Kategoria BISAC: Religion >> Buddhism - History

Beginning with Buddha's life story, this compelling guide reveals how Buddha's
extraordinary wisdom is the method to achieve lasting happiness and freedom from life's problems. Meditation is explained clearly and simply as a tool for developing transformative qualities such as inner peace, love, and joy. The essential principles of Buddhism and the Buddhist way of life are accessible to beginners, and this clear presentation will also inspire those who have been practicing for years.

Politics and Transcendent Wisdom presents a systematic theoretical framework for understanding the relationship between politics and religion in a variety of contexts. This book examines the formation of "national protection" Buddhism in China and translates the key text of this important movement. Showing that Buddhist notions of sovereignty were meant and were taken as more than mere metaphor, Orzech examines the profound link between Buddhist notions of transcendence and the deployment of political authority in East Asia. To this integration of philosophical tradition and...

In this book, David McMahan charts the development of this "Buddhist modernism."...

This book identifies what is meant by sati (smrti), usually translated as 'mindfulness', in early Buddhism, and examines its soteriological functions and its central role in the early Buddhist practice and philosophy. Using textual analysis and criticism, it takes new approaches to the subject through a comparative study of Buddhist texts in Pali, Chinese and Sanskrit. It also furnishes new perspectives on the ancient teaching by applying the findings in modern psychology. In contemporary Buddhism, the practice of mindfulness is zealously advocated by the Theravada tradition,...

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...

In this ambitious and path-breaking book, Shawn McHale challenges long held views that define modern Vietnamese history in terms of anticolonial nationalism and revolution. McHale argues instead for a historiography that does not overstress either the role of politics in general or Communism in particular. Using a wide range of sources from Vietnam, France, and the United States, many of them previously unexploited, he shows how the use of printed matter soared between 1920 and 1945 and in the process transformed Vietnamese public life and shaped the modern Vietnamese consciousness....

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...

The study of Cambodian religion has long been hampered by a lack of easily accessible scholarship. This impressive new work by Ian Harris thus fills a major gap and offers English-language scholars a booklength, up-to-date treatment of the religious aspects of Cambodian culture. Beginning with a coherent history of the presence of religion in the country from its inception to the present day, the book goes on to furnish insights into the distinctive nature of Cambodia's important yet overlooked manifestation of Theravada Buddhist tradition and to show how it reestablished itself following...