An ideal introduction to the history of Buddhism. Andrew Skilton - a writer on and practitioner of Buddhism - explains the development of the basic concepts of Buddhism during its 2,500 years of history and describes its varied developments in India, Buddhism's homeland, as well as its spread across Asia, from Mongolia to Sri Lanka and from Japan to the Middle East. A fascinating insight into the historical progress of one of the world's great religions.
This comprehensive and detailed survey of the first six centuries of Indian Buddhism sums up the results of a lifetime of research and reflection by one of Japan's most renowned scholars of Buddhism.
This fourteenth-century Tibetan classic serves as an excellent introduction to basic Buddhism as practiced throughout India and Tibet and describes the process of entering the Buddhist path through study and reflection. It begins with setting forth the structure of Buddhist education and the range of its subjects, and we’re treated to a rousing litany of the merits of such instruction. We’re then introduced to the buddhas of our world and eon—three of whom have already lived, taught, and passed into transcendence—before examining in detail the fourth, our own Buddha Shakyamuni. Butön tells the story of Shakyamuni’s past lives and then presents the path the Buddha followed (the same that all buddhas must follow). After the Buddha’s story, Butön recounts three compilations of Buddhist scriptures and then quotes from sacred texts that foretell the lives and contributions of great Indian Buddhist masters, which he then relates, concluding with the tale of the eventual demise and disappearance of the Buddhist doctrine. The text ends with an account of the inception and spread of Buddhism in Tibet, focused mainly on the country’s kings and early adopters of the foreign faith. An afterword by Ngawang Zangpo, one of the translators, discusses and contextualizes Butön’s exemplary life, his turbulent times, and his prolific works.
No man has had a greater inflience on the spiritual development of his people than Siddartha Gautama. Born in India in the sixth century BC into a nation hungry for spiritual experience, he developed a religious and moral teaching that, to this day, brings comfort and peace to all who practise it. This comprehensive biography examines the social, religious and political conditions that gave rise to Buddhism as we now know it.
Buddhism teaches that to become happy, greed, ill-will, and delusion must be transformed into their positive counterparts: generosity, compassion, and wisdom. The history of the West, like all histories, has been plagued by the consequences of greed, ill-will, and delusion. A Buddhist History of the West investigates how individuals have tried to ground themselves to make themselves feel more real. To be self-conscious is to experience ungroundedness as a sense of lack, but what is lacking has been understood differently in different historical periods. Author David R. Loy examines how the understanding of lack changes at historical junctures and shows how those junctures were so crucial in the development of the West.
The History of Indian Buddhism is undoubtedly Msgr. E. Lamotte's most brilliant contribution to the field of Buddhist exegesis. The work contains a vivid, vigorous and fully-detailed description of early Buddhism and its teachings, the material organization of the Community, the formation and further developments of the writings, the conciliar traditions, the evolution of Buddhist sculpture and architecture, the origins of the sects, the Buddhist dialects and the constitution of the legends, and sets them in the historical background in which buddhist doctrines originated and expanded in India and in the neighbouring countries. Using the material evidence provided by Indian epigraphy and archaeological remains on the one hand, and taking into account the data supplied by Western (Latin and Greek) and Far Eastern (Tibetan and Chinese) sources on the other, Msgr. E. Lamotte has succeeded in producing a lucid and basic book that is unanimously considered as a classic of contemporary Buddhist studies. After thirty years, the work has retained all its value, but, in order to meet the requirements of recent Buddhist scholarship, the History of Indian Buddhism has been supplemented with an additional bibliography, an index of technical terms and revised geographical maps.
"My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness." --Dalai Lama That's easy for the Dalai Lama to say--but for the rest of us, understanding this mysterious, multilayered faith can be very difficult. With this updated and revised edition of the classic Buddhist primer, you can delve into the profound principles of nonviolence, mindfulness, and self-awareness. From Tibetan Buddhism to Zen, you'll explore the traditions of all branches of Buddhism, including: The life of Buddha and his continuing influence throughout the world A revealing survey of the definitive Buddhist texts What the Sutras say about education, marriage, sex, and death Faith-fueled social protest movements in Tibet, Burma, and elsewhere Buddhist art, poetry, architecture, calligraphy, and landscaping The proven physiological effects of meditation and other Buddhist practices The growing impact of Buddhism on modern American culture In this guide, you'll discover the deceptively simple truths of this enigmatic religion. Most important, you learn how to apply the tenets of Buddhism to your daily life--and achieve clarity and inner peace in the process.
"This volume contains the first full English translation of a thirteenth-century history of Buddhism in India and Tibet. That means most of all a complete life of the Buddha with the history of his renunciate order and of early Buddhist authors in India. Midway through, the action moves to Tibet where there is an emphasis on the Tibetan ruling dynasty, the translators of Buddhist texts, and the lineages that transmitted doctrinal understanding, meditative insights, and practical realization. It concludes with a pessimistic account of the demise of the monastic order followed by optimism with the advent of the future Buddha Maitreya. The composer of this remarkably ecumenical Buddhist history remains anonymous but was likely a follower of rare lineages of Dzogchen and Zhijé teachings. He put together some of the most important early sources on the Tibetan imperial period that had been preserved in his times and supplies the best witnesses we have for many of them in our own times"--
The study of Cambodian religion has long been hampered by a lack of easily accessible scholarship. This impressive new work by Ian Harris thus fills a major gap and offers English-language scholars a booklength, up-to-date treatment of the religious aspects of Cambodian culture. Beginning with a coherent history of the presence of religion in the country from its inception to the present day, the book goes on to furnish insights into the distinctive nature of Cambodia's important yet overlooked manifestation of Theravada Buddhist tradition and to show how it reestablished itself following almost total annihilation during the Pol Pot period. Historical sections cover the dominant role of tantric Mahayana concepts and rituals under the last great king of Angkor, Jayavarman VII (1181–c. 1220); the rise of Theravada traditions after the collapse of the Angkorian civilization; the impact of foreign influences on the development of the nineteenth-century monastic order; and politicized Buddhism and the Buddhist contribution to an emerging sense of Khmer nationhood. The Buddhism practiced in Cambodia has much in common with parallel traditions in Thailand and Sri Lanka, yet there are also significant differences. The book concentrates on these and illustrates how a distinctly Cambodian Theravada developed by accommodating itself to premodern Khmer modes of thought. Following the overthrow of Prince Sihanouk in 1970, Cambodia slid rapidly into disorder and violence. Later chapters chart the elimination of institutional Buddhism under the Khmer Rouge and its gradual reemergence after Pol Pot, the restoration of the monastic order's prerevolutionary institutional forms, and the emergence of contemporary Buddhist groupings.
The Buddha's teachings center around two basic principles. One is the Four Noble Truths, in which the Buddha diagnoses the problem of suffering and indicates the treatment necessary to remedy this problem. The other is the Noble Eightfold Path, the practical discipline he prescribes to uproot and eliminate the deep underlying causes of suffering. The present book offers, in simple and clear language, a concise yet thorough explanation of the Eightfold Path. Basing himself solidly upon the Buddha's own words, the author examines each factor of the path to determine exactly what it implies in the way of practical training. Finally, in the concluding chapter, he shows how all eight factors of the path function in unison to bring about the realization of the Buddhist goal: enlightenment and liberation.
