Although recent scholarship has shown that the term 'Theravāda' in the familiar modern sense is a 19-20th century construct, it is now used to refer to the more than 150 million people around the world who practice that form of Buddhism. Buddhist practices such as meditation, amulets, and merit making rituals have always been inseparable from the social formations that give rise to them, their authorizing discourses and the hegemonic relations they create.

This book is comprised of chapters written by established scholars in Buddhist studies who represent diverse disciplinary...

Offers essays and dialogues by well-known Buddhist and Christian scholars on topics that were of primary interest to Frederick J. Streng, in whose honour the volume was created. Topics include interreligious dialogue, ultimate reality, nature and ecology, social and political issues of liberation, and ultimate transformation or liberation.

A richly complex study of the Yogacara tradition of Buddhism in India and China.

These essays chart the emergence of a new chapter in an ancient faith - the rise of social service and political activism in Buddhist Asia and the West. Engaged Buddhists have sought new ways to comfort society's oppressed communities.

These essays chart the emergence of a new chapter in an ancient faith - the rise of social service and political activism in Buddhist Asia and the West. Engaged Buddhists have sought new ways to comfort society's oppressed communities.

Scholars of Buddhism, themselves Buddhist, here seek to apply the critical tools of the academy to reassess the truth and transformative value of their tradition in its relevance to the contemporary world.

Following the critically acclaimed Zen at War (1997), Brian Victoria explores the intimate relationship between Japanese institutional Buddhism and militarism during the Second World War.
Victoria reveals for the first time, through examination of the wartime writings of the Japanese military itself, that the Zen school's view of life and death was deliberately incorporated into the military's programme of 'spiritual education' in order to develop a fanatical military spirit in both soldiers and civilians.  Furthermore, that D. T. Suzuki, the most famous exponent of Zen in the...

In this book, Vasubandhu's classic work Refutation of the Theory of a Self is translated and provided with an introduction and commentary. The translation, the first into a modern Western language from the Sanskrit text, is intended for use by those who wish to begin a careful philosophical study of Indian Buddhist theories of persons. Special features of the introduction and commentary are their extensive explanations of the arguments for the theories of persons of Vasubandhu and the Pudgalavâdines, the Buddhist philosophers whose theory is the central target of Vasubandhu's...

The most important research tool for vinaya studies. Covers both primary and secondary sources in Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, and Chinese as well as modern sources in English, French, German and Japanese.