The search for effective ways to enable different religious systems to co-exist peacefully in mutual complementarity has emerged as a necessary condition for economic development, social progress, human prosperity and even survival. The combination of diversity and interdependence in the religious world calls for comparative studies of religion. This book details the inherent problems of such studies.;The underlying idea presented is that there are similarities, as well as differences between Confucianism as humanistic tradition and Christianity as a theocentric religion, and that these similarities and differences are mutually involved and delicately related with each other: while agape can be translated in English as "love", it is in fact more than love, in that it defines the relationship between Christians and their God, and between Christians and their neighbours; while jen in Chinese is not the translation of "love", it is in fact essentially love, both ethical and religious, in that it defines the relationship between Confucians and their transcendantal pursuit, between Confucians and their ideal, and between Confucians and their fellow human beings.

Emptiness means that all entities are empty of, or lack, inherent existence - entities have a merely conceptual, constructed existence. Though Nagarjuna advocates the Middle Way, his philosophy of emptiness nevertheless entails nihilism, and his critiques of the Nyaya theory of knowledge are shown to be unconvincing.

Offers essays and dialogues by well-known Buddhist and Christian scholars on topics that were of primary interest to Frederick J. Streng, in whose honour the volume was created. Topics include interreligious dialogue, ultimate reality, nature and ecology, social and political issues of liberation, and ultimate transformation or liberation.

The aphorisms collected in this book, first published in 1953, were composed by Patanjali, a great Indian sage, over 1,500 years ago, and here translated into clear English prose. The accompanying commentary interprets the sayings for the modern world, and in doing so gives a full picture of what yoga is, what its aims are, and how it can be practised.

This book, first published in 1935, is an early western study of the practice of yoga. It examines the theories of yoga, and attempts to understand and explain its philosophy and beliefs.

This study probes the complex relationship between nationalism, violence and Buddhism in 19th-20th century Burma. Graver's study examines present-day Burma and the struggle by Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi for a new Burmese identity. The present volume is a revised and expanded version of the study originally published by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies.

Probes the complex relationship between nationalism, violence and Buddhism in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Burma, bringing us to present-day Burma and the struggle by Aung San Suu Kyi for a new Burmese identity.

The story of Tenzin Palmo, an Englishwoman, the daughter of a fishmonger from London's East End, who spent 12 years alone in a cave 13,000 feet up in the Himalayas and became a world-renowned spiritual leader and champion of the right of women to achieve spiritual enlightenment.

Diane Perry grew up in London's East End. At the age of 18 however, she read a book on Buddhism and realised that this might fill a long-sensed void in her life. In 1963, at the age of 20, she went to India, where she eventually entered a monastery. Being the only woman amongst hundreds of monks, she began her battle against the prejudice that has excluded women from enlightenment for thousands of years.

In 1976 she secluded herself in a remote cave 13,000 feet up in the Himalayas, where she stayed for 12 years between the ages of 33 and 45. In this mountain hideaway she faced unimaginable cold, wild animals, floods, snow and rockfalls, grew her own food and slept in a traditional wooden meditation box, three feet square — she never lay down. In 1988 she emerged from the cave with a determination to build a convent in northern India to revive the Togdenma lineage, a long-forgotten female spiritual elite.

Scholars of Buddhism, themselves Buddhist, here seek to apply the critical tools of the academy to reassess the truth and transformative value of their tradition in its relevance to the contemporary world.

'An invitation to embrace ourselves with all our pain, fear and anxieties, and to step lightly yet firmly on the path of understanding and compassion' Thich Nhat Hanh Feelings of self-doubt and insecurity are what hold us back in life and cause true suffering. In her landmark book Radical Acceptance, renowned meditation and mindfulness teacher Tara Brach offers us all a path to freedom. Drawing on personal stories, Buddhist teachings and guided meditations Tara leads us to trust our innate goodness. She reveals how we can develop the balance of clear-sightedness and compassion, heal fear and shame and build loving, authentic relationships.

This book contributes to the history of religions and Buddhist studies fields by focussing on what is a far too frequently ignored aspect of religious experience: visual images.

The Gandharan birch-bark scrolls preserve the earliest remains of Buddhist literature known today and provide unprecedented insights into the history of Buddhism. This volume presents three manuscripts from the Bajaur Collection (BC), a group of nineteen scrolls discovered at the end of the twentieth century and named after their findspot in northwestern Pakistan. The manuscripts, written in the Gandhari language and Kharosthi script, date to the second century CE. The three scrolls-BC 4, BC 6, and BC 11-contain treatises that focus on the Buddhist concept of non-attachment. This volume is the first in the Gandharan Buddhist Texts series that is devoted to texts belonging to the Mahayana tradition. There are no known versions of these texts in other Buddhist traditions, and it is assumed that they are autographs. Andrea Schlosser provides an overview of the contents of the manuscripts and discusses their context, genre, possible authorship, physical layout, paleography, orthography, phonology, and morphology. Transliteration and translation of the texts are accompanied by notes on difficult terminology, photographs of the reconstructed scrolls, an index of Gandhari words with Sanskrit and Pali equivalents, and a preliminary transliteration of the scroll BC 19. The ebook edition of Three Early Mahayana Treatises of Gandhara is openly available at DOI 10.6069/9780295750750.

This title was first published in 2002: Religion and Social Transformations examines the reciprocal relationship between religion, modernity and social change. The book focuses on the world's three major missionary religions - Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. It explores how these three traditions are responding to some of the most challenging issues associated with globalization, including the role of religion in the fall of Communism; the tension between religion and feminism; the compatibility of religion and human rights; and whether ancient religions can accommodate new challenges such as environmentalism. The five textbooks and Reader that make up the Religion Today Open University/Ashgate series are: From Sacred Text to Internet; Religion and Social Transformations; Perspectives on Civil Religion; Global Religious Movements in Regional Context; Belief Beyond Boundaries; Religion Today: A Reader

A revolutionary reexamination of trauma's role in the life journey, opening the door to growth and healing Trauma does not just happen to a few unlucky people; it is the bedrock of our psychology. Death and illness touch us all, but even the everyday sufferings of loneliness and fear are traumatic. In The Trauma of Everyday Life renowned psychiatrist and author of Thoughts Without a Thinker Mark Epstein uncovers the transformational potential of trauma, revealing how it can be used for the mind's own development. Western psychology teaches that if we understand the cause of trauma, we might move past it while many drawn to Eastern practices see meditation as a means of rising above, or distancing themselves from, their most difficult emotions. Both, Epstein argues, fail to recognize that trauma is an indivisible part of life and can be used as a lever for growth and an ever deeper understanding of change. When we regard trauma with this perspective, understanding that suffering is universal and without logic, our pain connects us to the world on a more fundamental level. The way out of pain is through it. Epstein's discovery begins in his analysis of the life of Buddha, looking to how the death of his mother informed his path and teachings. The Buddha's spiritual journey can be read as an expression of primitive agony grounded in childhood trauma. Yet the Buddha's story is only one of many in The Trauma of Everyday Life. Here, Epstein looks to his own experience, that of his patients, and of the many fellow sojourners and teachers he encounters as a psychiatrist and Buddhist. They are alike only in that they share in trauma, large and small, as all of us do. Epstein finds throughout that trauma, if it doesn't destroy us, wakes us up to both our minds' own capacity and to the suffering of others. It makes us more human, caring, and wise. It can be our greatest teacher, our freedom itself, and it is available to all of us. Check out Epstein's latest book, Advice Not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself.

Scholars and practitioners from a variety of Buddhist cultures, philosophical traditions, and academic disciplines analyze important dimensions of the new cross-cultural Buddhist women's movement: the status and experiences of women in Buddhist societies, feminist interpretation of Buddhist tenets, and the relationship of women to Buddhist institutions. Buddhist Women Across Cultures documents both women's struggle for religious equality in Asian Buddhist cultures as well as the process of creating Buddhist feminist identity across national and ethnic boundaries as Buddhism gains attention in the West. The book contributes significantly to an understanding of women and religion in both Western and non-Western cultures.

This is the first scholarly treatment of the emergence of American Buddhist Studies as a significant research field. Until now, few investigators have turned their attention to the interpretive challenge posed by the presence of all the traditional lineages of Asian Buddhism in a consciously multicultural society. Nor have scholars considered the place of their own contributions as writers, teachers, and practising Buddhists in this unfolding saga. In thirteen chapters and a critical introduction to the field, the book treats issues such as Asian American Buddhist identity, the new Buddhism, Buddhism and American culture, and the scholar's place in American Buddhist Studies. The volume offers complete lists of dissertations and theses on American Buddhism and North American dissertations and theses on topics related to Buddhism since 1892.

Taking a comparative approach which considers characters that are shared across the narrative traditions of early Indian religions (Brahmanical Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism) Shared Characters in Jain, Buddhist and Hindu Narrative explores key religious and social ideals, as well as points of contact, dialogue and contention between different worldviews. The book focuses on three types of character - gods, heroes and kings - that are of particular importance to early South Asian narrative traditions because of their relevance to the concerns of the day, such as the role of deities, the qualities of a true hero or good ruler and the tension between worldly responsibilities and the pursuit of liberation. Characters (incuding character roles and lineages of characters) that are shared between traditions reveal both a common narrative heritage and important differences in worldview and ideology that are developed in interaction with other worldviews and ideologies of the day. As such, this study sheds light on an important period of Indian religious history, and will be essential reading for scholars and postgraduate students working on early South Asian religious or narrative traditions (Jain, Buddhist and Hindu) as well as being of interest more widely in the fields of Religious Studies, Classical Indology, Asian Studies and Literary Studies.

This work presents an exploration of Buddhist philosophy and practice as a potential resource for an approach to psychotherapy which is responsive to the needs of its time and context, and attempts to open up a three-way dialogue between Buddhism, psychotherapy and contemporary discourse to reveal a meaningful theory and practice for a contemporary psychotherapy.

New edition. Pali is one of the Middle Indian idioms and the classical language of Theravada Buddhism - and thus important both to linguists and scholars of Buddhism. The original texts collected here are selected for their important and beautiful formulation of Buddhist ideas.

Buddhism is one of the oldest and largest of the world's religions. But it is also a tradition that has proven to have enormous contemporary relevance. Founded by Siddhartha Gautama, who came to be called the Buddha, the religion has spread from its origins in northeast India, across Asia, and eventually to the West, taking on new forms at each step of the way. Buddhism: What Everyone Needs to Know offers readers a brief, authoritative guide to one of the world's most diverse religious traditions in a reader-friendly question-and-answer format. Dale Wright covers the origins and early history of Buddhism, the diversity of types of Buddhism throughout history, and the status of contemporary Buddhism. This is a go-to book for anyone seeking a basic understanding of the origins, history, teachings, and practices of Buddhism.

The Way of the Bodhisattva, composed by the monk and scholar Santideva in eighth-century India, is a Buddhist treatise in verse that beautifully and succinctly lays out the theory and practice of the Mahayana path of a bodhisattva. Over one thousand years after Santideva's composition, Kunzang Soenam (1823-1905) produced the most extensive commentary on the Way of the Bodhisattva ever written. This book is the first English translation of Kunzang Soenam's overview of Santideva's notoriously difficult ninth chapter on wisdom. The ninth chapter of the Way of the Bodhisattva is philosophically very rich but forbiddingly technical, and can only be read well with a good commentary. Kunzang Soenam's commentary offers a unique and complete introduction to the view of Prasangika-Madhyamaka, the summit of Buddhist philosophy in Tibet, as articulated by Tsongkhapa. It brings Santideva's text, and Tsongkhapa's interpretation of Prasangika-Madhyamaka, into conversation with a vast Buddhist literature from India and Tibet. By articulating the integral relationship between emptiness and interdependence, this text formulates a sustained and powerful argument for emptiness as a metaphysical basis of bodhisattva ethics. This volume makes the ninth chapter accessible to English-speaking teachers and students of the Way of the Bodhisattva.