Investigation of the Percept is a short (eight verses and a three page autocommentary) work that focuses on issues of perception and epistemology. Its author, Dignaga, was one of the most influential figures in the Indian Buddhist epistemological tradition, and his ideas had a profound and wide-ranging impact in India, Tibet, and China. The work inspired more than twenty commentaries throughout East Asia and three in Tibet, the most recent in 2014. This book is the first of its kind in Buddhist studies: a comprehensive history of a text and its commentarial tradition. The volume editors translate the root text and commentary, along with Indian and Tibetan commentaries, providing detailed analyses of the commentarial innovations of each author, as well as critically edited versions of all texts and extant Sanskrit fragments of passages. The team-based approach made it possible to study and translate a corpus of treatises in Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese and to employ the methods of critical philology and cross-cultural philosophy to provide readers with a rich collection of studies and translations, along with detailed philosophical analyses that open up the intriguing implications of Dignaga's thought and demonstrate the diversity of commentarial approaches to his text. This rich text has inspired some of the greatest minds in India and Tibet. It explores some of the key issues of Buddhist epistemology: the relationship between minds and their percepts, the problems of idealism and realism, and error and misperception.

kyamuni was a sage from the ancient Shakya republic in India on whose teachings Buddhism was founded. His life is a story of how a normal human being can become an "awakened one" by sacrificing himself for the benefit of all. As a Buddhist, what we can learn from the eight different stages of the Buddha's life is very inspiring when we follow his teachings in our daily practices. This book helps the readers to form upright values in life and have comfort in this faith.

As the first comprehensive study of Buddhism and law in Asia, this interdisciplinary volume challenges the concept of Buddhism as an apolitical religion without implications for law. Buddhism and Law draws on the expertise of the foremost scholars in Buddhist studies and in law to trace the legal aspects of the religion from the time of the Buddha to the present. In some cases, Buddhism provided the crucial architecture for legal ideologies and secular law codes, while in other cases it had to contend with a pre-existing legal system, to which it added a new layer of complexity. The wide-ranging studies in this book reveal a diversity of relationships between Buddhist monastic codes and secular legal systems in terms of substantive rules, factoring, and ritual practices. This volume will be an essential resource for all students and teachers in Buddhist studies, law and religion, and comparative law.

Originally published in 1916, this book presents a selection from the Jatakas translated into English. The selection was made 'with the purpose of bringing together the Jataka stories of most interest, both intrinsically, and also from the point of view of the folklorist.' Notes and illustrative figures are also included. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the Jataka tales and Indian literature.

Ecotherapy in Practice reflects the growing interest and research in this field. Drawing on a diversity of experience from the counselling and psychotherapy professions, but also from practitioners in community work, mental health and education, this book explores the exciting and innovative possibilities involved in practising outdoors. Caroline Brazier brings to bear her experience and knowledge as a psychotherapist, group worker and trainer over several decades to think about therapeutic work outdoors in all its forms. The book presents a model of ecotherapy based on principles drawn from Buddhist psychology and Western psychotherapy which focuses particularly on the relationship between person and environment at three levels, moving from the personal level of individual history to cultural influences, then finally to global circumstances, all of which condition mind-states and psychological wellbeing. Ecotherapy in Practice will provide refreshing and valuable reading for psychotherapists and counsellors in the field, those interested in Buddhism, and other mental health and health professionals working outdoors

Dao De Jing is simply referred to as the Laozi, an ancient Chinese Classic known across the world. There could be different interpretations of its passages that are quite ambiguous without in depth Taoist practice. This book presents a Buddhist Master's view on the basic reasons within the main concepts of Laozi. The author opens up another way to understand Laozi's ideas by Buddhist ways of practice. He also aims to help its readers to build the right values of life by benefiting all human beings.

Buddhism and Jainism share the concepts of karma, rebirth, and the desirability of escaping from rebirth. The literature of both traditions contains many stories about past, and sometimes future, lives which reveal much about these foundational doctrines. Naomi Appleton carefully explores how multi-life stories served to construct, communicate, and challenge ideas about karma and rebirth within early South Asia, examining portrayals of the different realms of rebirth, the potential paths and goals of human beings, and the biographies of ideal religious figures. Appleton also deftly surveys the ability of karma to bind individuals together over multiple lives, and the nature of the supernormal memory that makes multi-life stories available in the first place. This original study not only sheds light on the individual preoccupations of Buddhist and Jain tradition, but contributes to a more complete history of religious thought in South Asia, and brings to the foreground long-neglected narrative sources.

Now available for the first time-more than 50 years after it was written-is the memoir of Michael Dillon/Lobzang Jivaka (1915-62), the British doctor and Buddhist monastic novice chiefly known to scholars of sex, gender, and sexuality for his pioneering transition from female to male between 1939 and 1949, and for his groundbreaking 1946 book Self: A Study in Ethics and Endocrinology. Here at last is Dillon/Jivaka's extraordinary life story told in his own words. Out of the Ordinary captures Dillon/Jivaka's various journeys-to Oxford, into medicine, across the world by ship-within the major narratives of his gender and religious journeys. Moving chronologically, Dillon/Jivaka begins with his childhood in Folkestone, England, where he was raised by his spinster aunts, and tells of his days at Oxford immersed in theology, classics, and rowing. He recounts his hormonal transition while working as an auto mechanic and fire watcher during World War II and his surgical transition under Sir Harold Gillies while Dillon himself attended medical school. He details his worldwide travel as a ship's surgeon in the British Merchant Navy with extensive commentary on his interactions with colonial and postcolonial subjects, followed by his "outing" by the British press while he was serving aboard The City of Bath. Out of the Ordinary is not only a salient record of an early sex transition but also a unique account of religious conversion in the mid-twentieth century. Dillon/Jivaka chronicles his gradual shift from Anglican Christianity to the esoteric spiritual systems of George Gurdjieff and Peter Ouspensky to Theravada and finally Mahayana Buddhism. He concludes his memoir with the contested circumstances of his Buddhist monastic ordination in India and Tibet. Ultimately, while Dillon/Jivaka died before becoming a monk, his novice ordination was significant: It made him the first white European man to be ordained in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Out of the Ordinary is a landmark publication that sets free a distinct voice from the history of the transgender movement.

This book, written with hospital spiritual care providers in mind, investigates how to expand the field and scope of compassion within the hospital context, for the spiritual care and safety of transgender patients. Written by a law-educated pastoral counselor, it advocates for chaplain legal literacy, and explains the consequences of spiritual care providers not knowing more about the law. It explores the current political and legal situation transgender hospital patients find themselves in, and especially how these new policies put transgender people at risk when they are in a hospital setting. Pamela Ayo Yetunde offers Buddhist-Christian activist interreligious dialogue methods to promote deeper understanding of how spiritual practices can cultivate empathy for transgender patients.

This book is an essential guide on the often perilous path to self-transformation. B. Simhananda invites the reader to explore one's inherent potential, through an exceptional and groundbreaking study of Gampopa's famous twelfth-century Buddhist classical works. Let your mind be inspired and your soul stirred through this impeccably written masterpiece. Divided in two sections, one part presents the author's modern liberal rendition of Gampopa's Root Text, and the other, in complete alignment with Tibetan tradition, remains the author's own contemporary commentaries on the mentioned work, helping the reader to extend his comprehension of the various topics. Readers of Buddhist literature and philosophy will appreciate "Gampopa's Precious Garland" in a new mode of understanding and in today's contemporary style of written expression. Once again, B. Simhananda offers us, in a modernized way, an interpretation of his profound understanding of Gampopa's teachings.

Originally published in 1938, this book provides a history of the variety of forms of Buddhist art that grew up in Thailand from the 1st century AD to the end of the 16th century. Le May draws on his experience as part of the British Consular Service in Thailand to focus primarily on sculpture, how the trade routes in South and South-East Asia brought Thailand into contact with a variety of artistic styles and how the different areas of the country adapted these styles for their own use. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the history of Thai art specifically or of Eastern art more generally.

A clear and comprehensive explanation of the entire path to enlightenment. We all have the potential for self-transformation, and a limitless capacity for the growth of good qualities, but to fulfil this potential we need to know what to do along every stage of our spiritual journey. With this book, Geshe Kelsang offers us step-by-step guidance on the meditation practices that will lead us to lasting inner peace and happiness. With extraordinary clarity, he presents all Buddha's teachings in the order in which they are to be practised, enriching his explanation with stories and illuminating analogies. This is a perfect guidebook to the Buddhist path.

The Mahayana tradition in Buddhist philosophy is defined by its ethical orientation-the adoption of bodhicitta, the aspiration to attain awakening for the benefit of all sentient beings. And indeed, this tradition is known for its literature on ethics, particularly such texts as Nagarjuna's Jewel Garland of Advice (Ratnavali), Aryadeva's Four Hundred Verses (Catuhsataka), and especially Santideva's How to Lead an Awakened Life (Bodhicaryavatara) and its commentaries. All of these texts reflect the Madhyamaka tradition of philosophy, and all emphasize both the imperative to cultivate an attitude of universal care (karuna) grounded in the realization of emptiness, impermanence, independence and the absence of any self in persons or other phenomena. This position is morally very attractive, but raises an important problem: if all phenomena, including persons and actions, are only conventionally real, can moral injunctions or principles be binding, or does the conventional status of the reality we inhabit condemn us to an ethical relativism or nihilism? In Moonshadows, the international collective known as the Cowherds addresses an analogous problem in the domain of epistemology and argues that the Madhyamaka tradition has the resources to develop a robust account of truth and knowledge within the context of conventional reality. The essays explore a variety of ways in which to understand important Buddhist texts on ethics and Mahayana moral theory so as to make sense of the genuine force of morality. The volume combines careful textual analysis and doctrinal exposition with philosophical reconstruction and reflection, and considers a variety of ways to understand the structure of Mahayana Buddhist ethics.

An American diplomat and self-taught scholar of the history and languages of the Islamic world, John Porter Brown (1814 72) published in 1868 this illustrated account of the Dervish orders of the Near East. Assisted closely by followers of this Sufi ascetic path while in Constantinople, Brown based his research on original Turkish, Arabic and Persian manuscripts. The work also includes extracts from other scholarly works on Dervish history, fleshing out this engaging introduction to a devout way of life and the philosophy underpinning it. As a Freemason, Brown was struck by the relationship between some Masonic and Dervish tenets, and he highlights parallels between the Christian and Islamic faiths in order to forge a better understanding of the traditions and beliefs of the people of the Near East for the benefit of Western readers.

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.

What turns the continuous flow of experience into perceptually distinct objects? Can our verbal descriptions unambiguously capture what it is like to see, hear, or feel? How might we reason about the testimony that perception alone discloses? Christian Coseru proposes a rigorous and highly original way to answer these questions by developing a framework for understanding perception as a mode of apprehension that is intentionally constituted, pragmatically oriented, and causally effective. By engaging with recent discussions in phenomenology and analytic philosophy of mind, but also by drawing on the work of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, Coseru offers a sustained argument that Buddhist philosophers, in particular those who follow the tradition of inquiry initiated by Dign?ga and Dharmak?rti, have much to offer when it comes to explaining why epistemological disputes about the evidential role of perceptual experience cannot satisfactorily be resolved without taking into account the structure of our cognitive awareness. Perceiving Reality examines the function of perception and its relation to attention, language, and discursive thought, and provides new ways of conceptualizing the Buddhist defense of the reflexivity thesis of consciousness-namely, that each cognitive event is to be understood as involving a pre-reflective implicit awareness of its own occurrence. Coseru advances an innovative approach to Buddhist philosophy of mind in the form of phenomenological naturalism, and moves beyond comparative approaches to philosophy by emphasizing the continuity of concerns between Buddhist and Western philosophical accounts of the nature of perceptual content and the character of perceptual consciousness.

The Moon Points Back comprises essays by both established scholars in Buddhist and Western philosophy and young scholars contributing to cross-cultural philosophy. It continues the program of Pointing at the Moon (Oxford University Press, 2009), integrating the approaches and insights of contemporary logic and analytic philosophy and those of Buddhist Studies to engage with Buddhist ideas in a contemporary voice. This volume demonstrates convincingly that integration of Buddhist philosophy with contemporary analytic philosophy and logic allows for novel understandings of and insights into Buddhist philosophical thought. It also shows how Buddhist philosophers can contribute to debates in contemporary Western philosophy and how contemporary philosophers and logicians can engage with Buddhist material. The essays in the volume focus on the Buddhist notion of emptiness (sunyata), exploring its relationship to core philosophical issues concerning the self, the nature of reality, logic, and epistemology. The volume closes with reflections on methodological issues raised by bringing together traditional Buddhist philosophy and contemporary analytic philosophy. This volume will be of interest to anyone interested in Buddhist philosophy or contemporary analytic philosophy and logic. But it will also be of interest to those who wish to learn how to bring together the insights and techniques of different philosophical traditions.

'[A] timely book on compassion and its cultivation' The Dalai Lama 'The bravest, cleverest and most engaging book I know on why we need to cultivate compassion' Jon Kabat-Zinn 'A practical toolkit for becoming a better human being' Daniel Goleman Self-compassion is the overlooked key to achieving our goals. It can lead to increased happiness, stress reduction, a stronger sense of purpose, better health and a longer life. Yet many of us resist compassion, worrying that if we are too compassionate with others we will be taken advantage of and if we are too compassionate with ourselves we won't achieve our goals in life. Using the latest science, psychology (from contemporary Western and classical Buddhist sources) as well as stories from others and his own extraordinary life, Jinpa shows us how to train our compassion muscle. His powerful programme, derived from his remarkable course in Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT), is the perfect guide to achieving a greater sense of wellbeing.