany uncovers a set of discrete paradigms by which dreams were viewed and responded to by practitioners.
He shows how these paradigms underlay texts of diverse religious and ideological persuasions that are usually treated in mutual isolation. The result is a provocative meditation on the relationship between individuals' nocturnal experiences and one culture's persistent attempts to discipline, interpret, and incorporate them into waking practice.
Series: Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series
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Dreaming and Self-Cultivation in China, 300 BCE–800 CE
Practitioners of any of the paths of self-cultivation available in ancient and medieval China engaged daily in practices meant to bring their bodies and minds under firm control. They took on regimens to discipline their comportment, speech, breathing, diet, senses, desires, sexuality, even their dreams. Yet, compared with waking life, dreams are incongruous, unpredictable—in a word, strange. How, then, did...Paperback$6699Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
Dreaming and Self-Cultivation in China, 300 BCE–800 CE
Practitioners of any of the paths of self-cultivation available in ancient and medieval China engaged daily in practices meant to bring their bodies and minds under firm control. They took on regimens to discipline their comportment, speech, breathing, diet, senses, desires, sexuality, and even their dreams. Yet, compared with waking life, dreams are incongruous and unpredictable—in a word, strange. How,...Hardback$11899Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
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Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780674293724
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Format: Hardback
Date Published: 18 April 2023
Country: United States
Imprint: Harvard University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 25.0mm
Width: 152.0mm
Height: 229.0mm
Weight: 590g
Pages: 326
About the Author
Robert Ford Campany is Professor of Asian and Religious Studies at Vanderbilt University. He is author of Signs from the Unseen Realm: Buddhist Miracle Tales from Early Medieval China and Making Transcendents: Ascetics and Social Memory in Early Medieval China.
Also by Robert Ford Campany
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Dreaming and Self-Cultivation in China, 300 BCE–800 CE
Practitioners of any of the paths of self-cultivation available in ancient and medieval China engaged daily in practices meant to bring their bodies and minds under firm control. They took on regimens to discipline their comportment, speech, breathing, diet, senses, desires, sexuality, even their dreams. Yet, compared with waking life, dreams are incongruous, unpredictable—in a word, strange. How, then, did...Paperback$6699Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
The Chinese Dreamscape, 300 BCE–800 CE
Dreaming is a near-universal human experience, but there is no consensus on why we dream or what dreams should be taken to mean. In this book, Robert Ford Campany investigates what people in late classical and early medieval China thought of dreams. He maps a common dreamscape—an array of ideas about what dreams are and what responses they should provoke—that...Paperback$6199Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks
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