Greater Magadha

Greater Magadha PDF Author: Johannes Bronkhorst
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004157190
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 437

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Book Description
Through a detailed analysis of the available cultural and chronological data, this book overturns traditional ideas about the cultural history of India and proposes a different picture instead. The idea of a unilinear development out of Brahmanism, in particular, is challenged.

Greater Magadha

Greater Magadha PDF Author: Johannes Bronkhorst
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004157190
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 437

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Book Description
Through a detailed analysis of the available cultural and chronological data, this book overturns traditional ideas about the cultural history of India and proposes a different picture instead. The idea of a unilinear development out of Brahmanism, in particular, is challenged.

Buddhism in the Shadow of Brahmanism

Buddhism in the Shadow of Brahmanism PDF Author: Johannes Bronkhorst
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004201408
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
This book deals with the confrontation of Buddhism and Brahmanism in India. Both depended on support from the royal court, but Buddhism had less to offer in return than Brahmanism. Buddhism developed in a manner to make up for this.

Karma

Karma PDF Author: Johannes Bronkhorst
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824860152
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
Karma has become a household word in the modern world, where it is associated with the belief in rebirth determined by one’s deeds in earlier lives. This belief was and is widespread in the Indian subcontinent as is the word “karma” itself. In lucid and accessible prose, this book presents karma in its historical, cultural, and religious context. Initially, karma manifested itself in a number of religious movements—most notably Jainism and Buddhism—and was subsequently absorbed into Brahmanism in spite of opposition until the end of the first millennium C.E. Philosophers of all three traditions were confronted with the challenge of explaining by what process rebirth and karmic retribution take place. Some took the drastic step of accepting the participation of a supreme god who acted as a cosmic accountant, others of opting for radical idealism. The doctrine of karma was confronted with alternative explanations of human destiny, among them the belief in the transfer of merit. It also had to accommodate itself to devotional movements that exerted a major influence on Indian religions. The book concludes with some general reflections on the significance of rebirth and karmic retribution, drawing attention to similarities between early Christian and Indian ascetical practices and philosophical notions that in India draw their inspiration from the doctrine of karma.

How the Brahmins Won

How the Brahmins Won PDF Author: Johannes Bronkhorst
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004315519
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 590

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Book Description
This is the first study to systematically confront the question how Brahmanism, which was geographically limited and under threat during the final centuries BCE, transformed itself and spread all over South and Southeast Asia. Brahmanism spread over this vast area without the support of an empire, without the help of conquering armies, and without the intermediary of religious missionaries. This phenomenon has no parallel in world history, yet shaped a major portion of the surface of the earth for a number of centuries. This book focuses on the formative period of this phenomenon, roughly between Alexander and the Guptas.

Buddhist Teaching in India

Buddhist Teaching in India PDF Author: Johannes Bronkhorst
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0861718119
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
The earliest records we have today of what the Buddha said were written down several centuries after his death, and the body of teachings attributed to him continued to evolve in India for centuries afterward across a shifting cultural and political landscape. As one tradition within a diverse religious milieu that included even the Greek kingdoms of northwestern India, Buddhism had many opportunities to both influence and be influenced by competing schools of thought. Even within Buddhism, a proliferation of interpretive traditions produced a dynamic intellectual climate. Johannes Bronkhorst here tracks the development of Buddhist teachings both within the larger Indian context and among Buddhism's many schools, shedding light on the sources and trajectory of such ideas as dharma theory, emptiness, the bodhisattva ideal, buddha nature, formal logic, and idealism. In these pages, we discover the roots of the doctrinal debates that have animated the Buddhist tradition up until the present day.

Greek Buddha

Greek Buddha PDF Author: Christopher I. Beckwith
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691176329
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
Presents a history of early Buddhism based solely on dateable artefacts and archaeology rather than received tradition, much of which data is provided by studying Pyrrho's history

Absorption

Absorption PDF Author: Johannes Bronkhorst
Publisher: UniversityMedia
ISBN: 3906000249
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
"This book argues for the central role played by absorption in the functioning of the human mind. The importance of absorption makes itself felt in different ways; the two studies combined in this book concentrate on two of them. The first study argues that, largely as a result of language acquisition, humans have two levels of cognition, which in normal circumstances are simultaneously active. Mental absorption is a (or the) means to circumvent some, perhaps all, of the associations that characterize one of these two levels, resulting in what is sometimes referred to as mystical experience, but which is not confined to mysticism and plays a role in various "religious" phenomena, and elsewhere. The second study takes as point of departure some puzzling statements in the early Buddhist canon that raises serious questions of a psychological nature. An essential element in the psychological theory proposed is the observation that mental absorption is a source of pleasure. Since the human mind is in large part guided by pleasure, which it seeks to repeat, states of absorption leave memory traces that subsequently direct the mind. However, these memory traces do not "recall" the states of absorption themselves, but rather the objects or circumstances that accompanied them. The resulting activity of the mind differs in this way from person to person, and can pursue wildly diverging goals."--Publisher description.

The Origin of Buddhist Meditation

The Origin of Buddhist Meditation PDF Author: Alexander Wynne
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134097417
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 171

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Book Description
Based on the early Brahminic literature, the author asserts the origin of the method of meditation learned by the Buddha from his two teachers and identifies some authentic teachings of the Buddha on meditation.

Inscriptions of Asoka

Inscriptions of Asoka PDF Author: Aśoka (King of Magadha)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : India
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description


Understanding Interreligious Relations

Understanding Interreligious Relations PDF Author: David Cheetham
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199645841
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 457

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Book Description
A multi-authored volume that explores the theme of the 'religious other' from the perspective of five major religions—Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam—and discusses a range of issues in which interreligious relations are central.