The swastika has been used for over three thousand years by billions of people in many cultures and religions--including Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism--as an auspicious symbol of the sun and good fortune. However, beginning with its hijacking and misappropriation by Nazi Germany, it has also been used, and continues to be used, as a symbol of hate in the Western World. Hitler's device is in fact a "hooked cross." Rev. Nakagaki's book explains how and why these symbols got confused, and offers a path to peace, understanding, and reconciliation.

Language in the Buddhist Tantra of Japan dismantles the preconception that Buddhism is a religion of mystical silence, arguing that language is in fact central to the Buddhist tradition. By examining the use of 'extraordinary language'-evocations calling on the power of the Buddha-in Japanese Buddhist Tantra, Richard K. Payne shows that such language was not simply cultural baggage carried by Buddhist practitioners from South to East Asia. Rather, such language was a key element in the propagation of new forms of belief and practice. In contrast to Western approaches to the philosophy of language, which are grounded in viewing language as a form of communication, this book argues that it is the Indian and East Asian philosophies of language that shed light on the use of language in meditative and ritual practices in Japan. It also illuminates why language was conceived as an effective means of progress on the path from delusion to awakening.

'We often say: My mind, my mind. But if someone were to ask us: What is your mind? We would have no correct answer. This is because we do not understand the nature and function of the mind correctly.' - Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso Rinpoche. How to Understand the Mind offers us deep insight into our mind. It shows us how an understanding of our mind's nature and functions can be used to improve our lives practically, in our everyday experience. It begins by guiding us to develop and maintain a light, positive mind. It then explains how to recognize and abandon mental states that harm us, and shows us in how to replace them with peaceful beneficial states. The book goes on to describe different types of mind in detail, revealing the depth and profundity of the Buddhist understanding of the mind. The book concludes with a detailed explanation of meditation, which we use for controlling and transforming our mind until we attain a lasting state of joy, independent of external conditions.

The Transnational Cult of Mount Wutai explores the pan-East Asian significance of sacred Mount Wutai from the Northern Dynasties to the present day. Offering novel readings of comparatively familiar visual and textual sources and, in many cases, examining unstudied or understudied noncanonical materials, the papers collected here illuminate the roles that both local actors and individuals dwelling far beyond Mount Wutai's borders have played in its making and remaking as a holy place for more than fifteen hundred years. The work aims to contribute to our understanding of the ways that sacred geography is made and remade in new places and times.

Disease and death are undeniably integral parts of human life. Yet when they manifest we are easily caught unprepared. To prepare for these, we need to learn how to skilfully face illness and passing away. A source of practical wisdom can be found in the early discourses that record the teachings given by the Buddha and his disciples.The chief aim of this book is to provide a collection of passages taken from the Buddha's early discourses that provide guidance for facing disease and death. The present anthology focuses on the theme of compassion, and is concerned with anukampa: compassion as the underlying motivation in altruistic action. The book combines translations of Buddhist Sanskrit discourse from the Chinese original, with introductions that explain the basic message, clarify terminology and ideas contained in the discourse, and draw out some of their practical implications.

This book offers a systematic and radical introduction to the Buddhist roots of Patanjala-yoga, or the Yoga system of Patanjali. By examining each of 195 aphorisms (sutras) of the Yogasutra and discussing the Yogabhasya, it shows that traditional and popular views on Patanjala-yoga obscure its true nature. The book argues that Patanjali's Yoga contains elements rooted in both orthodox and heterodox philosophical traditions, including Sankhya, Jaina and Buddhist thought. With a fresh translation and a detailed commentary on the Yogasutra, the author unearths how several of the terms, concepts and doctrines in Patanjali's Yoga can be traced to Buddhism, particularly the Abhidharma Buddhism of Vasubandhu and the early Yogacara of Asanga. The work presents the Yogasutra of Patanjali as a synthesis of two perspectives: the metaphysical perspective of Sankhya and the empirical-psychological perspective of Buddhism. Based on a holistic understanding of Yoga, the study explores key themes of the text, such as meditative absorption, means, supernormal powers, isolation, Buddhist conceptions of meditation and the interplay between Sankhya and Buddhist approaches to suffering and emancipation. It further highlights several new findings and clarifications on textual interpretation and discrepancies. An important intervention in Indian and Buddhist philosophy, this book opens up a new way of looking at the Yoga of Patanjali in the light of Buddhism beyond standard approaches and will greatly interest scholars and researchers of Buddhist studies, Yoga studies, Indian philosophy, philosophy in general, literature, religion and comparative studies, Indian and South Asian Studies and the history of ideas.

IDH Religion provides a series of short introductions to specific areas of study at the intersections of digital humanities and religion, offering an overview of current methodologies, techniques, tools, and projects as well as defining challenges and opportunities for further research. This volume explores DH and Buddhism in four sections: Theory and Method; Digital Conservation, Preservation and Archiving; Digital Analysis; Digital Resources. It covers themes such as language processing, digital libraries, online lexicography, and ethnographic methods. Erratum: Unfortunately there is a mistake in the print version in the last paragraph of page 14. READ is an open-source software system developed by a team consisting of Stefan Baums at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Andrew Glass in Seattle, Ian McCrabb at the University of Sydney and Stephen White in Venice (https://github.com/readsoftware/read).

Are you frustrated with your finances and ready for a painless solution? Is your coaching or creative business ramping up, but your bookkeeping gets you down? Do you cringe when you have to deal with your finances, and wish it could just be easy? From Zero to Zen shows you how to manage your money so your business is fabulously successful. When you dig into your books and learn exactly what to do and when, you'll take your business to a whole new level. This book is for motivated coaches and creative professionals who want to help people and make money.

This cove wisdom literature is back in print after many years. Maharshi spent his life teaching the purest form of Advaita Vedanta (non-duality) through the simple discipline of Self-Enquiry, Upadesa Saram, Fire Hymns to Arunachala, the two sets of Forty Versus, and miscellaneous pieces, including Atma Vidya

This volume of new essays is the first English-language anthology devoted to Chinese metaphysics. The essays explore the key themes of Chinese philosophy, from pre-Qin to modern times, starting with important concepts such as yin-yang and qi and taking the reader through the major periods in Chinese thought - from the Classical period, through Chinese Buddhism and Neo-Confucianism, into the twentieth-century philosophy of Xiong Shili. They explore the major traditions within Chinese philosophy, including Daoism and Mohism, and a broad range of metaphysical topics, including monism, theories of individuation, and the relationship between reality and falsehood. The volume will be a valuable resource for upper-level students and scholars of metaphysics, Chinese philosophy, or comparative philosophy, and with its rich insights into the ethical, social and political dimensions of Chinese society, it will also interest students of Asian studies and Chinese intellectual history.

Few sacred texts present their wisdom with the clarity of the Buddhist Dhammapada, or Path to Virtue. These ancient verses offer a compelling introduction to Buddhist thought, revealing the Four Truths--concerning the nature of the world and our lot in it--and the Eightfold Path to enlightenment, the means by which to overcome the essential suffering revealed by the Four Truths as the essence of life. Expressed with great beauty and translated with painstaking scholarship, this volume offers stimulating, challenging, and inspiring reading.

This is the first book to provide a broad overview of the ways in which Buddhist ideas have influenced political thinking and politics in Myanmar. Matthew J. Walton draws extensively on Burmese language sources from the last 150 years to describe the 'moral universe' of contemporary Theravada Buddhism that has anchored most political thought in Myanmar. In explaining multiple Burmese understandings of notions such as 'democracy' and 'political participation', the book provides readers with a conceptual framework for understanding some of the key dynamics of Myanmar's ongoing political transition. Some of these ideas help to shed light on restrictive or exclusionary political impulses, such as anti-Muslim Buddhist nationalism or scepticism towards the ability of the masses to participate in politics. Walton provides an analytical framework for understanding Buddhist influences on politics that will be accessible to a wide range of readers and will generate future research and debate.

Fueled by the music of revolution, anger, fear, and despair, we dyed our hair or shaved our heads ... Eating acid like it was candy and chasing speed with cheap vodka, smoking truckloads of weed, all in a vain attempt to get numb and stay numb.

This is the story of a young man and a generation of angry youths who rebelled against their parents and the unfulfilled promise of the sixties. As with many self-destructive kids, Noah Levine's search for meaning led him first to punk rock, drugs, drinking, and dissatisfaction. But the search didn't end there. Having clearly seen the uselessness of drugs and violence, Noah looked for positive ways to channel his rebellion against what he saw as the lies of society. Fueled by his anger at so much injustice and suffering, Levine now uses that energy and the practice of Buddhism to awaken his natural wisdom and compassion.

While Levine comes to embrace the same spiritual tradition as his father, bestselling author Stephen Levine, he finds his most authentic expression in connecting the seemingly opposed worlds of punk and Buddhism. As Noah Levine delved deeper into Buddhism, he chose not to reject the punk scene, instead integrating the two worlds as a catalyst for transformation. Ultimately, this is an inspiring story about maturing, and how a hostile and lost generation is finally finding its footing. This provocative report takes us deep inside the punk scene and moves from anger, rebellion, and self-destruction, to health, service to others, and genuine spiritual growth.

Daisetsu Teitar Suzuki was a key figure in the introduction of Buddhism to the non-Asian world. Many outside Japan encountered Buddhism for the first time through his writings and teaching, and for nearly a century his work and legacy have contributed to the ongoing religious and cultural interchange between Japan and the rest of the world, particularly the United States and Europe. This fourth volume of Selected Works of D. T. Suzuki brings together a range of Suzuki's writings in the area of Buddhist studies. Based on his text-critical work in the Chinese canon, these essays reflect his commitment to clarifying Mahayana Buddhist doctrines in Indian, Chinese, and Japanese historical contexts. Many of these innovative writings reflect Buddhological discourse in contemporary Japan and the West's pre-war ignorance of Mahayana thought. Included is a translation into English for the first time of his "Mahayana Was Not Preached by Buddha." In addition to editing the essays and contributing the translation, Mark L. Blum presents an introduction that examines how Suzuki understood Mahayana discourse via Chinese sources and analyzes his problematic use of Sanskrit.

Buddhism or Buddhisms? By the time they move on to Buddhism in Japan, many students who have studied its origins in India ask whether this is in fact the same religion, so different can they appear. In Buddhisms: An Introduction, Professor John S. Strong provides an overview of the Buddhist tradition in all its different forms around the world. Beginning at the modern day temples of Lumbini, where the Buddha was born, Strong takes us through the life of the Buddha and a study of Buddhist Doctrine, revealing how Buddhism has changed just as it has stayed the same. Finally, Strong examines the nature of Buddhist community life and its development today in the very different environments of Thailand, Japan, and Tibet. Enriched by the author's own insights gathered over forty years, Buddhisms never loses sight of the personal experience amidst the wide-scope of its subject. Clear in its explanations, replete with tables and suggestions for further reading, this is an essential new work that makes original contributions to the study of this 2,500 year-old religion.

In this volume of memoirs we find Sangharakshita after twenty years in the East arriving back in England at the invitation of the English Sangha Trust. He expects to stay no more than a few months, but the months become years and, as he comes to know the then small world of British Buddhism, he realizes that after all it is here that he may best be able to work for the good of Buddhism , as one of his teachers had once exhorted him. After a farewell tour of his friends and teachers in India, he goes on to found a new Buddhist movement and to ordain twelve men and women into a new Buddhist Order. The answer to the question Why did Sangharakshita found a new Buddhist movement and Order? is in these pages. 'Moving Against the Stream' has for its backdrop 1960s Britain, with figures as diverse as Prime Minister Harold Wilson, and David Cooper, the anti-psychiatry psychiatrist. In the world of British Buddhism there is Christmas Humphreys, founder of the London Buddhist Society, and Maurice Walshe, translator of the Digha Nikaya, and many others. Here also is the story of a friendship that was to be deeply significant for Sangharakshita. As he and Terry Delamare drive across Europe visiting the sites of ancient Greece and the churches, museums and great works of art of Renaissance Italy, Sangharakshita makes vivid the role that higher culture can play in spiritual life. This volume includes '1970 - A Retrospect' in which Sangharakshita tells of a year that begins with lectures in Paris, continues with three months at Yale University as a visiting lecturer, and concludes back in Britain as he resumes his work for the Buddhist movement. A new phase is beginning.

This volume is a tribute to the work of Michael Jerryson, one of the initiators of the academic discourse on Buddhism and violence whose intellectual pursuits have resulted in a trailblazing shift in the academic study of Buddhism. Preconceived in the modern west as a pacific, chiefly meditative practice aiming for personal salvation and world peace, Buddhism has been exposed in the last few decades for its manifold legacy of violence. This is apparent not only in Buddhist groups' history of support for actual military aims, but in Buddhism's association with religious nationalism and in its more subtle expressions of discursive and structural violence. This exposure is due in significant part to Michael Jerryson who, in addition to exploring this perhaps surprising Buddhist history, has investigated the dynamism of Buddhist authority. Most recently in his critique of U Wirathu, the Burmese Buddhist monk whose advocacy of Buddhist nationalism in Myanmar has stirred a boiling pot of anti-Muslim resentments, Michael Jerryson has shown that reverence for Burmese religious authorities transcends respect for traditional Buddhist doctrine and monastic accomplishments. It emanates instead from the phenomenon of religious authority itself and from the cultural institutions which support it. His examinations have resulted in heightened sensitivity to the sociology of religious authority and violence. The scholarly contributions in this volume include discussions of Buddhism and violence, religious authority and nationalism, whether Buddhist, Christian, white, or other.

This Mah y na Buddhist s tra has been especially influential in the Chan school of Chinese Buddhism. Some of the key themes of the ra gama S tra form the foundation for Buddhist practice, mainly by sam dhi power. The moral precepts in this Sutra are so important that they are often used to combat delusions that may arise during meditation. This book serves as a guide for all Buddhist practitioners to understand the basic ideas of Buddhism and lead their hands through the way of factual practice toward the ten stages of Mah y na achievements.