Kategoria BISAC: Religion >> Buddhism - History

Walter Henry Nelson, a respected historical scholar and author, offers readers a distinctly accessible and authoritative biography of the Buddha and his teachings. In this essential, gripping, and inspiring introduction for the general reader, Buddha explores ancient legends surrounding Buddhism s founder. It shows how the simple...

Popular understanding of Zen Buddhism typically involves a stereotyped image of isolated individuals in meditation, contemplating nothingness. This book presents the "other side of Zen," by examining the movement's explosive growth during the Tokugawa period (1600-1867) in Japan and by shedding light on the broader Japanese religious landscape during the era. Using newly-discovered manuscripts, Duncan Ryuken Williams argues that the success of Soto Zen was due neither to what is most often associated with the sect, Zen meditation, nor to the teachings of its medieval founder Dogen, but...

This collection brings together studies of the history, textual tradition, and contemporary interpretation of Shin Buddhism by leading scholars in the field of Pure Land Buddhist studies. The historical studies included here span the range of Pure Land from its origins in India through its development as a distinct system of Buddhist praxis--that is, the dialectic of doctrine and practice--in China, to its rise as a separate and self-identified Pure Land (Jodo) tradition in Japan. In recent decades the term Pure Land Buddhism has come to be used very inclusively, as a term for all forms of...

This volume discusses the Bhaiksuki manuscript of the "Candralamkara" ( Ornament of the Moon ), a commentary of the twelfth century based on the "Candravyakarana," Candragomin s seminal Buddhist grammar of Sanskrit (fifth century). The discovery of the Bhaiksuki script and of all available written sources are described. The detailed study of this "codex unicus" of the "Candralamkara" is accompanied by a facsimile edition and extensive tables of the script, a long-felt desideratum in the field of palaeography. The Buddhist author of the commentary has been identified for the first time,...

The philosophy of Buddhism, originating in India, has undergone considerable changes in its adoption in the Far East. It has, in Japan, assumed a more practical aspect, and has come to play an important role in the everyday life of action. But in this process Japanese Buddhism has split itself into many sects with greatly differing doctrines, though all profess a method destined to elevate the soul and a method of action. The understanding of this spiritual movement is an important key to the understanding of the contemporary Japanese state of mind, and The Buddhist Sects of Japan gives...

Since the 1960s, yoga has become a billion-dollar industry in the West, attracting housewives and hipsters, New Agers and the old-aged. But our modern conception of yoga derives much from nineteenth-century European spirituality, and the true story of yoga s origins in South Asia is far richer, stranger, and more entertaining than most of us realize.

To uncover this history, David Gordon White focuses on yoga s practitioners. Combing through millennia of South Asia s vast and diverse literature, he discovers that yogis are usually portrayed as wonder-workers or sorcerers who use their...

In Japan's Frames of Meaning, Michael Marra identifies interpretative concepts central to discussions of hermeneutical practices in Japan and presents English translations of works on basic hermeneutics by major Japanese thinkers. Discussions of Japanese thought tend to be centered on key Western terms in light of which Japanese texts are examined; alternatively, a few Buddhist concepts are presented as counterparts of these Western terms. Marra concentrates on Japanese philosophers and thinkers who have mediated these two extremes, bringing their knowledge of Western thought to bear on...