Pamela D. Winfield, “Icons and Iconoclasm in Japanese Buddhism: Kukai and Dogen on the Art of Enlightenment” (Oxford UP, 2013)

In Conversation: An OUP Podcast · Mar 29, 2016 · 40m

What role do images play in the enlightenment experience? Can Buddha images, calligraphy, mandalas, and portraits function as nodes of access for a practitioner’s experience of enlightenment? Or are these visual representations a distraction from what ultimately matters? Pamela D. Winfield‘s recent award-winning monograph, Icons and Iconoclasm in Japanese Buddhism: Kukai and Dogen on the Art of Enlightenment (Oxford University Press, 2013), explores these major Japanese Buddhist figures artistic and textual productions in order to answer these questions. Bringing together her expertise in the…