New Ebooks

The latest ebooks added to the E-Library

Buddhist Yoga: A Comprehensive Course

The word yoga has many meanings, including "meditation," "method," and "union." While the physical exercises of Hindu yoga are familiar to Westerners, the subtle metaphysics and refined methods of spiritual development that characterize Buddhist yoga are not yet well known. This volume presents a landmark translation of a classical sourcebook of Buddhist yoga, the Sandhinirmochana-sutra, or "Scripture Unlocking the Mysteries," a revered text of the school of Buddhism known as Vijnanavada or Yogachara.

Early Buddhist Theory Of Knowledge

This book is based primarily on the source material available in the Pali Canon, studied historically and philosophically in the light of the contemporary, earlier and later literary evidence related to the subject. The antiquity and authenticity of the material is vouchsafed by the literary, linguistic, ideological, sociological, and historical evidence existing into Pali Canon itself. The book traces the origin of the theory of knowledge and its development in early Buddhism.

Early Buddhism

A step by step guidebook to what Buddhism really is and was intended to be, perfect for providing a complete overview of Buddhist origins. Paul Tice adds a section explaining how Buddhism was not meant to be a form of religious worship, but an important system of ethics that can still bring personal salvation.

The History and Literature of Buddhism

Before T.W. Rhys Davids and some others ventured into interpretations of obscure sources of Buddhist philosophy and history, most of the material was lying scattered. It was strange, and very characteristic of the real meaning of true Buddhism, that there was no life of Gautama the Buddha in the Buddhist scriptures. Known sources of the Buddha's life story like Malalankara Watthu and the Jataka Book were written much after the days of the Buddha. These were more or less in the same tradition and written in Pali.

Mūlamadhyamakakārikā of Nagarjuna

This is a completely new translation of Nagarjuna`s major work the Mulamadhyamakakarika, accompanied by a detailed annotation of each of the verses. The annotation identifies the metaphysical theories of the scholastics criticized by Nagarjuna, and traces the source material and the arguments utilized in his refutation back to the early discourses of the Buddha. The book shows that Nagarjuna`s ideas are neither original nor are they an advancement from the early Buddhist period. Nagarjuna is not a Mahayanist.

The Social Dimensions of Early Buddhism

This book examines the relationship of Buddhism to its locus, the expanding agrartan economy of the Ganga valley during the periocl 600-300 Be. It outlines the cofttours of the major social and economic groups that were the dramatic personae in this dynamic process, especially the Gahapati, whose entrepreneurial role in the economy has not received the attention it deserves.

The Buddhist Unconscious: The ālaya-vijñāna in the context of Indian Buddhist thought

This work focuses upon an explicit notion of unconscious mind formulated by the Yogācāra school of Indian Buddhism in a series of texts from the third to the fifth centuries CE. These texts describe and defend this "Buddhist" unconscious through a variety of exegetical and metapsychological arguments whose rationales are analyzed in terms of their historical and contemporary context.

Buddhist Sciology

The present study based on Buddhist thought consists of a series of essays on different topics that interest a sociologist or an anthropologist of the present day. The material is primarily taken from early Buddhist texts. The Pali texts are accepted as the earliest available Buddhist sources, and as such, those sources were given the foremost attention. Later Pali as well as Sanskrit sources are used only to expand, elaborate or elucidate what is already found in the “oroginal teachings” or early Buddhist thought.

Buddhist Philosophy: A Historical Analysis

This introduction to Buddhism examines its basic philosophical teachings and historical development, setting forth complex and significant ideas in a straightforward and simple style that is easily accessible to the student. The author's orientation is philosophical, rather than religious or sociological. This approach is both the uniqueness and the strength of the work.

The Zen Teaching of Huang Po on the transmission of mind

This complete translation of the original collection of sermons, dialogues, and anecdotes of Huang Po, the illustrious Chinese master of the Tang Dynasty, allows the Western reader to gain an understanding of Zen from the original source, one of the key works in its teachings; it also offers deep and often startling insights into the rich treasures of Eastern thought. Nowhere is the use of paradox in Zen illustrated better than in the teaching of Huang Po, who shows how the experience of intuitive knowledge that reveals to a man what he is cannot be communicated by words.

A Buddhist Doctrine of Experience

Giving a new translation and interpretation of the basic works of Vasubandhu, the author shows that Yogacara metaphysics is basically the same as that of the early Buddhism. He contends that the Yogacara writings are open to interpretation in terms of realistic pluralism, and thus challenges their traditional interpretation in terms of idealistic monism. His translation is faithful to the original, arguments convincing and consistent, and presentation clear and readable.

The Literature of the Personalists of Early Buddhism

This is indeed a remarkable book. It has the best treatment of the schools called Vātsiputrīya and four other minor ones (p.5) that espoused the theory that a pudgala (a sort of person) supported the five personal aggregates (skandha) and made possible the Intermediate State (antardbhava) between death and rebirth. The author points out that this school of the Personalists (Pudgalavādin) once had its own version of three classes of scriptures (āgama) but they are now lost. The remaining schools of Buddhism condemned these personalists.

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