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Author: Reiko Ohnuma
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190637560
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 265
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Book Description
Unfortunate Destiny focuses on the roles played by nonhuman animals within the imaginative thought-world of Indian Buddhism, as reflected in pre-modern South Asian Buddhist literature. These roles are multifaceted, diverse, and often contradictory: In Buddhist doctrine and cosmology, the animal rebirth is a most "unfortunate destiny" (durgati), won through negative karma and characterized by a lack of intelligence, moral agency, and spiritual potential. In stories about the Buddha's previous lives, on the other hand, we find highly anthropomorphized animals who are wise, virtuous, endowed with human speech, and often critical of the moral shortcomings of humankind. In the life-story of the Buddha, certain animal characters serve as "doubles" of the Buddha, illuminating his nature through identification, contrast or parallelism with an animal "other." Relations between human beings and animals likewise range all the way from support, friendship, and near-equality to rampant exploitation, cruelty, and abuse. Perhaps the only commonality among these various strands of thought is a persistent impulse to use animals to clarify the nature of humanity itself--whether through similarity, contrast, or counterpoint. Buddhism is a profoundly human-centered religious tradition, yet it relies upon a dexterous use of the animal other to help clarify the human self. This book seeks to make sense of this process through a wide-ranging-exploration of animal imagery, animal discourse, and specific animal characters in South Asian Buddhist texts.
Author: Reiko Ohnuma
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190637560
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Get Book Here
Book Description
Unfortunate Destiny focuses on the roles played by nonhuman animals within the imaginative thought-world of Indian Buddhism, as reflected in pre-modern South Asian Buddhist literature. These roles are multifaceted, diverse, and often contradictory: In Buddhist doctrine and cosmology, the animal rebirth is a most "unfortunate destiny" (durgati), won through negative karma and characterized by a lack of intelligence, moral agency, and spiritual potential. In stories about the Buddha's previous lives, on the other hand, we find highly anthropomorphized animals who are wise, virtuous, endowed with human speech, and often critical of the moral shortcomings of humankind. In the life-story of the Buddha, certain animal characters serve as "doubles" of the Buddha, illuminating his nature through identification, contrast or parallelism with an animal "other." Relations between human beings and animals likewise range all the way from support, friendship, and near-equality to rampant exploitation, cruelty, and abuse. Perhaps the only commonality among these various strands of thought is a persistent impulse to use animals to clarify the nature of humanity itself--whether through similarity, contrast, or counterpoint. Buddhism is a profoundly human-centered religious tradition, yet it relies upon a dexterous use of the animal other to help clarify the human self. This book seeks to make sense of this process through a wide-ranging-exploration of animal imagery, animal discourse, and specific animal characters in South Asian Buddhist texts.
Author: Chuan Cheng
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443857785
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 275
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Book Description
Through detailed discussions of several Buddhist and Chinese moral concepts and beliefs and accompanied by some edifying short stories, this book investigates three types of ethical treatment of animals in early Chinese Buddhism: the imperial bans on animal sacrifice; the early development of the two unique and living traditions of vegetarianism; and the freeing of animals. The book presents a demonstration of the early Chinese acceptance of Indian Buddhism, providing the reader with a better understanding of the early history of Chinese Buddhism in general, and of the integration of Chinese and Indian Buddhist cultures in particular.
Author: Mark W. McGinnis
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 0834826011
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 228
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Book Description
Around the beginning of the common era, Indian Buddhists began to collect fables, or jataka tales, illuminating various human virtues and foibles—from kindness, cooperation, loyalty and self-discipline on the one hand to greed, pride, foolishness, and treachery on the other. Instead of populating these stories with people, they cast the animals of their immediate environment in the leading roles—which may have given the tales a universal appeal that helped them travel around the world, surfacing in the Middle East as Aesop's fables and in various other guises throughout East and Southeast Asia, Africa, Russia, and Europe. Author and painter Mark McGinnis has collected over forty of these hallowed popular tales and retold them in vividly poetic yet accessible language, their original Buddhist messages firmly intact. Each story is accompanied with a beautifully rendered full-color painting, making this an equally attractive book for children and adults, whether Buddhist or not, who love fine stories about their fellow wise (and foolish) creatures.
Author: Shravasti Dhammika
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789552404313
Category : Animals
Languages : en
Pages : 259
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Book Description
Author: David Abram
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0375713697
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 338
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Book Description
David Abram’s first book, The Spell of the Sensuous has become a classic of environmental literature. Now he returns with a startling exploration of our human entanglement with the rest of nature. As the climate veers toward catastrophe, the innumerable losses cascading through the biosphere make vividly evident the need for a metamorphosis in our relation to the living land. For too long we’ve ignored the wild intelligence of our bodies, taking our primary truths from technologies that hold the living world at a distance. Abram’s writing subverts this distance, drawing readers ever closer to their animal senses in order to explore, from within, the elemental kinship between the human body and the breathing Earth. The shape-shifting of ravens, the erotic nature of gravity, the eloquence of thunder, the pleasures of being edible: all have their place in this book.
Author: Lambert Schmithausen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Buddhism
Languages : en
Pages : 140
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Book Description
Author: Matthieu Ricard
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 0834840545
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 353
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Book Description
Every cow just wants to be happy. Every chicken just wants to be free. Every bear, dog, or mouse experiences sorrow and feels pain as intensely as any of us humans do. In a compelling appeal to reason and human kindness, Matthieu Ricard here takes the arguments from his best-sellers Altruism and Happiness to their logical conclusion: that compassion toward all beings, including our fellow animals, is a moral obligation and the direction toward which any enlightened society must aspire. He chronicles the appalling sufferings of the animals we eat, wear, and use for adornment or "entertainment," and submits every traditional justification for their exploitation to scientific evidence and moral scrutiny. What arises is an unambiguous and powerful ethical imperative for treating all of the animals with whom we share this planet with respect and compassion.
Author: Ron B. Epstein, PhD
Publisher: Buddhist Text Translation Society
ISBN: 1601031009
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
Does genetic engineering have the potential to be as dangerous a nuclear holocaust? Will playing games online lead to brain shrinkage? These and other environmental and moral dilemmas of the modern world are discussed in a collection of essays which use Buddhist texts and academic resources to analyze problems in today’s world. Topics include pollution, animal cruelty, genetically modified foods, and our addictions to digital and social media. Dr. Epstein describes how outer environmental and social problems mirror humanity’s inner struggle with selfishness, greed, and desire. By connecting Buddhist concepts such as compassion, causation, and moral precepts to these issues, this collection of essays provides guidance to for ethical conduct in today’s world.
Author: Daigan Matsunaga
Publisher: New York : Philosophical Library
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 168
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Book Description
"The first half of the book studies the development of hell as a philosophical cncept from Early Buddhism through the Madhhyamika and Vijnāňavāda schools. The second half, based upon the Saddharmasmṛtyupasthānasūtra, presents an analysis of the eight symbolic Buddhist hells as a journey into self-reflection."--Jacket.
Author: W. Y. Evans-Wentz
Publisher: Courier Dover Publications
ISBN: 0486845370
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 303
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Book Description
Derived from a Buddhist funerary text, this famous volume's timeless wisdom includes instructions for attaining enlightenment, preparing for the process of dying, and moving through the various stages of rebirth.
