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Religious Studies: The Key Concepts is an accessible, A-Z resource, defining and explaining key terms and ideas central to the study of religion. Exploring broad and recurring themes which are applicable in both eastern and western religions, cross-cultural examples are provided for each term to give a comprehensive overview of the subject. Subjects covered include: afterlife comparative religion festivals ethics gender monotheism world religions modernity pilgrimage theism secularization With cross referencing and further reading provided throughout, this book provides an inclusive map of the discipline, and is an essential reference for all students, academics and researchers.
Originally published in 1971. Long regarded as a classic, this volume is one of the most systematic treatments of Hwa Yen to have appeared in the English language. With excellently translated selections of Hwa Yen readings, factual information and discussion, it is highly recommended to readers whose interests in Buddhism incline toward the metaphysical and phenomenological.
Hua-yen is regarded as the highest form of Buddhism by most modern Japanese and Chinese scholars. This book is a description and analysis of the Chinese form of Buddhism called Hua-yen (or Hwa-yea), Flower Ornament, based largely on one of the more systematic treatises of its third patriarch. Hua-yen Buddhism strongly resembles Whitehead's process philosophy, and has strong implications for modern philosophy and religion. Hua-yen Buddhism explores the philosophical system of Hua-yen in greater detail than does Garma C.C. Chang's The Buddhist Teaching of Totality (Penn State, 1971). An additional value is the development of the questions of ethics and history. Thus, Professor Cook presents a valuable sequel to Professor Chang's pioneering work. The Flower Ornament School was developed in China in the late 7th and early 8th centuries as an innovative interpretation of Indian Buddhist doctrines in the light of indigenous Chinese presuppositions, chiefly Taoist. Hua-yen is a cosmic ecology, which views all existence as an organic unity, so it has an obvious appeal to the modern individual, both students and layman.
This book describes eleven types of walking meditation techniques and their beneficial effects. These techniques are: Walking Meditation in Theravada Buddhism, Zen Walking Meditation or Kinhin, Taoist or Daoist Walking Meditation, Vipassana Walking Meditation, Walking Meditation in Vietnamese Thien Tradition due to Thich Nhat Hanh, Mindful Walking Meditation, Yogic or Om-Mantra-Based Walking Meditation, Jong-Grom Walking Meditation, Labyrinth Walking Meditation, Pilgrimage Walking Meditation, and Walking Meditation in the Forest It is sincerely believed that a book of this nature will be useful for all the readers across the globe who wish to understand the significance of science of walking meditation and practices, and get physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual benefits from it.
As a psychiatrist, Brendan Kelly is used to extoling the benefits of a daily meditation practice, but following his own advice is a different story. Finding the time to sit quietly every day isn't easy when you're already trying to juggle a stressful job, a busy family life, a cinema addiction, a cake habit and low-level feelings of guilt over an unused gym membership. But this is the year he is going to do it. Can he improve his life by meditating for 15 minutes every day? Will it improve his relationships with his family and patients? And will he ever be more Zen than Trixie the cat? The Doctor Who Sat for a Year is a funny, thoughtful and inspiring book about embracing both meditation and our imperfections. 'An excellent introduction to the path of meditation ... The author describes both how difficult meditation can be in the face of daily distractions and, ultimately, how easy it becomes when simple choices are put in place.' Michael Harding
Yoga, tantra and other forms of Asian meditation are practised in modernized forms throughout the world today, but most introductions to Hinduism or Buddhism tell only part of the story of how they developed. This book is an interpretation of the history of Indic religions up to around 1200 CE, with particular focus on the development of yogic and tantric traditions. It assesses how much we really know about this period, and asks what sense we can make of the evolution of yogic and tantric practices, which were to become such central and important features of the Indic religious scene. Its originality lies in seeking to understand these traditions in terms of the total social and religious context of South Asian society during this period, including the religious practices of the general population with their close engagement with family, gender, economic life and other pragmatic concerns.
This important text analyzes the moral theory of the seventh century Indian Mahayana master, Santideva, author of the well-known religious poem, the Bodhicaryavatara (Entering the Path of Enlightenment) as well as the significant, but relatively overlooked, Siksasamuccaya (Compendium of Teachings). With particular focus on the Siksasamuccaya, this book uses original translations and critical analysis in order to answer the question: How would Santideva’s ethics be understood in terms of Western moral theory? Santideva’s ethical presuppositions and moral reasoning are illuminated by analyzing his key moral terms and comparing them to other Buddhist principles. By focusing on a neglected Buddhist Sanskrit text by a major Mahayana figure, Barbra R. Clayton helps to redress a significant imbalance in the scholarship on Buddhist ethics, which has - up to now - focused primarily on the ethics of the Pali literature as interpreted in the Theravada tradition.
In the past European scholars have tended to treat both Madhyamaka and Yogācāra as separate and fundamentally opposed trends in Mahāyāna Buddhist thought. Drawing heavily on early textual evidence this work questions the validity of such a "Mahāyāna schools" hypothesis. By down-playing the late commentorial traditions, the author attempts a general reappraisal of the epistemological and ontological writings of Nagarjuna, Asanga and Vasubandhu. He concludes that the overlap in all areas of doctrine is significant, but particularly with respect to the teachings on the levels of truth, the enlightened and unenlightened states, the status of language and the nature of reality. It is hoped that such investigations may provide the basis for a new theory on the proliferation of Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism as an organic process of assimilation to new audiences, and specific contemporary problems, rather than in the more schismatic manner favoured by past researchers.
This book describes the Buddhism of India on the basis of the comparison of all the available original sources in various languages. It falls into three approximately equal parts. The first is a reconstruction of the original Buddhism presupposed by the traditions of the different schools known to us. It uses primarily the established methods of textual criticism, drawing out of the oldest extant texts of the different schools their common kernel. This kernel of doctrine is presumably common Buddhism of the period before the great schisms of the fourth and third centuries BC. It may be substantially the Buddhism of the Buddha himself, though this cannot be proved: at any rate, it is a Buddhi...