Author: Vessantara
Publisher: Windhorse Publications
ISBN: 9781899579273
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 220
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Book Description
A Zen monk strides empty handed into a tiger's cage. An Indian master spontaneously empties a bag of gold dust into the air. A young woman lays down the burden of her dead child and asks the Buddha to accept her as his disciple. Here is another book by the popular author, Vessantara, who takes incidents from the lives of the Buddha, Tibetan mystics and Zen masters and uses them to show how we too can live a more fulfilled life. Full of colorful tales, Vessantara's vivid, imaginative style makes these ancient, well-loved stories inspiring tools for self-development.Also by the same author: Female Deities in Buddhism, The Mandala of the Five Buddhas, Meeting the Buddhas, The Vajra and Bell
Author: Bhikkhu Analayo
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1614297339
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 184
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Book Description
Renowned scholar-monk writes accessibly on some of the most contentious topics in Buddhism—guaranteed to ruffle some feathers. Armed with his rigorous examination of the canonical records, respected scholar-monk Bhikkhu Analayo explores—and sharply criticizes—four examples of what he terms “superiority conceit” in Buddhism: the androcentric tendency to prevent women from occupying leadership roles, be these as fully ordained monastics or as advanced bodhisattvas the Mahayana notion that those who don’t aspire to become bodhisattvas are inferior practitioners the Theravada belief that theirs is the most original expression of the Buddha’s teaching the Secular Buddhist claim to understand the teachings of the Buddha more accurately than traditionally practicing Buddhists Ven. Analayo challenges the scriptural basis for these conceits and points out that adhering to such notions of superiority is not, after all, conducive to practice. “It is by diminishing ego, letting go of arrogance, and abandoning conceit that one becomes a better Buddhist,” he reminds us, “no matter what tradition one may follow.” Thoroughly researched, Superiority Conceit in Buddhist Traditions provides an accessible approach to these conceits as academic subjects. Readers will find it not only challenges their own intellectual understandings but also improves their personal practice.
Author: Steven Heine
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195349091
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 298
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Book Description
The history of Buddhism has been characterized by an ongoing tension between attempts to preserve traditional ideals and modes of practice and the need to adapt to changing cultural conditions. Many developments in Buddhist history, such as the infusion of esoteric rituals, the rise of devotionalism and lay movements, and the assimilation of warrior practices, reflect the impact of widespread social changes on traditional religious structures. At the same time, Buddhism has been able to maintain its doctrinal purity to a remarkable degree. This volume explores how traditional Buddhist communities have responded to the challenges of modernity, such as science and technology, colonialism, and globalization. Editors Steven Heine and Charles S. Prebish have commissioned ten essays by leading scholars, each examining a particular traditional Buddhist school in its cultural context. The essays consider how the encounter with modernity has impacted the disciplinary, textual, ritual, devotional, practical, and socio-political traditions of Buddhist thought throughout Asia. Taken together, these essays reveal the diversity and vitality of contemporary Buddhism and offer a wide-ranging look at the way Buddhism interacts with the modern world.
Author: Erol Čopelj
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000605477
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 205
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Book Description
This book offers an original phenomenological description of mindfulness and related phenomena, such as concentration (samādhi) and the practice of insight (vipassanā). It demonstrates that phenomenological method has the power to reanimate ancient Buddhist texts, giving new life to the phenomena at which those texts point. Beginning with descriptions of how mindfulness is encountered in everyday, pre-philosophical life, the book moves on to an analysis of how the Pali Nikāyas of Theravada Buddhism define mindfulness and the practice of cultivating it. It then offers a critique of the contemporary attempts to explain mindfulness as a kind of attention. The author argues that mindfulness is not attention, nor can it be understood as a mere modification of the attentive process. Rather, becoming mindful involves a radical shift in perspective. According to the author’s account, being mindful is the feeling of being tuned-in to the open horizon, which is contrasted with Edmund Husserl’s transcendental horizon. The book also elucidates the difference between the practice of cultivating mindfulness with the practice of the phenomenological epoché, which reveals new possibilities for the practice of phenomenology itself. Phenomenological Reflections on Mindfulness in the Buddhist Tradition will appeal to scholars and advanced students interested in phenomenology, Buddhist philosophy, and comparative philosophy.
Author: Karma Lekshe Tsomo
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479803421
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 232
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Book Description
A new history of Buddhism that highlights the insights and experiences of women from diverse communities and traditions around the world Buddhist traditions have developed over a period of twenty-five centuries in Asia, and recent decades have seen an unprecedented spread of Buddhism globally. From India to Japan, Sri Lanka to Russia, Buddhist traditions around the world have their own rich and diverse histories, cultures, religious lives, and roles for women. Wherever Buddhism has taken root, it has interacted with indigenous cultures and existing religious traditions. These traditions have inevitably influenced the ways in which Buddhist ideas and practices have been understood and adapted. Tracing the branches and fruits of these culturally specific transmissions and adaptations is as challenging as it is fascinating. Women in Buddhist Traditions chronicles pivotal moments in the story of Buddhist women, from the beginning of Buddhist history until today. The book highlights the unique contributions of Buddhist women from a variety of backgrounds and the strategies they have developed to challenge patriarchy in the process of creating an enlightened society. Women in Buddhist Traditions offers a groundbreaking and insightful introduction to the lives of Buddhist women worldwide.
Author: William Theodore de Bary
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307778797
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 441
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Book Description
This book, compiled from basic Buddhist writings, presents a survey of Buddhist thought in India, China, and Japan, covering the central doctrines and practices that has profoundly influenced human life in Asia. Developments in practical ethics, social attitudes, philosophical speculation, and religious and aesthetic contemplation are represented by selected excerpts from basic writings with succinct introductions and commentary. From these one may observe not only the remarkable vitality of Buddhism in its spread through Asia, but also the essential links between widely diverse forms, showing how the spiritual message of the Buddha found expression in different historical and cultural circumstances. Thus both its continuity in time and its wide range of influence mark Buddhism as a major spiritual force in the world. Buddha, as the Awakened One, has exemplified to millions of followers throughout the ages a living Truth, a dynamic wisdom and an active compassion. It is these qualities that have inspired hop and courage in men who were asked to face to the stark reality of man's condition: the inevitable involvement in suffering which arises from his persistent egoism and refusal to recognize his finitude.
Author: Gergely Hidas
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110713365
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 424
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Book Description
This sourcebook explores the most extensive tradition of Buddhist dhāraṇī literature and provides access to the earliest available materials for the first time: a unique palm-leaf bundle from the 12th–13th centuries and a paper manuscript of 1719 CE. The Dhāraṇīsaṃgraha collections have been present in South Asia, and especially in Nepal, for more than eight hundred years and served to supply protection, merit and auspiciousness for those who commissioned their compilation. For modern scholarship, these diverse compendiums are valuable sources of incantations and related texts, many of which survive in Sanskrit only in such manuscripts.
Author: Carl Olson
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813537789
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 306
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Book Description
For centuries, Buddhist teachers and laypeople have used stories, symbols, cultural metaphors, and anecdotes to teach and express their religious views. In this introductory textbook, Carl Olson draws on these narrative traditions to detail the development of Buddhism from the life of the historical Buddha to the present. By organizing the text according to the structure of Buddhist thought and teaching, Olson avoids imposing a Western perspective that traditional texts commonly bring to the subject. The book offers a comprehensive introduction to the main branches of the Buddhist tradition in both the Mahayana and Theravada schools, including the Madhyamika school, the Yogacara school, Pure Land devotionalism, Tibetan Tantric Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, and village folk Buddhist traditions. Chapters explore the life and teachings of the Buddha in historical context, the early development and institutionalization of Buddhism, its geographic spread across Asia and eventually to the United States, philosophy and ethics, the relationship between monks and laity, political and ethical implications, the role of women in the Buddhist tradition, and contemporary reinterpretations of Buddhism. Drawn from decades of classroom experience, this creative and ambitious text combines expert scholarship and engaging stories that offer a much-needed perspective to the existing literature on the topic.
Author: Alex Wayman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317722779
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 249
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Book Description
First published in 1995. The volume is divided into four sections: The introduction places the position of the Buddhist Tantras within Mahayana Buddhism and recalls their early literary history, especially the Guhyasamahatantra; the section also covers Buddhist Genesis and the Tantric tradition. Next is the he foundations of the Buddhist Tantras are discussed and the Tantric presentation of divinity; the preparation of disciples and the meaning of initiation; symbolism of the mandala-palace Tantric ritual and the twilight language. The third section explores the Tantric teachings of the inner Zodiac and the fivefold ritual symbolism of passion. The bibliographical research contains an analysis of the Tantric section of the Kanjur exegesis and a selected Western Bibliography of the Buddhist Tantras with comments.
Author: Paul Williams
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134623259
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
Buddhist Thought guides the reader towards a richer understanding of the central concepts of classical Indian Buddhist thought, from the time of Buddha, to the latest scholarly perspectives and controversies. Abstract and complex ideas are made understandable by the authors' lucid style. Of particular interest is the up-to-date survey of Buddhist Tantra in India, a branch of Buddhism where strictly controlled sexual activity can play a part in the religious path. Williams' discussion of this controversial practice as well as of many other subjects makes Buddhist Thought crucial reading for all interested in Buddhism.
