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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Beckett and Buddhism undertakes a twenty-first-century reassessment of the Buddhist resonances in Samuel Beckett's writing. These reverberations, as Angela Moorjani demonstrates, originated in his early reading of Schopenhauer. Drawing on letters and archives along with recent studies of Buddhist thought and Schopenhauer's knowledge of it, the book charts the Buddhist concepts circling through Beckett's visions of the 'human predicament' in a blend of tears and laughter. Moorjani offers an in-depth elucidation of texts that are shown to intersect with the negative and paradoxical path of the Buddha, which she sets in dialogue with Western thinking. She brings further perspectives from cognitive philosophy and science to bear on creative emptiness, the illusory 'I', and Beckett's probing of the writing process. Readers will benefit from this far-reaching study of one of the most acclaimed writers of the twentieth century who explored uncharted topologies in his fiction, theatre, and poetry.

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.

With a foreword by Prof. Alfred Bloom. This completely new study of Japanese Shin Buddhism offers a valuable combination of historical development, carefully selected readings with commentaries and illustrations. Widely welcomed both for its scope as course work reader and as a general introduction to the subject.

Discusses historical and contemporary aspects of pilgrimage within the Tibetan cultural world. Examines myths and legends, material conditions, textual sources, a modern pilgrim's impressions, political and economic influences, biographies and contemporary developments.

A detailed exploration of the quest for liberation on the part of the early bhikkunis. Only text in the Buddhist tradition of known female authorship. Important to anyone investigating women's own perspective on their religion. Also provides a clear statement about how renunciants understand nibbana.

It is difficult to think of a more urgent question for Buddhism in the late 20th century than human rights. The political ethical and philosophical questions surrounding human rights are debated vigorously in political and intellectual circles throughout the world. Yet despite its contemporary significance, the subject has merited little attention in mainstream academic research and publication in the field of Buddhist studies. If Buddhism wishes to address the issues which are of concern to today's global community, it must begin to ask itself new questions alongside the old ones. The papers in this collection were presented at the first online conference sponsored by the Journal of Buddhist ethics from 1-13 October 1995. In the context of human rights, which was the theme of the conference, an important preliminary question would seem to be whether traditional Buddhism has any understanding of what is meant by "human rights" at all. Even if it is felt that this objection is overstated, and that the issue of human rights does not have a legitimate place on the Buddhist agenda, there would still remain the separate and no less difficult question of how human rights were to be groun

This volume brings together Paul Williams's previously published papers on the Indian and Tibetan interpretations of selected verses from the eighth and ninth chapters of the Bodhicaryavatara. In addition, there is a much longer version of the paper "Identifying the object of negation", and nearly half the book consist of a wholly new essay, "The absence of self and the removal of pain", subtitled "How Santideva destroyed the Bodhisattva Path". In this paper, Williams seeks to engage in a critical way with some central issues of Buddhist thought relating to the coherence of a reductionist model of the person. He argues for an irreducible subject-involvement of pain-statements, and suggests that given an approach to the person explicitly avowed in the Bodhicaryavatara it becomes impossible to make sense of such subject-involvement, and thus of the removal of pain which is central to the path to Buddhahood. Paul Williams approaches selected verses from the Bodhicaryavatara in the light of all the extant Indian commentaries available as well as many indigenous Tibetan commentaries from all Tibetan traditions. This book will be of interested to those concerned with the history and inte

Places the controversy initiated by the Tibetan Tsong kha pa - who elaborated on one of the eight difficult points in understanding Madhyamaka philosophy - in its Indian and Tibetan context.

The decline of mechanism and positivism offers new opportunities to bring together Western and Buddhist views of the mind and its relationship to its surroundings. The purpose of this collection of readings is to present some contemporary views on this progressive integration.

This collection of writings presents contemporary views on the integration of Buddhism in the West. Over the past few decades Buddhism has deepened its presence in the West and as a result teachings and practices are becoming integrated with those of Western psychology in a more productive way. The decline of mechanism and positivism offers new opportunities to bring together Western Buddhist views of the mind and its relationship to its surroundings. Written by psychologists and scholars, the essays discuss many of the difficult questions raised by Buddhism's increased presence. In particular the issue of the balance between authenticity and accessibility is examined. Buddhist traditions are often perceived as inaccessible and too firmly fixed to a cultural framework with some people, especially women, left feeling alienated and undervalued. However, by responding to this by attempting to synthesise Buddhism with the values of contemporary culture can lead to doubts about authenticity and dilution. Examining these issues and many more, the contributors seek to bring Buddhism into a realistic and informed relationship with contemporary Western thought.

Early European histories of India frequently reflected colonialist agendas. The idea that Indian society had declined from an earlier Golden Age helped justify the colonial presence. It was said, for example, that modern Buddhism had fallen away from its original identity as a purely rational philosophy that arose in the mythical 5th-century BCE Golden Age unsullied by the religious and cultural practices that surrounded it. In this book Robert DeCaroli seeks to place the formation of Buddhism in its appropriate social and political contexts. It is necessary, he says, to acknowledge that the monks and nuns who embodied early Buddhist ideals shared many beliefs held by the communities in which they were raised. In becoming members of the monastic society these individuals did not abandon their beliefs in the efficacy and the dangers represented by minor deities and spirits of the dead. Their new faith, however, gave them revolutionary new mechanisms with which to engage those supernatural beings. Drawing on fieldwork, textual, and iconographic evidence, DeCaroli offers a comprehensive view of early Indian spirit-religions and their contributions to Buddhism-the first attempt at such a study since Ananda Coomaraswamy's pioneering work was published in 1928. The result is an important contribution to our understanding of early Indian religion and society, and will be of interest to those in the fields of Buddhist studies, Asian history, art history, and anthropology.

This book discusses what is now called "Buddhism". It started as an effort to strengthen a weak point in that "immanence" which had become the accepted religious teaching in the valley of the Ganges, by showing that the "God/in/man" was realizable, not by gnosis and ritual, but in conduct. Conduct needed to be brought into relgion, into the relation between man and his eternal destiny. Man's being is more truly becoming; and only in and by becoming a More, will he attain to an actual, not potential Most. In teaching a More worth in conduction, Buddhism brought in a teaching of the man himself as Less.

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

"Right Development" examines the Santi Asoke Buddhist Reform Movement of Thailand as a culturally and environmentally appropriate alternative to western development programs. The Asoke group's aim is not a Western ideal, to accumulate high levels of material comfort, but a Buddhist ideal to release attachment to the material world and attain spiritual freedom. Ethnographic research at one Asoke community illuminates how Asoke beliefs and practices foster development on three levels: the individual, community, and society. A closer look at "a day in the life" of four women provides further insight into this development. This book stipulates that development must be culturally/locally situated, focused on livelihoods rather than economic growth, environmentally sustainable, and endogenously inspired, implemented, and maintained. The intent here is not to offer a new meta-strategy for global development but to underscore the need for diverse responses to the vast array of economic, social, and environmental dilemmas. "Right Development" offers alternatives for sustainable development perfect for scholars of Buddhism or Thailand.

This study is an investigation of the moral percepts and codes of every day conduct by which ordained women regulated their lives. It takes as its basis the Bhiksuni Pratmoksa Sutras of the Dharmagupta school, preserved in Chinese translation, and the Mulasarvastivada school, preserved in Tibetan translation.