Kategoria BISAC: Religion >> Buddhism - History

The Venerable Cheng-yen is an unassuming Taiwanese Buddhist nun who leads a worldwide social welfare movement with five million devotees in over thirty countries--with its largest branch in the United States. Tzu-Chi (Compassion Relief) began as a tiny, grassroots women's charitable group; today in Taiwan it runs three state-of-the-art hospitals, a television channel, and a university. Cheng-yen, who has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, is a leader in Buddhist peace activism and has garnered recognition by Business Week as an entrepreneurial star.

Based on extensive...

South Asian Buddhism presents a comprehensive historical survey of the full range of Buddhist traditions throughout South Asia from the beginnings of the religion up to the present. Starting with narratives on the Buddha's life and foundational teachings from ancient India, the book proceeds to discuss the rise of Buddhist monastic organizations and texts among the early Mainstream Buddhist schools. It considers the origins and development of Mahayana Buddhism in South Asia, surveys the development of Buddhist Tantra in South Asia and outlines developments in Buddhism as found in...

Meditative practice lies at the heart of the Buddhist tradition. This introductory anthology gives a representative sample of the various kinds of meditations described in the earliest body of Buddhist scripture, the Pali canon.

It provides a broad introduction to their traditional context and practice and supplies explanation, context and doctrinal background to the subject of meditation. The main themes of the book are the diversity and flexibility of the way that the Buddha teaches meditation from the evidence of the canon. Covering fundamental features of Buddhist practice such...

The Mahāratnakūta Sūtra is one of the five major sutra groups in the Mahāyāna canon. Of the two great schools of Buddhism, Mahāyāna has the greatest number of adherents worldwide--it prevails among the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Tibetans, and Vietnamese--and contains within it a number of movements, notably Zen, which have been of growing interest in the West in recent decades. Yet despite this increased attention and enormous following, translations of Mahāyāna scriptures have been scarce and fragmentary; clearly, a comprehensive translation...

This fifth volume in the Gandharan Buddhist Texts series (GBT) presents two fragmentary manuscripts of the poem "Songs of Lake Anavatapta." Previously known from versions in Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, and Chinese, the two recently discovered Gandhari-language versions confirm the poem's popularity in the ancient Buddhist world.

The "Songs of Lake Anavatapta" consists of a series of narrations by the Buddha's foremost disciples (and finally by the Buddha himself) in which each reveals his own complex karmic history over many past lives and explains how, as a result of good deeds, he has...

First published in 1914, this is a fascinating investigation of the origins of Buddhism, drawing on a wealth of evidence relating to the life and teachings of the Buddha. First considering how the study of the Buddhist doctrine can be used to critique religious systems such as Christianity, Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire proceeds to discuss Buddhism at three different periods of its history: the life and legend of the Buddha as demonstrated within canonical works, Buddhism in India during the seventh century, and finally, Buddhism in Sri Lanka (formally 'Ceylon') at the start of the twentieth...

Buddhism: The Basics provides a thorough and accessible introduction to a fascinating religion. Examining the historical development of Buddhism and its presence today, this guide covers:

• principal traditions
• practices and beliefs
• ethical guidelines and philosophy
• religious texts
• community

With helpful features including a detailed map of the Buddhist world, glossary of terms and tips for further study, this is an ideal...

Weber's claim that Buddhism is an otherworldly religion is only partially true. Early sources indicate that the Buddha was sometimes diverted from supramundane interests to dwell on a variety of politically-related matters. The significance of Asoka Maurya as a paradigm for later traditions of Buddhist kingship is also well-attested. However, there has been little scholarly effort to integrate findings on the extent to which Buddhism interacted with the political order in the classical and modern states of Theravada Asia into a wider, comparative study.

This volume brings together the...

"A very helpful introduction and overview of this complex, fascinating tradition."--David R. Loy, author of Money, Sex, War, Karma

Here is a rare overview of the second of the three great phases of Buddhism that blossomed across Asia, particularly in China, Korea, and Japan.

In this detailed exploration of the development and expression of the Mahayana as a whole, Nagapriya introduces its themes and huge spectrum of practices, literature, and movements. He also illustrates the transformative beauty and compassion predominant in this magnificent...

The most influential work on Buddhism to be published in the nineteenth century, "Introduction a l histoire du Buddhisme indien, "by the great French scholar of Sanskrit Eugene Burnouf, set the course for the academic study of Buddhism and Indian Buddhism in particular for the next hundred years. First published in 1844, the masterwork was read by some of the most important thinkers of the time, including Schopenhauer and Nietzsche in Germany and Emerson and Thoreau in America.
Katia Buffetrille and Donald S. Lopez Jr. s expert English translation, "Introduction to the History of...

Buddhism under Mao shows what kind of a problem Buddhism presented to the Chinese Communists and how they solved it. Relying largely on materials from the Mainland press, Holmes Welch has made what is probably the most detailed study so far available of the fate of a world religion in a Communist country. He describes how Buddhist institutions were controlled, protected, utilized, and suppressed; and explains why the larger needs of foreign and domestic policy dictated the Communists' approach to the institutions. Over eighty photographs illustrate the activities of monks, laymen,...