{"product_id":"9780271074696","title":"Zen and the Unspeakable God: Comparative Interpretations of Mystical Experience","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eZen and the Unspeakable God \u003c\/em\u003ereevaluates how we study mystical experience. Forsaking the prescriptive epistemological box that has constrained the conversation for decades, ensuring that methodology has overshadowed subject matter, Jason Blum proposes a new interpretive approach—one that begins with a mystic’s own beliefs about the nature of mystical experience. Blum brings this approach to bear on the experiential accounts of three mystical exemplars: Meister Eckhart, Ibn al-ʿArabi, and Hui-neng. Through close readings of their texts, he uncovers the mystics’ own fundamental assumptions about transcendence and harnesses these as interpretive guides to their experiences.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe predominant theory-first path to interpretation has led to the misunderstanding and misrepresentation of individual mystical experiences and fostered specious conclusions about cross-cultural comparability among them. Blum’s hermeneutic invites the scholarly community to begin thinking about mystical experience in a new way—through the mystics’ eyes. \u003cem\u003eZen and the Unspeakable God \u003c\/em\u003eoffers a sampling of the provocative results of this technique and an explanation of its implications for theories of consciousness and our contemporary understanding of the nature of mystical experience.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Penn State University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47075499081968,"sku":"9780271074696","price":23.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780271074696_p0.jpg?v=1763681472","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780271074696","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}