Building on the author's previous published work, this book focuses on the relationship between identity and perception in early Buddhism, drawing out and explaining the way they relate in terms of experience. It presents a coherent picture of these issues in the context of Buddhist teachings as a whole and suggests that they represent the heart of what the Buddha taught. This book will be of primary interest to scholars working within all fields of Buddhist studies.

The Tokyo subway attack in March 1995 was just one of a series of criminal activities including murder, kidnapping, extortion, and the illegal manufacture of arms and drugs carried out by the Japanese new religious movement Aum Shinrikyo, under the guidance of its leader Asahara Shoko. Reader looks at Aum's claims about itself and asks, why did a religious movement ostensibly focussed on yoga, meditation, asceticism and the pursuit of enlightenment become involved in violent activities?

Reader discusses Aum's spiritual roots, placing it in the context of contemporary Japanese religious patterns. Asahara's teaching are examined from his earliest public pronouncements through to his sermons at the time of the attack, and statements he has made in court. In analysing how Aum not only manufactured nerve gases but constructed its own internal doctrinal justifications for using them Reader focuses on the formation of what made all this possible: Aum's internal thought-world, and on how this was developed.

Reader argues that despite the horrors of this particular case, Aum should not be seen as unique, nor as solely a political or criminal terror group. Rather it can best be analysed within the context of religious violence, as an extreme example of a religious movement that has created friction with the wider world that escalated into violence.

Empowering Bernard Lonergan's Legacy offers an interdisciplinary approach to Lonergan's work. It presents a series of five "feedback matrices" to situate his work within a historical context. The matrices also serve to establish foundations for an interdisciplinary ethics and a method for interreligious dialogue. "Feedback" and "matrix" are key, but previously unstressed, notions in Lonergan's work. The book's final two collaborative feedback matrices could best be implemented in a proposed international Lonergan association. Raymaker argues that without such an association, Lonergan's breakthrough method cannot reach its interdisciplinary and collaborative potential. One of Lonergan's most important achievements was his development of foundations for the sciences, ethics, and interreligious dialogue. One can best empower Lonergan's legacy through a correct understanding and implementation of how the data of human consciousness affects all human knowledge and activities.

By providing an annotated translation of, and applying the methods of literary criticism to, a first-century account of the life of the saint Purna, this study introduces the reader to a genre which has played an essential role in Buddhist self-understanding for over 2000 years.

This book, first published in 1961, examines the old Tibetan Bon religion, the development of Buddhism in India and Tibet, and covers the religious struggles of the eighth and ninth centuries. It also describes the rise of the Lamaist sects and the priest state of the Dalai Lamas, and taken as a whole is a study of the development of the character of Tibet itself.

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.

The Zhenzheng lun (T 2112, Treatise of Revealing the Correct) is a Chinese Buddhist apologetic treatise with a distinct anti-Daoist stance in three juan. It is organized as a dialogue between a Daoist, the "Venerable Obstructed by Customs" (zhisu gongzi ), and the Buddhist "Master Revealing the Correct" (zhenzheng xiansheng ) in which the former is gradually led towards an orthodox Buddhist understanding by the latter through the refutation of his various arguments against Buddhism. Composed in the late 7th century, the text was authored depending on the political interests and strategies of Wu Zhao (624-705), who in 690 was enthroned as Empress Wu Zetian . This study of Thomas Julch offers a richly annotated and complete translation of the Zhenzheng lun along with an introductory part that focuses on reconstructing the political and propagandistic circumstances relevant to the understanding of the Zhenzheng lun.

In the midst of our busy activity, people often feel fragmented. We experience conflicting demands from our work, our personal relationships, our families, and our spiritual practice. In this book, the author, a practicing psychotherapist, explores the challenges and joys of making our life into a coherent whole.
Psychotherapy addresses a sense of fragmentation in an effort to help us be uniquely ourselves. Zen Buddhist practice insists we find ourselves on every moment of our lives; it speaks to the basic connectedness of all things. This book attempts to integrate the two. Each chapter examines some aspect of sewing together the practice of Zen with the realization of psychotherapy, and its implications for daily life. Though there is a logical progression to the chapters, each chapter can be read on its own if the reader is interested in how a particular text might inform their psychotherapy or life circumstances.
Through the stories of his clients' and his own difficulties anddiscoveries, the author invites each reader to actualize the fundamental point: to realize the joy and compassion that comes when we touch the basic ground of life, and put it into play in our everyday activity.

The first scholarly study of the emergence of American Buddhist Studies as a significant research field, approaching issues such as identity in Asian-American Buddhism, the new Buddhism, and the scholar's place in American Buddhist Studies.

This gem, the sequel to The Dalai Lama's Little Book of Inner Peace, contains the essence of the Dalai Lama's teachings on life and death. Think of this as the essential guide to both living and dying well from one of the most important spiritual teachers of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Among the topics covered are:

A a¬A Contentment, Joy and Living Well

A a¬A Facing Death and Dying

A a¬A Dealing with Anger and Emotion

A a¬A Compassion--the Basis for Human Happiness

A a¬A Giving and Receiving
This charming packaged is designed for the busy person who is always on the go: a small format, flapped paperback that will easily fit in a purse, backpack, or briefcase.

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.

First published in 1915, this book presents a dramatization of part ofthe author's The Light of Asia. The original text represents one of the first successful attempts to popularise Buddhism and its founder Gautama Buddha - presenting his life, teachings and philosophy in verse poetry. This adaptation dramatizes part of the The Light of Asia and includes staging instructions, properties required, illustrative drawings of suggested costumes, and incidental music composed specifically for the piece. This book will be of interest to students of Indian and Buddhist literature - and how this has interacted with the West - as well as students of drama.

Originated by the great sage of modern India, Sri Aurobindo, integral yoga has been presented in this volume, first published in 1965, in the context of modern western thinking. It expounds the concept of harmonious and creative living on the basis of a fruitful reconciliation of the self-perfecting mysticism of the East and the rationalistic humanism of the West. It gives a dynamic form, an evolutionary perspective, and a creative impetus to the ancient mystic idea of union with the eternal.

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.

Both a demonstration of and critical self-reflection on method, this book explores how methodologies shape our understanding of the diversity of Buddhist traditions in the past and the present. International contributors from the West and Asia explore case studies and reflect on methods in the study of Buddhism, united in their debt to Richard K. Payne, the influential Buddhist studies scholar. Methods in Buddhist Studies features new translations of Buddhist works as well as ethnographic studies on contemporary Buddhism in the United States and China. Topics discussed include Buddhist practices in relation to food, material culture, and imperial rituals; the development of modern Buddhist universities; the construction of the canon from the perspective of history, textual analysis, and ritual studies; and the ethical obligations of scholars toward the subject of Buddhism itself. Chapters are drawn from Payne's students and his colleagues, demonstrating the breadth of his intellectual interests. Payne's scholarship has left a remarkable impact on the field, making this volume essential reading for students and scholars of contemporary Buddhism and Buddhist 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.

This book suggests that previous critiques of the rules of Buddhist monks (Vinaya) may now be reconsidered in order to deal with some of the assumptions concerning the legal nature of these rules and to provide a focus on how Vinaya texts may have actually operated in practice. Malcolm Voyce utilizes the work of Foucault and his notions of 'power' and 'subjectivity' in three ways. First, he examines The Buddha's role as a lawmaker to show how Buddhist texts were a form of lawmaking that had a diffused and lateral conception of authority. While lawmakers in some religious groups may be seen as authoritative, in the sense that leaders or founders were coercive or charismatic, the Buddhist concept of authority allows for a degree of freedom for the individual to shape or form themselves. Second, he shows that the confession ritual acted as a disciplinary measure to develop a unique sense of collective governance based on self regulation, self-governance and self-discipline. Third, he argues that while the Vinaya has been seen by some as a code or form of regulation that required obedience, the Vinaya had a double nature in that its rules could be transgressed and that offenders could be dealt with appropriately in particular situations. Voyce shows that the Vinaya was not an independent legal system, but that it was dependent on the Dharmasastra for some of its jurisprudential needs, and that it was not a form of customary law in the strict sense, but a wider system of jurisprudence linked to Dharmasastra principles and precepts.

Yongming Yanshou ranks among the great thinkers of the Chinese and East Asian Buddhist traditions, one whose legacy has endured for more than a thousand years. Albert Welter offers new insight into the significance of Yanshou and his major work, the Zongjing lu, by showing their critical role in the contested Buddhist and intellectual territories of the Five Dynasties and early Song dynasty China.
Welter gives a comprehensive study of Yanshou's life, showing how Yanshou's Buddhist identity has been and continues to be disputed. He also provides an in-depth examination of the Zongjing lu, connecting it to Chan debates ongoing at the time of its writing. This analysis includes a discussion of the seminal meaning of the term zong as the implicit truth of Chan and Buddhist teaching, and a defining notion of Chan identity. Particularly significant is an analysis of the long underappreciated significance of the Chan fragments in the Zongjing lu, which constitute some of the earliest information about the teachings of Chan's early masters.
In light of Yanshou's advocacy of a morally based Chan Buddhist practice, Welter also challenges the way Buddhism, particularly Chan, has frequently been criticized in Neo-Confucianism as amoral and unprincipled. Yongming Yanshou's Conception of Chan in the Zongjing lu concludes with an annotated translation of fascicle one of the Zongjing lu, the first translation of the work into a Western language.

Two of DŌ gen's most esteemed translators provide key chapters form his Zen masterpiece, the Shō bō genzō , in English with annotations to guide the reader.