New Ebooks

This book identifies what is meant by sati (smṛti), usually translated as “mindfulness,” in early Buddhism, and examines its soteriological functions and its central role in the early Buddhist practice and philosophy. Using textual analysis and criticism, it takes new approaches to the subject through a comparative study of Buddhist texts in Pali, Chinese and Sanskrit. It also furnishes new perspectives on the ancient teaching by applying the findings in modern psychology.

Peaceful Action, Open Heart shines 60 years of study and practice upon one of the crowning scriptures of the path of the Buddha, and is destined to be known as one of the most significant writings by Thich Nhat Hanh. The Lotus Sutra is one of the most revered of Mahayana sacred texts and is sometimes called "the king of sutras." Despite this fact, there are very few commentaries in English available today. Thich Nhat Hanh explores the Sutra’s main theme-- that everyone has the capacity to become a Buddha, and that Buddha-nature is inherent in everything--but he also uniquely emphasizes the sutra’s insight that Buddha-nature is the basis for peaceful action. Since we all will one day become a Buddha, he says, we can use mindfulness practices right now to understand and find solutions to current world challenges. In his interpretation of the sutra, he suggests that if the practices, views, and insights of the Lotus Sutra would find application not only by individuals but also by nations, it would offer concrete solutions to transform individual suffering and the global challenges facing the world today.

Awakening of the Heart is a comprehensive, single volume collection of the Buddha’s key sutras, translated with contemporary commentary by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. It is an essential complement to Happiness, the bestselling collection of meditation and mindful practices released in 2009. Awakening of the Heart captures the heart of Buddhist wisdom and Thich Nhat Hanh’s unique talent to make the Buddha’s teachings accessible and applicable to our daily lives and times. This is a wonderful gift for anyone looking to deepen their practice and understanding of the teachings, as well as a unique resource to understand the fundamentals of Buddhism from its source.

Buddha Mind, Buddha Body expands upon the themes in Thich Nhat Hanh’s book Understanding Our Mind. It opens with the question: Is free will possible? This concept becomes a leitmotif as the author considers how the mind functions and how we can work with it to cultivate more freedom and understanding, how to be in closer touch with reality, and how to create the conditions for our own happiness. Nhat Hanh discusses the connection between psychology, neuroscience, and meditation.

An exciting contribution to the growing trend of applying Buddhist practices to encourage wellness and balance mental health. Reconciliation focuses on mindful awareness of our emotions and offers concrete practices to restore damaged relationships through meditations and exercises to help acknowledge and transform the hurt that many of us may have experienced as children. Reconciliation shows how anger, sadness, and fear can become joy and tranquility by learning to breathe with, explore, meditate, and speak about our strong emotions. Written for a wide audience and accessible to people of all backgrounds and spiritual traditions.

Unravelling the Mysteries of Mind and Body Through Abhidhamma by Sayalay Susil. Abhidhamma is a Pali word , the language in which the Theravadin records of the teachings of the Buddha have been recorded. The word is composed of the two parts, ‘abhi’ meaning ‘higher’ or ‘greater’ and ‘dhamma’ which means ‘reality’ or ‘truth’ (it can be loosely translated as to mean ‘everything which is real’). The teachings of Abhidhamma may appear dull or complicated in daily life and meditation practices. Therefore it is largely ignored.

Illuminating the Path to Enlightenment was published in 2002 by Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet. The free ebook is essentially a commentary on Atishas Dipamkara Shrijnana’s A Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment and Lama Je Tsong Khapa’s Lines of Experience. Buddhism originated from its founding teacher, Shakyamuni Buddha , who gave 84,000 forms of teaching.

In the second part, Buddhism and Buddhist teachings are looked at from the perspective of medicine. What do Buddhist teachings say on illness and health? Health for example, is referred to as the greatest gain in life. There is much that Buddhist anthropology and sociology could gain from Buddhist thought. The social aspects of the community of monks are discussed from a sociological point of view as its theme. …..

This book analyses the transplantation, development and adaptation of the two largest Tibetan and Zen Buddhist organizations currently active on the British religious landscape: the New Kadampa Tradition (NKT) and the Order of Buddhist Contemplatives (OBC). The key contributions of recent scholarship are evaluated and organised thematically to provide a framework for analysis, and the history and current landscape of contemporary Tibetan and Zen Buddhist practice in Britain are also mapped out.

According to Modern Cosmology, our Universe came from a primordial state 13.7 billion years ago, with no matter and very little energy. In other words, it was almost empty. Where do the stars and galaxies, and everything else in the present universe come from then? This captivating book provides an answer to this question, and explains the observations and evidence behind the assertion of an almost empty primordial universe. Aimed at a general audience, it assumes no prior knowledge of astronomy or physics.

If you have been practicing Buddhism for a while, why do you still have problems? And how do you balance the sometimes different needs of spiritual and psychological perspectives? Rob Preece draws on his personal experience - over two decades as a psychotherapist and many years as a meditation teacher - to explore and map the psychological influences on our struggle to awaken. Wisdom does not always come as a flash of inspiration, but from the slow-often painful-working of experience. As we detach from our ideals of perfection and develop our acceptance of imperfection, our love and compassion can grow, and with this, our psychological and spiritual health will benefit as well. The Wisdom of Imperfection delves into this journey of individuation in Buddhist life, looking at the psychological process beneath the traditional path of the compassionate-minded Bodhisattva.

In a manner never before published, this book presents both Buddhism and Yoga and relates them to contemporary Western psychology. Although existing books begin with advanced concepts, such as emptiness or egolessness, The Positive Psychology of Buddhism and Yoga begins with very basic concepts and avoids the exotic and so called "mystical" notions. Levine emphasizes the goals of Buddhism and Yoga and the methods they employ to achieve those goals.

A great deal of Buddhist literature and scholarly writing about Buddhism of the past 150 years reflects, and indeed constructs, a historically unique modern Buddhism, even while purporting to represent ancient tradition, timeless teaching, or the "essentials" of Buddhism. This literature, Asian as well as Western, weaves together the strands of different traditions to create a novel hybrid that brings Buddhism into alignment with many of the ideologies and sensibilities of the post-Enlightenment West.

In a probing analysis of the oldest Buddhist texts, Julius Evola places the doctrine of liberation in its original context. The early teachings, he suggests, offer the foremost example of an active spirituality that is opposed to the more passive, modern forms of theistic religions. This sophisticated, highly readable analysis of the theory and practice of Buddhist asceticism, first published in Italian in 1943 , elucidates the central truths of the eightfold path and clears away the later accretions of Buddhist doctrine. Evola describes the techniques for conscious liberation from the world of maya and for achieving the state of transcendence beyond dualistic thinking. Most surprisingly, he argues that the widespread belief in reincarnation is not an original Buddhist tenet. Evola presents actual practices of concentration and visualization, and places them in the larger metaphysical context of the Buddhist model of mind and universe.

Nagarjuna's Vigrahavyavartani is an essential work of Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophical literature. Written in an accessible question-and-answer style, it contains Nagarjuna's replies to criticisms of his philosophy of the "Middle Way." The Vigrahavyavartani has been widely cited both in canonical literature and in recent scholarship; it has remained a central text in India, Tibet, China, and Japan, and has attracted the interest of greater and greater numbers of Western readers.

For centuries the I Ching has been used as a basic map of conscious development, containing the underlying principles of all religions, and highly prized by followers of Buddhism. Chih-hsu Ou-i uses the concepts of Tian Tai Buddhism to elucidate the I Ching —concentration and insight, calmness and wisdom, and various levels of realization. Skillfully translated by Thomas Cleary, this work presents the complete text of the I Ching plus the only Buddhist interpretation of the oracle.

When neurology researcher James Austin began Zen training, he found that his medical education was inadequate. During the past three decades, he has been at the cutting edge of both Zen and neuroscience, constantly discovering new examples of how these two large fields each illuminate the other. Now, in Selfless Insight, Austin arrives at a fresh synthesis, one that invokes the latest brain research to explain the basis for meditative states and clarifies what Zen awakening implies for our understanding of consciousness. Austin, author of the widely read Zen and the Brain, reminds us why Zen meditation is not only mindfully attentive but evolves to become increasingly selfless and intuitive. Meditators are gradually learning how to replace over-emotionality with calm, clear, objective comprehension.

Saturated with direct, pithy instructions, Rainbow Painting presents the very quintessence of the Buddhist Spiritual approach through the authentic personal experience of one of the greatest living meditation masters.Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche expresses what he himself has undergone, instructing us in a complete manner of training. To attain enlightenment we must experience our innate nature. The ultimate object of realization, the natural state of mind, unmistakenly and exactly as it is, need not be sought for elsewhere but is present within ourselves. Stability in this unexcelled state of unity is not achieved by separating what we know from what we do.This book contains astute instructions that address these key points of spirituality.

Penetrating Wisdom is a book of teachings on the Buddhist paths of Dzogchen and Tantra by an innovative Tibetan master who is both authoritative and modern. Basing himself on The Aspiration of Samantabhadra, a proclamation in the Buddhist tantras of the Buddha Samantabhadra, Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche illuminates the philosophy and meditation practices of Dzogchen, the highest and most profound teaching of all of Tibetan Buddhism. With precision that does not intimidate the uninitiated, Rinpoche explains the basic nature of our very own mind--complete enlightenment--and how we may go about making this nature of mind manifest through making profound aspirations and through relying on the skillful methods of the Vajrayana, Tibetan Buddhism's "indestructible" path of insight.

It is common in both Buddhism and Freudian psychoanalysis to treat desire as if it is the root of all suffering and problems, but psychiatrist Mark Epstein believes this to be a grave misunderstanding. In his controversial defense of desire, he makes clear that it is the key to deepening intimacy with ourselves, each other, and our world. Proposing that spiritual attainment does not have to be detached from intimacy or eroticism, Open to Desire begins with an exploration of the state of dissatisfaction that causes us to cling to irrational habits. Dr. Epstein helps readers overcome their own fears of desire so that they can more readily bridge the gap between self and other, cope with feelings of incompletion, and get past the perception of others as objects. Freed from clinging and shame, desire’s spiritual potential can then be opened up.

The Indian philosopher Acharya Nagarjuna (c. 150-250 CE) was the founder of the Madhyamaka (Middle Path) school of Mahayana Buddhism and arguably the most influential Buddhist thinker after Buddha himself. Indeed, in the Tibetan and East Asian traditions, Nagarjuna is often referred to as the 'second Buddha.' His primary contribution to Buddhist thought lies is in the further development of the concept of sunyata or 'emptiness.' For Nagarjuna, all phenomena are without any svabhaba, literally 'own-nature' or 'self-nature', and thus without any underlying essence. In this book, Jan Westerhoff offers a systematic account of Nagarjuna's philosophical position. He reads Nagarjuna in his own philosophical context, but he does not hesitate to show that the issues of Indian and Tibetan Buddhist philosophy have at least family resemblances to issues in European philosophy.

As the first systematic attempt to probe the linguistic strategies of Daoist Zhuangzi and Chan Buddhism, this book investigates three areas: deconstructive strategy, liminology of language, and indirect communication. It bases these investigations on the critical examination of original texts, placing them strictly within soteriological contexts. Whilst focusing on language use, the study also reveals some important truths about these two traditions and challenges many conventional understandings of them.

Readers are hard-pressed to find books that can help them understand the central concept in Mahayana Buddhism - the idea that ultimate reality is "emptiness." In clear language, Introduction to Emptiness explains that emptiness is not a mystical sort of "nothingness," but a specific truth that can and must be understood through calm and careful reflection. Newland's contemporary examples and vivid anecdotes will be helpful to students trying to understand one of the great classic texts of the Tibetan tradition, Tsong-kha-pa's Great Treatise.

With Imagining Karma, Gananath Obeyesekere embarks on the very first comparison of rebirth concepts across a wide range of cultures. Exploring in rich detail the beliefs of small-scale societies of West Africa, Melanesia, traditional Siberia, Canada, and the northwest coast of North America, Obeyesekere compares their ideas with those of the ancient and modern Indic civilizations and with the Greek rebirth theories of Pythagoras, Empedocles, Pindar, and Plato. His groundbreaking and authoritative discussion decenters the popular notion that India was the origin and locus of ideas of rebirth. As Obeyesekere compares responses to the most fundamental questions of human existence, he challenges readers to reexamine accepted ideas about death, cosmology, morality, and eschatology.

Here for the first time in English is a complete Dzogchen meditation manual freom the ancient religious tradition of Tibet known as Bon. The Kunzang Nying-tig by Shardza Tashi Gyaltsen is a powerful and practical instructional text which cuts to the heart of Dzogchen meditation. Dzogchen is regarded by Bonpos as the highest and most esoteric religious practice.

Written in the style of personal instruction from Shardza to his students, the manual is supplemented with a commentary by Lopon Tenzin Namdak, who is himself an acknowledged master of Dzogchen. The translation was carried out by Lopon in the course of teaching the text to Western students at his monastery in the Kathmandu Valley.

This short work by Longchen Rabjampa, one of the great codifiers of the Dzogchen teachings belonging to the Nyingmapa tradition expounds the four themes of Gampopa and surveys the nine vehicles of enlightenment as describing the final goal.

Creatively exploring the points of confluence and conflict between Western psychology and Buddhist teachings, various scholars, researchers, and therapists struggle to integrate their diverse psychological orientations - psychoanalytic, humanistic, cognitive-behavioral, transpersonal - with their diverse Theravada and Mahayana Buddhist practices. By investigating the degree to which Buddhist insights are compatible with Western science and culture, they then consider what each philosophical/psychological system has to offer the other. The contributors reveal how Buddhism has changed the way they practice psychotherapy, choose their research topics, and conduct their personal lives. In doing so, they illuminate the relevance of ancient Buddhist texts to contemporary cultural and psychological dilemmas.

Dogen (1200-1253), the founder of the Soto Zen sect in Japan, is especially known for introducing to Japanese Buddhism many of the texts and practices that he discovered in China. Heine reconstructs the context of Dogen's travels to and reflections on China by means of a critical look at traditional sources both by and about Dogen in light of recent Japanese scholarship. While many studies emphasize the unique features of Dogen's Japanese influences, this book calls attention to the way Chinese and Japanese elements were fused in Dogen's religious vision.

Are there Buddhist conceptions of the unconscious? If so, are they more Freudian, Jungian, or something else? If not, can Buddhist conceptions be reconciled with the Freudian, Jungian, or other models? These are some of the questions that have motivated modern scholarship to approach alayavijnana, the storehouse consciousness, formulated in Yogâcâra Buddhism as a subliminal reservoir of tendencies, habits, and future possibilities.

Cognitive Humanistic Therapy describes a new approach to psychotherapy and self-development, based on an understanding of what it means to be “fully human.” In a unique integration of theory and practice, the book synthesises ideas from the cognitive and humanistic domains of psychotherapy and the religious worlds of Buddhism and Christianity.

This book on engaged Buddhism focuses on women working for social justice in a wide range of Buddhist tradition and societies. Contributors document attempts to actualize Buddhism's liberating ideas of personal growth and social transformation. Dealing with issues such as human rights, gender-based violence, prostitution, and the role of Buddhist nuns, the work illuminates the possibilities for positive change that are available to those with limited power and resources. Integrating social realities and theoretical perspectives, the work utilizes feminist interpretations of Buddhist values and looks at culturally appropriate means of instigating change.

Meditative practice lies at the heart of the Buddhist tradition. This introductory anthology gives a representative sample of the various kinds of meditations described in the earliest body of Buddhist scripture, the Pali canon.

It provides a broad introduction to their traditional context and practice and supplies explanation, context and doctrinal background to the subject of meditation. The main themes of the book are the diversity and flexibility of the way that the Buddha teaches meditation from the evidence of the canon. Covering fundamental features of Buddhist practice such as posture, lay meditation, and meditative technique it provides comments both from the principal early commentators on Buddhist practice, Upatissa and Buddhaghosa, and from reputable modern meditation teachers in a number of Theravadin traditions.

This book is billed as a sequel to Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Suzuki's classic collection of talks on Zen, but it stands on its own considerable merits as an eloquent, humorous series of lectures on the Sandokai, an eighth-century poem central to the Soto Zen tradition. These lectures show Suzuki, head priest of Tassajara monastery in California until his death in 1971, using his line-by-line exposition of the poem to illuminate what it means to practice Zen Buddhism. He stresses the simultaneity of the relative and the absolute, skillfully using words to direct his listeners toward understanding, all the while emphasizing that words are merely fingers pointing at the moon of enlightenment.

Buddhism first came to the West many centuries ago through the Greeks, who also influenced some of the culture and practices of Indian Buddhism. As Buddhism has spread beyond India, it has always been affected by the indigenous traditions of its new homes. When Buddhism appeared in America and Europe in the 1950s and 1960s, it encountered contemporary psychology and psychotherapy, rather than religious traditions. Since the 1990s, many efforts have been made by Westerners to analyze and integrate the similarities and differences between Buddhism and it therapeutic ancestors, particularly Jungian psychology. Taking Japanese Zen-Buddhism as its starting point, this volume is a collection of critiques, commentaries, and histories about a particular meeting of Buddhism and psychology.

Buddhism teaches that to become happy, greed, ill-will, and delusion must be transformed into their positive counterparts: generosity, compassion, and wisdom. The history of the West, like all histories, has been plagued by the consequences of greed, ill-will, and delusion. A Buddhist History of the West investigates how individuals have tried to ground themselves to make themselves feel more real. To be self-conscious is to experience ungroundedness as a sense of lack, but what is lacking has been understood differently in different historical periods. Author David R. Loy examines how the understanding of lack changes at historical junctures and shows how those junctures were so crucial in the development of the West.

We will be exploring the Abhidharmasamuccaya, a text that belongs to the later development of Buddhism. Early Buddhism is known as Theravadin or Hinayana Buddhism. Later Buddhism is known as Mahayana Buddhism. It has two schools: Madhyamika, the school of the middle way, and Yogacara, the practitioners of yoga. Yoga, in this case, has very little to do with physical dexterity, with how you can twist your arms or fiddle your toes. It is very much related with learning how to meditate properly and relate to one's own mind, with trying to understand the sort of mental states we go through in meditation and so on. The Abhidharmasamuccaya presents that kind of overall structure, in the fullest sense.

This book is in 2 volumes and has become a classic in Pali studies. It provides a vast amount of information about early Buddhism and about early Indian ancient history. It is a valuable reference book for the scholar as well as the general reader interested in Buddhism.

'Buddhism and Psychology' has been carefully designed to provide the reader with a comprehensive, in-depth view of what Buddhism is all about. I have tried to blend the concepts of psychology and most of the teaching of the Buddha that has so impressed me. The most exciting areas of Buddhism are represented, as are the early concepts of Theravada Buddhism that constitute the foundation of Buddhism.

Dr. Endo's primary task, as he states, is to present the data and information embodied in the Pali Atthakatha concerning the Buddha-concept as much and as systematically as possible. He begins with a brief examination of the Buddha-concept found in the pre-commentarial literature as a prelude to his main themes both of the Buddha-concept and the Bodhisatta concept from Chapter I onwards. Findings presented in his work clearly indicate that the Buddha-concept in the Atthakatha literature forms in itself an important and dynamic force to reckon with for the establishment of what we later regard as Theravada Buddhism reflected in the commentarial and subsequent literature.

Report for 1887 (T.W. Rhys Davids);
The Pajjamadhu. A Poem in Praise of Buddha (ed. E.R. Gooneratne);
Simå-vivåda-vinicchayå-kathå (ed. Prof. J.P. Minayeff);
Saddhammopåyana (ed. Dr. Morris);
Notes on Sadhammopåyana; Index of subjects and words;
Notes and Queries (Dr. Morris); Spellicans (T.W. Rhys Davids); List of members of the
Society; Accounts; Works already published.

Report for 1885 (T.W. Rhys Davids);
Påli Mss. in the Brown University Library at Providence, R.I., U.S. (Henry C. Warren);
The Cha-kesa-dhatË-vaμsa (ed. Prof. Minayeff);
The Sandesa-kathå (ed. Prof. Minayeff);
Notes and Queries (Dr. Morris); List of members of the Society; Balance sheet, ets.,
Works published and in progress.

Lectures by Mr. James Alwis (1. On Buddhism, 2. On Påli);
The Late Kenjiu Kasawara (Max Müller);
Buddha (A.C. Benson);
Notes and Queries on Passages in the Mahåvagga (Cecil Bendall);
Khudda-sikkhå and MËla-sikkhå (ed. Edward Müller);
List of Påli Manuscripts in the British Museum (Dr. Hoerning);
List of Påli Manuscripts in the Cambridge University Library (T.W. Rhys Davids);
List of Påli Manuscripts in the Copenhagen Royal Library;
Påli manuscripts at Stockholm;

1. The Anāgatavaṃsa Revisited (K.R. Norman)
2. Sri Lankan Manuscriptology (Jinadasa Liyanaratne)
3. Sāriputta's Three Works on the Samantapāsādikā (Kate Crosby)
4. The Canonicity of the Netti and Other Works (Peter Jackson)
5. Mythology as Meditation: From the Mahāsudassana Sutta to the Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra (Rupert Gethin)
6. Jātaka and Paññāsa-jātaka in South-East Asia (Peter Skilling)
7. I.B. Horner Lectures
8. An Index to JPTS, Volumes IX-XXVIII
9. Contributors to this volume

It is noteworthy that the two most recent textbooks that bear this title, the current one by Karyn Lai, and one by JeeLoo Liu (2006, Blackwell; also reviewed on NDPR), limit themselves to introducing the reader to early Chinese philosophy (Warring States period through the Han -- roughly 5th century BCE through 3rd century CE) and the early schools of Chinese Buddhism (from ca. 1st through 6th centuries CE).

From the preface: "This small booklet was compiled and edited from talks given by Venerable Ajahn Sumedho on the central teaching of the Buddha: that the unhappiness of humanity can be overcome through spiritual means. The teaching is conveyed through the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths, first expounded in 528 BC in the Deer Park at Sarnath near Varanasi and kept alive in the Buddhist world ever since."

Masatoshi Nagatomi was a panoramic thinker. Raised in a Jodo Shinshu family, he chose the distant world of Indian Buddhism as his research field. Educated at Kyoto University, he went on to complete his doctorate at Harvard University, spending time studying in India as well. When thinking about Indian Buddhist literature he could call upon analogies from East Asia; when discussing Buddhist rituals in China he could draw upon his knowledge of Tibet.