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Books > Religion & Spirituality > Non-Christian religions > Religions of Indic & Oriental origin > Buddhism > General
As its teachings spread from the Indian subcontinent in all
directions across Asia, Buddhism influenced every culture it
touched--from Afghanistan to Korea, from Mongolia to Java. Buddhist
art is a radiant reflection of the encounter of the Buddha's
teachings with the diverse civilizations that came under their
sway. It is also an intriguing visual record of the evolution of
Buddhist practice and philosophy over a period of more than two
millennia.
More than two hundred photographs provide the visual context for
this tour of the world of Buddhist art. Included in the rich
variety of forms are architecture and monumental art, statuary,
paintings, calligraphy, fresco, brushwork, and textile arts. Denise
Leidy's guide is the perfect introductory text for all those
intrigued by this splendid aesthetic tradition. It also an
essential resource for all who seek to understand Buddhist art as
teaching.
Many people have the compassionate wish to benefit others, but few
understand how to accomplish this effectively in daily life.
Bodhisattvas are friends of the world who have such strong
compassion they are able to transform all their daily activities
into methods to benefit others. The path of the Bodhisattva was
exquisitely explained in the universally loved poem Guide to the
Bodhisattva's Way of Life by the 8th century master Shantideva.
With this commentary by Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso Rinpoche,
the effectiveness and profundity of this way of life are clearly
revealed and made practical for our modern world.
Daily Meditations and Prayers from Around the World "...I hope that
people of all faiths as well as those who do not believe in a
religion will find inspiration and understanding here that in some
way contributes to their own inner peace." -The Dalai Lama #1 New
Release in Buddhism, Sacred Writings Discover the power to heal
through many meditation and prayer voices. This interfaith book
provides insight from various religious and cultural texts that
touches on our pain and inspires the healer within all of us to be
reminded of hope and faith so that we may live a deeper, more
meaningful, and fully self-expressed life. Create a tapestry of
comfort and inspiration. Maggie Oman creates a healing space for
readers in her deeply spiritual book Prayers for Healing: 365
Blessings, Poems, & Meditations from Around the World. During
moments that are filled with despair, illnesses, depression, or
spiritual longing, Prayers for Healing draws on the power of wise
and healing devotionals for reflection and deep mediation. Embrace
physical, emotional, and spiritual transformation. Prayers for
Healing demonstrates the transformative nature woven through the
power of prayer and wisdom. It draws from a select collection of
influential spiritual leaders, philosophers and thinkers of our
time that include: The Tao Te Ching, The Koran, The Torah, Native
American texts, The Bible, Thich Nhat Hanh, Wendell Berry, ack
Kornfield, Rumi, Rainer Maria Rilke, Marian Wright Edelman, Martin
Luther King, Jr., and Marianne Williamson. If you have found that
works such as Prayers That Bring Healing, Earth Prayers, Prayers of
Hope for Caregivers, Prayers for Hard Times, or Prayers for Hope
and Healing have brought inspiration into your life, then this book
is an invitation to strengthen your inner healer.
In fresh and inviting language and making frequent use of
strikingly clear diagrams and illustrations, "Unlearning the
Basics" challenges many of our common-sense understandings about
ourselves and the world. The author lays out a new way of seeing
that enables us to live more serenely, more compassionately, and
more free from the slings and arrows of our busy lives.
Along the way, Rishi Sativihari looks at love and grasping, at "the
great unfixables," and at how vulnerability and pain feed the
"evolution of character"-all in the service of helping us return to
our true home and find new ways to flourish. Grounded in the
Buddhist tradition yet completely free from the formulas of
traditional, tired presentations, "Unlearning the Basics" has an
informal, straightforward style that will immediately captivate the
reader.
The phenomenon known as "Buddhism" embraces an uninterrupted
process of communication through which the Buddha's followers have
been guided and inspired for 25 centuries. Communication is a
living, evolving thing, and for all its continuity the Buddhist
tradition presents the modern student - and practitioner - with a
bewildering array of cultural, philosophical and practical forms.
This work describes and correlates these diverse manifestations -
in Buddhism's homeland of India, and in its spread across Asia,
from Mongolia to Sri Lanka and from Japan to the Middle East.
Drawing on recent historical and literary research, the author
explains the basic concepts of Buddhism from all periods of its
development, and places them in an historical framework.
The rising population known as "nones" for its members' lack of
religious affiliation is changing American society, politics, and
culture. Many nones believe in God and even visit places of
worship, but they do not identify with a specific faith or belong
to a spiritual community. Corinna Nicolaou is a none, and in this
layered narrative, she describes what it is like for her and
thousands of others to live without religion or to be spiritual
without committing to a specific faith. Nicolaou tours America's
major traditional religions to see what, if anything, one might
lack without God. She moves through Christianity's denominations,
learning their tenets and worshiping alongside their followers. She
travels to Los Angeles to immerse herself in Judaism, Berkeley to
educate herself about Buddhism, and Dallas and Washington, D.C., to
familiarize herself with Islam. She explores what light they can
shed on the fears and failings of her past, and these encounters
prove the significant role religion still plays in modern life.
They also exemplify the vibrant relationship between religion and
American culture and the enduring value it provides to immigrants
and outsiders. Though she remains a devout none, Nicolaou's
experiences reveal points of contact between the religious and the
unaffiliated, suggesting that nones may be radically revising the
practice of faith in contemporary times.
Originally published in 1976, Leon Hurvitz's monumental
translation of the "Lotus Sutra" is the work scholars have
preferred for decades. Hailed by critics as an "extraordinary" and
"magnificent" achievement, Hurvitz's translation is based on the
best known Chinese version of the text and includes passages of the
original Sanskrit that were omitted from the Chinese.
Beloved for its mythology and literary artistry, the "Lotus
Sutra" is one of the most popular and influential texts of Mahayana
Buddhism, asserting that there is only one path to enlightenment,
the bodhisattva path, and that all followers without exception can
achieve supreme awakening. The text argues that the Buddha cannot
be delimited by time and space and that a common intent underlies
the diversity of Buddhist teachings. Through parables of the
burning house, the wayward son, and other tales that have come to
be known throughout East Asia, the sutra skillfully concretizes
abstract religious concepts and clarifies bold claims about the
Buddhist tradition. Urging devotees to revivify doctrine through
recitation and interpretation, the sutra powered an organic process
of remaking that not only kept its content alive in the poetry and
art of premodern Asia but also introduced new forms of practice and
scriptural study into contemporary Buddhism. Stephen F. Teiser's
foreword addresses this vital quality of the sutra, discusses its
background, and reflects on the enduring relevance of Hurvitz's
critical work.
"Instant Zen" presents the teachings of Foyan, a twelfth-century
Chinese Zen master recognized as one of the greatest masters of the
Song dynasty Zen renaissance in China. Returning to the
uncomplicated genuineness of the original and classical Zen
masters, Foyan offers many simple exercises in attention and
thought designed to lead to the awakening of Zen insight into the
real nature of the self. These succinct teachings emphasize
independence and autonomy, and show us how to open our own eyes and
stand on our own two feet, to see directly without delusion and act
on truth without confusion.
Translator Thomas Cleary provides an incisive introduction and
extensive references from traditional Zen sources, placing the work
in both historical and contemporary contexts. Newcomers to Zen will
find this book a useful and sophisticated introduction to authentic
inner Zen practices from an impeccable source, without cultural
exoticism or religious cultism. Instant Zen sheds new light on this
vital tradition, making available the immediacy of Zen practice and
unveiling our innate potential for conscious awakening.
A richly illustrated tapestry of interwoven studies spanning some
six thousand years of history, Daemons Are Forever is at once a
record of archaic contacts and transactions between humans and
protean spirit beings--daemons--and an account of exchanges, among
human populations, of the science of spirit beings: daemon-ology.
Since the time of the Indo-European migrations, and especially
following the opening of the Silk Road, a common daemonological
vernacular has been shared among populations ranging from East and
South Asia to Northern Europe. In this virtuoso work of historical
sleuthing, David Gordon White recovers the trajectories of both the
"inner demons" cohabiting the bodies of their human hosts and the
"outer daemons" that those same humans recognized each time they
encountered them in their enchanted haunts: sylvan pools, sites of
geothermal eruptions, and dark forest groves. Along the way, he
invites his readers to reconsider the potential and promise of the
historical method in religious studies, suggesting that a
"connected histories" approach to Eurasian daemonology may serve as
a model for restoring history to its proper place, at the heart of
the history of religions discipline.
Thich Nhat Hanh outlines the methods of conscious breathing presented in the sutra on the full awareness of breathing, and offers exercises for practising them today.
Jung's Red Book, finally published only in 2009, is a highly
ambiguous text describing a succession of extraordinary visions,
together with Jung's interpretation of them. Red Book, Middle Way
offers a new interpretation of Jung's Red Book, in terms of the
Middle Way, as a universal principle and embodied ethic, paralleled
both in the Buddha's teachings and elsewhere. Jung explicitly
discusses the Middle Way in the Red Book (although this has been
largely ignored by scholars so far) as well as offering lots of
material that can be understood in its terms. This book interprets
the Red Book in relation to the archetypes met in its visions - the
hero, the feminine, the Shadow, God and Christ, and follows Jung's
process of integrating these different internal figures. To do this
Jung needs to find the Middle Way between absolutes at every point,
in a way similar to the Buddha.
"Murmured Conversations" is the first complete and rigorously
annotated translation of "Sasamegoto" (1463-1464), considered the
most important and representative poetic treatise of the medieval
period in Japan because of its thoroughgoing construction of poetry
as a way to attain, and signify through language, the mental
liberation ("satori") that is the goal of Buddhist practice. It is
a fascinating document revealing the central place of Buddhist
philosophy in medieval Japanese artistic practices. Shinkei
(1406-1475), the author of the treatise, is himself a major poet,
regarded as the most brilliant among the practitioners of linked
poetry ("renga") in the Muromachi Period.
Along with the extensive annotations, Ramirez-Christensen's
commentaries illuminate the significance of each section of the
treatise within the context of "waka" and "renga" poetics, of the
history of classical Japanese aesthetic principles in general and
of Shinkei's thought in particular, and the role of Buddhism in the
contemporary understanding of cultural practices like poetry. This
is the most comprehensive presentation available in English of a
major classical Japanese critical text.
Eco-philosopher and best-selling author Joanna Macy shares five
stories from her more than 30 years of studying and practicing
Buddhism and deep ecology. Gathered on her travels to India,
Russia, Australia, and Tibet, these stories testify to Joanna
Macy's belief that either humankind awakens to a new and deeper
understanding of our interconnectedness with its planet or risks
loosing it. "Pass it On" tells of encounters with individuals who
share very personal stories of sudden awakening, unexpected
awareness, and the co-mingling of joy and pain. Each story is
imbued with the specific cultural flavor of the places where the
stories originate, but all show how each individual counts in the
global need for change and awakening.
A study of the surprising functions of Buddhist statues, which
helped disseminate Buddhist beliefs among the populace in Tenth-
and Eleventh-century Japan. Using ethnographic data drawn from
present-day fieldwork and marshalling ancient textual evidence,
Horton reveals the historical origins and development of modern
Japanese beliefs and practices.
The Heart Sutra is the most widely read, chanted, and copied text
in East Asian Buddhism. Here Frederik L. Schodt explores his
lifelong fascination with the sutra: its mesmerizing mantra, its
ancient history, the "emptiness theory, and the way it is used
around the world as a metaphysical tool to overcome chaos and
confusion and reach a new understanding of reality--a perfection of
wisdom. Schodt's journey takes him to caves in China, American
beats declaiming poetry, speculations into the sutra's true
origins, and even a robot Avalokitesvara at a Kyoto temple.
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