A landmark publication which offers Western readers a unique combination of what Buddhists worldwide consider the holiest of holy texts The Diamond Sutra and The Heart Sutra, two sutras, or scriptures, ascribed to the early centuries of the first millennium.
The Diamond Sutra, or the Perfection of Wisdom, which cuts like a thunderbolt, is one of the cornerstone texts of Mahayana Buddhism and provides a summary of the core concepts of the Buddha. The Heart Sutra, perhaps the most important of all Buddhist texts, sets out to formulate the very heart, or...

Some 2000 years ago Buddhism experienced a major reformation through a movement called the Mahayana, or "Great Vehicle," which dominated religious through in much of Asia for many centuries and still exerts considerable influence. The basic Mahayana texts, sermons ascribed to the Buddha and called "sutras" in Sanskrit, discussed the "perfect wisdom." The "Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom" took shape between 50 and 2000 A.D. in southern India during one of the most momentous outbursts of religious creativity in human history.

The Buddhist Sutra "The Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 Lines" and its verse summary. Translated and edited by Edward Conze.

The Perfection of Wisdom Sutras, The Prajnaparamita, is a collection of about forty texts. They were composed in India between approximately 100 BC and AD 600. Those contained within this volume are among the shorter ones; they are also some of the most well known such as The Heart Sutra and The Diamond Sutra. The Prajnaparamita texts are central to the Mahayana, the Great Vehicle tradition of Buddhism which today includes the Zen and Tibetan traditions. They are a magnificent work which offer guidance to those who wish to plumb the depths of their own mind and come face to face with the...

With a great clarity and from a scientific point of view, the author presents a readable survey of the whole range of Buddhist thought.

Originally published in 1962.

This book discusses and interprets the main themes of Buddhist thought in India and is divided into three parts:

1. Archaic Buddhism: Tacit assumptions, the problem of "original Buddhism," the three marks and the perverted views, the five cardinal virtues, the cultivation of the social emotions, Dharma and dharmas, Skandhas, sense-fields and elements.
2. The Sthaviras: the eighteen schools, doctrinal disputes, the unconditioned and the process of salvation, some Abhidharma problems.

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As an intensely practical religion, Buddhism has concentrated on devising a great number of meditations. In recent years psychologists have shown great interest in the therapeutic value of these meditations, but accurate information about them has been hard to come by. The most outstanding original documents have now been made accessible by Edward Conze, who translated them from Pali, Sanskrit and Tibetan. The volume, originally published in 1956, also deals with the meaning of Buddhist meditation, and the relation of its methods and presuppositions to modern psychology.

Conze's monograph The Principle of Contradiction: On the Theory of Dialectical Materialism is his most important philosophical work and the foundation for his later publications as a Buddhist scholar and translator. The openly Marxist work was published under considerable risk to both printer and author alike in December 1932 in Hamburg, Germany. Only months later, in May 1933, almost all of the five hundred copies of the first edition were destroyed during the Nazi book burning campaign. It is only now, more than eighty years later, that Conze's key philosophical work is made available to a...

This unique anthology of Buddhist scriptures traces the development of Buddhism through the ages and around the world. Designed to serve scholars and students alike, this classic text has become a valuable resource for Buddhists and all those who wish to explore for themselves the original sources of one of the world's great religions. Accessible and jargon-free, these translations from the original Pali, Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan, and Japanese are presented in plain English by four leading experts on the language and literature of Buddhism, while a glossary of foreign terms completes a...