Mahayana Buddhism

Author: Paul Williams
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134250576
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 456

Book Description
Originating in India, Mahayana Buddhism spread across Asia, becoming the prevalent form of Buddhism in Tibet and East Asia. Over the last twenty-five years Western interest in Mahayana has increased considerably, reflected both in the quantity of scholarly material produced and in the attraction of Westerners towards Tibetan Buddhism and Zen. Paul Williams’ Mahayana Buddhism is widely regarded as the standard introduction to the field, used internationally for teaching and research and has been translated into several European and Asian languages. This new edition has been fully revised throughout in the light of the wealth of new studies and focuses on the religion’s diversity and richness. It includes much more material on China and Japan, with appropriate reference to Nepal, and for students who wish to carry their study further there is a much-expanded bibliography and extensive footnotes and cross-referencing. Everyone studying this important tradition will find Williams’ book the ideal companion to their studies.

Nagarjuna in Context

Author: Joseph Walser
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231506236
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Book Description
Joseph Walser provides the first examination of Nagarjuna's life and writings in the context of the religious and monastic debates of the second century CE. Walser explores how Nagarjuna secured the canonical authority of Mahayana teachings and considers his use of rhetoric to ensure the transmission of his writings by Buddhist monks. Drawing on close textual analysis of Nagarjuna's writings and other Buddhist and non-Buddhist sources, Walser offers an original contribution to the understanding of Nagarjuna and the early history of Buddhism.

Outlines of Mahaŷâna Buddhism

Author: Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Buddhism
Languages : en
Pages : 442

Book Description

The Heart Sutra

Author: Kazuaki Tanahashi
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 1611803128
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
An illuminating in-depth study of one of the most well-known and recited Buddhist texts, by a renowned modern translator The Prajna Paramita Hridaya Sutra is among the best known of all the Buddhist scriptures. Chanted daily by many Zen practitioners, it is also studied extensively in the Tibetan tradition, and it has been regarded with interest more recently in the West in various fields of study—from philosophy to quantum physics. In just a few lines, it expresses the truth of impermanence and the release of suffering that results from the understanding of that truth with a breathtaking economy of language. Kazuaki Tanahashi’s guide to the Heart Sutra is the result of a life spent working with it and living it. He outlines the history and meaning of the text and then analyzes it line by line in its various forms (Sanskrit, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Tibetan, Mongolian, and various key English translations), providing a deeper understanding of the history and etymology of the elusive words than is generally available to the non-specialist—yet with a clear emphasis on the relevance of the text to practice. This book includes a fresh and meticulous new translation of the text by the author and Roshi Joan Halifax.

A History of Indian Buddhism

Author: Akira Hirakawa
Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass Publ.
ISBN: 9788120809550
Category : Buddhism
Languages : en
Pages : 436

Book Description
This comprehensive and detailed survey of the first six centuries of Indian Buddhism sums up the results of a lifetime of research and reflection by one of Japan's most renowned scholars of Buddhism.

Exploring the Life and Teachings of Mahayana Buddhists in Asia

Author: Ampere A. Tseng
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781536187021
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
"Buddhism is one of the world's oldest and largest religions having about 490 million followers. Mahayana Buddhists represent approximately two-thirds of the total Buddhist population. A large portion of Mahayanists resides in East Asia. They cannot be said to follow an undivided doctrine and have a unified religious lifestyle. Mahayana Buddhism, rather, consists of a multitude of ideas and practices with its followers holding various behaviors and attitudes. This book explores the lives and teachings of Mahayana Buddhists, who reside in Mainland China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, and Myanmar, as well as in the ancient Gandhara region (today's north Pakistan and east Afghanistan). The time frame covered is from the beginning of the Mahayana movement in the Ancient Gandhara region in the first several centuries of the Common Era to the present-day lifestyle and practices of the Mahayanists as they respond to 2020's COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to the historical and doctrinal views of Mahayana Buddhism, the book features thematic chapters on topics, such as pandemic responses, Mahayana scriptures and sculptures, modern Mahayana teachings, charity, suicide, and ethnicity. The book also considers such social constructs as family and community and modern Buddhist movements in reshaping the traditional structures and cosmological beliefs of Chinese Mahayanists. In sum, this book is a unique effort to define the nature of Mahayana Buddhist life in the past and in the present as well as its teaching in Asia. It does so from various multidisciplinary perspectives"--

Genealogies of Mahāyāna Buddhism

Author: Joseph Walser
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317354583
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Book Description
Genealogies of Mahāyāna Buddhism offers a solution to a problem that some have called the holy grail of Buddhist studies: the problem of the “origins” of Mahāyāna Buddhism. In a work that contributes both to a general theory of religion and power for religious studies as well as to the problem of the origin of a Buddhist movement, Walser argues that that it is the neglect of political and social power in the scholarly imagination of the history of Buddhism that has made the origins of Mahāyāna an intractable problem. Walser challenges commonly-held assumptions about Mahāyāna Buddhism, offering a fascinating new take on its genealogy that traces its doctrines of emptiness and mind-only from the present day back to the time before Mahāyāna was “Mahāyāna.” In situating such concepts in their political and social contexts across diverse regimes of power in Tibet, China and India, the book shows that what was at stake in the Mahāyāna championing of the doctrine of emptiness was the articulation and dissemination of court authority across the rural landscapes of Asia. This text will be will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students and scholars of Buddhism, religious studies, history and philosophy.

Women in Buddhism

Author: Diana Y. Paul
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520054288
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 366

Book Description
"In seeking to explore the interrelationships between, and mutual influence of, varieties of sexual stereotypes and religious views of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, Women in Buddhism succeeds in drawing our attention to matters of philosophical importance. Paul examines the 'image' of women which arise in a number of Buddhist texts associated with Mahayana and finds that, while ideally the tradition purports to be egalitarian, in actual practice it often betrayed a strong misogynist prejudice. Sanskrit and Chinese texts are organized by theme and type, progressing from those which treat the traditionally orthodox and negative to those which set forth a positive consideration of soteriological paths for women. . . . In Women in Buddhism, Diana Paul may be forcing our consideration of the problem of female enlightenment. Thus the main purport and accomplishment of her scholarship is revolutionary."—Philosophy East and West

Figments and Fragments of Mahayana Buddhism in India

Author: Gregory Schopen
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824825485
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 408

Book Description
In these articles, Gregory Schopen once again displays the erudition and originality that have contributed to a major shift in the way that Indian Buddhism is perceived, understood, and studied.

Empty Vision

Author: David McMahan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136857265
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Book Description
Visual metaphors in a number of Mahayana sutras construct a discourse in which visual perception serves as a model for knowledge and enlightenment. In the Perfection of Wisdom (Prajnaparamita) and other Mahayana literature, immediate access to reality is symbolized by vision and set in opposition to language and conceptual thinking, which are construed as obscuring reality. In addition to its philosophical manifestations, the tension between vision and language also functioned as a strategy of legitimation in the struggle of the early heterodox Mahayana movement for authority and legitimacy. This emphasis on vision also served as a resource for the abundant mythical imagery in Mahayana sutras, imagery that is ritualized in Vajrayana visualization practices. McMahan brings a wide range of literature to bear on this issue, Including a rare analysis of the lavish imagery of the Gandavyuha Sutra in its Indian context. He concludes with a discussion of Indian approaches to visuality in the light of some recent discussions of "ocularcentrism" in the west, inviting scholars to expand the current discussion of vision and its roles in constructing epistemic systems and cultural practices beyond its exclusively European and American focus.