Human-Centered Buddhism

Human-Centered Buddhism PDF Author: Venerable Master Yinshun
Publisher: Dharma Translation Organization
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 99

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Book Description
The process of Buddhism’s transmission to China in the distant past and its present transmission to the West have striking parallels. The Buddhist scriptures and practices that crept gradually into China from India had developed in different historical periods and in different environments. The ways in which the ancient Chinese made sense of the bewildering array of Buddhist doctrines that had developed over hundreds of years in India and adapted them to their own circumstances ultimately gave rise to a uniquely Chinese Buddhism. The West now seems to be much like ancient China, encountering many different threads of Buddhism coming from distant lands, threads which reflect many permutations of Buddhist thought and practice that developed in Asia over the past 2500 years under circumstances quite foreign to the present. Do these various forms have anything in common? What, then, is Buddhism? How will it adapt to Western culture and still be Buddhism? What does it have to offer people living a twenty-first century modern life? In this book, the eminent Chinese Buddhist Master Yinshun gives us some answers.

Human-Centered Buddhism

Human-Centered Buddhism PDF Author: Venerable Master Yinshun
Publisher: Dharma Translation Organization
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 99

Get Book Here

Book Description
The process of Buddhism’s transmission to China in the distant past and its present transmission to the West have striking parallels. The Buddhist scriptures and practices that crept gradually into China from India had developed in different historical periods and in different environments. The ways in which the ancient Chinese made sense of the bewildering array of Buddhist doctrines that had developed over hundreds of years in India and adapted them to their own circumstances ultimately gave rise to a uniquely Chinese Buddhism. The West now seems to be much like ancient China, encountering many different threads of Buddhism coming from distant lands, threads which reflect many permutations of Buddhist thought and practice that developed in Asia over the past 2500 years under circumstances quite foreign to the present. Do these various forms have anything in common? What, then, is Buddhism? How will it adapt to Western culture and still be Buddhism? What does it have to offer people living a twenty-first century modern life? In this book, the eminent Chinese Buddhist Master Yinshun gives us some answers.

Being Human in a Buddhist World

Being Human in a Buddhist World PDF Author: Janet Gyatso
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231538324
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 539

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Book Description
Critically exploring medical thought in a cultural milieu with no discernible influence from the European Enlightenment, Being Human in a Buddhist World reveals an otherwise unnoticed intersection of early modern sensibilities and religious values in traditional Tibetan medicine. It further studies the adaptation of Buddhist concepts and values to medical concerns and suggests important dimensions of Buddhism's role in the development of Asian and global civilization. Through its unique focus and sophisticated reading of source materials, Being Human adds a crucial chapter in the larger historiography of science and religion. The book opens with the bold achievements in Tibetan medical illustration, commentary, and institution building during the period of the Fifth Dalai Lama and his regent, Desi Sangye Gyatso, then looks back to the work of earlier thinkers, tracing a strategically astute dialectic between scriptural and empirical authority on questions of history and the nature of human anatomy. It follows key differences between medicine and Buddhism in attitudes toward gender and sex and the moral character of the physician, who had to serve both the patient's and the practitioner's well-being. Being Human in a Buddhist World ultimately finds that Tibetan medical scholars absorbed ethical and epistemological categories from Buddhism yet shied away from ideal systems and absolutes, instead embracing the imperfectability of the human condition.

After Buddhism

After Buddhism PDF Author: Stephen Batchelor
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030021622X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
Some twenty-five centuries after the Buddha started teaching, his message continues to inspire people across the globe, including those living in predominantly secular societies. What does it mean to adapt religious practices to secular contexts? Stephen Batchelor, an internationally known author and teacher, is committed to a secularized version of the Buddha’s teachings. The time has come, he feels, to articulate a coherent ethical, contemplative, and philosophical vision of Buddhism for our age. After Buddhism, the culmination of four decades of study and practice in the Tibetan, Zen, and Theravada traditions, is his attempt to set the record straight about who the Buddha was and what he was trying to teach. Combining critical readings of the earliest canonical texts with narrative accounts of five members of the Buddha’s inner circle, Batchelor depicts the Buddha as a pragmatic ethicist rather than a dogmatic metaphysician. He envisions Buddhism as a constantly evolving culture of awakening whose long survival is due to its capacity to reinvent itself and interact creatively with each society it encounters. This original and provocative book presents a new framework for understanding the remarkable spread of Buddhism in today’s globalized world. It also reminds us of what was so startling about the Buddha’s vision of human flourishing.

Buddha Taught Nonviolence, Not Pacifism

Buddha Taught Nonviolence, Not Pacifism PDF Author: Paul R. Fleischman
Publisher: Pariyatti Publishing
ISBN: 1928706223
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 59

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Book Description
In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, this thought-provoking essay explores the Buddha's teaching to find one prescription: not war, not pacifism but nonviolence.

Buddhism and Human Flourishing

Buddhism and Human Flourishing PDF Author: Seth Zuihō Segall
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030370275
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
The Buddha and Aristotle offer competing visions of the best possible life to which human beings can aspire. In this volume, Seth Zuihō Segall compares Theravāda and Mahāyāna accounts of enlightenment with Aristotelian and neo-Aristotelian accounts of eudaimonia, and proposes a syncretic model of eudaimonic enlightenment that, given prevalent Western beliefs about well-being and human flourishing, provides a credible new end-goal for modern Western Buddhist practice. He then demonstrates how this proposed synthesis is already deeply reflected in contemporary Western Buddhist rhetoric. Segall re-evaluates traditional Buddhist teachings on desire, attachment, aversion, nirvāṇa, and selfhood from the eudaimonic enlightenment perspective, and explores the perspective’s ethical and metaphysical implications.

Why Buddhism is True

Why Buddhism is True PDF Author: Robert Wright
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439195471
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
From one of America’s most brilliant writers, a New York Times bestselling journey through psychology, philosophy, and lots of meditation to show how Buddhism holds the key to moral clarity and enduring happiness. At the heart of Buddhism is a simple claim: The reason we suffer—and the reason we make other people suffer—is that we don’t see the world clearly. At the heart of Buddhist meditative practice is a radical promise: We can learn to see the world, including ourselves, more clearly and so gain a deep and morally valid happiness. In this “sublime” (The New Yorker), pathbreaking book, Robert Wright shows how taking this promise seriously can change your life—how it can loosen the grip of anxiety, regret, and hatred, and how it can deepen your appreciation of beauty and of other people. He also shows why this transformation works, drawing on the latest in neuroscience and psychology, and armed with an acute understanding of human evolution. This book is the culmination of a personal journey that began with Wright’s landmark book on evolutionary psychology, The Moral Animal, and deepened as he immersed himself in meditative practice and conversed with some of the world’s most skilled meditators. The result is a story that is “provocative, informative and...deeply rewarding” (The New York Times Book Review), and as entertaining as it is illuminating. Written with the wit, clarity, and grace for which Wright is famous, Why Buddhism Is True lays the foundation for a spiritual life in a secular age and shows how, in a time of technological distraction and social division, we can save ourselves from ourselves, both as individuals and as a species.

Engaged Buddhism

Engaged Buddhism PDF Author: Christopher S. Queen
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791428436
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 462

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Book Description
This is the first comprehensive coverage of socially and politically engaged Buddhism in Asia, presenting the historical development and institutional forms of engaged Buddhism in the light of traditional Buddhist conceptions of morality, interdependence, and liberation.

Against Empathy

Against Empathy PDF Author: Paul Bloom
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062339354
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
New York Post Best Book of 2016 We often think of our capacity to experience the suffering of others as the ultimate source of goodness. Many of our wisest policy-makers, activists, scientists, and philosophers agree that the only problem with empathy is that we don’t have enough of it. Nothing could be farther from the truth, argues Yale researcher Paul Bloom. In AGAINST EMPATHY, Bloom reveals empathy to be one of the leading motivators of inequality and immorality in society. Far from helping us to improve the lives of others, empathy is a capricious and irrational emotion that appeals to our narrow prejudices. It muddles our judgment and, ironically, often leads to cruelty. We are at our best when we are smart enough not to rely on it, but to draw instead upon a more distanced compassion. Basing his argument on groundbreaking scientific findings, Bloom makes the case that some of the worst decisions made by individuals and nations—who to give money to, when to go to war, how to respond to climate change, and who to imprison—are too often motivated by honest, yet misplaced, emotions. With precision and wit, he demonstrates how empathy distorts our judgment in every aspect of our lives, from philanthropy and charity to the justice system; from medical care and education to parenting and marriage. Without empathy, Bloom insists, our decisions would be clearer, fairer, and—yes—ultimately more moral. Brilliantly argued, urgent and humane, AGAINST EMPATHY shows us that, when it comes to both major policy decisions and the choices we make in our everyday lives, limiting our impulse toward empathy is often the most compassionate choice we can make.

Zen and the Brain

Zen and the Brain PDF Author: James H. Austin
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262260350
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 876

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Book Description
A neuroscientist and Zen practitioner interweaves the latest research on the brain with his personal narrative of Zen. Aldous Huxley called humankind's basic trend toward spiritual growth the "perennial philosophy." In the view of James Austin, the trend implies a "perennial psychophysiology"—because awakening, or enlightenment, occurs only when the human brain undergoes substantial changes. What are the peak experiences of enlightenment? How could these states profoundly enhance, and yet simplify, the workings of the brain? Zen and the Brain presents the latest evidence. In this book Zen Buddhism becomes the opening wedge for an extraordinarily wide-ranging exploration of consciousness. In order to understand which brain mechanisms produce Zen states, one needs some understanding of the anatomy, physiology, and chemistry of the brain. Austin, both a neurologist and a Zen practitioner, interweaves the most recent brain research with the personal narrative of his Zen experiences. The science is both inclusive and rigorous; the Zen sections are clear and evocative. Along the way, Austin examines such topics as similar states in other disciplines and religions, sleep and dreams, mental illness, consciousness-altering drugs, and the social consequences of the advanced stage of ongoing enlightenment.

Earthdance

Earthdance PDF Author: Elisabet Sahtouris
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780595130672
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 405

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Book Description
the submitted cover design includes spine and back cover