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Stanford scholar discusses Buddhism and its origins

Stanford religious studies Professor Paul Harrison talks about the latest research on the origin of Buddhism and the rise of Mahayana Buddhism, which has influenced most of today’s Buddhist practices around the world.

It’s hard to find a self-help book today that doesn’t praise the benefits of meditation, mindfulness and yoga.

Many individuals engage in meditation and other practices associated with Buddhism. But not all realize the complexities of the religion, according to Stanford expert Paul Harrison. (Image credit: FatCamera / Getty Images)

Many of these practices are rooted in the ancient tradition of Buddhism, a religion first developed by people in India sometime in the fifth century BCE.

But according to Stanford Buddhist scholar Paul Harrison , Buddhism is more than finding zen: It is a religious tradition with a complicated history that has expanded and evolved over centuries. Harrison has dedicated his career to studying the history of this religion, which is now practiced by over 530 million people.

In a recent book he edited, Setting Out on the Great Way: Essays on Early Mahāyāna Buddhism , Harrison brings together the latest perspectives on the origins and early history of a type of Buddhism that has influenced most of today’s Buddhist practices around the world.

This new work focuses on the rise of Mahayana Buddhism, which evolved about 400 years after the birth of Buddhism. It is an elaborate web of ideas that has seen other types of Buddhism branch from its traditions. Unlike other Buddhists, Mahayana followers aspire to not only liberate themselves from suffering but also lead other people toward liberation and enlightenment.

Stanford News Service interviewed Harrison, the George Edwin Burnell Professor of Religious Studies in the School of Humanities and Sciences, about Buddhism and the latest research on its origins.

What are some things that people may not know about Buddhism?

Some people, especially those in the Western world, seem to be bewitched and mesmerized by the spell of Buddhism and the way it’s represented in the media. We’re now saturated with the promotion of mindfulness meditation, which comes from Buddhism.

Paul Harrison (Image credit: Connor Crutcher)

But Buddhism is not all about meditation. Buddhism is an amazingly complex religious tradition. Buddhist monks don’t just sit there and meditate all day. A lot of them don’t do any meditation at all. They’re studying texts, doing administrative work, raising funds and performing rituals for the lay people, with a particular emphasis on funerals.

Buddhism has extremely good press. I try to show my students that Buddhism is not so nice and fluffy as they might think. Buddhism has a dark side, which, for example, we’ve been seeing in Myanmar with the recent persecution of the Rohingya people there.

It’s as if we need to believe that there is a religion out there that’s not as dark and black as everything else around us. But every religion is a human instrument, and it can be used for good and for bad. And that’s just as true of Buddhism as of any other faith.

Why is it important to study the origin of Buddhism and other religions?

Religion plays a hugely important role in our world today. Sometimes it has extremely negative consequences, as evidenced by terrorism incidents such as the Sept. 11 attacks. But sometimes it has positive consequences, when it’s used to promote selfless behavior and compassion.

Religion is important to our politics. So, we need to understand how religions work. And part of that understanding involves trying to grasp how religions developed and became what they became.

This new book of essays on Mahayana Buddhism is just a small part of figuring out how Buddhism developed over time.

What is Mahayana Buddhism and what are its distinct features?

The word Mahayana is usually translated as “the great vehicle.” The word maha means “great,” but the yana bit is trickier. It can mean both “vehicle” and “way,” hence the title of this book.

As far as we know, Mahayana Buddhism began to take shape in the first century BCE. This religious movement then rapidly developed in a number of different places in and around what is now India, the birthplace of Buddhism.

Buddhism itself started sometime in the fifth century BCE. We now think that the Buddha, who founded the religion, died sometime toward the year 400 BCE. As Buddhism developed, it spread beyond India. A number of different schools emerged. And out of that already complicated situation, we had the rise of a number of currents, or ways of thinking, which eventually started being labeled as Mahayana.

The kind of Buddhism before Mahayana, which I call mainstream Buddhism, is more or less a direct continuation of the teachings of the founder. Its primary ideal is attaining liberation from suffering and the cycle of life and rebirth by achieving a state called nirvana. You can achieve nirvana through moral striving, the use of various meditation techniques and learning the Dharma, which is the Buddha’s teachings.

Eventually, some people said that mainstream Buddhism is all fine and well but that it doesn’t go far enough. They believed that people need to not just liberate themselves from suffering but also liberate others and become Buddhas too.

Mahayana Buddhists strive to copy the life of the Buddha and to replicate it infinitely. That effort was the origin of the bodhisattva ideal. A bodhisattva is a person who wants to become a Buddha by setting out on the great way. This meant that Mahayana Buddhists were allegedly motivated by greater compassion than the normal kind of Buddhists and aimed for a complete understanding of reality and greater wisdom.

That’s Mahayana in a nutshell. But along with that goes a whole lot of new techniques of meditation, an elaborate cosmology and mythology, and a huge number of texts that were written around the time of the birth of Mahayana.

What’s the biggest takeaway from the latest research on the origin of Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism?

The development of Buddhism and its literature is much more complicated than we have realized. In the middle of the 20th century, scholars thought Mahayana Buddhism was developed by lay people who wanted to make a Buddhism for everybody. It was compared to the Protestant movement in Christianity. But we now know that this picture is not true.

The evidence shows that Mahayana Buddhism was spearheaded by the renunciants, the Buddhist monks and nuns. These were the hardcore practitioners of the religion, and they were responsible for writing the Mahayana scriptures and promoting these new ideas. The lay people were not the initiators.

But the full story is even more complicated than that. Buddhism’s development is more like a tumbleweed than a tree. And Mahayana Buddhism is sort of like a braided stream of several river currents, without one main current.

Why is it challenging to figure out how Mahayana Buddhism came about?

What’s special about Buddhist studies and makes it different from studying religions like Christianity is that there is still a huge amount of material that has not been translated or studied properly.

In the last two or three decades, scholars have also discovered a whole lot of texts in a long-lost language, called Gandhari, some of which are related to the Mahayana. These documents, the oldest of which date to the first century BCE, have been found in a region that now includes Pakistan and parts of North India, Afghanistan and Central Asia.

A lot of these texts are very hard to translate and understand. And there is more material that keeps surfacing. All of that is changing our view of the early history of Buddhism.

Printing Woodblocks of the Tripitaka Koreana in Haeinsa Temple, Hapcheon

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Buddhism and the Sciences: Historical Background, Contemporary Developments

• Original Article
• Published: 23 November 2020
• Volume 3 , pages 219–243, ( 2020 )

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• Richard K. Payne   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3164-2914 1  

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While discourse on the relation between Christianity and science has a long history, it has only been in the last century that Buddhists and Buddhist scholars have begun to consider the relation between their own religious tradition and the promises and challenges of modern science. This does not mean that there has not been a long history of a relation between Buddhism and the sciences. However, rarely has that relation been conceived of in terms of “discourse on religion and science” as such. As a result, much of the recent work done in the area of science and religion, though significant in its own right, inadequately considers many core Buddhist concerns. Originally published in 1993, this version has been updated with a preface surveying developments over the last three decades.

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Acknowledgements

The essay that follows this new Preface was originally published in Bridging Science and Religion , edited by Ted Peters and Gaymon Bennett, SCM Press, 1993, and reprinted by Fortress Press, 2003, pp. 153–172. It is republished here with the permission of both presses, to whom we wish to express our gratitude.

I would also like to express my gratitude to the editors of this special issue, Thomas Calobrisi and Devin Zuckerman for this opportunity to republish this essay. In addition to making it accessible to a wider audience, this allows me to make some minor corrections. Other than some grammatical changes, however, the essay itself remains as originally published. It was written for a general audience, and therefore does not include the diacritics or the reference citations normal to an academic publication.

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Payne, R.K. Buddhism and the Sciences: Historical Background, Contemporary Developments. DHARM 3 , 219–243 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42240-020-00086-8

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7627213d930e1981366069359e5a876e, buddhism in the world (text), ca. 6th-5th c. bce life of siddhartha gautama, the buddha.

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c. 480-380 BCE The First Council

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c. 350 BCE The Second Council

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269-232 BCE The Spread of Buddhism Through South Asia

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200 BCE-200 CE Emergence of Two Schools of Buddhism

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Han dynasty records note that Prince Ying of Ch’u, a half-brother of the Han emperor, provided a vegetarian feast for the Buddhist laity and monks living in his kingdom around 65 CE. This indicates that a Buddhist community had already formed there.

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372 CE Buddhism Introduced to Korea from China

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400s CE Buddhaghosa Systematizes Theravada Teachings

Buddhaghosa was a South Indian monk who played a formative role in the systematization of Theravada doctrine. After arriving in Sri Lanka in the early part of the fifth century CE, he devoted himself to editing and translating into Pali the scriptural commentaries that had accumulated in the native Sinhalese language. He also composed the Visuddhimagga, “Path of Purity,” an influential treatise on Theravada practice. From this point on, Theravada became the dominant form of Buddhism in Sri Lanka and eventually spread to Southeast Asia.

402 CE Pure Land Buddhism Established in China

In 402 CE, Hui-yuan became the first Chinese monk to form a group specifically devoted to reciting the vow to be reborn in the Western Paradise, and founded the Donglin Temple at Mount Lu for this purpose. Subsequent practitioners of Pure Land Buddhism regard Hui-yuan as the school’s founder.

520 CE Bodhidharma and Ch’an (Zen) in China

The Ch’an (Zen) school attributes its establishment to the arrival of the monk Bodhidharma in Northern China in 520 CE. There, he is said to have spent nine years meditating in front of a wall before silently transmitting the Buddha’s Dharma to Shen-Kuang, the second patriarch. All Zen masters trace their authority to this line.

552 CE Buddhism Enters Japan from Korea

In 552 CE the king of Paekche sent an envoy to Japan in hopes of gaining military support. As gifts, he sent an image of Buddha, several Buddhist scriptures, and a memorial praising Buddhism. Within three centuries of this introduction, Buddhism would become the major spiritual and intellectual force in Japan.

700s CE Vajrayana Buddhism Emerges in Tibet

Buddhist teachings and practices appear to have first made their way into Tibet in the mid-7th century CE. During the reign of King Khri-srong (c. 740-798 CE), the first Tibetan monastery was founded and the first monk ordained. For the next four hundred years, a constant flow of Tibetan monks made their way to Northern India to study at the great Buddhist universities. It was from the university of Vikramasila around the year 767 that the yogin-magician Padmasambhava is said to have carried the Vajrayana teachings to Tibet, where they soon became the dominant form of Buddhism.

1044-1077 CE Theravada Buddhism Established in Burma

Theravada Buddhism was practiced in pockets of southern Burma since about the 6th century CE. However, when King Anawrahta ascended the throne in 1044, Shin Arahan, a charismatic Mon monk from Southern Burma, convinced the new monarch to establish a more strictly Theravadin expression of Buddhism for the entire kingdom. From that time on, Theravada would remain the tradition of the majority of the Burmese people.

c. 1050 CE Development of Jogye Buddhism in Korea

The Ch’an school, which first arrived in Korea from China in the 8th century CE, eventually established nine branches, known as the Nine Mountains. In the 11th century, these branches were organized into one system under the name of Jogye. Although all Buddhist teachings were retained, the kong-an (koan) practice of Lin-chi Yixuan gained highest stature as the most direct path to enlightenment.

1100s CE Pure Land Buddhism Established in Japan

Following a reading of a Chinese Pure Land text, the Japanese monk Honen Shonin (1133-1212 CE) became convinced that the only effective mode of practice was nembutsu: chanting the name of Amitabha Buddha. This soon became a dominant form of Buddhist practice in Japan.

1100s CE Rinzai School of Zen Buddhism Established in Japan

In the 12th century CE, a Japanese monk named Eisai returned from China, bringing with him both green tea and the Rinzai school of Zen Buddhism. In the form of meditation practiced by this school, the student’s only guidance is to come from the subtle hint of a raised eyebrow, the sudden jolt of an unexpected slap, or the teacher’s direct questioning on the meaning of a koan.

1203 CE Destruction of Buddhist Centers in India

By the close of the first millennium CE, Buddhism had passed its zenith in India. Traditionally, the end of Indian Buddhism is identified with the advent of Muslim Rule in Northern India. The Turk Muhammad Ghuri razed the last two great Buddhist universities, Nalanda and Vikramasila, in 1197 and 1203 respectively. However, recent histories have suggested that the destruction of these monasteries was militarily, rather than religiously, motivated.

1200s CE True Pure Land Buddhism Established

Honen’s disciple Shinran Shonin (1173-1262 CE) began the devotional “True Pure Land” movement in the 13th century CE. Considering the lay/monk distinction invalid, Shinran married and had several children, thereby initiating the practice of married Jodo Shinshu clergy and establishing a familial lineage of leadership — traits which continue to distinguish the school to this day.

1200s CE Dōgen Founds Soto Zen in Japan

Dōgen (1200-1253 CE), an influential Japanese priest and philosopher, spent most of his two years in China studying T’ien-t’ai Buddhism. Disappointed by the intellectualism of the school, he was about to return to Japan when the Ts’ao-tung monk Ju-ching (Rujing) explained that the practice of Zen simply meant “dropping off both body and mind.” Dōgen, immediately enlightened, returned to Japan, establishing Soto (the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese graphs for Ts’ao-tung) as one of the pre-eminent schools.

1253 CE Nichiren Buddhism Established in Japan

As the sun began to rise on May 17, 1253 CE, Nichiren Daishonin climbed to the crest of a hill, where he cried out “Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,” “Adoration to the Sutra of the Lotus of the Perfect Truth.” Nichiren considered the recitation of this mantra to be the core of the true teachings of the Buddha. He believed that it would eventually spread throughout the world, a conviction sustained by contemporary sects of the Nichiren school, especially the Soka Gakkai.

1279-1360 CE Theravada Buddhism Established in Southeast Asia

With Kublai Khan’s conquest of China in the thirteenth century CE, ever greater numbers of Tai migrated from southwestern China into present day Thailand and Burma. There, they established political domination over the indigenous Mon and Khmer peoples, while appropriating elements of these cultures, including their Buddhist faith. By the time that King Rama Khamhaeng had ascended the throne in Sukhothai (central Thailand) in 1279, a monk had been sent to Sri Lanka to receive Theravadin texts. During the reigns of Rama Khamhaeng’s son and grandson, Sinhala Buddhism spread northward to the Tai Kingdom of Chiangmai. Within a century, the royal houses of Cambodia and Laos also became Theravadin.

1391-1474 CE The First Dalai Lama

Gedun Drupa (1391-1474 CE), a Tibetan monk of great esteem during his lifetime, was considered after his death to have been the first Dalai Lama. He founded the major monastery of Tashi Lhunpo at Shigatse, which would become the traditional seat of Panchen Lamas (second only to the Dalai Lama).

1881 CE Founding of Pali Text Society

Ever since its founding by the British scholar T.W. Rhys Davids in 1881 CE, the Pali Text Society has been the primary publisher of Theravada texts and translations into Western languages.

1891 CE Anagarika Dharmapala Founds Mahabodhi Society

Sri Lankan writer Anagarika Dharmapala played an important role in restoring Bodh-Gaya, the site of the Buddha’s enlightenment, which had badly deteriorated after centuries of neglect. In order to raise funds for this project, Dharmapala founded the Mahabodhi Society, first in Ceylon and later in India, the United States, and Britain. He also edited the society’s periodical, The Mahabodhi Journal.

1930 CE Soka Gakkai Established in Japan

Soka Gakkai is a Japanese Buddhist movement that was begun in 1930 CE by an educator named Tsunesaburo Makiguchi. Soon after its founding, it became associated with Nichiren Shoshu, a sect of Nichiren Buddhism. Today the organization has over twelve million members around the world.

1938 CE Rissho Kosei-Kai Established in Japan

The Rissho Kosei-Kai movement was founded by the Rev. Nikkyo Niwano in 1938 CE, and is based on the teachings set forth in the Lotus Sutra and works for individual and world peace. Rev. Niwano was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion in 1979 and honored by the Vatican in 1992. The Rissho Kosei-Kai has since been active in interfaith activities throughout the world.

1949 CE Buddhist Sangha Flees Mainland China

With the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, Buddhist monks and nuns fled to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore. Many of these monks and nuns subsequently immigrated to Australia, Europe and the United States.

1950 CE World Fellowship of Buddhists Inaugurated in Sri Lanka

The World Fellowship of Buddhists was established in 1950 CE in Sri Lanka to bring Buddhists together in promoting common goals. Since 1969, its permanent headquarters have been in Thailand, with regional offices in 34 different countries.

1956 CE Buddhist Conversions in India

On October 14, 1956 CE, Bhim Rao Ambedkar (1891-1956), India’s leader of Hindu untouchables, publicly converted to Buddhism as part of a political protest. As many as half a million of his followers also took the three refuges and five precepts on that day. In the following years, over four million Indians, chiefly from the castes of untouchables, declared themselves Buddhists.

1959 CE Dalai Lama Flees to India

With the Chinese occupation of Tibet, the Dalai Lama, the Karmapa, and other Vajrayana Buddhist leaders fled to India. A Tibetan government in exile was established in Dharamsala, India.

1966 CE Thich Nhat Hanh Visits the U.S. and Western Europe

Thich Nhat Hanh is a Vietnamese monk, teacher, and peace activist. While touring the U.S. in 1966, Nhat Hanh was outspoken against the American-supported Saigon government. As a result of his criticism, Nhat Hanh faced certain imprisonment upon his return to Vietnam. He therefore decided to take asylum in France, where he founded Plum Village, today an important center for meditation and action.

1975 CE Devastation of Buddhism in Cambodia

Pol Pot’s Marxist regime came to power in Cambodia in 1975 CE. Over the four years of his governance, most of Cambodia’s 3,600 Buddhist temples were destroyed. The Sangha was left with an estimated 3,000 of its 50,000 monks. The rest did not survive the persecution.

1989 CE Founding of the International Network of Engaged Buddhists (INEB)

The International Network of Engaged Buddhists (INEB) began in Thailand in 1989 as a conference of 36 monks and lay persons from 11 countries. Today, it has expanded to 160 members and affiliates from 26 countries. As its name suggests, INEB endeavors to facilitate Buddhist participation in social action in order to create a just and peaceful world.

1989 CE Dalai Lama Receives Nobel Peace Prize

Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for his tireless work spreading a message of non-violence. He has said on many occasions about Buddhism, “My religion is very simple – my religion is kindness.”

2010 CE Western Buddhist Teachers call for U.S. Commission of Inquiry to Burma

In 2010, prominent Buddhist teachers in the U.S. signed a letter to President Barack Obama urging him to repudiate the results of the upcoming Burmese election, in light of crimes against ethnic groups committed by the Burmese military regime.

With over 520 million followers, Buddhism is currently the world’s fourth-largest religious tradition. Though Theravada and Mahayana are its two major branches, contemporary Buddhism comprises a wide diversity of practices, beliefs, and traditions — both throughout East and Southeast Asia and worldwide.

Buddhism in America (text)

1853 ce the first chinese temple in “gold mountain”.

Attracted by the 1850s Gold Rush, many Chinese workers and miners came to California, which they called “Gold Mountain” — and brought their Buddhist and Taoist traditions with them. In 1853, they built the first Buddhist temple in San Francisco’s Chinatown. By 1875, Chinatown was home to eight temples, and by the end of the century, there were hundreds of Chinese temples and shrines along the West Coast.

1878 CE Kuan-yin in Hawaii

In 1878, the monk Leong Dick Ying brought to Honolulu gold-leaf images of the Taoist sage Kuan Kung and the bodhisattva of compassion Kuan-yin. He thus established the Kuan-yin Temple, which is the oldest Chinese organization in Hawaii. The Temple has been located on Vineland Avenue in Honolulu since 1921.

1879 CE The Light of Asia Comes West

Sir Edwin Arnold’s The Light of Asia, a biography of the Buddha in verse, was published in 1879. This immensely popular book, which went through eighty editions and sold over half a million copies, gave many Americans their first introduction to the Buddha.

1882 CE The Chinese Exclusion Act

Two decades of growing anti-Chinese sentiment in the U.S. led to the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. The act barred new Chinese immigration for ten years, including that by women trying to join their husbands who were already in the U.S., and prohibited the naturalization of Chinese people.

1893 CE Buddhists at the Parliament of the World’s Religions

The 1893 Parliament of the World’s Religions, held in Chicago in conjunction with the World Columbian Exposition, included representatives of many strands of the Buddhist tradition: Anagarika Dharmapala (Sri Lankan Maha Bodhi Society), Shaku Soyen (Japanese Rinzai Zen), Toki Horyu (Shingon), Ashitsu Jitsunen (Tendai), Yatsubuchi Banryu (Jodo Shin), and Hirai Kinzo (a Japanese lay Buddhist). Days after the Parliament, in a ceremony conducted by Anagarika Dharmapala, Charles T. Strauss of New York City became the first person to be ordained into the Buddhist Sangha on American soil.

1894 CE The Gospel of Buddha

The Gospel of Buddha was an influential book published by Paul Carus in 1894. The book brought a selection of Buddhist texts together in readable fashion for a popular audience. By 1910, The Gospel of Buddha had been through 13 editions.

1899 CE Jodo Shinshu Buddhism and the Buddhist Churches of America

The Young Men’s Buddhist Association (Bukkyo Seinenkai), the first Japanese Buddhist organization on the U.S. mainland, was founded in 1899 under the guidance of Jodo Shinshu missionaries Rev. Dr. Shuya Sonoda and Rev. Kakuryo Nishijima. The following years saw temples established in Sacramento (1899), Fresno (1900), Seattle (1901), Oakland (1901), San Jose (1902), Portland (1903), and Stockton (1906). This organization, initially called the Jodo Shinshu Buddhist Mission of North America, went on to become the Buddhist Churches of America (incorporated in 1944). Today, it is the largest Buddhist organization serving Japanese-Americans, entailing some 60 temples and a membership of about 19,000.

1900 CE First Non-Asian Buddhist Association

In 1900, a group of Euro-Americans attracted to the Buddhist teachings of the Jodo Shinshu organized the Dharma Sangha of the Buddha in San Francisco.

1915 CE World Buddhist Conference

Buddhists from throughout the world gathered in San Francisco in August 1915 at a meeting convened by the Jodo Shinshu Buddhist Mission of North America. Resolutions from the conference were taken to President Woodrow Wilson.

1931 CE Sokei-an and Zen in New York

The Buddhist Society of America was incorporated in New York in 1931 under the guidance of Rinzai Zen teacher Sokei-an. Sokei-an first came to the U.S. in 1906 to study with Shokatsu Shaku in California, though he completed his training in Japan where he was ordained in 1931. Sokei-an died of poor health in 1945, after having spent two years in a Japanese internment camp. The center he established in New York City would evolve into the First Zen Institute of America.

1935 CE Relics of the Buddha to San Francisco

In 1935, a portion of the Buddha’s relics was presented to Bishop Masuyama of the Jodo Shinshu Buddhist Mission of North America, based in San Francisco. This led to the construction of a new Buddhist Church of San Francisco, with a stupa on its roof for the holy relics, located on Pine Street and completed in 1938.

1942 CE Internment of Japanese Americans

Two months after Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 which eventually removed 120,000 Japanese Americans, both citizens and noncitizens, to internment camps where they remained until the end of World War II. Buddhist priests and other community leaders were among the first to be targeted and evacuated. Zen teachers Sokei-an and Nyogen Senzaki were both interned. Buddhist organizations continued to serve the internees in the camps.

1949 CE Buddhist Studies Center in Berkeley

The Buddhist Studies Center was first established in 1949 in Berkeley, California, under the auspices of the Buddhist Churches of America. In 1966, the center changed its name to the Institute of Buddhist Studies and became the first seminary for Buddhist ministry and research. The Institute affiliated with the Graduate Theological Union in 1985, and today is active in training clergy for the Buddhist Churches of America.

1955 CE Beat Zen and Zen Literature

The Beat Movement was started by American authors who explored American pop culture and politics in the post-war era, with strong themes from Eastern spirituality. The first public reading of the poem “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg in 1955 at the Six Gallery in San Francisco is said to have signalled the beginning of the Beat Zen movement. The late 1950s also saw a Zen literary boom in the U.S. Several popular books on Buddhism were published, including Alan Watt’s bestseller The Way of Zen and Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums.

1960 CE Soka Gakkai in the U.S.

Daisaku Ikeda, President of Soka Gakkai, visited the United States in 1960, largely introducing Soka Gakkai to Americans. By 1992, Soka Gakkai International–USA estimated that it had 150,000 American members.

1965 CE Immigration and Nationality Act

The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act ended the quota system which had virtually halted immigration from Asia to the United States for over forty years. Following 1965, growing numbers of Asian immigrants from South, Southeast, and East Asia settled in America; many brought Buddhist traditions with them.

1966 CE The Vietnam Conflict and Thich Nhat Hanh in America

The Vietnam conflict incited a surge of Buddhist activism in Saigon, which included some monks immolating themselves as an act of protest. In response, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Cabot Lodge met with Vietnamese and Japanese Buddhist leaders, and the State Department established an Office of Buddhist Affairs headed by Claremont College Professor Richard Gard. In 1966, Vietnamese monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh came to the United States to speak about the conflict. His visit, coupled with the English publication of his book, Lotus in a Sea of Fire, so impressed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that King nominated Nhat Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize.

1966 CE First Buddhist Monastery in Washington D.C.

The Washington Buddhist Vihara was the first Sri Lankan Buddhist temple in America. It was established in Washington, D.C. in 1966 as a missionary center with the support of the Sri Lankan government. The Ven. Bope Vinita Thera brought an image and a relic of the Buddha to the nation’s capital in 1965. The following year, the Vihara was incorporated, and in 1968, it moved to its present location on 16th Street, NW.

1969 CE Tibetan Center in Berkeley

Tarthang Tulku, a Tibetan monk educated at Banaras Hindu University in India, came to Berkeley and in 1969 established the Nyingma Meditation Center, the first Tibetan Buddhist center in the U.S.

1970 CE Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche to America

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche was an Oxford-educated Tibetan teacher who brought the Karma Kagyu Tibetan Buddhist lineage to the U.S. in 1970. In 1971, he established Karma Dzong in Boulder, Colorado, and in 1973, he founded Vajradhatu, an organization consolidating many Dharmadhatu centers. Cutting through Spiritual Materialism, his classic introduction to Trungpa’s form of Tibetan Buddhism, was published in 1973.

1970 CE International Buddhist Meditation Center

The International Buddhist Meditation Center was established by Ven. Dr. Thich Thien-An, a Vietnamese Zen Master, in Los Angeles in 1970. The College of Buddhist Studies is also located on the grounds of the Center, which is currently under the direction of Thien-An’s student, Ven. Karuna Dharma.

1972 CE Korean Zen Master comes to Rhode Island

Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn came to the United States in 1972 with little money and little knowledge of English. He rented an apartment in Providence and worked as a washing machine repairman. A note on his door said simply, “What am I?” and announced meditation classes. Thus began the Providence Zen Center, followed soon by Korean Zen Centers in Cambridge, New Haven, New York, and Berkeley, all part of the Kwan Um School of Zen.

1974 CE Buddhist Chaplain in California

In 1974, the California State Senate appointed Rev. Shoko Masunaga as its first Buddhist and first Asian-American chaplain.

1974 CE First Buddhist Liberal Arts College

Naropa Institute was founded in Boulder, Colorado in 1974 as a Buddhist-inspired but non-sectarian liberal arts college. It aimed to combine contemplative studies with traditional Western scholastic and artistic disciplines. The accredited college now offers courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels in Buddhist studies, contemplative psychotherapy, environmental studies, poetics, and dance.

1974 CE Redress for Internment of Japanese Americans

In 1974, Rep. Phillip Burton of California addressed the U.S. House of Representatives on the topic “Seventy-five Years of American Buddhism” as part of an ongoing debate surrounding redress for Japanese Americans interned during World War II.

1975 CE The Fall of Saigon and the Arrival of Refugees

About 130,000 Vietnamese refugees, many of them Buddhists, came to the U.S. in 1975 after the fall of Saigon. By 1985 there were 643,200 Vietnamese in the U.S. Dr. Thich Thien-an, a Vietnamese monk and scholar already in Los Angeles, began the first Vietnamese Buddhist temple in America – the Chua Vietnam – in 1976. The temple is still thriving on Berendo Street, not far from central Los Angeles. With the end of the war, some 70,000 Laotian, 60,000 Hmong, and 10,000 Mien people also arrived in the U.S. as refugees bringing their religious traditions, including Buddhism, with them.

1976 CE Council of Thai Bhikkhus

The Council of Thai Bhikkhus, a nonprofit corporation founded in 1976 and based in Denver, Colorado, became the leading nationwide network for Thai Buddhism.

1976 CE City of 10,000 Buddhas

The City of 10,000 Buddhas was established in 1976 in Talmage, California by the Dharma Realm Buddhist Association as the first Chinese Buddhist monastery for both monks and nuns. The City of 10,000 Buddhas consists of sixty buildings, including elementary and secondary schools and a university, on a 237-acre site.

1976 CE First Rinzai Zen Monastery

On July 4 1976, Dai Bosatsu Zendo Kongo-ji, America’s first Rinzai Zen monastery, was established in Lew Beach, New York, under the direction of Eido Tai Shimano-roshi.

1979-1989 CE Cambodian Refugees Come to the U.S.

The regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge ended in 1979 with the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia. Over the following ten years, 180,000 Cambodian refugees were relocated from Thailand to the United States. In 1979, the Cambodian Buddhist Society was established in Silver Spring, Maryland, as the first Cambodian Buddhist temple in America. Later in 1987, the nearly 40,000 Cambodian residents of Long Beach, California, purchased the former headquarters of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union and converted the huge building into a temple complex.

1980 CE First Burmese Temple

Dhammodaya Monastery, the first Burmese Buddhist temple in America, was established in Los Angeles in 1980.

1980 CE Buddhist Sangha Council

The Buddhist Sangha Council of Los Angeles (later of Southern California) was established under the leadership of the Ven. Havanpola Ratanasara in 1980. It was one of the first cross-cultural, inter-Buddhist organizations, bringing together monks and other leaders from a wide range of Buddhist traditions.

1986 CE Buddhist Astronaut on Challenger

Lt. Col. Ellison Onizuka, a Hawaiian-born Jodo Shinshu Buddhist, was killed 73 seconds after takeoff in the space shuttle Challenger in 1986. He was the first Asian-American to reach space.

1987 CE American Buddhists Get Organized

For ten days in July of 1987, Buddhists from all the Buddhist lineages in North America came together in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for a Conference on World Buddhism in North America — intended to promote dialogue, mutual understanding, and cooperation. In the same year, the Buddhist Council of the Midwest gathered twelve Chicago-area lineages of Buddhism; in Los Angeles, the American Buddhist Congress was created, with 47 Buddhist organizations attending its inaugural convention. Also in 1987, the Sri Lanka Sangha Council of North America was established in Los Angeles to serve as the national network for Sri Lankan Buddhism.

1987 CE Buddhist Books Gain Wider Audience

In 1987, Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield published what became a classic book on vipassana meditation – Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation. Thich Nhat Hanh, who was residing at Plum Village in France and visiting the United States annually, also published Being Peace, a classic treatment of “engaged Buddhism” – Buddhism that is concerned with social and ecological issues.

1990s CE Popular Buddhism

Throughout the 1990s, immigrant and American-born Buddhist communities were growing and building across the United States. In the midst of this flourishing, there emerged a popular “Hollywood Buddhism” or a Buddhism of celebrities which persists today. Espoused by figures from Tina Turner to the Beastie Boys to bell hooks, Buddhism became a larger part of mass culture during the 90s.

1991 CE Tricycle: the Buddhist Review

The first issue of Tricycle: the Buddhist Review, a non-sectarian national Buddhist magazine, was published in 1991. The journal features articles by prominent Buddhist teachers and writers as well as pieces on Buddhism and American culture at large.

1991 CE Tibetan Resettlement in the United States

The National Office of the Tibetan Resettlement Project was established in New York in 1991 after the U.S. Congress granted 1,000 special visas for Tibetans, all of them Buddhists. Two years later, the Tibetan Community Assistance Program opened to assist Tibetans resettling in New York. Cluster groups of Tibetan refugees have since established their own small temples and have begun to encounter Euro-American practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism.

1991 CE Dalai Lama in Madison Square Garden

For more than a week in October in 1991, the Dalai Lama gave the “Path of Compassion” teachings and conferred the Kalachakra Initiation in Madison Square Garden in New York City.

1993 CE Centennial of the World’s Parliament of Religions

There were many prominent Buddhist speakers at the 1993 Centennial of the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago, among them Thich Nhat Hanh, Master Seung Sahn, the Ven. Mahaghosananda, and the Ven. Dr. Havanpola Ratanasara. The Dalai Lama gave the closing address. There were myriad Buddhist co-sponsors of the event, including the American Buddhist Congress, Buddhist Churches of America, Buddhist Council of the Midwest, World Fellowship of Buddhists, and Wat Thai of Washington, D.C.

2006 CE American Monk Named First U.S. Representative to World Buddhist Supreme Conference

In 2006, Venerable Bhante Vimalaramsi (Sayadaw Gyi U Vimalaramsi Maha Thera) was nominated and confirmed as the first representative from the United States for the World Buddhist Supreme Conference, which is held every two years and includes representatives from fifty countries.

2007 CE First Buddhist Congresswoman Sworn In

Rep. Mazie Hirono, a Democrat from Hawaii, in 2007 became the first Buddhist to be sworn into the United States Congress.

Today, Buddhism thrives in America, with American Buddhists comprising myriad backgrounds, identities, and religious traditions and often integrating Buddhism with other forms of spiritual practice. It is estimated that there are roughly 3.5 million Buddhist practitioners in the United States at present. Many live in Hawaii or Southern California, but there are surely followers of Buddhism around the nation.

Selected Publications & Links

Takaki, Ronald . A Different Mirror . Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 1993.

Sidor, Ellen S . A Gathering of Spirit: Women Teaching in American Buddhism . Cumberland: Primary Point Press, 1987.

Tweed, Thomas A., and Stephen Prothero (eds.) . Asian Religions in America: A Documentary History . New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Access to Insight

America burma buddhist association, american buddhist congress, buddha’s light international association, buddhist churches of america, explore buddhism in greater boston.

Buddhism arrived in Boston in the 19th century with the first Chinese immigrants to the city and a growing intellectual interest in Buddhist arts and practice. Boston’s first Buddhist center was the Cambridge Buddhist Association (1957). The post-1965 immigration brought new immigrants into the city—from Cambodia and Vietnam, as well as Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Korea. These groups brought with them a variety of Buddhist traditions, now practiced at over 90 area Buddhist centers and temples. Representing nearly every ethnicity, age, and social strata, the Buddhist community of Greater Boston is a vibrant presence in the city.

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2 Buddhism and Science

B. Alan Wallace is founder and president of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies.

• Published: 02 September 2009
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While Buddhism is often referred to as a ‘non-theistic religion’, it has the potential to play a unique mediating role between theistic religions, with their emphasis on faith and divine revelation, and the natural sciences, with their ideals of empiricism, rationality, and scepticism. The main body of this article focuses on Buddhist approaches to cultivating eudaimonic well-being, probing the nature of consciousness, and understanding reality at large. In each case, religious, scientific, and philosophical elements are blended in ways that may not only lend themselves to dialogue with Western science, but push forward the frontiers of scientific research as well as interdisciplinary and cross-cultural inquiry. The article also argues that Buddhism has developed a science of consciousness, with a few exceptions regarding sciences with no controlled experiments.

Introduction

When reading an essay on Buddhism and science, it is natural to assume that Buddhism is a religion, together with Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, because our Western concept of religion has been modelled primarily on the basis of the three Abrahamic traditions. In the West we have developed separately the constructs of science and philosophy , as initially inspired by Greek and Roman modes of inquiry. Since Buddhism is one among many traditions of inquiry that arose outside the Mediterranean basin, there is no reason to expect it to fit neatly into any of the categories of religion, science, and philosophy that have been forged in the West. To understand what Buddhism brings to the dialogue between religion and science, it should be met on its own terms, without insisting that it conform to Western conceptual categories. Buddhism is both more and less than the sum of these three Western traditions of inquiry.

While Buddhism is often referred to as a ‘non‐theistic religion’, a problematic characterization in many ways, it does have the potential to play a unique mediating role between theistic religions, with their emphasis on faith and divine revelation, and the natural sciences, with their ideals of empiricism, rationality, and scepticism. It may serve as a catalyst for reintroducing the spirit of empiricism in religion with respect to the natural world and in science with respect to spiritual realities and subjective experience in general. This might even lead to a science of religions that would earn the respect and trust of religious believers, scientists, and the public at large.

Religion is often regarded as addressing questions concerning the meaning and purpose of life, our ultimate origins and destiny, and the experiences of our inner life. Moreover, we commonly deem a system of belief and practice to be religious if it is concerned primarily with universal and elemental features of existence as they bear on the human desire for liberation and authentic existence ( Harvey 1981 : ch. 8 ; Gilkey 1985: 108–16 ; Gould 1999: 93 ). Stated in such broad terms, Buddhism can certainly be classified as a religion.

Science may be defined as an organized, systematic enterprise that gathers knowledge about the world and condenses that knowledge into testable laws and principles. In short, it addresses questions of what the universe is composed of and how it works ( Wilson 1998: 58 ; Gould 1999: 93 ). Buddhism is an organized, systematic enterprise aimed at understanding reality, and it presents a wide range of testable laws and principles, such as the propositions set forth in the Four Noble Truths ( Dalai Lama 1997 ). Although Buddhism has not developed historically along the lines of Western science, it is a time‐tested discipline of rational and empirical inquiry that could further evolve in ways more closely resembling science as we have currently come to understand it.

Furthermore, philosophy, as it is defined primarily within the context of Western civilization, consists of theories and modes of logical analysis of the principles underlying conduct, thought, knowledge, and the nature of the universe, and it includes such branches as ethics, aesthetics, logic, epistemology, and metaphysics. While there is a general consensus that scientific theories must be testable, at least in principle, by empirical observation or experiment, no such stipulation is made for philosophical theories. They may be evaluated on the basis of reason alone. Buddhism has from its origins included theories and modes of logical analysis of the principles underlying conduct, thought, knowledge, and the nature of the universe. So in this regard, Buddhism may be viewed as a philosophy, or—given the great range of theories within the Buddhist tradition—as a diverse array of philosophies.

While theistic religions are centrally concerned with transcendental realities, such as God, Buddhism is naturalistic in the sense that it is centrally concerned with the causality within the world of experience (Sanskrit: loka ). Its fundamental framework is the Four Noble Truths, pertaining to the reality of suffering, its necessary and sufficient causes, the possibility of freedom from suffering and its causes, and the practical means for achieving such freedom. This basic structure of the Buddhist enterprise is pragmatic, rather than supernatural or metaphysical, so it bears only some of the family resemblances of Western religions.

While science has overwhelmingly focused on understanding the objective, quantifiable, physical universe in order to gain power over the natural world (Bacon 2004), Buddhism is primarily focused on understanding subjective, qualitative states of consciousness as a means to liberate the mind from its afflictive tendencies ( klesha ) and obscurations ( avarana ). Given the scientific focus on the outer world, the Western scientific study of the mind did not begin until more than 300 years after the time of Copernicus, whereas the rigorous, experiential examination of the mind has been central to Buddhism from the start. Buddhist theories are not confined to the Buddha's inquiries alone, but have been rationally analysed and experientially tested by generations of Buddhist scholars and contemplatives over the past 2,500 years ( Wallace 2000: 103–18 ). Buddhist insights into the nature of the mind and related phenomena are presented as genuine discoveries in the sense that any competent practitioner with sufficient training can replicate them (though different kinds of training pursued within different conceptual contexts do lead to different, and sometimes conflicting, insights). They could thus be said to be empirical in the sense that they are based on immediate experience, but that experience consists primarily of first‐person, introspective observations, not the third‐person externalist observations more commonly associated with science.

In addition, many Buddhist writings are clearly philosophical in nature and can be cross‐culturally evaluated as such ( Bronkhorst 1999 ; Tillemans 1999 ). However, empirical or intellectual inquiry motivated simply by curiosity or knowledge for its own sake has never been a widespread Buddhist ideal. Unlike both Western science and philosophy, the Buddhist pursuit of knowledge occurs within the framework of ethics ( shila ), focused attention ( samadhi ), and wisdom ( prajña ). These comprise the essence of the Four Noble Truths, the path to liberation.

The main body of this chapter focuses on Buddhist approaches to cultivating eudaimonic well‐being, probing the nature of consciousness, and understanding reality at large. In each case, religious, scientific, and philosophical elements are blended in ways that may not only lend themselves to dialogue with Western science, but push forward the frontiers of scientific research as well as interdisciplinary and cross‐cultural inquiry.

The Buddhist Pursuit of Eudaimonic Well‐being

Buddhist tradition identifies itself not in terms of the Western constructs of religion, science, and philosophy, but with the Indian notion of dharma . While this word takes on a wide variety of meanings within different contexts, ‘Buddhadharma’ refers to the Buddhist world‐view and way of life that lead to the elimination of suffering and the realization of a lasting state of well‐being. Such ‘sublime dharma’ ( saddharma ) is presented in contrast to mundane dharmas ( lokadharma ), which include the classic set of ‘eight mundane concerns’: namely, material gain and loss, stimulus‐driven pleasure and pain, praise and ridicule, and fame and ill repute ( Wallace 1993 : ch. 1 ).

These two types of dharma correspond closely to two approaches to well‐being studied in psychology today: hedonic and eudaimonic ( Ryan and Deci 2001 ). The hedonic approach, corresponding to mundane dharma, is defined in terms of the pursuit of mental and physical pleasure and the avoidance of pain, whereas the eudaimonic approach, corresponding to sublime dharma, focuses on striving for the perfection that represents the realization of one's true potential ( Ryff 1995: 100 ; Kahneman, Diener, and Schwarz 1999 ). Hedonic well‐being includes pleasurable emotions and moods aroused by agreeable stimuli. I would argue that the evolutionary process of natural selection facilitates such happiness in the course of modifying living organisms so that they can survive and procreate. Eudaimonic well‐being, on the other hand, appears to arise not as a result of natural selection, but primarily from practices of the kind Buddhists call sublime dharma .

A Buddhist Model of Suffering

The sublime dharmas taught in Buddhism as a whole have as their principal aim the decrease and eventual complete liberation from suffering ( duhkha ), of which three levels are commonly identified: explicit suffering, the suffering of change, and ubiquitous suffering of conditionality ( Tsong‐kha‐pa 2000: 289–92 ). Explicit suffering refers to all physical and mental feelings of pain and distress. The suffering of change refers not to unpleasant feelings, but to pleasurable feelings and mental states aroused by pleasant stimuli, as well as the stimuli themselves. It is so called because when the stimulus is removed, the resultant happiness fades, revealing the underlying dissatisfaction that was only temporarily veiled by the pleasant stimulus. The ubiquitous suffering of conditionality refers to the state of existence in which one is constantly vulnerable to all kinds of suffering due to the mind's afflictive tendencies. These include the ‘three mental toxins’ of craving, hostility, and delusion, which are fundamental sources of dissatisfaction. In short, the ground state of such an afflicted mind is suffering, even when one is experiencing hedonic well‐being, and this is overcome only through the pursuit of eudaimonic well‐being, in which all forms of suffering are ultimately severed from their root.

A Buddhist Model of Happiness

As a remedy to the above three‐tiered model of suffering, Buddhists aim toward a similarly three‐tiered model of happiness ( sukha ). The most superficial level of sukha consists of all forms of explicit pleasure that arise from pleasant chemical, sensory, intellectual, aesthetic, and interpersonal stimuli. Some of these are ethically neutral, such as the pleasure of eating sweets; some are ethically positive, such as the joy of performing an act of altruistic service, or taking delight in one's children's success; and some are ethically malignant, such as taking satisfaction in another's misery. A second level of sukha consists of traits of eudaimonic well‐being that arise from an ethical way of life and from exceptional states of mental health and balance. The highest level of sukha consists of the eudaimonic well‐being resulting from freedom from all mental afflictions and obscurations and the complete realization of one's potentials for virtue. One who experiences such total freedom and realization is known as a buddha , literally ‘one who is awake’.

Hedonic psychology is concerned with the avoidance of explicit suffering and the accomplishment of explicit happiness, and it measures the success of that approach in terms of the amount of happiness and suffering one experiences from day to day. The Buddhist pursuit of eudaimonic well‐being, on the other hand, is primarily concerned with gaining freedom from the second and third levels of duhkha and realizing the second two levels of sukha . However, there is an asymmetry in the causal relation between hedonic and eudaimonic well‐being. While the hedonic pursuit of stimulus‐driven pleasures may or may not contribute to eudaimonic well‐being and may actually interfere with it, the eudaimonic approach enables one to derive increasing pleasure from life in the midst of both adversity and felicity. The hedonic approach focuses on the short‐term causes of stimulus‐driven happiness, whereas the eudaimonic approach focuses on the long‐term causes of well‐being that arise from mental balance.

While hedonic well‐being is contingent upon outer and inner pleasant stimuli, and is often pursued with no regard for ethics, the Buddhist eudaimonic approach begins with ethics, then focuses on the cultivation of mental balance, and finally centres on the cultivation of wisdom, particularly that stemming from insight into one's own nature. In this regard, eudaimonic well‐being may be characterized as having three levels: social and environmental well‐being stemming from ethical behaviour in relation to other living beings and the environment, psychological well‐being stemming from mental balance, and spiritual well‐being stemming from wisdom. These three elements—ethics, mental balance derived from the cultivation of focused attention, and wisdom—are the three ‘higher trainings’ that comprise the essence of the Buddhist path to awakening.

The essence of the first training in ethics consists of the avoidance of injurious behaviour and the cultivation of behaviour that is conducive to one's own and others' well‐being. While the topic of ethics in Western civilization is commonly a matter of religious belief or philosophical analysis, and has not been a focus of psychology, in the Buddhist tradition as a whole it is a practical, experiential matter that is at the very core of well‐being. All of us are called upon to examine our own physical, verbal, and mental behaviour, noting both short‐term as well as long‐term consequences of our actions. Although some activity may yield immediate pleasure, if over time it results in unrest, conflict, and misery, it is deemed unwholesome ( akushala ). On the other hand, even if a choice of behaviour involves difficulties in the short term, it is regarded as wholesome ( kushala ) if it leads eventually to contentment, harmony, and eudaimonic well‐being for oneself and others. This raises the possibility of ecological, sociological, and psychological research into the role of ethics, not in terms of religious doctrines or societal contracts, but with respect to the types of behaviours that impede and nurture our own and others' genuine well‐being.

In Buddhist tradition, ethics is taught before introducing the second kind of training—meditative practices designed to reduce mental afflictions and enhance mental balance—for it has been found that without this foundation, such practices will be of little or no value. Indeed, they may aggravate pre‐existing neuroses and other mental imbalances. Likewise, we can reflect upon the limited benefits of teaching people sophisticated therapeutic techniques to reduce depression, anxiety, or rage without exploring the effects of how they are leading their lives.

Mental Balance

While many environmental problems and social conflicts stem from unethical behaviour, according to Buddhism most mental suffering is due to imbalances of the mind to which virtually all of us are prone. A person whose mind is severely imbalanced is highly vulnerable to all forms of duhkha , including anxiety, frustration, boredom, restlessness, and depression. These are some of the symptoms of an unhealthy mind, and Buddhists claim that the underlying problems can be remedied through skilful, sustained mental training ( Gethin 2001 ). On the other hand, just as a healthy, uninjured body is relatively free of pain, so a healthy, balanced mind is relatively free of psychological distress.

This is the point of the second phase of Buddhist practice, a key element of which is the cultivation of focused attention ( samadhi ). The training in samadhi , however, refers to much more than the development of attentional skills. More broadly, it includes (1) conative balance , or the cultivation of desires and intentions conducive to eudaimonic well‐being ( Tsong‐kha‐pa 2000 ); (2) attentional balance , including the development of exceptional attentional stability and vividness ( Gunaratana 1991 ; Lamrimpa 1995 ; Wallace 2005 a ); (3) cognitive balance , including the application of mindfulness to one's own and others' bodies, minds, and the environment at large ( Nyanaponika Thera 1973 ; Gunaratana 1991 ); and (4) affective balance , in which one's emotional responses are appropriately measured and conducive to one's own and others' well‐being ( Goleman 1997 , 2002 ; Davidson et al. 2005 ; Nauriyal 2005; Wallace 2005 b ).

A basic hypothesis of Buddhism is that to the extent that the mind loses its balance of any of the above four kinds, its ground state, prior to any chemical, sensory, or conceptual stimulation, is one of duhkha , or dis‐ease. In response to such dissatisfaction, there are two major options: (1) to follow the hedonic approach of smothering the unpleasant symptoms of these fundamental imbalances; (2) to adopt the eudaimonic approach of getting to the root of these symptoms by cultivating mental balance. Modern society has provided us with a plethora of means to stifle unhappiness, from mood‐altering drugs to sensory bombardment, to extreme sports. The more the mind is in a state of imbalance, the more intense the stimuli it requires to smother its internal unrest.

According to Buddhism, no pleasurable stimuli are true sources of happiness in the sensethatanartesianwellisasourceofwaterand the sunisasourceofheat.Ifthey were, we should experience happiness whenever we encounter pleasurable stimuli, and the degree of our happiness should be directly correlated to the intensity and duration of our contact with those stimuli. While sensory experiences, attitudes, other people, and situations seemto‘makeus happy’, infact the most theycandois contribute to our well‐being; they cannot literally deliver happiness to us. The only way, according to the Buddhist hypothesis, to achieve eudaimonic well‐being is to balance the mind, and to the extent that this occurs, one discovers a sense of well‐being from within, which lingers whether one is alone or with others, active or still.

We turn now to the third element of Buddhist practice, the cultivation of wisdom, particularly through the investigation of consciousness.

Buddhist Science of Consciousness

In his classic work Science and Civilization in China (1956) Joseph Needham explored the historical reasons why the civilizations of China and India never developed science as we understand it in the modern West: namely, a quantitative, technologically driven science of the outer, physical world. Similarly, one may ask why Western civilization has never developed a science of consciousness ( Whitehead 2004 ), in which a consensus is reached regarding the definition of consciousness and means are devised to examine directly the nature of consciousness, as well as its necessary and sufficient causes and its causal influences. Buddhism, I maintain, has developed such a rational and empirical discipline of inquiry.

I shall begin by outlining a hierarchy among the natural sciences, showing both the strengths and weaknesses of modern science. While the physical sciences rely heavily on quantitative analysis, axioms of mathematics do not define, predict, or explain the emergence of the physical universe. Isaac Newton modelled the physical laws presented in his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy on the axioms of geometry, but his discoveries would have been impossible without careful observations of celestial and terrestrial physical phenomena. Likewise, the current laws of physics alone do not define, predict, or explain the emergence of life in the universe. Biologists needed to develop their own unique modes of observing living organisms, such as Darwin's studies on the Galapagos Islands, as a basis for defining and explaining the emergence and evolution of life in the universe. Similarly, the laws of biology alone do not define, predict, or explain the emergence of consciousness in living organisms; nor is consciousness detected by the instruments of biology. Given the pattern of the physical and life sciences, it follows that cognitive scientists must also devise sophisticated, rigorous means of directly observing mental phenomena as a basis for defining and explaining the origins and nature of consciousness. Galileo refined the telescope and used it to make precise observations of celestial phenomena, and Van Leeuwenhoek used the microscope to make precise observations of minute living organisms. But cognitive scientists have failed to devise a methodology for making reliable, direct observations of the whole spectrum of mental phenomena themselves, which can be made only from a first‐person perspective, as I shall discuss below.

William James, a great pioneer of American psychology, proposed that psychology should consist of the study of subjective mental phenomena, their relations to their objects, to the brain, and to the rest of the world. To develop this scientific study of the mind, he proposed a threefold strategy: mental phenomena should be studied indirectly through the careful observation of behaviour and of the brain, and they should be examined directly by means of introspection. Among these three approaches, he declared that for the study of the mind, ‘ Introspective Observation is what we have to rely on first and foremost and always ’ ( James 1890/1950: i. 185 ). Much as the theories of Copernicus, Darwin, and Mendel were largely ignored for decades after their deaths, so this threefold strategy of James has been discarded for the most part, while behaviourism, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience have dominated the cognitive sciences. The current means of observing mental phenomena directly has not achieved the level of sophistication of the behavioural and neurosciences, so, in this regard, James's comment that psychology today is hardly more than what physics was before Galileo still retains a high degree of validity (James 1892).

There are certainly problems in incorporating introspection—a first‐person, qualitative mode of inquiry—into the framework of science, which is centred upon third‐person, quantitative methods. Indeed, there have been examples in Western psychology of employing inadequately developed methods of self‐reporting that were never able to clarify general principles for understanding mental functions ( Danziger 1980 ). However, these problems may be surmounted by improving the necessary skills for making precise, reliable, introspective observations. Another reason why first‐person observation has been so neglected since the time of James is the neuroscientific interest in identifying the mechanisms underlying mental processes. Despite this focus, cognitive scientists have yet to identify any mechanism that explains how neural processes generate or even influence subjectively experienced mental processes, or, conversely, how mental events influence the brain. They have succeeded in identifying the neural correlates to specific perceptual and conceptual processes, but the exact nature of those correlations remains a mystery. A widespread assumption among cognitive scientists is that neural and mental processes are actually flip sides of the same coin, but this belief has yet to be validated by either empirical evidence or rational argument. All we really know is that specific kinds of neural events are necessary for the generation of specific kinds of mental processes. That hardly amounts to a proof of identity.

In light of the history of science, this insistence on identifying the mechanisms of mental processes may be premature. From the time when Newton identified the natural laws of gravity in 1687, it was 228 years before the mechanism of gravity was explained in Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. Likewise, for the laws of natural selection, a century passed after the publication of Darwin's On the Origins of Species in 1859 and Gregor Mendel's formulation of his theories of genetics in 1865 before James Watson and Francis Crick were able to model the structure of DNA. And according to quantum theory, which is commonly cited as the most successful of all scientific theories, no mechanisms have yet been found to explain such phenomena as non‐locality, the uncertainty principle, or the collapse of probabilistic wave functions.

It is quite possible that no mechanisms will ever be found to explain the causal interactions between neural and mental events, but this should not deter scientists from developing rigorous methods for observing mental phenomena in the only way possible: through first‐person, introspective observation in conjunction with careful observation of behaviour and of the brain, as James proposed more than a century ago.

The physical sciences have undergone two revolutions: the Copernican revolution and the twentieth‐century revolution of relativity and quantum theory. The biological sciences have witnessed one revolution, beginning with Darwin and culminating in the Human Genome Project. The cognitive sciences have achieved no similar radical shift in their understanding of mind or consciousness. The basic assumptions about the mind and its relation to the brain that were common in the late nineteenth century remain unchanged and largely unchallenged to this day. Although great advances have been made recently in measuring neural correlates of mental phenomena, it is far from clear whether these objective measures will ever reveal the nature of those correlations and therefore the nature of mind–brain interactions or consciousness itself.

Despite the West's failure to bring about a revolution in the cognitive sciences, it would be hasty to assume that no other civilization has revolutionized the scientific study of the mind. Much as Galileo refined the telescope and used it in unprecedented ways to directly observe celestial phenomena, so the Buddha refined the practice of samadhi and used it in unprecedented ways to explore states of consciousness and their objects ( ÑāŅamoli 1992 ). As a result of his own experiential explorations, he came to the conclusion: ‘The mind that is established in equipoise comes to know reality as it is' ( Kamalaśīla 1958: 205 ). While such introspective inquiry may seem more philosophical than scientific, consider the definition of the scientific method as ‘principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses’ ( Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary ). There is nothing in that definition that insists on third‐person observation or quantitative analysis, especially for phenomena that are irreducibly first‐person in nature ( Searle 1994 ).

Derived from exactly this kind of exploration, three dimensions of consciousness may be posited on the basis of contemplative writings common to the Mahayana Buddhist tradition (which emerged around the beginning of the Christian era). The first of these is the psyche ( chitta )—the whole array of conscious and unconscious mental processes that occur from birth to death. In Buddhism the primary reason for exploring the psyche is to identify and learn to overcome the afflictive mental processes that generate suffering internally. This is the central theme of the Four Noble Truths and the Buddhist pursuit of liberation.

A thorough understanding of the human psyche must include insight into its origins. The vast majority of contemporary cognitive scientists assume, often unquestioningly, that the brain is solely responsible for producing all mental processes. The uniformity of this view is remarkable in light of the fact that scientists have yet to identify the neural correlates of consciousness or its necessary and sufficient causes ( Searle 2002: 49–50 ; Searle 2004: 119 ). Researchers in the field of artificial intelligence question whether a carbon‐based brain is necessary for the generation of consciousness, and there is no scientific consensus regarding its sufficient causes. The belief that the brain is solely responsible for all states of consciousness stems immediately from the metaphysical principles of scientific materialism, which dominate most scientific thinking today, muchas Roman Catholic theology dominated and constrained intellectual life during the time of Galileo ( Wallace 2000 ).

Substrate Consciousness

Through the development and utilization of highly advanced stages of samadhi , which remain unexplored by science, contemplatives in the ‘Great Perfection’ (Dzogchen) tradition of Indo‐Tibetan Buddhism claim to have discovered a second dimension of consciousness: a continuum of individual mental awareness that precedes this life and continues on beyond death, which they call the substrate consciousness (alayavijñana) ( Wallace 1996 : ch. 23 ; Düdjom Lingpa 2004: 31 and 68 ; Wallace 2000 a : 77–8 and 164–6). This relative ground state of the mind is characterized by three qualities: bliss, luminosity, and non‐conceptuality. It is most vividly apprehended by meditatively enhancing the stability and vividness of attention, but it naturally manifests in deep sleep and in the dying process.

The human psyche, the first dimension of consciousness mentioned above, emerges, they conclude, not from the body but from this underlying stream of consciousness that precedes species differentiation. While the body conditions the mind and is necessary for specific mental processes to arise as long as the substrate consciousness is embodied, the psyche emerges from this underlying stream of consciousness that is embodied in life after life. This theory is compatible with all current scientific knowledge of the mind and the brain, so there is nothing illogical about it; nor is it simply a faith‐based proposition as far as advanced Buddhist contemplatives are concerned. Scientific materialists, however, insist that mental phenomena emerge solely from the brain, much as bile is secreted from the gall bladder ( Searle 2002: 115 ). What they commonly overlook, though, is that mental phenomena, unlike all other emergent phenomena known to science, cannot be observed by any objective, scientific means. So this assertion is a metaphysical assumption, not an established scientific fact. Something that is purely a matter of religious faith or philosophical speculation as far as scientists in the West are concerned may be an experientially confirmed hypothesis for contemplatives in the East. The demarcation between science and metaphysics—between theories that can and cannot be tested empirically—is determined by the limits of experiential inquiry, not Nature or God.

Thus far, experiential inquiry in science has been confined largely to the exploration of the objective world by way of our five physical senses and the instruments of technology. Mental phenomena themselves, as opposed to their neural and behavioural correlates, are invisible to such objective modes of observation. So, to this day, cognitive scientists have yet to come to a consensus regarding the definition of consciousness; they have noobjective meansof detecting the presenceof consciousness in anything; they have failed toidentify even the neural correlatesofconsciousness, and therefore remain in the dark regarding the necessary and sufficient causes of consciousness. All this suggests that mental phenomena are irreducibly first‐person phenomena, and that the only way to restore a true sense of empiricism to the scientific study of the mind is to acknowledge the primary role of introspective observation.

A major reason for the resistance on the part of many scientists to including introspection as a legitimate method of empirical inquiry is that it is quintessentially a private, first‐person kind of experience. Scientific inquiry, on the other hand, has achieved its great successes by way of public, third‐person observations. It is important to note that these advances in scientific knowledge have focused primarily on objective, quantifiable, physical processes, while conscious mental processes are subjective, qualitative, and invisible to the physical means of observation developed by science. But now, with the recent development of sophisticated psychological and neurophysiological methods of inquiry, the first‐person methods of introspection (based on the development of advanced stages of samadhi ) may be cross‐checked with the third‐person methods of the cognitive sciences in ways that may expand the horizons of both scientific and contemplative inquiry.

The Buddha claimedtohavegained direct knowledgeofthis continuityofindividual consciousness beyond death, as well as direct knowledge of the patterns of causal relationships connecting multiple lifetimes ( ÑāŅamoli 1992: 23–6 ). Many generations of Buddhist contemplativesthroughout Asia claimtohavereplicatedhis discoveries, so such reports are not confined to the testimony of one individual. From a third‐person perspective, all such discoveries based on introspective inquiry remain anecdotal, so only practitioners have ‘proof’ of their validity. As such, they are accessible only to a privileged few, but this has always been true of many of the most profound scientific truths. It takes years of training to become a qualified ‘third person’ capable of testing others' alleged discoveries in any advanced Weld of science. They have never been testable by the general public, who often take them on faith, much as religious believers take on faith the claims of their church. The Buddhist training in samadhi required to gain experiential access to the substrate may easily take 10,000–20,000 hours— comparable to the time required for graduate work in science—and until now, such professional training has never been available to cognitive scientists.

Particularly in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, for centuries there has been keen interest in identifying children who were allegedly accomplished meditators and teachers in their past lives. This has commonly been done by seeking out children who appear to remember their past‐life experiences, and scientific research into such instances has also begun ( Stevenson 1997 ). Most cognitive scientists have refused to consider any theory of reincarnation, insisting that it cannot belong in a scientific dialogue per se.

While there does not appear to be any neuroscientific means of disproving the hypothesis that the brain is necessary for all states of consciousness, few scientists have expressed concern over the non‐scientific nature of their fundamental assumptions about the mind—body problem. Similarly, the Buddhist hypothesis of the substrate consciousness does not easily lend itself to scientific repudiation; but scientific inquiry, with a suspension of disbelief, should Wrst be directed to examining whether any positive evidence exists, before worrying about whether it can be repudiated.

Indirect evidence may be provided by third‐person methods, such as the Weld studies of Ian Stevenson and his scientific successor Jim Tucker (2005) . The quantitative, objective tools of observation of science provide no immediate access to any kind of mental phenomena, so they are not likely to reveal any evidence for the substrate consciousness. This can come only from rigorous, Wrst‐person methods such as those proposed by the Buddhist tradition. Just as the existence of the moons of Jupiter can be verified only by those who gaze through a telescope, so the existence of subtle dimensions of consciousness can be verified experientially only by those willing to devote themselves to years of rigorous attentional training. And dedication to such refinement of attention is not contingent on accepting the hypotheses of Buddhism or any other contemplative tradition beforehand.

Primordial Consciousness

There is yet a third dimension of consciousness, known as primordial consciousness ( jñana ), or the Buddha‐nature ( buddhadhatu ) ( Ruegg 1989 ; Thrangu Rinpoche 1993 ;   Dalai Lama 2000 ). This is regarded in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition as the ultimate ground state of consciousness, prior to the conceptual dichotomies of subject and object, mind and matter, and even existence and non‐existence. This realm of consciousness is described metaphorically as being space‐like and luminous, forever unsullied by mental afflictions or obscurations of any kind. The realization of this state of consciousness is said to yield a state of well‐being that represents the culmination of the Buddhist pursuit of eudaimonic well‐being, knowledge, and virtue. With such insight, it is said that one comes to understand not only the nature of consciousness, but also its relation to reality as a whole. This raises the truly astonishing Buddhist hypothesis: ‘All phenomena are preceded by the mind. When the mind is comprehended, all phenomena are comprehended. By bringing the mind under control, all things are brought under control’ ( Śāntideva 1961: 68 ).

This primordial consciousness is, then, the ultimate basis for the other two dimensions of awareness. While each human psyche emerges from its individual substrate consciousness, all streams of substrate consciousness emerge ultimately from primordial consciousness, which transcends individuality. The substrate consciousness can allegedly be ascertained with the achievement of advanced stages of samadhi, whereas primordial consciousness can be realized only through the cultivation of contemplative insight ( vipashyana ) ( Bielefeldt 1988 ; Karma Chagmé 1998 ; Padmasambhava 1998 ; Wallace 2005 b : ch. 14 ). Thus, Buddhism postulates this dimension of awareness not as a mystical theology, but as a hypothesis that can be put to the test of immediate experience through advanced contemplative training open to anyone, without any leap of faith that violates reason.

The above theory of the multiple levels of emergence of consciousness flies in the face of the widespread assumption of cognitive scientists that the brain alone produces all states of consciousness. Such scientists commonly assume that they already know that consciousness has no existence apart from the brain, so the only question to be solved is how the brain produces conscious states. Neurologist Antonio Damasio, for instance, while acknowledging that scientists have yet to understand consciousness, declares, ‘Understanding consciousness says little or nothing about the origins of the universe, the meaning of life, or the likely destiny of both’ ( Damasio 1999: 28 ). This assumption is an instance of what historian Daniel Boorstin calls ‘an illusion of knowledge’. It is such illusions, he proposes, and not mere ignorance, that have historically acted as the greatest impediments to scientific discovery ( Boorstin 1985: p. xv ).

Prospectively, were the Buddhist theories of the substrate consciousness and primordial consciousness and the practices for realizing eudaimonic well‐being to be introduced into the realm of scientific inquiry, radical changes might occur in both traditions. Buddhism, like all other religions, philosophies, and sciences, is prone to dogmatism. As they encounter the empiricism and scepticism of modern science and philosophy, contemporary Buddhists may be encouraged to take a fresh look at their own beliefs and assumptions, putting them to the test, wherever possible, of rigorous third‐person inquiry. Buddhist societies have never developed a science of the brain, nor any quantitative science of behaviour or the physical world, so its understanding of the human mind may be enhanced by close collaboration with various branches of modern science.

The encounter between the cognitive sciences and Buddhism and other contemplative traditions may also bring about deep changes in the scientific understanding of the mind. One possibility is that the first revolution in the cognitive sciences may result from the long‐delayed synthesis of rigorous first‐person and third‐person means of investigating a wide range of mental phenomena. This would be the fulfilment of William James's strategy for the scientific study of the mind, which has been marginalized over the past century. This revolution could be analogous to the emergence of classical physics, culminating in the discoveries of Isaac Newton. If we speculate further into the future, we may envision a second revolution in the cognitive sciences emerging from the study of and with individuals with exceptional mental skills and insights acquired through sophisticated, sustained contemplative training. This might parallel the revolution in physics in the early twentieth century, which challenged many of our deepest assumptions about the nature of space, time, mass, and energy. Such revolutions in the cognitive sciences may equally challenge current scientific assumptions about the nature of consciousness and its relation to the brain and the rest of the world.

A Return to Empiricism

A reasonable scientific response to the above presentation of Buddhist views on the nature of eudaimonic well‐being and the three dimensions of consciousness is one of open‐minded scepticism. But such scepticism should be equally directed to one's own beliefs, which may be ‘illusions of knowledge’ masquerading as scientific facts. Richard Feynman wonderfully expressed this ideal of scientific scepticism thus:

One of the ways of stopping science would be only to do experiments in the region where you know the law. But experimenters search most diligently, and with the greatest effort, in exactly those places where it seems most likely that we can prove our theories wrong. In other words we are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress. ( Feynman 1983: 158 )

Buddhism, too, expresses a comparable ideal of scepticism. The Buddha is recorded as having said: ‘Monks, just as the wise accept gold after testing it by heating, cutting, and rubbing it, so are my words to be accepted after examining them, but not out of respect for me’ ( Shastri 1968 : k. 3587). The Dalai Lama maintains this self‐reflective spirit of scepticism when he writes: ‘A general basic stance of Buddhism is that it is inappropriate to hold a view that is logically inconsistent. This is taboo. But even more taboo than holding a view that is logically inconsistent is holding a view that goes against direct experience’ ( Varela and Hayward 1992: 37 ).

I have argued in this chapter that Buddhism has developed a science of consciousness, but serious objections may be raised. It may be pointed out that science is characterized by controlled experiments, repeated iterative evolving cycles of hypothesis formation, controlled testing, hypothesis revision, and prediction. However, these traits are not common to all branches of science. Astronomy, geology, meteorology, and ecology are some examples that do not lend themselves to all the above methods. Buddhist rational and experiential inquiry into the nature of consciousness and the world at large bears some qualities in common with modern science, but not all. This opens the possibility of a new contemplative science emerging from the interface between Buddhism and the cognitive sciences, in which rigorous Wrst‐person and third‐person methodologies are integrated in unprecedented ways. Such a science may serve to bring together spiritual and scientific modes of inquiry, to the enrichment of everyone.

Buddhism is also poised to serve as a mediator between theistic religions, which regard God (existing independently of human experience) as their ultimate authority, and science, which takes Nature (existing independently of human experience) as its ultimate authority. While many theologians claim that God can be known only through faith or reason (versus direct experience), and many scientists claim that the mind can be scientifically studied only inferentially by examining the brain and behaviour, Buddhist contemplatives claim that the potential range of immediate experience is far greater than is commonly assumed. The Buddhist challenge here is to retrieve spiritual realities and physical realities from their respective black boxes and return them to the world of experience, where they rightfully belong.

Such a move accords with William James's proposal of a science of religion that differs from philosophical theology by drawing inferences and devising imperatives based on the scrutiny of ‘the immediate content of religious consciousness’ ( James 1902/1985: 12 ). Such a science of religions, he suggested, might offer mediation between scientists and religious believers, and might eventually command public adherence comparable to that presently granted to the natural sciences. I conclude this chapter with James's challenge to restore a true spirit of empiricism to both religion and science:

Let empiricism once become associated with religion, as hitherto, through some strange misunderstanding, it has been associated with irreligion, and I believe that a new era of religion as well as philosophy will be ready to begin … I fully believe that such an empiricism is a more natural ally than dialectics ever were, or can be, of the religious life. ( James 1909/1977: 142 )

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Title: Buddhist Resurgence in the Western Deccan: Analysis of timeline of Ghatotchacha Caves

2024, maharashtra Itihas Parishad, Nevasa 2024

This research paper delves into the transformative period between the fifth and sixth centuries CE in the western Deccan, focusing on the Ghatotkach Caves. The era witnessed a revival of Buddhism, marked by changes in patronage, artistic evolution, international engagement, and the expansion of cave complexes. Through an in-depth exploration of timelines, architectural nuances, and historical contexts, this study provides valuable insights into the cultural tapestry of the region.

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David Efurd

Rajesh K U M A R Singh

This monograph is meant for researchers of South Asian studies with advanced interest in history of the late fifth-century CE. The new study proposes a reconstructive chronology of the times. It clarifies that the fifth-century rock-cut monuments of India were all Buddhist with only a few exceptions. The excavations had begun in the peaceful times of ca. 461/462 CE. However, by ca. 480 CE all the cave temples were abandoned even before completion. The study re-examines the cause of the abandonment and presents some new revelations. It was ca. 465 CE when the Hephthalite Hūṇs attacked the Early Alchon Hūṇs in the Greater Gandhāra region forcing the Buddhist monks to disperse inter alia towards the Deccan, which was then peaceful. Many Buddhist rock-cut sites were flourishing there under the Gupta-Vākāṭaka-Traikūṭakas: Bagh, Ajanta, Ellora, Mahāḍ, Dhārāśiva (Jain), Banoṭī, Ghaṭotkaca, Nasik, Loṇāḍ, Kondavite, and Kanheri. The ousted Alchons led by Mahāṣāhi Khīṅgīla (r. ca. 440 to 492–496 CE) advanced into India and came up to the Narmada-Tapti valleys. The new intrusions witnessed many battles, particularly those of ca. 469, 472, and 477 CE wherein many great Indian emperors and kings were perished: Kumāragupta I, Nāgabhaṭa, Ghaṭōtkacagupta, Skandagupta, Narasimhagupta, Narendra Sena, Ravisāmba, Kumāragupta II, Hari Ṣeṇa, and Dahrasena. These disturbances in India now forced the migrant Gandhāran and the resident Deccani monks to escape to distant lands including Kucha in Central Asia. Consequently, there was catalysed the Kuchean Period III, which witnessed the introduction of many Gandhāran and Deccani ideas. Finally Buddhagupta ousted the Alchons in ca. 478 CE. The persistent defeat had taught the Alchons a lesson. They now imbibed the Indian values of liberalism as statecraft, which allowed them unobstructed rule for the next one century and two decades (ca. 479–ca. 600 CE) when they ruled from Greater Gandhāra to the Narmada valley. The new picture comes out when we attempt to synchronise the known chronologies of the Early Alchons, Early Guptas, Vākāṭakas, Traikūṭakas, Gandhāra, and the rock-cut monuments of India and Kucha in the late 5th c. CE. It is revealed that the monasteries were abandoned due to the attacks by the Early Alchon Hūṇs.

pia brancaccio

Asian Perspectives

Lars Fogelin

Asian Perspectives Journal

Himanshu Prabha Ray

Manohar Publishers and Distributors and SAARC Cultural Centre, Colombo, New Delhi

Sanjay Garg

Elsevier Encyclopedia of Archaeology, 2nd edition, Amsterdam

Karam Tej Sarao

Archaeological material, which is more objective than many textual sources, can be better located in space and time and has high value as a source material. • Even for the first two centuries of Buddhism in India, for which archaeology cannot substantially add to the understanding of Indian Buddhism, it can offer an analysis of the larger material milieu in which it originated. • From the 3rd century BCE onwards, archaeology offers so much valuable information on Buddhism that there is now need to rewrite the history of Indian Buddhism, which has been largely based on textual material. • Three types of monuments, st upa (mound), caityagṛha (sanctuary), and vih ara (monastery), are commonly used to identify an archaeological site as Buddhist. However, while doing so, it needs to be remembered that specific material remains may have been the creation of more than one religious community.

An Archaeological History of Indian Buddhism is a comprehensive survey of Indian Buddhism from its origins in the 6th century BCE, through its ascendance in the 1st millennium CE, and its eventual decline in mainland South Asia by the mid-2nd millennium CE. Weaving together studies of archaeological remains, architecture, iconography, inscriptions, and Buddhist historical sources, this book uncovers the quotidian concerns and practices of Buddhist monks and nuns (the sangha), and their lay adherents—concerns and practices often obscured in studies of Buddhism premised largely, if not exclusively, on Buddhist texts. At the heart of Indian Buddhism lies a persistent social contradiction between the desire for individual asceticism versus the need to maintain a coherent community of Buddhists. Before the early 1st millennium CE, the sangha relied heavily on the patronage of kings, guilds, and ordinary Buddhists to support themselves. During this period, the sangha emphasized the communal elements of Buddhism as they sought to establish themselves as the leaders of a coherent religious order. By the mid-1st millennium CE, Buddhist monasteries had become powerful political and economic institutions with extensive landholdings and wealth. This new economic self-sufficiency allowed the sangha to limit their day-to-day interaction with the laity and begin to more fully satisfy their ascetic desires for the first time. This withdrawal from regular interaction with the laity led to the collapse of Buddhism in India in the early-to-mid 2nd millennium CE. In contrast to the ever-changing religious practices of the Buddhist sangha, the Buddhist laity were more conservative—maintaining their religious practices for almost two millennia, even as they nominally shifted their allegiances to rival religious orders. This book also serves as an exemplar for the archaeological study of long-term religious change through the perspectives of practice theory, materiality, and semiotics.

Rehren, T., Nikita, E. (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Archaeology, 2nd Edition, vol. 4, pp. 344–349, London: Academic Press.

Archaeological material can be located not only in space and time fairly reasonably, it also offers an unfiltered access to Indian Buddhism. However, an overwhelming majority of modern Buddhist scholarship still sees textual material as the most important source of information on Buddhism and that the archaeological data, though useful, can only be understood fully if used as supportive of the textual data. In other words, the usefulness of archaeological sources as independent witnesses is effectively ignored, when, compared to the textual material, the archaeological and epigraphical material offers the most direct access to Buddhism and the way it was followed by its adherents across all social and economic strata of the Indian society. Thus, for the proper study of Indian Buddhism, the value of archaeological material needs to be taken into consideration. Here, an effort has been made to show that a study of Buddhism can gain significantly through archaeology.

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• v.55(Suppl 2); 2013 Jan

Buddha philosophy and western psychology

Tapas kumar aich.

Department of Psychiatry, Universal College of Medical Sciences, Bhairahawa, Nepal

Four noble truths as preached by Buddha are that the life is full of suffering ( Duhkha ), that there is a cause of this suffering ( Duhkha-samudaya ), it is possible to stop suffering ( Duhkha-nirodha ), and there is a way to extinguish suffering ( Duhkha-nirodha-marga ). Eight fold Path (astangika-marga) as advocated by Buddha as a way to extinguish the sufferings are right views, right resolve/aspiration, right speech, right action/conduct, right livelihood, right effort right mindfulness and right concentration.

Mid-twentieth century saw the collaborations between many psychoanalysts and Buddhist scholars as a meeting between “two of the most powerful forces” operating in the Western mind. Buddhism and Western Psychology overlap in theory and in practice. Over the last century, experts have written on many commonalities between Buddhism and various branches of modern western psychology like phenomenological psychology, psychoanalytical psychotherapy, humanistic psychology, cognitive psychology and existential psychology. Orientalist Alan Watts wrote ‘if we look deeply into such ways of life as Buddhism, we do not find either philosophy or religion as these are understood in the West. We find something more nearly resembling psychotherapy’.

Buddha was a unique psychotherapist. His therapeutic methods helped millions of people throughout the centuries. This essay is just an expression of what little the current author has understood on Buddha philosophy and an opportunity to offer his deep tribute to one of the greatest psychotherapists the world has ever produced!

INTRODUCTION

Most of us know the life and basic teachings of Siddhartha or Gautama Buddha since our childhood days. He was born in a royal family at Kapilavastu, on the foot-hills of Himalaya, in the 6 th century BC. The sights of disease, old age and death impressed the young prince with the idea that the world was full of suffering and he renounced the world early in life.

As an ascetic, he was restless in search of the real source of all sufferings and of the path or means of cessation from these sufferings. He sought answers to his questions from many learned scholars and religious teachers of his time, but nothing satisfied him. He practiced great austerities, went through intense meditations with an iron will and a mind free from all disturbing thoughts and passions. He endeavored to unravel the mystery of world's miseries. Finally, his mission was fulfilled and Prince Siddhartha became Buddha or “Enlightened”. The message of his enlightenment laid the foundation of both the Buddhist religion and philosophy.

Like all great teachers of ancient times, Buddha taught by conversation and our knowledge of Buddha's teachings depends on the “Tripitakas” or the three “baskets” of teachings of Gautama Buddha. The third part or “basket“ is known as the Abhidhamma in Pali; and Abhidharma in Sanskrit. Abhidhamma Pitaka articulates simultaneously a philosophy, a psychology, and an ethics, all integrated into the framework of a program for liberation.

TEACHINGS OF BUDDHA: A BRIEF ESSAY

The four noble truths.

Buddha was primarily an ethical teacher and reformer, not a metaphysician. He disliked metaphysical discussions devoid of practical utility. Instead of discussing metaphysical questions, which are ethically useless and intellectually uncertain, Buddha always tried to enlighten persons on the most important questions of sorrow, its origin, its cessation and the path leading to its cessation. The answers to these four questions constitute the essence of the Buddha's enlightenment. These have come to be known as four noble truths. They are: (a) Life is full of suffering ( Duhkha ), (b) There is a cause of this suffering ( Duhkha-samudaya ), (c) It is possible to stop suffering ( Duhkha-nirodha ), (d) There is a way to extinguish suffering ( Duhkha-nirodha-marga ).[ 1 , 2 ]

The first noble truth is life full of suffering. The very essential conditions of life appeared to be fraught with suffering-birth, old age, disease, death, sorrow, grief, wish, despair, in short, all that is born of attachment, is suffering. The second noble truth is that there is a cause of this suffering. Suffering is due to attachment. Attachment is one translation of the word trishna, which can also be translated as thirst, desire, lust, craving, or clinging. Another aspect of attachment is dvesha, which means avoidance or hatred. A third aspect of attachment is avidya, meaning ignorance.

Buddha preaches about the chain of 12 links in the cause and maintenance of suffering. These chain of causes and effects lead to sufferings in the world. The suffering in life is due to birth, which is due to the will to be born, which again is due to our mental clinging to objects. Clinging again is due to thirst or desire for objects. This again is due to sense-experience, which is due to sense-object-contact, which again is due to the six organs of cognition. These organs are dependent on the embryonic organism (composed of mind and body), which again could not develop without some initial consciousness, which again hails from the impressions of the experience of past life, which lastly are due to ignorance of truth. These constitute the wheel of existence (bhaba-chakra): Birth and rebirth.

The third noble truth about suffering is that suffering can be extinguished. Nirvana is the state of being wherein all clinging, and so all suffering, can be eliminated here, in this very life. Buddha pointed out that work without attachment, hatred and infatuation (rāga, dveṣa, moha) does not cause bondage. The fourth noble truth about suffering is that there is a path (marga)-which Buddha followed and others can similarly follow-to reach to a state free from misery. He called it the Eightfold Path to liberation.

Eightfold Path (astangika-marga): This gives, in a nutshell, the essentials of ‘Buddha Ethics’. This Path is open to all, monks as well as laymen. The first two segments of the path are referred to as prajña, meaning wisdom:[ 1 ] Right views-understanding the Four Noble Truths, especially the nature of all things as imperfect, impermanent, and insubstantial and our self-inflicted suffering as founded in clinging, hate, and ignorance.[ 2 ] Right resolve/aspiration-having the true desire/determination to free oneself from attachment, hatefulness, and ignorance.

The next three segments of the path provide more detailed guidance in the form of moral precepts, called ‘sila’:[ 3 ] Right speech-Abstaining from lying, gossiping, and hurtful speech generally. Speech is often our ignorance made manifest, and is the most common way in which we harm others.[ 4 ] Right action/conduct-Right conduct includes the ‘Pancha-Sila’, the five vows for desisting from killing, stealing, sensuality, lying and intoxication.[ 5 ] Right livelihood-Making one's living in an honest, non-hurtful way.

The last three segments of the path are the ones Buddhism is most famous for, and concern samadhi or meditation. Despite the popular conception, without wisdom and morality, meditation is worthless, and may even be dangerous.[ 6 ] Right effort - Taking control of your mind and the contents thereof, effort to develop good mental habits. When bad thoughts and impulses arise, they should be abandoned. This is done by watching the thought without attachment, recognizing it for what it is and letting it dissipate. Good thoughts and impulses, on the other hand, should be nurtured and enacted.[ 7 ] Right mindfulness - Mindfulness refers to a kind of meditation (vipassana) involving an acceptance of thoughts and perceptions, a “bare attention” to these events without attachment. This mindfulness is to be extended to daily life as well. It becomes a way of developing a fuller, richer awareness of life.[ 8 ] Right concentration - One who has successfully guided his life in the life of last seven rules and thereby freed himself from all passions and evil thoughts is fit to enter into deeper stages of concentration that gradually take him to the goal of his long and arduous journey – cessation of suffering.

Right concentration, through four stages, is the last step in the path that leads to the goal-nirvana. (i) The 1 st stage of concentration is on reasoning and investigation regarding the truths. There is then a joy of pure thinking. (ii) The 2 nd stage is unruffled meditation even free from reasoning. There is then a joy of tranquillity. (iii) The 3 rd stage of concentration is detachment from even the joy of tranquillity. There is then indifference to even such joy but a feeling of a bodily case still persists. (iv) The 4 th and final stage of concentration is detachment from this bodily case too. There are then perfect equanimity and indifference. This is the state of nirvana or perfect wisdom. This is the highest form of Buddhist meditation, and full practice of it is usually restricted to monks and nuns who have progressed considerably along the path.

BUDDHISM AND WESTERN PSYCHOLOGY

Assessment of Buddhism in terms of modern western psychology started when British Indologist Rhys Davids translated Abhidhamma Pitaka from Pali and Sanskrit texts in 1900. She published the book entitled it, “Buddhist Manual of Psychological Ethics”.[ 2 ] In 1914, she wrote another book “Buddhist psychology: An inquiry into the analysis and theory of mind”.[ 3 ]

The mid-twentieth century saw the collaborations between many psychoanalysts and Buddhist scholars as a meeting between “two of the most powerful forces” operating in the Western mind. A variety of renowned teachers, clinicians and writers in the west such as Carl Jung, Erich Fromm, Alan Watts, Tara Brach, Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, and Sharon Salzberg among others have attempted to bridge and integrate psychology and Buddhism, from time to time, in a manner that offers meaning, inspiration and healing to the common man's suffering.

Buddhism and Western Psychology overlap in theory and in practice. Over the last century, experts have written on many commonalities between Buddhism and the various branches of modern western psychology like phenomenological psychology, psychoanalytical psychotherapy, humanistic psychology, cognitive psychology and existential psychology.

Buddhism and phenomenological psychology

Any assessment of Buddhism in terms of psychology is necessarily a modern western invention. Western and Buddhist scholars have found in Buddhist teachings a detailed introspective phenomenological psychology. Rhys Davids in her book “Buddhist Manual of Psychological Ethics” wrote, “Buddhist philosophy is ethical first and last. Buddhism set itself to analyze and classify mental processes with remarkable insight and sagacity”.[ 2 ] Buddhism's psychological orientation is a theme Rhys Davids pursued for decades as evidenced by her other writings.[ 3 , 4 ]

Abhidhamma Pitaka articulates a philosophy, a psychology, and ethics as well; all integrated into the framework of a program for liberation. The primary concern of the Abhidhamma (or Abhidharma in Sanskrit), is to understand the nature of experience, and thus the reality on which it focuses is conscious reality. For this reason, the philosophical enterprise of the Abhidhamma shades off into a phenomenological psychology.[ 4 ]

Later on long-term efforts to integrate Abhidhammic psychology with Western empirical sciences have been carried out by other leaders such as Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and the 14 th Dalai Lama.

In introduction to his 1975 book, Glimpses of the Abhidharma , Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche wrote: “Many modern psychologists have found that the discoveries and explanations of the abhidharma coincide with their own recent discoveries and new ideas; as though the abhidharma, which was taught 2,500 years ago, had been redeveloped in the modern idiom”.[ 5 ]

Every two years, since 1987, the Dalai Lama has convened “Mind and Life” gatherings of Buddhists and scientists.[ 6 ] Reflecting on one Mind and Life session in March 2000, psychologist Daniel Goleman, the author of the best-selling “Emotional Intelligence” and “Destructive Emotions: A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama” noted; “since the time of Gautama Buddha in the 5 th century BC, an analysis of the mind and its workings has been central to the practices of his followers. This analysis was codified during the first millennium, after his death within the system called Abhidhamma (or Abhidharma in Sanskrit), which means ultimate doctrine”.[ 7 ]

Buddhism and psychoanalytical psychotherapy

Psychoanalyst Carl Jung wrote the foreword to Zen's scholar Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki's introduction to Zen Buddhism, first published together in 1948. In his foreword, Jung highlights the enlightenment experience as the unsurpassed transformation to wholeness for Zen practitioners. “The only movement within our culture which partly has, and partly should have, some understanding of these aspirations for such enlightenment is psychotherapy”.[ 8 , 9 ]

Psychoanalysts like Karen Horney and Fritz Perls studied Zen-Buddhism. Karen Horney was intensely interested in Zen Buddhism during the last years of her life. Richard Wilhelm was a translator of Chinese texts into German language of the I Ching, Tao Te Ching and ‘the secret of the golden flower’, with a forward written by Carl Jung. R D Laing, another noted psychoanalyst, went to Ceylon, where he spent two months studying meditation in a Buddhist retreat. Later on, he spent time learning Sanskrit and visiting Govinda Lama, who had been a guru to Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert. Suzuki, Fromm and other psychoanalysts collaborated at a 1957 workshop on “Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis” in Cuernavaca, Mexico. In his contribution to this workshop, Fromm declared: “Psychoanalysis is a characteristic expression of the Western man's spiritual crisis, and an attempt to find a solution. The common suffering is the alienation from oneself, from one's fellow men, and from nature; the awareness that life runs out of one's hand like sand, and that one will die without having lived; that one lives in the midst of plenty and yet is joyless”.[ 9 ] Fromm continues: “Zen is the art of seeing into the nature of one's being; it is a way from bondage to freedom; it liberates our natural energies; and it impels us to express our faculty for happiness and love.[ 9 ]” “What can be said with more certainty is that the knowledge of Zen, and a concern with it, can have a most fertile and clarifying influence on the theory and technique of psychoanalysis. Zen, different as it is in its method from psychoanalysis, can sharpen the focus, throw new light on the nature of insight, and heighten the sense of what it is to see, what it is to be creative, what it is to overcome the affective contaminations and false intellectualizations which are the necessary results of experience based on the subject-object split”.[ 10 ]

Referencing Jung and Suzuki's collaboration as well as the efforts of others, humanistic philosopher and psychoanalyst Erich Fromm noted; “there is an unmistakable and increasing interest in Zen Buddhism among psychoanalysts”.[ 9 ] Erich Fromm also wrote the forward to a 1986 anthology of Nyanaponika Thera's essays on Buddhist philosophy.[ 11 , 12 ]

There have been many other important contributors,[ 13 , 14 ] to the popularization of the integration of Buddhist meditation with psychology, including Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, Tara Brach, Epstein and Nhat Hanh.

Psychoanalysis, pioneered and popularized by such philosophers/psychoanalysts rests upon the idea that uncovering and making conscious buried complexes and memories is a therapeutic process. The relocation of a complex or neurosis from the unconscious to the conscious easily equates to the principles inherent in right meditation and right understanding. One might recall that on Jung's deathbed, he was reading a translation of Hsu Yun's dharma discourses and was reputedly very excited by the succinct and direct methods of Chan's practice in working with the unconscious.

Buddhism and existential psychology

Buddha said that life is suffering. Existential psychology speaks of ontological anxiety (dread, angst). Buddha said that suffering is due to attachment. Existential psychology also has some similar concepts. We cling to things in the hope that they will provide us with a certain benefit. Buddha said that suffering can be extinguished. The Buddhist concept of nirvana is quite similar to the existentialists’ freedom. Freedom has, in fact, been used in Buddhism in the context of freedom from rebirth or freedom from the effects of karma. For the existentialist, freedom is a fact of our being, one which we often ignore. Finally, Buddha says that there is a way to extinguish suffering. For the existential psychologist, the therapist must take an assertive role in helping the client become aware of the reality of his or her suffering and its roots. Likewise, the client must take an assertive role in working towards improvement–even though it means facing the fears they’ve been working so hard to avoid, and especially facing the fear that they will “lose” themselves in the process.[ 15 , 16 ]

Buddhism and cognitive-behavior therapy principles

Buddhistic mindfulness practices have been explicitly incorporated into a variety of psychological treatments. More specifically psychotherapies dealing with cognitive restructuring share core principles with ancient Buddhistic antidotes to personal suffering.

Fromm distinguishes between two types of meditative techniques that have been used in psychotherapy: (i) auto-suggestion used to induce relaxation; and (ii) meditation “to achieve a higher degree of non-attachment, of non-greed, and of non-illusion; briefly, those that serve to reach a higher level of being”. Fromm attributes techniques associated with the latter to Buddhist mindfulness practices.[ 10 ]

Two increasingly popular therapeutic practices using Buddhist mindfulness techniques are Jon Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR),[ 17 , 18 ] and Marsha M. Linehan's dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT). Other prominent therapies that use mindfulness include mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT)[ 19 ] and Steven C. Hayes’ Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT).[ 20 ]

Mindfulness-based stress reduction

Kabat-Zinn developed the 8-week MBSR program over a 10-year-period with over 4,000 patients at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. Describing the MBSR program, Kabat-Zinn writes: “This ‘work’ involves above all the regular, disciplined practice of moment-to-moment awareness or mindfulness , the complete ‘owning’ of each moment of your experience, good, bad, or ugly. This is the essence of full catastrophic living.”[ 17 ]

Kabat-Zinn, a one-time Zen practitioner, goes on to write: “Although at this time, mindfulness meditation is most commonly taught and practiced within the context of Buddhism, its essence is universal. Yet it is no accident that mindfulness comes out of Buddhism, which has as its overriding concerns the relief of suffering and the dispelling of illusions”.[ 18 ]

Not surprisingly, in terms of clinical diagnoses, MBSR has proven beneficial for people with depression and anxiety disorders; however, the program is meant to serve anyone experiencing significant stress.[ 19 ]

Dialectical behavioral therapy

In writing about DBT, Zen practitioner Linehan states: “As its name suggests, its overriding characteristic is an emphasis on ‘dialectics’ – that is, the reconciliation of opposites in a continual process of synthesis. This emphasis on acceptance as a balance to change flows directly from the integration of a perspective drawn from the practice of Buddhism with Western psychological practice.”[ 21 ] Similarly, Linehan writes:[ 22 ] “Mindfulness skills are central to DBT. They are the first skills taught and are reviewed every week. The skills are psychological and behavioral versions of meditation practices from Eastern spiritual training. Linehan has drawn heavily from the practice of Zen. Controlled clinical studies have demonstrated DBT's effectiveness for people with borderline personality disorder.”[ 21 ]

Dr. Albert Ellis, has written that many of the principles incorporated in the theory of rational-emotive psychotherapy are not new; some of them were originally stated several thousands of years ago, by Taoist and Buddhistic thinkers.[ 23 ] To give one example, Buddhism identifies anger and ill-will as basic hindrances to spiritual development. A common Buddhistic antidote for anger is the use of active contemplation of loving thoughts. This is similar to using a CBT technique known as “emotional training” which Ellis described.[ 24 ]

The school of Behaviorism describe (or reduce) human functions to principles of behavior, which can be manipulated to create positive effects in the life of the patient. In the Noble Eightfold Path we see reflections of this approach in the exhortations to Right Action, Right Speech and Right Livelihood. One may consider the story of the Buddha who was approached by a rich but miserly man who wanted to develop his spiritual life but was constrained by his seeming inability to share his wealth with others. The Buddha addressed this problem by telling him to get into the habit of using his right hand to give his left hand items of value and in doing so learn the art of giving!

Cognitive and cognitive-behaviorists focus more on training the mind to review and question assumptions, phobias, fears and beliefs. These therapists are typically associated with such techniques as visualization and positive self-talk designed to teach, or unlearn, principles that are, respectively, helpful or unhelpful. Again, the noble eightfold path and its focus on right mindfulness and right thinking are the corollary in Buddhist thought.

Buddhism and other psychotherapy principles

Gestalt Therapy is an approach created by Fritz Perls, based heavily on existentialist philosophy and significantly, Zen Buddhism (among other influences). In Gestalt, the premise is we must work with the whole person, the “gestalt” in German, which echoes the wisdom of Right Understanding. Its techniques encourage Right Mindfulness, and the focus on the immediate, phenomenological and experiential reality of the here and now, in the physical, emotional and mental realms.[ 25 ]

David Brazier in his book Zen Therapy makes a thoughtful comparison of some principal Buddhist concepts and person-centered (rogerian) Therapy.[ 26 ] Developed by Carl Rogers, this therapeutic approach includes virtually all effective therapy, either in principle or technique. In basic terms, its goal is to provide the patient a safe place, an environment where he or she may express their problems. The therapist does not direct the process, but works on the assumption the patient has the resources to deal with their own “cure” and self-growth, provided the environment is supportive of them. Like the Buddha, this non-authoritative approach suggests the patient can be “a light unto themselves”. Although the therapist may do little more than provide active and empathic listening, and reflect and validate the thoughts and emotions of the struggling patient, they nonetheless, provide three crucial components for change to occur; unconditional positive regard, empathy and congruence (or genuiness). These are the elements that are considered essential to create an environment where the individual can grow, learn and evolve.

This is of particular interest to the Buddhist student who is taught that all suffering stems from the three “bitter roots” or “poisons” of greed, hatred and delusion. Brazier demonstrates how, from a therapeutic perspective, Person-Centered Therapy counters each of these “poisons”; empathy is the “antidote” to hate, unconditional positive regard provides a model of acceptance of self and other which counters the grasping, needy nature of greed, and congruence (genuineness) is the opposite of delusion. Delusion itself, as Brazier suggests, could just as well be translated as “incongruence”, the separation of self and mind from what is real and what is present.

Buddha was commonly referred to as “the great physician” and like any therapist, made it his aim to identify, explain and end human suffering. All therapists do have similar aims. Four Noble Truths are the method to adopt a diagnostic format to explain suffering and its cure; the 1 st Noble Truth identifies the disease, the 2 nd provides etiology, the 3 rd gives a prognosis, and the 4 th suggests a remedy.

Philosopher and Orientalist Alan Watts once wrote: If we look deeply into such ways of life as Buddhism, we do not find either philosophy or religion as these are understood in the West. We find something more nearly resembling psychotherapy.[ 27 ] The main resemblance between these Eastern ways of life and Western psychotherapy is in the concern of both with bringing about changes of consciousness, changes in our ways of feeling our own existence and our relation to human society and the natural world.[ 28 ]

What Buddhism is really all about is returning to this life, your very own little life, with a “new attitude.” By being more calm, more aware, a nicer person morally, someone who has given up envy and greed and hatred and such, who understands that nothing is forever, that grief is the price we willingly pay for love… this life becomes at very least bearable. We stop torturing ourselves and allow ourselves to enjoy what there is to enjoy.[ 15 ]

Buddha was a unique psychotherapist. His therapeutic methods helped millions of people throughout the centuries. Today the Western world has realized the psychological essence of Buddhism. Many Psychotherapeutic systems in the West are derived from Buddha's teaching. Buddha showed empathy and non-judgmental acceptance to everyone who came to him. He helped people to gain insight and helped in growth promotion while eliminating troubling and painful emotions. His therapeutic methods are exceptional and can be applied for all times.[ 16 ]

Prince Gautama gave his entire life in understanding and then propagating his philosophy. People have devoted their entire lives in studying and understanding his philosophy. Being a student of modern psychiatry, I do not claim to be an expert in Buddhist philosophy and/or religion. This essay is just an expression of what little I have understood on His philosophy and an opportunity to offer my deep tribute to one of the greatest psychotherapists the world has ever produced!

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Conflict of Interest: None declared

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Buddhism as Philosophy: Fundamental Themes

Jeffery D. Long, Discovering Indian Philosophy: An Introduction to Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist Thought (2024)

Andy Karr, Into the Mirror: A Buddhist Journey through Mind, Matter, and the Nature of Reality (2023)

Tyler Dalton McNabb & Erik Daniel Baldwin, Classical Theism and Buddhism: Connecting Metaphysical and Ethical Systems (2023)

Zhihua Yao, Nonexistent Objects in Buddhist Philosophy: On Knowing What There Is Not (2023)

Haidy Geismar et al (eds.), Impermanence: Exploring Continuous Change Across Cultures (2022)

Roger R. Jackson, Rebirth: A Guide to Mind, Karma, and Cosmos in the Buddhist World (2022)

Harrison J. Pemberton, The Buddha Meets Socrates: A Philosopher's Journal (2022)

Rick Repetti (ed.), Routledge Handbook on the Philosophy of Meditation (2022)

Avram Alpert, A Partial Enlightenment: What Modern Literature and Buddhism Can Teach Us about Living Well without Perfection (2021)

Bhikkhu Analayo, Superiority Conceit in Buddhist Traditions: A Historical Perspective (2021)

Zane M. Diamond, Gautama Buddha: Education for Wisdom (2021)

C.W. Huntington, What I Don't Know about Death: Reflections on Buddhism and Mortality (2021)

Jianxun Shi, Mapping the Buddhist Path to Liberation: Diversity and Consistency Based on the Pali Nikayas and the Chinese Agamas (2021)

Mark Siderits, How Things Are: An Introduction to Buddhist Metaphysics (2021)

Peter D. Hershock & Roger T. Ames (eds.), Human Beings or Human Becomings? A Conversation with Confucianism on the Concept of Person (2021)

Y. Karunadasa, The Buddhist Analysis of Matter (2020)

Mark Siderits et al (ed.), Buddhist Philosophy of Consciousness: Tradition and Dialogue (2020)

Jan Westerhoff, The Non-Existence of the Real World (2020)

Graham Priest, The Fifth Corner of Four: An Essay on Buddhist Metaphysics and the Catuskoti (2019)

Vajragupta Staunton, Free Time! From Clock-Watching to Free-Flowing: A Buddhist Guide (2019)

David Burton, Buddhism: A Contemporary Philosophical Investigation (2017)

Steven M. Emmanuel (ed.), Buddhist Philosophy: A Comparative Approach (2017)

Bryan W. Van Norden, Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto (2017)

Mark Siderits, Studies in Buddhist Philosophy, ed. Jan Westerhoff (2016)

Marcus Boon, Eric M. Cazdyn, & Timothy Morton, Nothing: Three Inquiries in Buddhism (2015)

Jay L. Garfield, Engaging Buddhism: Why It Matters to Philosophy (2015)

JeeLoo Liu & Douglas Berger (eds.), Nothingness in Asian Philosophy (2014)

Steven M. Emmanuel (ed.), A Companion to Buddhist Philosophy (2013)

Cyrus Panjvani, Buddhism: A Philosophical Approach (2013)

Mark Siderits, Evan Thompson, & Dan Zahavi (eds.), Self, No Self? Perspectives from Analytical, Phenomenological, and Indian Traditions (2013)

Robin Cooper (Ratnaprabha), Finding the Mind: A Buddhist View (2012)

John Danvers, Agents of Uncertainty: Mysticism, Scepticism, Buddhism, Art and Poetry (2012)

Louis de La Vallée Poussin, The Way to Nirvana: Six Lectures on Ancient Buddhism as a Discipline of Salvation (2012)

Musashi Tachikawa, Essays in Buddhist Theology (2012)

Johannes Bronkhorst, Karma (2011)

Alf Hiltebeitel, Dharma: Its Early History in Law, Religion, and Narrative (2011)

Dhivan Thomas Jones, This Being, That Becomes: The Buddha's Teaching on Conditionality (2011)

Erich Frauwallner, The Philosophy of Buddhism [Die Philosophie des Buddhismus], trans. Gelong Lodro Sangpo & Jigme Sheldron (2010)

Rodney Smith, Stepping Out of Self-Deception: The Buddha's Liberating Teaching of No-Self (2010)

William Edelglass & Jay Garfield (eds.), Buddhist Philosophy: Essential Readings (2009)

Dan Arnold, Buddhists, Brahmins, and Belief: Epistemology in South Asian Philosophy of Religion (2008)

George Grimm, Buddhist Wisdom: The Mystery of the Self (2008)

Stephen J. Laumakis, An Introduction to Buddhist Philosophy (2008)

Sangharakshita, The Meaning of Conversion in Buddhism (2008)

Dharmachari Subhuti, Buddhism and Friendship (2008)

Sangharakshita, The Buddha's Noble Eightfold Path (2007)

Mark Siderits, Buddhism as Philosophy: An Introduction (2007)

Lama Shenpen Hookham, There's More to Dying Than Death: A Buddhist Perspective (2006)

Bruce Matthews, Craving and Salvation: A Study in Buddhist Soteriology (2006)

Sangharakshita, The Three Jewels: The Central Ideals of Buddhism (2006)

Jennifer Crawford, Spiritually-Engaged Knowledge: The Attentive Heart (2005)

John Taber (ed. & trans.), A Hindu Critique of Buddhist Epistemology: Kumarila on Perception (2005)

Fernando Tola & Carmen Dragonetti, On Voidness: A Study of Buddhist Nihilism (2005)

David Burton, Buddhism, Knowledge and Liberation: A Philosophical Study (2004)

Richard H. Jones, Mysticism and Morality: A New Look at Old Questions (2004)

Maitreyabandhu, Thicker Than Blood: Friendship on the Buddhist Path (2004)

Nagapriya, Exploring Karma and Rebirth (2004)

Sangharakshita, Buddha Mind (2004)

Sangharakshita, Living with Kindness: The Buddha's Teaching on Metta (2004)

John W. Schroeder, Skillful Means: The Heart of Buddhist Compassion (2004)

Brook Ziporyn, Being and Ambiguity: Philosophical Experiments with Tiantai Buddhism (2004)

Christina Feldman, Compassion: Listening to the Cries of the World (2003)

Vincent L. Wimbush & Richard Valantasis (eds.), Asceticism (2002)

Rupert Gethin, The Buddhist Path to Awakening: A Study of the Bodhi-Pakkhiya Dhamma (2001)

David J. Kalupahana, Buddhist Thought and Ritual (2001)

Michael C. Brannigan, The Pulse of Wisdom: The Philosophies of India, China, and Japan (1999)

Duncan Forbes, The Buddhist Pilgrimage, ed. Alex Wayman (1999)

Roger R. Jackson & John J. Makransky (eds.), Buddhist Theology: Critical Reflections by Contemporary Buddhist Scholars (1999)

Jamie Hubbard & Paul L. Swanson (eds.), Pruning the Bodhi Tree: The Storm over Critical Buddhism (1997)

Alex Wayman, Untying the Knots in Buddhism: Selected Essays (1997)

Newman Robert Glass, Working Emptiness: Toward a Third Reading of Emptiness in Buddhism and Postmodern Thought (1995)

Kaisa Puhakka, Knowledge and Reality: A Comparative Study of Divine and Some Buddhist Logicians (1994)

Robert E. Buswell & Robert M. Gimello (eds.), Paths to Liberation: The Marga and Its Transformations in Buddhist Thought (1992)

Jan Nattier, Once upon a Future Time: Studies in a Buddhist Prophecy of Decline (1992)

John M. Koller & Patricia Koller (eds.), Sourcebook in Asian Philosophy (1991)

Gail Hinich Sutherland, The Disguises of the Demon: The Development of the Yaksa in Hinduism and Buddhism (1991)

Gregory Darling, An Evaluation of the Vedantic Critique of Buddhism (1987)

Martin Willson, Rebirth and the Western Buddhist (1987)

Alphonse Verdu, The Philosophy of Buddhism: A "Totalistic" Synthesis (1981)

John r. carter, dhamma: western academic and sinhalese buddhist interpretations: a study of a religious concept (1978).

W.H. Weeraratne, Individual and Society in Buddhism (1977)

David J. Kalupahana, Buddhist Philosophy: A Historical Analysis (1976)

William M. McGovern, A Manual of Buddhist Philosophy (1976)

David J. Kalupahana, Causality: The Central Philosophy of Buddhism (1975)

Francis Story, Rebirth as Doctrine and Experience: Essays and Case Studies (1975)

Junjiro Takakusu, Wing-Tsit Chan & Charles A. Moore (eds.), The Essentials of Buddhist Philosophy (1975)

John E. Blofeld, Beyond the Gods: Taoist and Buddhist Mysticism (1974)

Herbert V. Guenther, Buddhist Philosophy in Theory and Practice (1972)

Daigan L. Matsunaga & Alicia Matsunaga, The Buddhist Concept of Hell (1971)

Ven. nyanaponika & maurice walshe (eds.), pathways of buddhist thought: essays from the wheel (1971).

T. Stcherbatsky, The Central Conception of Buddhism and the Meaning of the Word "Dharma" (1961)

This book is a collection of essays by Mark Siderits on topics in Indian Buddhist philosophy. The essays are divided into six main systematic sections, dealing with realism and anti-realism, further problems in metaphysics and logic, philosophy of language, epistemology, ethics, and specific discussions of the interaction between Buddhist and classical Indian philosophy. Each of the essays is followed by a postscript Siderits has written specifically for this volume, which make it possible to connect essays of the volume with each other, showing thematic interrelations, or locating them relative to the development of Siderits’s thought. New works have been published, new translations have come out, and additional connections have been discovered. The postscripts make it possible to acquaint the reader with the most important of these developments.

This book is the most comprehensive single volume on the subject available. It offers the very latest scholarship to create a wide-ranging survey of the most important ideas, problems, and debates in the history of Buddhist philosophy. Encompasses the broadest treatment of Buddhist philosophy available, covering social and political thought, meditation, ecology and contemporary issues and applications Each section contains overviews and cutting-edge scholarship that expands readers understanding of the breadth and diversity of Buddhist thought. Broad coverage of topics allows flexibility to instructors in creating a syllabus. Essays provide valuable alternative philosophical perspectives on topics to those available in Western traditions.

This book examines how the Brahmanical tradition of Purva Mimamsa and the writings of the seventh-century Buddhist Madhyamika philosopher Candrakirti challenged dominant Indian Buddhist views of epistemology. Arnold retrieves these two very different but equally important voices of philosophical dissent, showing them to have developed highly sophisticated and cogent critiques of influential Buddhist epistemologists such as Dignaga and Dharmakirti. His analysis—developed in conversation with modern Western philosophers like William Alston and J.L. Austin—offers an innovative reinterpretation of the Indian philosophical tradition, while suggesting that pre-modern Indian thinkers have much to contribute to contemporary philosophical debates.

Buddhism is essentially a teaching about liberation - from suffering, ignorance, selfishness and continued rebirth. Knowledge of 'the way things really are' is thought by many Buddhists to be vital in bringing about this emancipation. This book is a philosophical study of the notion of liberating knowledge as it occurs in a range of Buddhist sources. Burton assesses the common Buddhist idea that knowledge of the three characteristics of existence (impermanence, not-self and suffering) is the key to liberation. It argues that this claim must be seen in the context of the Buddhist path and training as a whole. Detailed attention is also given to anti-realist, sceptical and mystical strands within the Buddhist tradition, all of which make distinctive claims about liberating knowledge.

Ecology, Economics, Globalization, and the Environment

Susan Bauer-Wu, A Future We Can Love: How We Can Reverse the Climate Crisis with the Power of Our Hearts & Minds (2023)

Susan Murphy, A Fire Runs Through All Things: Zen Koans for Facing the Climate Crisis (2023)

Trine Brox & Elizabeth Williams-Oerberg (eds.), Buddhism and Waste: The Excess, Discard and Afterlife of Buddhist Consumption (2022)

Daniel Capper, Buddhist Ecological Protection of Space: A Guide for Sustainable Off-Earth Travel (2022)

Jeanine M. Canty, Returning the Self to Nature: Undoing Our Collective Narcissism and Healing Our Planet (2022)

Daniel Capper, Roaming Free Like a Deer: Buddhism and the Natural World (2022)

David Hinton, Wild Mind, Wild Earth: Our Place in the Sixth Extinction (2022)

Joel Magnuson, The Dharma and Socially Engaged Buddhist Economics (2022)

Christoph Brumann et al (eds.), Monks, Money, and Morality: The Balancing Act of Contemporary Buddhism (2021)

Josep M. Coll, Buddhist and Taoist Systems Thinking: The Natural Path to Sustainable Transformation (2021)

Sallie B. King, Buddhist Visions of the Good Life for All (2021)

Gábor Kovács, The Value Orientations of Buddhist and Christian Entrepreneurs: A Comparative Perspective on Spirituality and Business Ethics (2021)

Shantigarbha, The Burning House: A Buddhist Response to the Climate and Ecological Emergency (2021)

Trine Brox & Elizabeth Williams-Oerberg, Buddhism and Business: Merit, Material Wealth, and Morality in the Global Market Economy (2020)

Alex John Catanese, Buddha in the Marketplace: The Commodification of Buddhist Objects in Tibet (2020)

Ernest C.H. Ng, Introduction to Buddhist Economics: The Relevance of Buddhist Values in Contemporary Economy and Society (2020)

Geoffrey Barstow (ed.), The Faults of Meat: Tibetan Buddhist Writings on Vegetarianism (2019)

Geoffrey Barstow, Food of Sinful Demons: Meat, Vegetarianism, and the Limits of Buddhism in Tibet (2019)

Candi K. Cann (ed.), Dying to Eat: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Food, Death, and the Afterlife (2019)

Gergely Hidas, A Buddhist Ritual Manual on Agriculture: A Critical Edition (2019)

Stephanie Kaza, Green Buddhism: Practice and Compassionate Action in Uncertain Times (2019)

Belden C. Lane, The Great Conversation: Nature and the Care of the Soul (2019)

Clair Brown, Buddhist Economics: An Enlightened Approach to the Dismal Science (2018)

Shravasti Dhammika, Nature and the Environment in Early Buddhism (2018)

Karine Gagné, Caring for Glaciers: Land, Animals, and Humanity in the Himalayas (2018)

Willis J. Jenkins, Mary Evelyn Tucker, and John Grim (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology (2018)

Vajragupta, Wild Awake: Alone, Offline and Aware in Nature (2018)

Whitney Bauman, Richard Bohannon, and Kevin O'Brien (eds.), Grounding Religion: A Field Guide to the Study of Religion and Ecology, 2nd ed. (2017)

Caroline Brazier, Ecotherapy in Practice: A Buddhist Model (2017)

J. Baird Callicott & James McRae (eds.), Japanese Environmental Philosophy (2017)

David E. Cooper & Simon P. James, Buddhism, Virtue and Environment (2017)

Simon P. James, Zen Buddhism and Environmental Ethics (2017)

Bodhipaksa, Vegetarianism: A Buddhist View (2016)

Padmasiri De Silva, Environmental Philosophy and Ethics in Buddhism (2016)

Todd LeVasseur et al (eds.), Religion and Sustainable Agriculture: World Spiritual Traditions and Food Ethics (2016)

Daniel P. Scheid, The Cosmic Common Good: Religious Grounds for Ecological Ethics (2016)

J. Baird Callicott & James McRae (eds.), Environmental Philosophy in Asian Traditions of Thought (2015)

Ugo Dessì, Japanese Religions and Globalization (2015)

Vaddhaka Linn, The Buddha on Wall Street: What's Wrong with Capitalism and What We Can Do About It (2015)

Joan Marques, Business and Buddhism (2015)

James Stewart, Vegetarianism and Animal Ethics in Contemporary Buddhism (2015)

Whitney A. Bauman, Religion and Ecology: Developing a Planetary Ethic (2014)

James Mark Shields (ed.), Buddhist Responses to Globalization (2014)

Susan M. Darlington, The Ordination of a Tree: The Thai Buddhist Environmental Movement (2013)

Tariq Jazeel, Sacred Modernity: Nature, Environment and the Postcolonial Geographies of Sri Lankan Nationhood (2013)

Bhikkhu Nyanasobhano, Landscapes of Wonder: Discovering Buddhist Dhamma in the World Around Us (2013)

Leslie E. Sponsel, Spiritual Ecology: A Quiet Revolution (2012)

Pragati Sahni, Environmental Ethics in Buddhism: A Virtues Approach (2011)

David M. Engel & Jaruwan S. Engel, Tort, Custom, and Karma: Globalization and Legal Consciousness in Thailand (2010)

Roger S. Gottlieb (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Ecology (2010)

Lin Jensen, Deep Down Things: The Earth in Celebration and Dismay (2010)

Richard Payne, How Much is Enough? Buddhism, Consumerism, and the Human Environment (2010)

Thomas Berry, The Sacred Universe: Earth, Spirituality, and Religion, ed. Mary Evelyn Tucker (2009)

Peter D. Hershock, Buddhism in the Public Sphere: Reorienting Global Interdependence (2009)

John Stanley et al (eds.), A Buddhist Response to the Climate Emergency (2009)

Ananda W. P. Guruge, Buddhism, Economics and Science: Further Studies in Socially Engaged Humanistic Buddhism (2008)

Stephanie Kaza, Mindfully Green: A Personal and Spiritual Guide to Whole Earth Thinking (2008)

Bhikkhu Basnagoda Rahula, The Buddha's Teachings on Prosperity: At Home, At Work, in the World (2008)

Lloyd Field, Business and the Buddha: Doing Well by Doing Good (2007)

Bhikkhu Nyanasobhano, Available Truth: Excursions into Buddhist Wisdom and the Natural World (2007)

Lisa Kemmerer, In Search of Consistency: Ethics and Animals (2006)

Kirkpatrick Sale, After Eden: The Evolution of Human Domination (2006)

Paul Waldau & Kimberley Christine Patton (eds.), A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics (2006)

Sulak Sivaraksa, Conflict, Culture, Change: Engaged Buddhism in a Globalizing World (2005)

Stuart Chandler, Establishing a Pure Land on Earth: The Foguang Buddhist Perspective on Modernization and Globalization (2004)

Linda Learman, Buddhist Missionaries in the Era of Globalization (2004)

Roger S. Gottlieb, This Sacred Earth: Religion, Nature, Environment, 2nd ed. (2003)

Joanna Macy, World As Lover, World As Self: Courage for Global Justice and Ecological Renewal (2003)

Paul Waldau, The Specter of Speciesism: Buddhist and Christian Views of Animals (2001)

Stephanie Kaza & Kenneth Kraft (eds.), Dharma Rain: Sources of Buddhist Environmentalism (2000)

Tony Page, Buddhism and Animals: A Buddhist Vision of Humanity's Rightful Relationship with the Animal Kingdom (1999)

Laurel Kearns & Catherine Keller (eds.), Ecospirit: Religions and Philosophies for the Earth (2007)

Mary E. Tucker & Duncan R. Williams (eds.), Buddhism and Ecology: The Interconnection of Dharma and Deeds (1997)

Christopher Key Chapple, Nonviolence to Animals, Earth, and Self in Asian Traditions (1993)

Martine Batchelor & Kerry Brown (eds.), Buddhism and Ecology (1992)

Allan Hunt Badiner (ed.), Dharma Gaia: A Harvest of Essays in Buddhism and Ecology (1990)

Arne Naess, Ecology, Community, and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy, trans. David Rothenberg (1989)

In this study of the place of vegetarianism within Tibetan religiosity, Geoffrey Barstow explores the tension between Buddhist ethics and Tibetan cultural norms to offer a novel perspective on the spiritual and social dimensions of meat eating. Barstow offers a detailed analysis of the debates over meat eating and vegetarianism, from the first references to such a diet in the tenth century through the Chinese invasion in the 1950s. He discusses elements of Tibetan Buddhist thought, but also looks beyond religious attitudes to examine the cultural, economic, and environmental factors that oppose the Buddhist critique of meat, including Tibetan concepts of medicine and health, food scarcity, the display of wealth, and idealized male gender roles. Barstow argues that the issue of meat eating was influenced by a complex interplay of factors, with religious perspectives largely supporting vegetarianism while practical concerns and secular ideals pulled in the other direction.

Clair Brown, professor of economics at UC Berkeley and a practicing Buddhist, has developed a holistic model, one based on the notion that quality of life should be measured by more than national income. Brown advocates an approach to organizing the economy that embraces rather than skirts questions of values, sustainability, and equity, and incorporates the Buddhist emphasis on interdependence, shared prosperity, and happiness into her vision for a sustainable and compassionate world. Buddhist economics leads us to think mindfully as we go about our daily activities, and offers a way to appreciate how our actions affect the well-being of those around us. By replacing the endless cycle of desire with more positive collective activities, we can make our lives more meaningful as well as happier. This book represents an enlightened approach to our modern world infused with ancient wisdom, with benefits both personal and global, for generations to come.

This book 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. 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 well-being. This work 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.

This work explores alternative ways of leading in the aftermath of the Great Recession and the many stories of fraud and greed that emerged. The book explores shifts in business perspectives as more value is placed on soft skills like emotional intelligence and listening, and introduces the reader to the principles in Buddhist philosophy that can be applied in the workplace. Marques explores the value of applying the positive psychology of Buddhism to work settings. She outlines the ways in which it offers highly effective solutions to addressing important management and organizational behavior related issues, but also flags up critical areas for caution. For example, Buddhism is non-confrontational, and promotes detachment. How can business leaders negotiate these principles in light of the demands of modern day pressures? The book includes end of chapter questions to promote reflection and critical thinking, and examples of Buddhist leaders in action. It will prove a captivating read for students of organizational behavior, management, leadership, diversity and ethics.

Andy Rotman, Hungry Ghosts (2021)

Eric Huntington, Creating the Universe: Depictions of the Cosmos in Himalayan Buddhism (2019)

Rebecca Redwood French, The Golden Yoke: The Legal Cosmology of Buddhist Tibet (2002)

Akira Sadakata, Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins (1997)

Jamgon K.L. Taye, Myriad Worlds: Buddhist Cosmology in Abhidharma, Kalacakra, and Dzog-chen (1995)

Randy Kloetzli, Buddhist Cosmology: From Single World System to Pure Land: Science and Theology in the Images of Motion and Light (1983)

Frank E. Reynolds & Mani B. Reynolds (trans.), Three Worlds According to King Ruang: A Thai Buddhist Cosmology (1982)

Peter Singer & Shih Chao-Hwei, The Buddhist and the Ethicist: Conversations on Effective Altruism, Engaged Buddhism, and How to Build a Better World (2023)

Jay L. Garfield, Buddhist Ethics: A Philosophical Exploration (2021)

Daniel Cozort & James Mark Shields (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Buddhist Ethics (2018)

Jake H. Davis (ed.), A Mirror Is for Reflection: Understanding Buddhist Ethics (2017)

The Cowherds, Moonpaths: Ethics and Emptiness (2015)

Dharmachari Subhuti, Mind in Harmony: A Guide to the Psychology of Buddhist Ethics (2015)

Charles Goodman, Consequences of Compassion: An Interpretation and Defense of Buddhist Ethics (2014)

Christopher W. Gowans, Buddhist Moral Philosophy: An Introduction (2014)

Alexus McLeod, Understanding Asian Philosophy: Ethics in the Analects, Zhuangzi, Dhammapada, and the Bhagavad Gita (2014)

Subhadramati, Not About Being Good: A Practical Guide to Buddhist Ethics (2013)

Dale Wright, The Six Perfections: Buddhism and the Cultivation of Character (2011)

Charles S. Prebish (ed.), Destroying Mara Forever: Buddhist Ethics Essays in Honor of Damien Keown (2010)

Susanne Mrozik, Virtuous Bodies: The Physical Dimensions of Morality in Buddhist Ethics (2007)

Hari Shankar Prasad, The Centrality of Ethics in Buddhism: Exploratory Essays (2007)

Pamela Bloom, The Healing Power of Compassion: The Essence of Buddhist Acts (2006)

Karma Lekshe Tsomo, Into the Jaws of Yama, Lord of Death: Buddhism, Bioethics, and Death (2006)

Damien Keown, Buddhist Ethics: A Very Short Introduction (2005)

Sangharakshita, Know Your Mind: The Psychological Dimension of Ethics in Buddhism (2004)

Jeffrey Hopkins, Cultivating Compassion: A Buddhist Perspective (2002)

Gananath Obeyesekere, Imagining Karma: Ethical Transformation in Amerindian, Buddhist, and Greek Rebirth (2002)

Peter Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics: Foundations, Values, and Issues (2000)

Damien Keown (ed.), Contemporary Buddhist Ethics (2000)

Damien Keown (ed.), Buddhism and Abortion (1998)

Hammalawa Saddhatissa, Buddhist Ethics (1997)

Peggy Morgan & Clive Lawton (eds.), Ethical Issues in Six Religious Traditions (1996)

Damien Keown, Buddhism and Bioethics (1995)

Phillip Olson, The Discipline of Freedom: A Kantian View of the Role of Moral Precepts in Zen Practice (1993)

Damien Keown, The Nature of Buddhist Ethics (1992)

William R. LaFleur, Liquid Life: Abortion and Buddhism in Japan (1992)

Charles W. Fu & Sandra A. Wawrytko (eds.), Buddhist Ethics and Modern Society (1991)

Bruce Reichenbach, The Law of Karma: A Philosophical Study (1990)

Russell F. Sizemore & Donald K. Swearer (eds.), Ethics, Wealth and Salvation: A Study in Buddhist Social Ethics (1989)

Toshiichi Endo, Dana: The Development of Its Concept and Practice (1987)

G.S. Misra, The Development of Buddhist Ethics (1984)

Robert Aitken, The Mind of Clover: Essays in Zen Buddhist Ethics (1982)

Roderick Hindery, Comparative Ethics in Hindu and Buddhist Traditions (1978)

Michael Pye, Skilful Means: A Concept in Mahayana Buddhism (1978)

Unto Tahtinen, Ahimsa: Non-Violence in Indian Tradition (1976)

Shundo Tachibana, The Ethics of Buddhism (1975)

Winston King, In the Hope of Nibbana: An Essay on Theravada Buddhist Ethics (1964)

All the varied forms of Buddhism embody an ethical core that is remarkably consistent. Articulated by the historical Buddha in his first sermon, this moral core is founded on the concept of karma--that intentions and actions have future consequences for an individual--and is summarized as Right Speech, Right Action, and Right Livelihood, three of the elements of the Eightfold Path. Although they were later elaborated and interpreted in a multitude of ways, none of these core principles were ever abandoned. This work provides a comprehensive overview of the field of Buddhist ethics in the twenty-first century. It discusses the foundations of Buddhist ethics, focusing on karma and the precepts for abstinence from harming others, stealing, and intoxication. It considers ethics in the different Buddhist traditions and the similarities they share, and compares Buddhist ethics to Western ethics and the psychology of moral judgments. The volume also investigates Buddhism and society, analysing economics, environmental ethics, and Just War ethics. The final section focuses on contemporary issues surrounding Buddhist ethics, including gender, sexuality, animal rights, and euthanasia.

Here is a lucid, accessible, and inspiring guide to the six perfections--Buddhist teachings about six dimensions of human character that require "perfecting": generosity, morality, tolerance, energy, meditation, and wisdom. Drawing on the Diamond Sutra, the Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom, and other essential Mahayana texts, Dale Wright shows how these teachings were understood and practiced in classical Mahayana Buddhism and how they can be adapted to contemporary life in a global society. What would the perfection of generosity look like today, for example? What would it mean to give with neither ulterior motives nor naiveté? Devoting a separate chapter to each of the six perfections, Wright combines sophisticated analysis with real-life applications. Buddhists have always stressed self-cultivation and the freedom of human beings to shape their own lives. For those interested in ideals of human character and practices of self-cultivation, this work offers invaluable guidance.

This book explores the Buddhist view of death and its implications for contemporary bioethics. Writing primarily from within the Tibetan tradition, Tsomo discusses Buddhist notions of human consciousness and personal identity and how these figure in the Buddhist view of death. Beliefs about death and enlightenment and states between life and death are also discussed. Tsomo goes on to examine such hot-button topics as cloning, abortion, assisted suicide, euthanasia, organ donation, genetic engineering, and stem-cell research within a Buddhist context, introducing new ways of thinking about these highly controversial issues.

With this work, 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 he compares responses to the most fundamental questions of human existence, the author challenges readers to reexamine accepted ideas about death, cosmology, morality, and eschatology. Obeyesekere's comprehensive inquiry shows that diverse societies have come through independent invention or borrowing to believe in reincarnation as an integral part of their larger cosmological systems. The author brings together into a coherent methodological framework the thought of such diverse thinkers as Weber, Wittgenstein, and Nietzsche. In a contemporary intellectual context that celebrates difference and cultural relativism, this book makes a case for disciplined comparison, a humane view of human nature, and a theoretical understanding of "family resemblances" and differences across great cultural divides.

Gender, Sexuality, Reproduction, and Children

Toni Pressley-Sanon, Lifting As They Climb: Black Women Buddhists and Collective Liberation (2024)

Megan Bryson & Kevin Buckelew, eds., Buddhist Masculinities (2023)

Vanessa R. Sasson, The Gathering: A Story of the First Buddhist Women (2023)

Bhikkhu Analayo, Daughters of the Buddha: Teachings by Ancient Indian Women (2022)

Jacoby Ballard, A Queer Dharma: Yoga and Meditations for Liberation (2022)

Ute Hüsken, Laughter, Creativity, and Perseverance: Female Agency in Buddhism and Hinduism (2022)

Elisabeth A. Benard, The Sakya Jetsunmas: The Hidden World of Tibetan Female Lamas (2022)

Darcy Flynn (ed.), Buddhism and Women: In the Middle Way (2022)

Kodo Nishimura, This Monk Wears Heels: Be Who You Are (2022)

Rachael Stevens, Red Tara: The Female Buddha of Power and Magnetism (2022)

Stephanie Guyer-Stevens & Françoise Pommaret, Divine Messengers: The Untold Story of Bhutan's Female Shamans (2021)

Alice Collett, I Hear Her Words: An Introduction to Women in Buddhism (2021)

Wendy Garling, The Woman Who Raised the Buddha: The Extraordinary Life of Mahaprajapati (2021)

Carola Roloff, The Buddhist Nun´s Ordination in the Tibetan Canon: Possibilities of the Revival of the Mulasarvastivada Bhiksuni Lineage (2021)

Vanessa R. Sasson, Yasodhara and the Buddha (2021)

Mayumi Oda, Sarasvati's Gift: The Autobiography of Mayumi Oda - Artist, Activist, and Modern Buddhist Revolutionary (2020)

Karma Lekshe Tsomo, Women in Buddhist Traditions (2020)

Matty Weingast, The First Free Women: Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns (2020)

Jan Willis, Dharma Matters: Women, Race, and Tantra (2020)

Sokthan Yeng, Buddhist Feminism: Transforming Anger Against Patriarchy (2020)

Anne Cushman, The Mama Sutra: A Story of Love, Loss, and the Pain of Motherhood (2019)

Martin Seeger, Gender and the Path to Awakening: Hidden Histories of Nuns in Modern Thai Buddhism (2018)

Karma Lekshe Tsomo (ed.), Buddhist Feminisms and Femininities (2019)

Gendun Chopel, The Passion Book: A Tibetan Guide to Love & Sex, trans. Donald S. Lopez, Jr. (2018)

Pamela Ayo Yetunde, Object Relations, Buddhism, and Relationality in Womanist Practical Theology (2018)

Amy Paris Langenberg, Birth in Buddhism: The Suffering Fetus and Female Freedom (2017)

Karen Muldoon-Hules, Brides of the Buddha: Nuns' Stories from the Avadanasataka (2017)

Bhikkhu Analayo, The Foundation History of the Nuns' Order (2016)

Anna Andreeva & Dominic Steavu (eds.), Transforming the Void: Embryological Discourse and Reproductive Imagery in East Asian Religions (2016)

Wendy Garling, Stars at Dawn: Forgotten Stories of Women in the Buddha's Life (2016)

Kamalamani, Other Than Mother: Choosing Childlessness with Life in Mind (2016)

Ashley Thompson, Engendering the Buddhist State: Territory, Sovereignty and Sexual Difference in the Inventions of Angkor (2016)

Pascale Engelmajer, Women in Pali Buddhism: Walking the Spiritual Paths in Mutual Dependence (2015)

Rosemarie Freeney Harding & Rachel Elizabeth Harding, Remnants: A Memoir of Spirit, Activism, and Mothering (2015)

Jennifer McWeeny & Ashby Butnor (eds.), Asian and Feminist Philosophies in Dialogue: Liberating Traditions (2014)

Andrea Miller (ed.), Buddha's Daughters: Teachings from Women Who Are Shaping Buddhism in the West (2014)

Karma Lekshe Tsomo (ed.), Eminent Buddhist Women (2014)

Kathryn R. Blackstone, Women in the Footsteps of the Buddha: Struggle for Liberation in the Therigatha (2013)

Florence Caplow & Susan Moon (eds.), The Hidden Lamp: Stories from Twenty-Five Centuries of Awakened Women (2013)

Nirmala S. Salgado, Buddhist Nuns and Gendered Practice: In Search of the Female Renunciant (2013)

Bardwell L. Smith, Narratives of Sorrow and Dignity: Japanese Women, Pregnancy Loss, and Modern Rituals of Grieving (2013)

Reiko Ohnuma, Ties That Bind: Maternal Imagery and Discourse in Indian Buddhism (2012)

Vanessa R. Sasson (ed.), Little Buddhas: Children and Childhoods in Buddhist Texts and Traditions (2012)

Paula Arai, Bringing Zen Home: The Healing Heart of Japanese Women's Rituals (2011)

Hsiao-Lan Hu, This-Worldly Nibbana: A Buddhist-Feminist Social Ethic for Peacemaking in the Global Community (2011)

Lori Rachelle Meeks, Hokkeji and the Reemergence of Female Monastic Orders in Premodern Japan (2010)

Thea Mohr & Jampa Tsedroen (eds.), Dignity and Discipline: Reviewing Full Ordination for Buddhist Nuns (2010)

Mohan Wijayaratna, Buddhist Nuns: The Birth and Development of a Women's Monastic Order (2010)

Christina Feldman, Woman Awake: Women Practicing Buddhism (2009)

Rita M. Gross, A Garland of Feminist Reflections: Forty Years of Religious Exploration (2009)

Grace Schireson, Zen Women: Beyond Tea Ladies, Iron Maidens, and Macho Masters (2009)

Andrea Whittaker, Abortion, Sin and the State in Thailand (2009)

Frances Mary Garrett, Religion, Medicine and the Human Embryo in Tibet (2008)

Sara Burns, A Path for Parents: What Buddhism Can Offer (2007)

Peter N. Gregory & Susanne Mrozik (eds.), Women Practicing Buddhism: American Experiences (2007)

Maura O'Halloran, Pure Heart, Enlightened Mind: The Life and Letters of an Irish Zen Saint (2007)

Sallie Tisdale, Women of the Way: Discovering 2,500 Years of Buddhist Wisdom (2007)

Martine Batchelor & Son'gyong Sunim, Women in Korean Zen: Lives and Practices (2006)

Sandy Boucher, Dancing in the Dharma: The Life and Teachings of Ruth Denison (2006)

Wei-Yi Cheng, Buddhist Nuns in Taiwan and Sri Lanka: A Critique of the Feminist Perspective (2006)

Alexandra David-Néel, My Journey to Lhasa: The Classic Story of the Only Western Woman Who Succeeded in Entering the Forbidden City (2005)

Kim Gutschow, Being a Buddhist Nun: The Struggle for Enlightenment in the Himalayas (2004)

Karma Lekshe Tsomo, Buddhist Women and Social Justice: Ideals, Challenges, and Achievements (2004)

Bernard Faure, The Power of Denial: Buddhism, Purity and Gender (2003)

Beata Grant, Daughters of Emptiness: Poems of Chinese Buddhist Nuns (2003)

Hugh B. Urban, Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics, and Power in the Study of Religion (2003)

Martine Batchelor, Women on the Buddhist Path (2002)

Susan Murcott, First Buddhist Women: Poems and Stories of Awakening (2002)

Sid Brown, The Journey of One Buddhist Nun: Even Against the Wind (2001)

Rita M. Gross & Rosemary Radford Ruether, Religious Feminism and the Future of the Planet: A Christian-Buddhist Conversation (2001)

Ranjini Obeyesekere (trans.), Portraits of Buddhist Women: Stories from the Saddharmaratnaavaliya (2001)

Tsültrim Allione, Women of Wisdom (2000)

Sandy Boucher, Discovering Kwan Yin, Buddhist Goddess of Compassion: A Path Towards Clarity and Peace (2000)

Mandakranta Bose (ed.), Faces of the Feminine in Ancient, Medieval, and Modern India (2000)

Karma Lekshe Tsomo, Innovative Buddhist Women: Swimming Against the Stream (2000)

Karma Lekshe Tsomo, Buddhist Women Across Cultures: Realizations (1999)

Sandy Boucher, Opening the Lotus: A Woman's Guide to Buddhism (1998)

Alan Cole, Mothers and Sons in Chinese Buddhism (1998)

Bernard Faure, The Red Thread: Buddhist Approaches to Sexuality (1998)

Chamindaji gamage, buddhism and sensuality: as recorded in the theravada canon (1998).

Rita M. Gross, Soaring and Settling: Buddhist Perspectives on Contemporary Social and Religious Issues (1998)

Lenore Friedman & Susan Moon (eds.), Being Bodies: Buddhist Women on the Paradox of Embodiment (1997)

Helen Hardacre, Marketing the Menacing Fetus in Japan (1997)

Karma Lekshe Tsomo, Sisters in Solitude: Two Traditions of Buddhist Monastic Ethics for Women (1997)

Martine Batchelor, Walking on Lotus Flowers: Buddhist Women Living, Loving and Meditating (1996)

Marianne Dresser (ed.), Buddhist Women on the Edge: Contemporary Perspectives from the Western Frontier (1996)

Liz Wilson, Charming Cadavers: Horrific Figurations of the Feminine in Indian Buddhist Hagiographic Literature (1996)

Anne C. Klein, Meeting the Great Bliss Queen: Buddhists, Feminists, and the Art of the Self (1995)

Karma Lekshe Tsomo (ed.), Buddhism Through American Women's Eyes (1995)

L.p.n. perera, sexuality in ancient india: a study based on the pali vinayapitaka (1993).

Rita M. Gross, Buddhism after Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis, and Reconstruction of Buddhism (1992)

Susan Murcott, The First Buddhist Women (1992)

José Ignacio Cabezón (ed.), Buddhism, Sexuality, and Gender (1991)

I. B. Horner, Women under Primitive Buddhism: Laywomen and Almswomen (1990)

John Stevens, Lust for Enlightenment: Buddhism and Sex (1990)

Janice Willis (ed.), Feminine Ground: Essays on Women and Tibet (1989)

Sandy Boucher, Turning the Wheel: American Women Creating the New Buddhism (1988)

Karma Lekshe Tsomo (ed.), Sakyadhita: Daughters of the Buddha (1988)

Recent decades have seen a transnational agitation for better opportunities for Buddhist women. Many of the main players in this movement self-identify as feminists, but other participants in this movement may not know or use the language of feminism. In fact, many ordained Buddhist women say they seek higher ordination so that they might be better Buddhist practitioners, not for the sake of gender equality. Eschewing the backward projection of secular liberal feminist categories, this book describes the basic features of the Buddhist discourse of the female body, held more or less in common across sectarian lines, and still pertinent to ordained Buddhist women today. The textual focus of the study is an early-first-millennium Sanskrit Buddhist work, the "Descent into the Womb Scripture" or Garbhāvakrānti-sūtra. Drawing out the implications of this text, the author offers innovative arguments about the significance of childbirth and fertility in Buddhism, namely that birth is a master metaphor in Indian Buddhism; that Buddhist gender constructions are centrally shaped by Buddhist birth discourse; and that, by undermining the religious importance of female fertility, the Buddhist construction of an inauspicious, chronically impure, and disgusting femininity constituted a portal to a new, liberated, feminine life for Buddhist monastic women.

Based on extensive research in Sri Lanka and interviews with Theravada and Tibetan nuns from around the world, Salgado's groundbreaking study urges a rethinking of female renunciation. How are scholarly accounts complicit in reinscribing imperialist stories about the subjectivity of Buddhist women? How do key Buddhist "concepts" such as dukkha, samsara, and sila ground female renunciant practice? Salgado's provocative analysis questions the secular notion of the higher ordination of nuns as a political movement for freedom against patriarchal norms. Arguing that the lives of nuns defy translation into a politics of global sisterhood equal before law, she calls for more-nuanced readings of nuns' everyday renunciant practices.

Consideration of children in the academic field of Religious Studies is taking root, but Buddhist Studies has yet to take notice. This book brings together a wide range of scholarship and expertise to address the question of what role children have played in Buddhist literature, in particular historical contexts, and what role they continue to play in specific Buddhist contexts today. The volume is divided into two parts, one addressing the representation of children in Buddhist texts, the other children and childhoods in Buddhist cultures around the world. The ground-breaking contributions in this volume challenge the perception of irreconcilable differences between Buddhist idealism and family ties. This work will be an indispensable resource for students and scholars of Buddhism and Childhood Studies, and a catalyst for further research on the topic.

Rita M. Gross has long been acknowledged as a founder in the field of feminist theology. One of the earliest scholars in religious studies to discover how feminism affects that discipline, she is recognized as preeminent in Buddhist feminist theology. The essays in this book represent the major aspects of her work and provide an overview of her methodology in women's studies in religion and feminism. The introductory article, written specifically for this volume, summarizes the conclusions Gross has reached about gender and feminism after forty years of searching and exploring, and the autobiography, also written for this volume, narrates how those conclusions were reached. These articles reveal the range of scholarship and reflection found in Gross's work and demonstrate how feminist scholars in the 1970s shifted the paradigm away from an androcentric model of humanity and forever changed the way we study religion.

Enlightenment & Enlightened Beings

Dale S. Wright, What Is Buddhist Enlightenment? (2016)

Soon-il Hwang, Metaphor and Literalism in Buddhism: The Doctrinal History of Nirvana (2012)

Alan Sponberg & Helen Hardacre (eds.), Maitreya: The Future Buddha (2011)

Bhikkhu Analayo, The Genesis of the Bodhisattva Ideal (2010)

Steven Collins, Nirvana: Concept, Imagery, Narrative (2010)

Guang Xing, The Concept of the Buddha: Its Evolution from Early Buddhism to the Trikaya Theory (2010)

Jan Nattier, A Few Good Men: The Bodhisattva Path According to the Inquiry of Ugra (2005)

Sangharakshita, Wisdom Beyond Words: The Buddhist Vision of Ultimate Reality (2004)

Steven Collins, Nirvana and Other Buddhist Felicities: Utopias of the Pali Imaginaire (1998)

Ulrich Pagel, The Bodhisattvapitaka: Its Doctrines, Practices and Their Position in Mahayana Literature (1995)

Cheng Chien, Manifestation of the Tathagata: Buddhahood According to the Avatamsaka Sutra (1993)

Sallie B. King, Buddha Nature (1991)

David Seyfort Ruegg, Buddha-Nature, Mind and the Problem of Gradualism in a Comparative Perspective (1989)

Sung Bae Park, Buddhist Faith and Sudden Enlightenment (1983)

Nathan Katz, Buddhist Images of Human Perfection: The Arahant of the Sutta Pitaka compared with the Bodhisattva and the Mahasiddha (1982)

Leslie Kawamura (ed.), The Bodhisattva Doctrine in Buddhism (1981)

Theodor Stcherbatsky, The Conception of Buddhist Nirvana. With Sanskrit Text of the Madhyamaka-karika, 2nd rev. ed. (1977)

Har Dayal, The Bodhisattva Doctrine in Buddhist Sanskrit Literature (1970)

Rune E. A. Johansson, The Psychology of Nirvana: A Comparative Study (1970)

G.R. Welbon, The Buddhist Nirvana and Its Western Interpreters (1968)

Robert L. Slater, Paradox and Nirvana: A Study of Religious Ultimates with Special Reference to Burmese Buddhism (1951)

Julius Evola, The Doctrine of Awakening: The Attainment of Self-Mastery According to the Earliest Buddhist Texts (1943)

Law, Politics, War, and Violence

Stephanie Balkwill & James A. Benn (eds.), Buddhist Statecraft in East Asia (2022)

Tom Ginsburg & Benjamin Schonthal (eds.), Buddhism and Comparative Constitutional Law (2022)

William J. Long, A Buddhist Approach to International Relations: Radical Interdependence (2021)

George Yancy & Emily McRae (eds.), Buddhism and Whiteness: Critical Reflections (2019)

Michael Jerryson, If You Meet the Buddha on the Road: Essays on Buddhism, Politics, and Violence (2018)

D. Christian Lammerts, Buddhist Law in Burma: A History of Dhammasattha Texts and Jurisprudence (2018)

Padmasiri de Silva, The Psychology of Buddhism in Conflict Studies (2017)

Hiroko Kawanami (ed.), Buddhism and the Political Process (2016)

Matthew J. Moore, Buddhism and Political Theory (2016)

Wayne R. Husted & Damien Keown (eds.), Buddhism and Human Rights (2015)

Rebecca Redwood French & Mark A. Nathan (eds.), Buddhism and Law: An Introduction (2014)

Hiroko Kawanami & Geoffrey Samuel (eds.), Buddhism, International Relief Work, and Civil Society (2013)

Vincent Eltschinger, Caste and Buddhist Philosophy: Continuity of Some Buddhist Arguments against the Realist Interpretation of Social Denominations (2012)

Melvin McLeod (ed.), Mindful Politics: A Buddhist Guide to Making the World a Better Place (2012)

Vladimir Tikhonov & Torkel Brekke (eds.), Buddhism and Violence: Militarism and Buddhism in Modern Asia (2012)

Michael K. Jerryson & Mark Juergensmeyer (eds.), Buddhist Warfare (2010)

Carmen Meinert, Hans-Bernd Zöllner (eds.), Buddhist Approaches to Human Rights: Dissonances and Resonances (2010)

Brian D. Victoria, Zen at War (2006)

Susan Moon, Not Turning Away: The Practice of Engaged Buddhism (2004)

Brian D. Victoria, Zen War Stories (2003)

Tessa J. Bartholomeusz, In Defense of Dharma: Just-War Ideology in Buddhist Sri Lanka (2002)

Andrew Huxley, Religion, Law and Tradition: Comparative Studies in Religious Law (2002)

Daisaku Ikeda, For the Sake of Peace: Seven Paths to Global Harmony: A Buddhist Perspective (2002)

Ian Harris (ed.), Buddhism and Politics in Twentieth Century Asia (2001)

Jan E.M. Houben & Karel R. Van Kooj (eds.), Violence Denied: Violence, Non-Violence and the Rationalization of Violence in South Asian Cultural History (1999)

David R. Loy, The Great Awakening: A Buddhist Social Theory (1997)

Kenneth Kraft (ed.), Inner Peace, World Peace: Essays on Buddhism and Nonviolence (1992)

Glenn D. Paige & Sarah Gilliatt, Buddhism and Non-Violent Global Problem-Solving: Ulan Bator Explorations (1991)

Unto tahtinen, non-violent theories of punishment: indian and western (1983).

Burma and neighboring areas of Southeast Asia comprise the only region of the world to have developed a written corpus of Buddhist law claiming jurisdiction over all members of society. Yet in contrast with the extensive scholarship on Islamic and Hindu law, this tradition of Buddhist law has been largely overlooked. In fact, it is commonplace to read that Buddhism gave rise to no law aside from the vinaya, or monastic law. In this book, Lammerts upends this misperception and provides an intellectual and literary history of the dynamic jurisprudence of the dhammasattha legal genre between the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries. Based on a critical study of hundreds of little-known surviving dhammasattha and related manuscripts, the work demonstrates the centrality of law as a crucial discipline of Buddhist knowledge in precolonial Southeast Asia. Lammerts argues that there were multiple, sometimes contentious, modes of reckoning Buddhist jurisprudence and legal authority in the region and assesses these in the context of local cultural, textual, and ritual practices. Over time, the foundational jurisprudence of the genre underwent considerable reformulation in light of arguments raised by its critics, bibliographers, and historians, resulting in a reorientation from a cosmological to a more positivist conception of Buddhist law and legislation that had far-reaching implications for innovative forms of dhammasattha -related discourse on the eve of British colonialism. Lammerts' book shows how, despite such textual and theoretical transformations, late precolonial Burmese jurists continued to promote and justify the dhammasattha genre, and the role of law generally in Buddhism, as a vital aspect of the ongoing effort to protect and preserve the sāsana of Gotama Buddha.

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. This collection 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 preexisting 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.

Though traditionally regarded as a peaceful religion, Buddhism has a dark side. On multiple occasions over the past fifteen centuries, Buddhist leaders have sanctioned violence, and even war. The eight essays in this book focus on a variety of Buddhist traditions, from antiquity to the present, and show that Buddhist organizations have used religious images and rhetoric to support military conquest throughout history. Buddhist soldiers in sixth century China were given the illustrious status of Bodhisattva after killing their adversaries. In seventeenth century Tibet, the Fifth Dalai Lama endorsed a Mongol ruler's killing of his rivals. And in modern-day Thailand, Buddhist soldiers carry out their duties undercover, as fully ordained monks armed with guns. This work demonstrates that the discourse on religion and violence, usually applied to Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, can no longer exclude Buddhist traditions. The book examines Buddhist military action in Tibet, China, Korea, Japan, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, and shows that even the most unlikely and allegedly pacifist religious traditions are susceptible to the violent tendencies of man.

The "golden yoke" of Buddhist Tibet was the last medieval legal system still in existence in the middle of the twentieth century. This book reconstructs that system as a series of layered narratives from the memories of people who participated in the daily operation of law in the houses and courtyards the offices and courts of Tibet prior to 1959. The practice of law in this unique legal world, which lacked most of our familiar sign posts, ranged from the fantastic use of oracles in the search for evidence to the more mundane presentation of cases in court. Buddhism and law, two topics rarely intertwined in Western consciousness, are at the center of this work. The Tibetan legal system was based on Buddhist philosophy and reflected Buddhist thought in legal practice and decision making. For Tibetans, law is a cosmology, a kaleidoscopic patterning of relations which is constantly changing, recycling, and re-forming even as it integrates the universe and the individual into a timeless mandalic whole. This work causes us to rethink American legal culture. It argues that in the United States, legal matters are segregated into a separate space with rigidly defined categories. The legal cosmology of Buddhist Tibet brings into question both this autonomous framework and most of the presumptions we have about the very nature of law from precedent and res judicata to rule formation and closure.

The Literature of Buddhism

Michihiro Ama, The Awakening of Modern Japanese Fiction: Path Literature and the Interpretation of Buddhism (2021)

John Brehm, The Dharma of Poetry: How Poems Can Deepen Your Spiritual Practice and Open You to Joy (2021)

Karen Derris, Storied Companions: Cancer, Trauma, and Discovering Guides for Living in Buddhist Narratives (2021)

Ven. K.L. Dhammajoti, Reading Buddhist Sanskrit Texts: An Elementary Grammatical Guide, 4th ed. (2021)

Natalie Gummer (ed.), The Language of the Sutras: Essays in Honor of Luis Gómez (2021)

Stefan Larsson & Kristoffer af Edholm, Songs on the Road: Wandering Religious Poets in India, Tibet, and Japan (2021)

Eviatar Shulman, Visions of the Buddha: Creative Dimensions of Early Buddhist Scripture (2021)

Chunwen Hao, Dunhuang Manuscripts: An Introduction to Texts from the Silk Road (2020)

Rafal K. Stepien (ed.), Buddhist Literature as Philosophy, Buddhist Philosophy as Literature (2020)

Dominique Julien, Borges, Buddhism, and World Literature: A Morphology of Renunciation Tales (2019)

Naomi Appleton, Shared Characters in Jain, Buddhist and Hindu Narrative: Gods, Kings and Other Heroes (2016)

Hildegard Diemberger et al (eds.), Tibetan Printing: Comparison, Continuities, and Change (2016)

Naomi Appleton, Narrating Karma and Rebirth: Buddhist and Jain Multi-Life Stories (2015)

Jae-Seong Lee, Postmodern Ethics, Emptiness, and Literature (2015)

Lawrence Normand & Alison Winch (eds.), Encountering Buddhism in Twentieth-Century British and American Literature (2015)

Agnieszka Helman-Wazny, The Archaeology of Tibetan Books (2014)

Kurtis R. Schaeffer, The Culture of the Book in Tibet (2014)

Jinah Kim, Receptacle of the Sacred: Illustrated Manuscripts and the Buddhist Book Cult in South Asia (2013)

Richard S. Cohen, The Splendid Vision: Reading a Buddhist Sutra (2012)

Stephen C. Berkwitz et al (eds.), Buddhist Manuscript Cultures: Knowledge, Ritual, and Art (2011)

John Whalen-Bridge & Gary Storhoff (eds.), Writing as Enlightenment: Buddhist American Literature into the Twenty-First Century (2011)

John Whalen-Bridge & Gary Storhoff (eds.), The Emergence of Buddhist American Literature (2009)

Ralph Flores, Buddhist Scriptures as Literature: Sacred Rhetoric and the Uses of Theory (2008)

Richard F. Gombrich & Cristina Scherrer-Schaub (eds.), Buddhist Studies: Papers of the 12th World Sanskrit Conference, Vol. 8 (2008)

Deborah Klimburg-Salter et al (eds.), Text, Image and Song in Transdisciplinary Dialogue (2007)

Jeff Humphries, Reading Emptiness: Buddhism and Literature (1999)

Milton C. Winternitz, History of Indian Literature, Volume II: Buddhist and Jaina Literature (1999)

Kogen Mizuno, Buddhist Sutras: Origin, Development, Transmission (1989)

Donald S. Lopez (ed.), Buddhist Hermeneutics (1988)

Roy C. Amore & Larry D. Shinn (ed. & trans.), Lustful Maidens and Ascetic Kings: Buddhist and Hindu Stories of Life (1981)

Shinsho Hanayama, Bibliography on Buddhism (1961)

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.

In considering medieval illustrated Buddhist manuscripts as sacred objects of cultic innovation, this book explores how and why the South Asian Buddhist book-cult has survived for almost two millennia to the present. A book "manuscript" should be understood as a form of sacred space: a temple in microcosm, not only imbued with divine presence but also layered with the memories of many generations of users. Kim argues that illustrating a manuscript with Buddhist imagery not only empowered it as a three-dimensional sacred object, but also made it a suitable tool for the spiritual transformation of medieval Indian practitioners. Through a detailed historical analysis, she suggests that while Buddhism’s disappearance in eastern India was a slow and gradual process, the Buddhist book-cult played an important role in sustaining its identity. In addition, by examining the physical traces left by later Nepalese users and the contemporary ritual use of the book in Nepal, Kim shows how human agency was critical in perpetuating and intensifying the potency of a manuscript as a sacred object throughout time.

This work explores how religious and cultural practices in premodern Asia were shaped by literary and artistic traditions as well as by Buddhist material culture. This study of Buddhist texts focuses on the significance of their material forms rather than their doctrinal contents, and examines how and why they were made. Collectively, the book offers cross-cultural and comparative insights into the transmission of Buddhist knowledge and the use of texts and images as ritual objects in the artistic and aesthetic traditions of Buddhist cultures. Drawing on case studies from India, Gandhara, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Mongolia, China and Nepal, the chapters included investigate the range of interests and values associated with producing and using written texts, and the roles manuscripts and images play in the transmission of Buddhist texts and in fostering devotion among Buddhist communities. Contributions are by reputed scholars in Buddhist Studies and represent diverse disciplinary approaches from religious studies, art history, anthropology, and history.

This work connects ancient Buddhist attitudes and ideas with postmodern theory and aesthetics, concluding that the closest thing in Western culture to the Middle Way of Buddhism is not any sort of theory or philosophy, but the practice of literature. The book draws on scholarship and criticism in literary theory, philosophy, and science to speculate about the possible common ground between literary and Buddhist practices, aiming not so much to elucidate the ancient traditions of Buddhism as to seek ways in which literature might be integrated into a truly Western practice of Buddhism that would remain philosophically true to its Eastern roots.

Language, Logic, and Semiotics

Eun-Su Cho, Language and Meaning: Buddhist Interpretations of the "Buddha's Word" in Indian and East Asian Perspectives (2020)

Manel Herat (ed.), Buddhism and Linguistics: Theory and Philosophy (2017)

Sangharakshita, Metaphors, Magic, and Mystery: An Anthology of Writings and Teachings on Words and Their Relation to the Truth (2015)

Koji Tanaka et al (eds.), The Moon Points Back (2015)

Youxuan Wang, Buddhism and Deconstruction: Towards a Comparative Semiotics (2015)

Jayant Burde, Buddhist Logic and Quantum Dilemma (2012)

The Cowherds, Moonshadows: Conventional Truth in Buddhist Philosophy (2010)

Jay L. Garfield et al (eds.), Pointing at the Moon: Buddhism, Logic, Analytic Philosophy (2009)

Jin Y. Park (ed.), Buddhisms and Deconstructions (2006)

Alex Wayman, A Millennium of Buddhist Logic (1999)

Asanga tilakaratne, nirvana and ineffability: a study of the buddhist theory of reality and language (1993).

R.S.Y. Chi, Buddhist Formal Logic: A Study of Dignaga's Hetucakra and K'uei-chi's Great Commentary on the Nyayapravesa (1990)

Joan Stambaugh, The Real Is Not the Rational (1986)

G.M. Sprung (ed.), The Problem of Two Truths in Buddhism and Vedanta (1973)

T. Stcherbatsky, Buddhist Logic, 2 vols. (1962)

Meditation, Mindfulness, and Insight

David L. McMahan, Rethinking Meditation: Buddhist Meditative Practices in Ancient and Modern Worlds (2023)

Farah Godrej, Freedom Inside? Yoga and Meditation in the Carceral State (2022)

Bhikkhu Analayo, Developments in Buddhist Meditation Traditions: The Interplay Between Theory and Practice (2022)

L.S. Cousins, Meditations of the Pali Tradition: Illuminating Buddhist Doctrine, History, and Practice, ed. Sarah Shaw (2022)

Paul Dennison, Jhana Consciousness: Buddhist Meditation in the Age of Neuroscience (2022)

Geshe YongDong Losar, Calm Breath, Calm Mind: A Guide to the Healing Power of Breath, ed. Bernadette Wyton (2022)

B. Alan Wallace, The Art of Transforming the Mind: A Meditator’s Guide to the Tibetan Practice of Lojong (2022)

Karen O'Brien-Kop, Rethinking 'Classical Yoga' and Buddhism: Meditation, Metaphors and Materiality (2021)

Vajradevi, Uncontrived Mindfulness: Ending Suffering Through Attention, Curiosity, and Wisdom (2021)

B. Alan Wallace, Minding Closely: The Four Applications of Mindfulness (2021)

Bhikkhu Analayo, Introducing Mindfulness: The Buddhist Background and Practical Exercises (2020)

Bhikkhu Analayo, Mindfulness in Early Buddhism: Characteristics and Functions (2020)

Will Johnson, The Posture of Meditation: A Practical Manual for Meditators of All Traditions (2020)

Sarah Shaw, Mindfulness: Where It Comes From and What It Means (2020)

Bhikkhu Analayo, Mindfulness of Breathing: A Practice Guide and Translations (2019)

Tullio Giraldi, Psychotherapy, Mindfulness and Buddhist Meditation (2019)

Michal Pagis, Inward: Vipassana Meditation and the Embodiment of the Self (2019)

Paramananda, The Myth of Meditation: Restoring Imaginal Ground through Embodied Buddhist Practice (2019)

Ronald Purser, McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality (2019)

Bhikkhu Analayo, Satipatthana Meditation: A Practice Guide (2018)

John Blofeld, Gateway to Wisdom: Taoist and Buddhist Contemplative and Healing Yogas (2018)

Ratnaguna Hennessey, The Art of Reflection: A Guide to Thinking, Contemplation and Insight on the Buddhist Path (2018)

Hyun-soo Jeon, Samatha, Jhana, and Vipassana. Practice at the Pa-Auk Monastery: A Meditator's Experience, trans. HaNul Jun (2018)

Jack Kornfield & Joseph Goldstein, The Path of Insight Meditation (2018)

Jaime Kucinskas, The Mindful Elite: Mobilizing from the Inside Out (2018)

Dharmachari Shantigarbha, I'll Meet You There: A Practical Guide to Empathy, Mindfulness and Communication (2018)

Lenart Skof & Petri Berndtson (eds.), Atmospheres of Breathing (2018)

Henry Vyner, The Healthy Mind: Mindfulness, True Self, and the Stream of Consciousness (2018)

Bhikkhu Analayo, Mindfully Facing Disease and Death: Compassionate Advice from Early Buddhist Texts (2017)

Keren Arbel, Early Buddhist Meditation: The Four Jhanas as the Actualization of Insight (2017)

Guy Armstrong, Emptiness: A Practical Introduction for Meditators (2017)

Peter Doran, A Political Economy of Attention, Mindfulness and Consumption: Reclaiming the Mindful Commons (2017)

Halvor Eifring (ed.), Meditation and Culture: The Interplay of Practice and Context (2017)

Paramabandhu Groves & Jed Shamel, Mindful Emotion: A Short Course in Kindness (2017)

Bhikkhu Phra Khantipalo, Calm and Insight: A Buddhist Manual for Meditators (2017)

Erik Braun, The Birth of Insight: Meditation, Modern Buddhism, and the Burmese Monk Ledi Sayadaw (2016)

Bob Chisholm & Jeff Harrison (eds.), The Wisdom of Not-Knowing: Essays on Psychotherapy, Buddhism, and Life Experience (2016)

Mahasi Sayadaw, Manual of Insight, trans. Steve Armstrong (2016)

Sayadaw U. Tejaniya, When Awareness Becomes Natural: A Guide to Cultivating Mindfulness in Everyday Life (2016)

Bhikkhu Analayo, Compassion and Emptiness in Early Buddhist Meditation (2015)

Richard P. Boyle, Realizing Awakened Consciousness: Interviews with Buddhist Teachers and a New Perspective on the Mind (2015)

Leigh Brasington, Right Concentration: A Practical Guide to the Jhanas (2015)

Bhikkhu Analayo, Perspectives on Satipatthana (2014)

Manu Bazzano (ed.), After Mindfulness: New Perspectives on Psychology and Meditation (2014)

Amanda Ie et al (eds.), The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Mindfulness, 2 vols. (2014)

Sarah Shaw, The Spirit of Buddhist Meditation (2014)

Lama Dudjom Dorjee, Stillness, Insight, and Emptiness: Buddhist Meditation from the Ground Up (2013)

J. Mark G. Williams & Jon Kabat-Zinn (eds.), Mindfulness: Diverse Perspectives on Its Meaning, Origins and Applications (2013)

Jinananda, Meditating: A Buddhist View (2012)

Kamalashila, Buddhist Meditation: Tranquillity, Imagination and Insight (2012)

Joe Loizzo, Sustainable Happiness: The Mind Science of Well-Being, Altruism, and Inspiration (2012)

Sangharakshita, The Purpose and Practice of Buddhist Meditation: A Sourcebook of Teachings (2012)

Shaila Catherine, Wisdom Wide and Deep: A Practical Handbook for Mastering Jhana and Vipassana (2011)

Judith Simmer-Brown & Fran Grace (eds.), Meditation and the Classroom: Contemplative Pedagogy for Religious Studies (2011)

Cynthia Thatcher, Just Seeing: Insight Meditation and Sense-Perception (2011)

Bodhipaksa, Wildmind: A Step-by-Step Guide to Meditation (2010)

Arinna Weisman & Jean Smith, The Beginner's Guide to Insight Meditation (2010)

Thomas Cleary, Minding Mind: A Course in Basic Meditation (2009)

Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, Beyond Mindfulness in Plain English: An Introductory Guide to the Jhanas, ed. John Peddicord (2009)

Maitreyabandhu, Life with Full Attention: A Practical Course in Mindfulness (2009)

Stephen Snyder & Tina Rasmussen, Practicing the Jhanas: Traditional Concentration Meditation As Presented by the Ven. Pa Auk Sayadaw (2009)

Alexander Wynne, The Origin of Buddhist Meditation (2009)

Richard Shankman, The Experience of Samadhi: An In-Depth Exploration of Buddhist Meditation (2008)

Sarah Shaw, Introduction to Buddhist Meditation (2008)

Ajahn Brahmavamso, Ajahn Nyanadhammo, & Dharma Dorje, Walking Meditation: Three Expositions (2007)

Gregory Kramer, Insight Dialogue: The Interpersonal Path to Freedom (2007)

Toni Packer, The Silent Question: Meditating in the Stillness of Not-Knowing (2007)

Paramananda, The Body: The Art of Meditation (2007)

Ajahn Brahm, Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond: A Meditator's Handbook (2006)

Paramananda, Change Your Mind: A Practical Guide to Buddhist Meditation (2006)

Sarah Shaw, Buddhist Meditation: An Anthology of Texts from the Pali Canon (2006)

Vessantara, The Heart: The Art of Meditation (2006)

Kathleen McDonald, How to Meditate: A Practical Guide (2005)

Vessantara, The Breath: The Art of Meditation (2005)

Bhikkhu Analayo, Satipatthana: The Direct Path to Realization (2004)

Frits Koster, Liberating Insight: Introduction to Buddhist Psychology and Insight Meditation (2004)

Nagabodhi, Metta: The Practice of Loving Kindness (2004)

Larry Rosenberg, Breath by Breath: The Liberating Practice of Insight Meditation (2004)

Sangharakshita, Living with Awareness: A Guide to the Satipatthana Sutta (2004)

Daniel Odier, Meditation Techniques of the Buddhist and Taoist Masters (2003)

John Daishin Buksbazen, Zen Meditation in Plain English (2002)

Bhante Gunaratana, Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness: Walking the Path of the Buddha (2001)

Lewis Richmond, Work as a Spiritual Practice: A Practical Buddhist Approach to Inner Growth and Satisfaction on the Job (2000)

Mitchell Ginsberg, The Far Shore: Vipassana, the Practice of Insight (1999)

A. Charles Muller (trans.), The Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment: Korean Buddhism's Guide to Meditation (1999)

Chih-i, Stopping and Seeing: A Comprehensive Course in Buddhist Meditation trans. Thomas Cleary (1997)

Donald K. Swearer, Secrets of the Lotus: Studies in Buddhist Meditation (1997)

Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, Mindfulness in Plain English (1996)

Sayadaw U. Silananda, The Four Foundations of Mindfulness, ed. Ruth-Inge Heinze (1995)

Claude F. Whitmyer (ed.), Mindfulness and Meaningful Work: Explorations in Right Livelihood (1994)

Johannes Bronkhorst, The Two Traditions of Meditation in Ancient India (1993)

Joseph Goldstein, Insight Meditation: The Practice of Freedom (1993)

Amadeo Sole-Leris, Tranquillity and Insight: An Introduction to the Oldest Form of Buddhist Meditation (1992)

Charles Luk, Secrets of Chinese Meditation: Self-Cultivation by Mind Control As Taught in the Ch'an, Mahayana and Taoist Schools in China (1991)

Chögyam Trungpa, Meditation in Action (1991)

Geshe G. Lodro, Walking Through Walls: A Presentation of Tibetan Meditation (1990)

Joseph Goldstein, The Experience of Insight: A Simple and Direct Guide to Buddhist Meditation (1987)

Bhikkhu Nanamoli, Mindfulness of Breathing: Buddhist Texts from the Pāli Canon and Extracts from the Pali Commentaries (1982)

Nyanaponika Thera (ed. & trans.), The Heart of Buddhist Meditation (1973)

Western society has never been more interested in interiority. Indeed, it seems more and more people are deliberately looking inward—toward the mind, the body, or both. Pagis’s book focuses on one increasingly popular channel for the introverted gaze: vipassana meditation, which has spread from Burma to more than forty countries and counting. Lacing her account with vivid anecdotes and personal stories, Pagis turns our attention not only to the practice of vipassana but to the communities that have sprung up around it. This work is also a social history of the westward diffusion of Eastern religious practices spurred on by the lingering effects of the British colonial presence in India. At the same time Pagis asks knotty questions about what happens when we continually turn inward, as she investigates the complex relations between physical selves, emotional selves, and our larger social worlds. Her book sheds new light on evergreen topics such as globalization, social psychology, and the place of the human body in the enduring process of self-awareness.

Mindful meditation is now embraced in virtually all corners of society today, from K-12 schools to Fortune 100 companies, and its virtues extolled by national and international media almost daily. It is thought to benefit our health and overall well-being, to counter stress, to help children pay attention, and to foster creativity, productivity and emotional intelligence. Yet in the 1960s and 1970s meditation was viewed as a marginal, counter-cultural practice, or a religious ritual for Asian immigrants. How did mindfulness become mainstream? Kucinskas reveals who is behind the mindfulness movement, and the engine they built to propel mindfulness into public consciousness. Drawing on over a hundred first-hand accounts with top scientists, religious leaders, educators, business people and investors, Kucinskas shows how this highly accomplished, affluent group in America transformed meditation into an appealing set of contemplative practices. Rather than relying on confrontation and protest to make their mark and improve society, the contemplatives sought a cultural revolution by building elite networks and advocating the benefits of meditation across professions. But this idealistic myopia came to reinforce some of the problems it originally aspired to solve. A critical look at this Buddhist-inspired movement, this book explores how elite movements can spread and draws larger lessons for other social, cultural, and religious movements across institutions and organizations.

This book offers a new interpretation of the relationship between 'insight practice' (satipatthana) and the attainment of the four jhanas (i.e., right samadhi ), a key problem in the study of Buddhist meditation. The author challenges the traditional Buddhist understanding of the four jhanas as states of absorption, and shows how these states are the actualization and embodiment of insight (vipassana). It proposes that the four jhanas and what we call 'vipassana' are integral dimensions of a single process that leads to awakening. This book demonstrates that the distinction between the 'practice of serenity' (samatha-bhavana) and the 'practice of insight' (vipassana-bhavana) – a fundamental distinction in Buddhist meditation theory – is not applicable to early Buddhist understanding of the meditative path. It seeks to show that the common interpretation of the jhanas as 'altered states of consciousness', absorptions that do not reveal anything about the nature of phenomena, is incompatible with the teachings of the Pali Nikayas. By carefully analyzing the descriptions of the four jhanas in the early Buddhist texts in Pali, their contexts, associations and meanings within the conceptual framework of early Buddhism, the relationship between this central element in the Buddhist path and 'insight meditation' becomes revealed in all its power. This book will be of interest to scholars of Buddhist studies, Asian philosophies and religions, as well as serious practitioners of insight meditation.

Dharma practice comprises a wide range of wise instructions and skillful means. As a result, meditators may be exposed to a diversity of approaches to the core teachings and the meditative path--and that can be confusing at times. In this clear and accessible exploration, Dharma teacher and longtime meditator Richard Shankman unravels the mix of differing, sometimes conflicting, views and traditional teachings on how samadhi (concentration) is understood and taught. In part one, Richard Shankman explores the range of teachings and views about samadhi in the Theravada Pali tradition, examines different approaches, and considers how they can inform and enrich our meditation practice. Part two consists of a series of interviews with prominent contemporary Theravada and vipassana (insight) Buddhist teachers. These discussions focus on the practical experience of samadhi, bringing the theoretical to life and offering a range of applications.

Monasticism

Stephen J. Davis, Monasticism: A Very Short Introduction (2018)

Susan Andrews et al (eds.), Rules of Engagement: Medieval Traditions of Buddhist Monastic Regulation (2017)

Bhikkhu Khantipalo, Banner of the Arahants: Buddhist Monks and Nuns from the Buddha's Time Till Now (2016)

Jeffrey Samuels, Attracting the Heart: Social Relations and the Aesthetics of Emotion in Sri Lankan Monastic Culture (2016)

Malcolm Voyce, Foucault, Buddhism and Disciplinary Rules (2016)

Bhikkhu Nyanatusita, Analysis of the Bhikkhu Patimokkha (2014)

Bhikkhu Nyanatusita (ed. & trans.), The Bhikkhu Patimokkha: A Word by Word Translation (2014)

Tim Ward, What the Buddha Never Taught (2013)

Jonathan A. Silk, Managing Monks: Administrators and Administrative Roles in Indian Buddhist Monasticism (2008)

Jotiya Dhirasekera, Buddhist Monastic Discipline: A Study of Its Origin and Development in Relation to the Sutta and Vinaya Pitakas (2007)

Li Rongxi & Albert A. Dalia (trans.), Lives of Great Monks and Nuns (2006)

Koichi Shinohara & Phyllis Granoff, Speaking of Monks: From Benares to Beijing (2006)

William Bodiford (ed.), Going Forth: Visions of Buddhist Vinaya (2005)

Pierre Pichard & Francois Lagirarde, The Buddhist Monastery: A Cross-Cultural Survey (2003)

Ann Heirman, Rules for Nuns According to the Dharmaguptakavinaya: "The Discipline in Four Parts" (2002)

Venerable Bhikshuni Wu Yin, Choosing Simplicity: A Commentary on the Bhikshuni Pratimoksha, ed. Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron, trans. Bhikshuni Jendy Shih (2001)

W. Pachow, A Comparative Study of the Pratimoksa: On the Basis of its Chinese, Tibetan, Sanskrit, and Pali Versions (2000)

Charles S. Prebish, Buddhist Monastic Discipline: The Sanskrit Pratimoksa Sutras of the Mahasamghikas and Mulasarvastivadins (1996)

Charles S. Prebish, A Survey of Vinaya Literature, Volume One (1996)

Thanissaro Bhikkhu, The Buddhist Monastic Code, 2 vols. (1994)

Charles Wei-hsun Fu & Sandra A. Wawrytko (eds.), Buddhist Behavioral Codes and the Modern World (1994)

Gunaratne Panabokke, History of the Buddhist Sangha in India and Sri Lanka (1993)

Sunanda Putuwar, The Buddhist Sangha: Paradigm of the Ideal Human Society (1991)

Mohan Wijayaratna, Buddhist Monastic Life, according to the Texts of the Theravada Tradition (1990)

Walpola Rahula, The Heritage of the Bhikkhu (1987)

Heinz Bechert & Richard Gombrich (eds.), The World of Buddhism: Buddhist Monks and Nuns in Society and Culture (1984)

John C. Holt, Discipline: The Canonical Buddhism of the Vinayapitaka (1983)

Nandasena ratnapala (ed. & trans.), the katikavatas: laws of the buddhist order of ceylon from the 12th century to the 18th century (1971).

Nalinaksha Dutt, Early Monastic Buddhism, 2 vols. (1960)

Sukumar Dutt, Early Buddhist Monachism (1960)

Erich Frauwallner, The Earliest Vinaya and the Beginnings of Buddhist Literature (1956)

Recent years have seen heightened interest in the ritual, juridical, and generally practical aspects of the Buddhist tradition. The contributions to this edited volume build on this trend while venturing beyond the established boundaries of discourse in specialized academic disciplines, presenting state-of-the-art research on the vinaya in all of its breadth and depth. They do so not only by tracing Buddhist textual traditions but also by showcasing the vast variety of practices that are the object of such regulations and throw a new light on the social implications such protocols have had in South, Central, and East Asia.

Vinaya, one of the three main categories of Buddhist scripture, functions not only as a type of canon law, but also as a founding charter for Buddhist institutional practice in East Asia. In its role as a scriptural charter, vinaya has justified widely dissimilar approaches to religious life as Buddhist orders in different times and places have interpreted it in contradictory ways. In the resulting tension between scripture and practice, certain kinds of ceremonial issues acquire profound social, psychological, doctrinal, and soteriological significance in Buddhism. This collection focuses on these issues over a wide sweep of history--from early fifth-century China to modern Japan--to provide readers with a rich overview of the intersection of doctrinal, ritual, and institutional concerns in the development of East Asian Buddhist practices. Despite the crucial importance of vinaya, especially for understanding Buddhism in East Asia, very little scholarship in Western languages exists on this fascinating topic. The essays presented here, written by senior scholars in the field, address how actual people responded to local social and cultural imperatives by reading scripture in innovative ways to give new life to tradition. They place real people, practices, and institutions at the center of each account, revealing both diversity and unity in Buddhist customs.

This work discusses the precepts and lifestyle of fully ordained nuns within the Buddhist tradition. The ordination vows act as guidelines to promote harmony both within the individual and within the community by regulating and thereby simplifying one's relationships to other sangha members and laypeople, as well as to the needs of daily life. Observing these precepts and practicing the Buddhadharma brings incredible benefit to oneself and others. Since the nuns' precepts include those for monks and have additional rules for nuns, this book is useful for anyone interested in monastic life. As a record of women's struggle not only to achieve a life of self-discipline, but also to create harmonious independent religious communities of women, this volume is a pioneering work.

This book provides a vivid and detailed picture of the daily life and religious practices of Buddhist monks and nuns in the classic period of Theravada Buddhism. The author describes the way in which the Buddha's disciples institutionalized and ritualized his teachings about food, dress, money, chastity, solitude, and discipleship. This tradition represents an ideal of religious life that has been followed in India and South Asia for more than two thousand years. The introduction by Steven Collins describes Theravada Buddhist literature, discusses the issue of the historical reliability of the texts, and offers extensive suggestions for further reading. The book will be of interest to scholars and students in Asian studies, religious studies, anthropology, and history.

Medicine & Health

C. Pierce Salguero, A Global History of Buddhism and Medicine (2022)

C. Pierce Salguero & Andrew Macomber (eds.), Buddhist Healing in Medieval China and Japan (2020)

C. Pierce Salguero (ed.), Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Sources (2019)

Katja Triplett, Buddhism and Medicine in Japan: A Topical Survey (500-1600 CE) of a Complex Relationship (2019)

Thomas N. Patton, The Buddha's Wizards: Magic, Protection, and Healing in Burmese Buddhism (2018)

C. Pierce Salguero, Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Premodern Sources (2017)

C. Pierce Salguero, Traditional Thai Medicine: Buddhism, Animism, Yoga, Ayurveda (2016)

Jan Chozen Bays, Jizo Bodhisattva: Modern Healing & Traditional Buddhist Practice (2015)

Janet Gyatso, Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet (2015)

C. Pierce Salguero, Translating Buddhist Medicine in Medieval China (2014)

Andrew E. Goble, Confluences of Medicine in Medieval Japan: Buddhist Healing, Chinese Knowledge, Islamic Formulas, and Wounds of War (2011)

Paul Brenner, Buddha in the Waiting Room: Simple Truths about Health, Illness, and Healing (2007)

Michel Strickmann, Chinese Magical Medicine (2005)

Sharon Cameron, Beautiful Work: A Meditation on Pain (2000)

Raoul Birnbaum, The Healing Buddha (1980)

Pluralism & Tolerance: Buddhism & Other Religions

C.V. Jones (ed.), Buddhism and Its Religious Others: Historical Encounters and Representations (2022)

R. Michael Feener & Anne M. Blackburn (eds.), Buddhist and Islamic Orders in Southern Asia: Comparative Perspectives (2021)

Jijimon Alakkalam Joseph, Christian-Zen Dialogue: Sacred Stories As a Starting Point for Interfaith Dialogue (2021)

Yongho Francis Lee, Mysticism and Intellect in Medieval Christianity and Buddhism (2021)

Monica Sanford, Kalyanamitra: A Model for Buddhist Spiritual Care, Volume 1 (2021)

Douglas S. Duckworth, J. Abraham Vélez de Cea, & Elizabeth J. Harris (eds.), Buddhist Responses to Religious Diversity: Theravada and Tibetan Perspectives (2020)

Pehr Granqvist, Attachment in Religion and Spirituality: A Wider View (2020)

Harold Coward, Word, Chant, and Song: Spiritual Transformation in Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Sikhism (2019)

Peter Harvey, Buddhism and Monotheism (2019)

S. Mark Heim, Crucified Wisdom: Theological Reflection on Christ and the Bodhisattva (2018)

J. Abraham Velez de Cea, The Buddha and Religious Diversity (2017)

Kristin Beise Kiblinger, Buddhist Inclusivism: Attitudes Towards Religious Others (2017)

Anh Q. Tran (ed. & trans.), Gods, Heroes, and Ancestors: An Interreligious Encounter in Eighteenth-Century Vietnam (2017)

Gavin D'Costa & Ross Thompson (eds.), Buddhist-Christian Dual Belonging: Affirmations, Objections, Explorations (2016)

Hugh Nicholson, The Spirit of Contradiction in Christianity and Buddhism (2016)

Corinna Nicolaou, A None's Story: Searching for Meaning Inside Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam (2016)

John Raymaker, Bernard Lonergan's Third Way of the Heart and Mind: Bridging Some Buddhist-Christian-Muslim-Secularist Misunderstandings with a Global Secularity Ethics (2016)

Perry Schmidt-Leukel, Buddhism, Christianity and the Question of Creation: Karmic or Divine? (2016)

Alan Cole, Fetishizing Tradition: Desire and Reinvention in Buddhist and Christian Narratives (2015)

Gavin Flood, The Truth Within: A History of Inwardness in Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism (2015)

Jan van Bragt, Interreligious Affinities: Encounters with the Kyoto School and the Religions of Japan, ed. James W. Heisig et al (2014)

Donald S. Lopez, Jr. & Peggy McCracken, In Search of the Christian Buddha: How an Asian Sage Became a Medieval Saint (2014)

Paul Gwynne, Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad: A Comparative Study (2013)

Michael Pye & Robert Morgan (eds.), The Cardinal Meaning: Essays in Comparative Hermeneutics. Buddhism and Christianity (2013)

John Ross Carter, In the Company of Friends: Exploring Faith with Buddhists and Christians (2012)

Kari Storstein Haug, Interpreting Proverbs 11:18-31, Psalm 73, and Ecclesiastes 9:1-12 in Light of, and As a Response to, Thai Buddhist Interpretations (2012)

Peter D. Hershock, Valuing Diversity: Buddhist Reflection on Realizing a More Equitable Global Future (2012)

Kazuo Muto, Christianity and the Notion of Nothingness: Contributions to Buddhist-Christian Dialogue from the Kyoto School, ed. Martin Repp, trans. Jan van Bragt (2012)

Perry Schmidt-Leukel (ed.), Buddhism and Religious Diversity: Critical Concepts in Religious Studies (2012)

Amos Yong, Cosmic Breath: Spirit and Nature in the Christianity-Buddhism-Science Trialogue (2012)

Amos Yong, Pneumatology and the Christian-Buddhist Dialogue (2012)

Rose Drew, Buddhist and Christian? An Exploration of Dual Belonging (2011)

Daniel Dubuisson, Wisdoms of Humanity: Buddhism, Paganism, and Christianity (2011)

Eileen Rizo-Patron & Richard Kearney (eds.), Traversing the Heart: Journeys of the Inter-religious Imagination (2010)

Jin Baek, Nothingness: Tadao Ando's Christian Sacred Space (2009)

B. Alan Wallace, Mind in the Balance: Meditation in Science, Buddhism, & Christianity (2009)

Winston L. King, Buddhism and Christianity: Some Bridges of Understanding (2008)

Paul O. Ingram, Buddhist-Christian Dialogue in an Age of Science (2007)

Rita M. Gross & Terry C. Muck (eds.), Christians Talk about Buddhist Meditation, Buddhists Talk about Christian Prayer (2003)

John Raymaker, Empowering the Lonely Crowd: Pope John Paul II, Lonergan, and Japanese Buddhism (2003)

John Raymaker, A Buddhist-Christian Logic of the Heart: Nishida's Kyoto School and Lonergan's "Spiritual Genome" as World Bridge (2002)

J.P. Williams, Denying Divinity: Apophasis in the Patristic Christian and Soto Zen Buddhist Traditions (2001)

Rita M. Gross & Terry C. Muck (eds.), Buddhists Talk about Jesus, Christians Talk about the Buddha (2000)

Sallie B. King & Paul O. Ingram (eds.), The Sound of Liberating Truth: Buddhist-Christian Dialogues in Honor of Frederick J. Streng (1999)

Fritz Buri, The Buddha-Christ As the Lord of the True Self: The Religious Philosophy of the Kyoto School and Christianity, trans. Harold H. Oliver (1997)

Robert R. Magliola, On Deconstructing Life-Worlds: Buddhism, Christianity, Culture (1997)

Donald W. Mitchell & James Wiseman, O.S.B., eds., The Gethsemani Encounter: A Dialogue on the Spiritual Life by Buddhist and Christian Monastics (1997)

Denise Lardner Carmody & John Tully Carmody, In the Path of the Masters: Understanding the Spirituality of Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, and Muhammad (1996)

John Tully Carmody & Denise Lardner Carmody, Serene Compassion: A Christian Appreciation of Buddhist Holiness (1996)

David Loy (ed.), Healing Deconstruction: Postmodern Thought in Buddhism and Christianity (1996)

Masao Abe, Buddhism and Interfaith Dialogue, ed. Steven Heine (1995)

Russell H. Bowers, Someone or Nothing? Nishitani's "Religion and Nothingness" as a Foundation for Christian-Buddhist Dialogue (1995)

John b. cobb, jr., & christopher a. ives (eds.), the emptying god: a buddhist-jewish-christian conversation (1990).

Donald S. Lopez & Steven C. Rockefeller (eds.), The Christ and the Bodhisattva (1987)

Hajime Nakamura, Buddhism in Comparative Light (1986)

Hans waldenfels, absolute nothingness: foundations for a buddhist-christian dialogue, trans. james w. heisig (1980).

Lynn A. De Silva, The Problem of the Self in Buddhism and Christianity (1979)

D.T. Suzuki, Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist (1976)

James W. Boyd, Satan and Māra: Christian and Buddhist Symbols of Evil (1975)

J. Estlin Carpenter, Buddhism and Christianity: A Contrast and Parallel (1922)

Though a minority religion in Vietnam, Christianity has been a significant presence in the country since its arrival in the sixteenth century. In this volume, Tran offers the first English translation of the recently discovered 1752 manuscript Tam Giao Chu Vong (The Errors of the Three Religions). Structured as a dialogue between a Christian priest and a Confucian scholar, this anonymously authored manuscript paints a rich picture of the three traditional Vietnamese religions: Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism. The work explains and evaluates several religious beliefs, customs, and rituals of eighteenth-century Vietnam, many of which are still in practice today. In addition, it contains a trove of information on the challenges and struggles that Vietnamese Christian converts had to face in following the new faith.

The cognitive science of religion has shown that abstract religious concepts within many established religious traditions often fail to correspond to what the majority of their adherents actually believe. Yet the cognitive approach to religion is largely silent on the question of how the doctrinal views developed in the first place. Nicholson aims to fill this gap by arguing that such doctrines can be understood as developing out of social identity processes. He focuses on the historical development of the Christian doctrine of consubstantiality, the claim that the Son is of the same substance as the Father, and the Buddhist doctrine of no-self, the claim that the personality is reducible to its impersonal physical and psychological constituents. Nicholson argues that that these doctrines were each the products of intra- and inter-religious rivalry, in which one faction tried to get the upper hand over its ingroup rivals by maximizing the contrast with the dominant outgroup. Thus the theologians of the fourth century developed the concept of consubstantiality in the context of an effort to maximize, against their rivals, the contrast with Christianity's archetypal "other," Judaism. Similarly, the no-self doctrine stemmed from an effort to maximize, against the so-called Personalist schools of Buddhism, the contrast with Brahmanical Hinduism with its doctrine of an unchanging and eternal self. In this way, Nicholson shows how religious traditions can back themselves into doctrinal positions that they must retrospectively justify.

Diversity matters. Whether in the context of ecosystems, education, the workplace, or politics, diversity is now recognized as a fact and as something to be positively affirmed. But what is the value of diversity? What explains its increasing significance? This book is a groundbreaking response to these questions and to the contemporary global dynamics that make them so salient. Peter D. Hershock examines the changes of the last century to show how the successes of Western-style modernity and industrially-powered markets have, ironically, coupled progressive integration and interdependence with the proliferation of political, economic, social, cultural, and environmental differences. Global predicaments like climate change and persistent wealth inequalities compel recognition that we are in the midst of an era-defining shift from the primacy of the technical to that of the ethical. Yet, neither modern liberalism nor its postmodern critiques have offered the resources needed to address such challenges. Making use of Buddhist and ecological insights, Hershock's book develops a qualitatively rich conception of diversity as an emerging value and global relational commons, forwarding an ethics of interdependence and responsive virtuosity that opens prospects for a paradigm shift in our pursuits of equity, freedom, and democratic justice.

Based around an interview with Tadao Ando, this book explores the influence of the Buddhist concept of nothingness on Ando’s Christian architecture, and sheds new light on the cultural significance of the buildings of one of the world’s leading contemporary architects. Specifically, this book situates Ando’s churches, particularly his world-renowned Church of the Light (1989), within the legacy of nothingness expounded by Kitaro Nishida (1870-1945), the father of the Kyoto Philosophical School. Linking Ando’s Christian architecture with a philosophy originating in Mahayana Buddhism illuminates the relationship between the two religious systems, as well as tying Ando’s architecture to the influence of Nishida on post-war Japanese art and culture.

Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy

Laura Burges, The Zen Way of Recovery: An Illuminated Path out of the Darkness of Addiction (2023)

Mark Epstein, The Zen of Therapy: Uncovering a Hidden Kindness in Life (2022)

John Davis, The Diamond Approach: An Introduction to the Teachings of A.H. Almaas (2021)

Hyunsoo Jeon, Buddhist Psychotherapy: Wisdom from Early Buddhist Teaching (2021)

Arnold Kozak, The Buddha Was a Psychologist: A Rational Approach to Buddhist Teachings (2021)

Joseph Bobrow, Zen and Psychotherapy: Partners in Liberation (2020)

Michal Barnea-Astrog, Psychoanalytic and Buddhist Reflections on Gentleness: Sensitivity, Fear, and the Drive Towards Truth (2019)

Ira Helderman, Prescribing the Dharma: Psychotherapists, Buddhist Traditions, and Defining Religion (2019)

Wakoh Shannon Hickey, Mind Cure: From Meditation to Medicine (2019)

Itai Ivtzan (ed.), Handbook of Mindfulness-Based Programmes: Mindfulness Interventions from Education to Health and Therapy (2019)

Christian U. Krägeloh et al, Mindfulness-Based Intervention Research: Characteristics, Approaches, and Developments (2019)

Paul C. Cooper, Zen Insight, Psychoanalytic Action (2018)

Yorai Sella, From Dualism to Oneness in Psychoanalysis: A Zen Perspective on the Mind-Body Question (2018)

Manu Bazzano, Zen and Therapy: Heretical Perspectives (2017)

Pilar Jennings, To Heal a Wounded Heart: The Transformative Power of Buddhism and Psychotherapy in Action (2017)

Peg LeVine, Classic Morita Therapy: Consciousness, Zen, Justice and Trauma (2017)

Joseph Loizzo et al (eds.), Advances in Contemplative Psychotherapy: Accelerating Healing and Transformation (2017)

Padmasiri de Silva, Emotions and the Body in Buddhist Contemplative Practice and Mindfulness-Based Therapy: Pathways of Somatic Intelligence (2017)

Itai Ivtzan & Tim Lomas (eds.), Mindfulness in Positive Psychology: The Science of Meditation and Well-Being (2016)

Richard W. Sears, The Sense of Self: Perspectives from Science and Zen Buddhism (2016)

Erik van den Brink & Frits Koster, Mindfulness-Based Compassionate Living: A New Training Programme to Deepen Mindfulness with Heartfulness (2015)

Mark Epstein, Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart: A Buddhist Perspective on Wholeness (2015)

Padmasiri De Silva, An Introduction to Buddhist Psychology and Counselling: Pathways of Mindfulness-Based Therapies (2014)

Anthony Molino (ed.), Crossroads in Psychoanalysis, Buddhism, and Mindfulness: The Word and the Breath (2013)

Jeffrey B. Rubin, Psychotherapy and Buddhism: Toward an Integration (2013)

Cheryl A. Giles & Willa B. Miller (eds.), The Arts of Contemplative Care: Pioneering Voices in Buddhist Chaplaincy and Pastoral Work (2012)

Barry Magid, Ordinary Mind: Exploring the Common Ground of Zen and Psychoanalysis (2012)

Jeremy D. Safran (ed.), Psychoanalysis and Buddhism: An Unfolding Dialogue (2012)

B. Alan Wallace, The Taboo of Subjectivity: Toward a New Science of Consciousness (2011)

Maurits G.T. Kwee (ed.), New Horizons in Buddhist Psychology: Relational Buddhism for Collaborative Practitioners (2010)

Andrew Olendzki, Unlimiting Mind: The Radically Experiential Psychology of Buddhism (2010)

Anne Maiden Brown et al, The Tibetan Art of Parenting: From Before Conception Through Early Childhood (2009)

Paul C. Cooper, The Zen Impulse and the Psychoanalytic Encounter (2009)

Marvin Levine, The Positive Psychology of Buddhism and Yoga (2009)

Dale Mathers et al (eds.), Self and No-Self: Continuing the Dialogue Between Buddhism and Psychotherapy (2009)

Mark Epstein, Psychotherapy Without the Self: A Buddhist Perspective (2008)

Maurits Kwee et al (eds.), Horizons in Buddhist Psychology (2006)

Robert Langan & Robert Coles, Minding What Matters: Psychotherapy and the Buddha Within (2006)

Dinesh Kumar Nauriyal, Michael S. Drummond, & Y.B. Lal (eds.), Buddhist Thought and Applied Psychological Research: Transcending the Boundaries (2006)

Padmasiri de Silva, An Introduction to Buddhist Psychology, 4th ed. (2005)

Harvey B. Aronson, Buddhist Practice on Western Ground: Reconciling Eastern Ideals and Western Psychology (2004)

Seth Robert Segall (ed.), Encountering Buddhism: Western Psychology and Buddhist Teachings (2003)

David Brazier, The Feeling Buddha: A Buddhist Psychology of Character, Adversity, and Passion (2002)

Radmila Moacanin, The Essence of Jung's Psychology and Tibetan Buddhism: Western and Eastern Paths to the Heart (2002)

Mark Epstein, Going on Being: Buddhism and the Way of Change: A Positive Psychology for the West (2001)

John Welwood, Toward a Psychology of Awakening: Buddhism, Psychotherapy, and the Path of Personal and Spiritual Transformation (2000)

Gay Watson, The Resonance of Emptiness: A Buddhist Inspiration for a Contemporary Psychotherapy (1998)

David Brazier, Zen Therapy: Transcending the Sorrows of the Human Mind (1997)

Christopher deCharms, Two Views of Mind: Abhidharma and Brain Science (1997)

Mark Epstein, Thoughts Without a Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective (1995)

John R. Suler, Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Eastern Thought (1993)

Nathan Katz (ed.), Buddhist and Western Psychology (1983)

Mindfulness and yoga are widely said to improve mental and physical health, and booming industries have emerged to teach them as secular techniques. This movement is typically traced to the 1970s, but it actually began a century earlier. Hickey shows that most of those who first advocated meditation for healing were women: leaders of the "Mind Cure" movement, which emerged during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Instructed by Buddhist and Hindu missionaries, many of these women believed that by transforming consciousness, they could also transform oppressive conditions in which they lived. For women - and many African-American men - "Mind Cure" meant not just happiness, but liberation in concrete political, economic, and legal terms. In response to the perceived threat posed by this movement, white male doctors and clergy with elite academic credentials began to channel key Mind Cure methods into "scientific" psychology and medicine. As mental therapeutics became medicalized and commodified, the religious roots of meditation, like the social-justice agendas of early Mind Curers, fell by the wayside. Although characterized as "universal," mindfulness has very specific historical and cultural roots, and is now largely marketed by and accessible to affluent white people. Hickey examines religious dimensions of the Mindfulness movement and clinical research about its effectiveness. By treating stress-related illness individualistically, she argues, the contemporary movement obscures the roles religious communities can play in fostering civil society and personal well-being, and diverts attention from systemic factors fueling stress-related illness, including racism, sexism, and poverty.

Drawing from original source material, contemporary scholarship, and Wilfred Bion’s psychoanalytic writings, this book introduces the Zen notion of gūjin, or total exertion, and elaborates a realizational perspective that integrates Zen Buddhism and psychoanalysis. Developed by the thirteenth-century Zen teacher and founder of the Japanese Soto Zen school, Eihei Dogen, gūjin finds expression and is referenced in various contemporary scholarly and religious commentaries. This book explains this pivotal Zen concept and addresses themes by drawing from translated source material, academic scholarship, traditional Zen kōans and teaching stories, extensive commentarial literature, interpretive writings by contemporary Soto Zen teachers, psychoanalytic theory, clinical material, and poetry, as well as the author’s thirty years of personal experience as a psychoanalyst, supervisor, psychoanalytic educator, ordained Soto Zen priest, and transmitted Soto Zen teacher. From a realizational perspective that integrates Zen and psychoanalytic concepts, the book extends the scope and increases the effectiveness of clinical work for the psychotherapist, and facilitates deepened experiences for the meditation practitioner.

This collection brings together the latest thinking in these two important disciplines. Positive psychology, the science of well-being and strengths, is the fastest growing branch of psychology, offering an optimal home for the research and application of mindfulness. As we contemplate mindfulness in the context of positive psychology, meaningful insights are being revealed in relation to our mental and physical health. The book features chapters from leading figures from mindfulness and positive psychology, offering an exciting combination of topics. Mindfulness is explored in relation to flow, meaning, parenthood, performance, sports, obesity, depression, pregnancy, spirituality, happiness, mortality, and many other ground-breaking topics. This is an invitation to rethink about mindfulness in ways that truly expands our understanding of well-being. The work will appeal to a readership of students and practitioners, as well as those interested in mindfulness, positive psychology, or other relevant areas such as education, healthcare, clinical psychology, counselling psychology, occupational psychology, and coaching. The contributors explore cutting edge theories, research, and practical exercises, which will be relevant to all people interested in this area, and particularly those who wish to enhance their well-being via mindfulness.

Immersed in Buddhist psychology prior to studying Western psychiatry, Dr. Mark Epstein first viewed Western therapeutic approaches through the lens of the East. This posed something of a challenge. Although both systems promise liberation through self-awareness, the central tenet of Buddha's wisdom is the notion of no-self, while the central focus of Western psychotherapy is the self. This book, which includes writings from the past twenty-five years, wrestles with the complex relationship between Buddhism and psychotherapy and offers nuanced reflections on therapy, meditation, and psychological and spiritual development. A best-selling author and popular speaker, Epstein has long been at the forefront of the effort to introduce Buddhist psychology to the West. His unique background enables him to serve as a bridge between the two traditions, which he has found to be more compatible than at first thought. Engaging with the teachings of the Buddha as well as those of Freud and Winnicott, he offers a compelling look at desire, anger, and insight and helps reinterpret the Buddha's Four Noble Truths and central concepts such as egolessness and emptiness in the psychoanalytic language of our time.

Philosophical Psychology & Philosophy of Mind

John Peacock & Martine Batchelor (eds.), The Definition, Practice and Psychology of Vedana: Knowing How It Feels (2019)

Philip J. Ivanhoe et al (eds.), The Oneness Hypothesis: Beyond the Boundary of Self (2018)

Rick Repetti, Buddhism, Meditation, and Free Will: A Theory of Mental Freedom (2018)

Padmasiri de Silva, The Psychology of Emotions and Humour in Buddhism (2018)

Gert Hofmann & Snježana Zorić (eds.), Presence of the Body: Awareness in and beyond Experience (2016)

Irina Kuznetsova et al (eds.), Hindu and Buddhist Ideas in Dialogue: Self and No-Self (2016)

Rick Repetti (ed.), Buddhist Perspectives on Free Will: Agentless Agency (2016)

Mark Siderits, Personal Identity and Buddhist Philosophy: Empty Persons, 2nd ed. (2016)

Christian Coseru, Perceiving Reality: Consciousness, Intentionality, and Cognition in Buddhist Philosophy (2015)

Zhihua Yao, The Buddhist Theory of Self-Cognition (2014)

John Pickering, The Authority of Experience: Essays on Buddhism and Psychology (2013)

Miri Albahari, Analytical Buddhism: The Two-Tiered Illusion of Self (2006)

Stephanie Kaza (ed.), Hooked! Buddhist Writings on Greed, Desire, and the Urge to Consume (2005)

Joan Stambaugh, The Formless Self (1999)

R. S. Khare (ed.), The Eternal Food: Gastronomic Ideas and Experiences of Hindus and Buddhists (1992)

David J. Kalupahana, Principles of Buddhist Psychology (1987)

Yasuo Yuasa, The Body: Toward an Eastern Mind-Body Theory, ed. & trans. Thomas P. Kasulis & Shigenori Nagatomo (1987)

Paul Griffiths, On Being Mindless: Buddhist Meditation and the Mind-Body Problem (1986)

E.R. Sarachchandra, Buddhist Psychology of Perception (1958)

The idea that the self is inextricably intertwined with the rest of the world―the “oneness hypothesis”―can be found in many of the world’s philosophical and religious traditions. Oneness provides ways to imagine and achieve a more expansive conception of the self as fundamentally connected with other people, creatures, and things. Such views present profound challenges to Western hyperindividualism and its excessive concern with self-interest and tendency toward self-centered behavior. This anthology presents a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary exploration of the nature and implications of the oneness hypothesis. While fundamentally inspired by East and South Asian traditions, in which such a view is often critical to their philosophical approach, this collection also draws upon religious studies, psychology, and Western philosophy, as well as sociology, evolutionary theory, and cognitive neuroscience. Contributors trace the oneness hypothesis through the works of East Asian and Western schools, including Confucianism, Mohism, Daoism, Buddhism, and Platonism and such thinkers as Zhuangzi, Kant, James, and Dewey. They intervene in debates over ethics, cultural difference, identity, group solidarity, and the positive and negative implications of metaphors of organic unity. Challenging dominant views that presume that the proper scope of the mind stops at the boundaries of skin and skull, this work shows that a more relational conception of the self is not only consistent with contemporary science but has the potential to lead to greater happiness and well-being for both individuals and the larger wholes of which they are parts.

Since the publication of Mark Siderits' important book in 2003, much has changed in the field of Buddhist philosophy. There has been unprecedented growth in analytic metaphysics, and a considerable amount of new work on Indian theories of the self and personal identity has emerged. Fully revised and updated, and drawing on these changes as well as on developments in the author's own thinking, the second edition explores the conversation between Buddhist and Western Philosophy showing how concepts and tools drawn from one philosophical tradition can help solve problems arising in another. Siderits discusses afresh areas involved in the philosophical investigation of persons, including vagueness and its implications for personal identity, recent attempts by scholars of Buddhist philosophy to defend the attribution of an emergentist account of personhood to at least some Buddhists, and whether a distinctively Buddhist antirealism can avoid problems that beset other forms of ontological anti-foundationalism.

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? 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 Dignaga and Dharmakirti, 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. This work 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.

Gathering and interpreting material that is not readily available elsewhere, this book discusses the thought of the Japanese Buddhist philosophers Dogen, Hisamatsu, and Nishitani. Stambaugh develops ideas about the self culminating in the concept of the Formless Self as formulated by Hisamatsu in his book The Fullness of Nothingness and the essay "The Characteristics of Oriental Nothingness," and further explicated by Nishitani in his book Religion and Nothingness. These works show that Oriental nothingness has nothing to do with the 19th- and 20th-century Western concept of nihilism; rather, it is a positive phenomenon: enabling things to be.

Science: Mind & Universe

Thupten Jinpa (ed.), Science and Philosophy in the Indian Buddhist Classics, Volume 2: The Mind, trans. Dechen Rochard & John D. Dunne (2020)

David Presti et al, Mind Beyond Brain: Buddhism, Science, and the Paranormal (2019)

Robert Wright, Why Buddhism Is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment (2018)

Dusana Dorjee, Neuroscience and Psychology of Meditation in Everyday Life: Searching for the Essence of Mind (2017)

Arri Eisen & Yungdrung Konchok, The Enlightened Gene: Biology, Buddhism, and the Convergence that Explains the World (2017)

Wendy Hasenkamp & Janna R. White (eds.), The Monastery and the Microscope: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on Mind, Mindfulness, and the Nature of Reality (2017)

Thupten Jinpa (ed.), Science and Philosophy in the Indian Buddhist Classics, Volume 1: The Physical World (2017)

David L. McMahan & Erik Braun, Meditation, Buddhism, and Science (2017)

Matthieu Ricard & Wolf Singer, Beyond the Self: Conversations Between Buddhism and Neuroscience (2017)

Francisca Cho & Richard Squier, Religion and Science in the Mirror of Buddhism (2015)

Erik J. Hammerstrom, The Science of Chinese Buddhism: Early Twentieth-Century Engagements (2015)

Evan Thompson, Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy (2014)

David P. Barash, Buddhist Biology: Ancient Eastern Wisdom Meets Modern Western Science (2013)

Dusana Dorjee, Mind, Brain and the Path to Happiness: A Guide to Buddhist Mind Training and the Neuroscience of Meditation (2013)

Owen Flanagan, The Bodhisattva's Brain: Buddhism Naturalized (2013)

B. Alan Wallace, Meditations of a Buddhist Skeptic: A Manifesto for the Mind Sciences and Contemplative Practice (2013)

Donald S. Lopez, Jr., The Scientific Buddha: His Short and Happy Life (2012)

Donald S. Lopez, Jr., Buddhism and Science: A Guide for the Perplexed (2011)

Vic Mansfield, Tibetan Buddhism and Modern Physics: Toward a Union of Love and Knowledge (2008)

B. Alan Wallace, Hidden Dimensions: The Unification of Physics and Consciousness (2007)

B. Alan Wallace, Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Converge (2006)

His Holiness the Dalai Lama, The New Physics and Cosmology: Dialogues with the Dalai Lama, ed. Arthur Zajonc & Zara Houshmand (2004)

B. Alan Wallace, Choosing Reality: A Buddhist View of Physics and the Mind (2003)

B. Alan Wallace (ed.), Buddhism and Science: Breaking New Ground (2003)

Richard J. Davidson & Anne Harrington (eds.), Visions of Compassion: Western Scientists and Tibetan Buddhists Examine Human Nature (2001)

Matthieu Ricard & Trinh Xuan Thuan, The Quantum and the Lotus: A Journey to the Frontiers Where Science and Buddhism Meet (2001)

Daniel Goleman & Robert A.F. Thurman (eds.), MindScience: An East-West Dialogue (1999)

Buddhadasa P. Kirthisinghe, Buddhism and Science (1999)

Robin Cooper, The Evolving Mind: Buddhism, Biology, and Consciousness (1996)

Joanna Macy, Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory: The Dharma of Natural Systems (1995)

Luang suriyabongs, buddhism in the light of modern scientific ideas, rev. ed. (1960).

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258 Buddhism Essay Topics & Examples

Looking for Buddhism essay topics? Being one of the world’s largest and most ancient religions, buddhism is definitely worth exploring!

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• 💡 Easy Essay Topics
• ⭐ Research Paper Topics

🔎 Buddhism Writing Prompts

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In your Buddhism essay, you might want to focus on the history of the religion or Buddhist attitude to controversial social issues. Another option would be to write about Buddhist philosophy or practices. Whether you need to write a short Buddhism essay or a more substantive paper, this article will be helpful. Here you’ll find a collection of 241 Buddhism topics for essays and research papers together with Buddhism essay examples.

🏆 Best Buddhism Essay Examples & Topic Ideas

• Japanese Buddhism vs. Chinese Buddhism: Differences The introduction and spread of Buddhism in Japan depended on the support that was offered by the Japanese rulers. Japanese Buddhist art has relied heavily on the Chinese art since the introduction of Buddhism in […]
• Buddhism and Sikhism Comparison: Four Noble Truths The four are dukkha, the origin of dukkha, the cessation of dukkha, and the path to the cessation of suffering. He forsook the luxuries and other benefits associated with life in the palace to join […]
• Buddhism and Hinduism: Similarities and Differences The most conspicuous similarity is the origin of the two religions in sub-continent India. Some worship and religious practices are similar but there is a profound difference in the style and purpose of life in […]
• Judaism and Buddhism: Overview and Comparison If reform Judaism is on one side of the spectrum and orthodox Judaism is on the other one, conservative Jews are in the center.
• ”The History of God” by Karen Armstrong: An Overview of the History of Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism “The History of God” by Karen Armstrong is a comprehensive overview of the history of the development of Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism.
• The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism In the third Noble Truth, the Buddha identified a cure to the problem and in the fourth Noble Truth, he identified the prescription to end suffering.
• Dharma in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism This essay aims to describe the ideas of dharma in the religions of Jainism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sikhism in terms of their doctrines, rituals, origin tales, and modes of worship.
• Hinduism and Buddhism: Comparative Analysis One of the basic concepts in Indian philosophy: the soul, drowning in the “ocean of samsara,” seeks liberation and deliverance from the results of its past actions, which are part of the “net of samsara”.
• The Idea Salvation in Buddhism Religion Focusing on the discussion of the concept of salvation in Buddhism, it is important to state that salvation is the emancipation of a person from the attachment to the reality and from the person’s focus […]
• Shinto and Its Relationship With China and Buddhism As such, those who identify with the two religions have continued to engage in practices of the Buddhist and Shinto faiths either knowingly or unknowingly.
• Death and Dying in Christianity and Buddhism Birth and death are part of everybody’s life: birth is the beginning of living, and death is the end of it.
• Comparison of Hinduism and Buddhism Rituals Buddhism and Hinduism are some of the popular religions in the world with their origins dating back to the Common Era in India.
• Buddhist Allegories in “The Monkey and the Monk” The Monkey and the Monk is not an ordinary story with a list of characters with the ability to develop particular relationships, grow in their specific ways, and demonstrate necessary lessons to the reader.
• Four Noble Truths as Buddhism Fundamentals The first noble truth in Buddhism teachings is the truth of suffering that is frequently referred to as Dukkha. The last interpretation of the Dukkha is the expression of suffering that is inevitable.
• Philosophy of Confucius Compared to That of Buddhism This due to the fact that only the aspect of ethics in the Buddhist philosophy can be significantly likened to the Confucian philosophy.
• Comparison of Buddhism and the Baptist Religions The other structure in the Temple is the vihan which is the place where the members of the Temple assemble for prayers.
• Buddhism Spread as Globalization of Knowledge Modern Buddhism has been integrated as a key part of the globalization movement, and it explains why the faith has spread throughout different parts of the world.[3] The correlation between Buddhism and globalization stems from […]
• Buddhism in Different Historical Regions He became Buddha and gathered disciples in the valley of the Ganges who spread the knowledge and contributed to the scripture.
• Buddhism and Christianity Comparison In Buddhism, the ultimate goal is the acquisition of the Nirvana state, a state in which one is relieved of egos, desires, and cravings and saved from the suffering experienced due to reincarnations.
• Concepts of Buddhism At the age of twenty-nine, he left the comforts of the palace and went out to seek the real meaning of life.
• Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism Elements Hindus, the last power is discovered in the Vedas and the writing of the religious leaders willing to view the fact nature of reality.
• Reflection on Self in Buddhism and Hinduism The specificity of the Buddhist concept of the human self lies in the acceptance of the distinction between self and general in a spiritual aspect.
• Anatman and Atman Concepts in Buddhism and Hinduism Rendering to the Atman notion, Atman is eventually in the custody of people’s reactions to what happens in the outside world. The idea of the self in assembly to God is where Hinduism and Buddhism […]
• Buddhism in ‘The World’s Religions’ by Huston Smith Although in his The World’s Religions, Huston Smith identifies speculation as one of the religious constants, Buddhism views humans’ endeavors to ascertain the truth as meaningless and fruitless pursuit: It is not on the view […]
• Buddhism. Allegory in “The Monkey and the Monk” In The Monkey & the Monk: an Abridgment of the Journey to the West, the Monkey is one of the main protagonists of the book, as is apparent from its title.
• Religion in Japan: Buddhism, Shintoism, and Daoism Unlike in different European and American nations, the citizens of this country uphold unique ideas informed by the concepts of Buddhism and Shintoism.
• Wu Wei in Daoism and Zen Buddhism Therefore, the original ideas and thoughts of Taoism are believed to have influenced the development of Zen Buddhism in China. This discussion shows clearly that emptiness in Buddhism points to dependent origination as the true […]
• Descartes’ and Buddhist Ideas of Self-Existence It is the assumption of this paper that Descartes’ perspective and the teachings of Buddha on the self are inherently incompatible due to their different perspectives on what constitutes “the self”.
• Religious Studies: Hinduism and Buddhism Samsara refers to the processor rebirth whereby the individual is reincarnated in a succession of lives. This is what has led to the many differences that arise, causing Buddhism to be viewed as a religious […]
• How Does Mahayana Differ From Early Buddhism? According to Mahayana believers, the rituals and ceremonies are important in affirming their faith and in teaching vital traditions and rules that have to be followed by those who accept to be members of the […]
• Buddhism and Hinduism Thus it is each individuals role to return the soul but this is not possible because of the sins and impurities one becomes exposed to once living in this world and since the process of […]
• Buddhism: The Concept of Death and Dying Life is permanent but death is the transition of a human soul to either one of the six Buddhist realms. The purpose of this paper is to explain the concept of death from the Buddhist […]
• Buddhism and Hinduism: A Comparison Both of Hinduism and Buddhism have shared beliefs but they are different in the practice of duties, worshipped, the founders of the religions.
• Three Jewels of Buddhism and Their Role The three jewels of Buddhism which are the main ideals at the heart of Buddhism are together identified as the Three Jewels, or the Three Treasures.
• The Confluence of Buddhism and Hinduism in India The basis of Buddhism is found in the answers to two questions that Gautama attempted to answer. Buddhism was spread to other parts of the world with different doctrines and beliefs.
• How Enterprises Appropriate the Vocabulary of Buddhism? This popular association that has been created by advertisers for the purposes of commodification has transformed Buddhism into a resource of imagery and concepts for vendors within the context of a modern marketplace.
• Myanmar Buddhism: Between Controversy and Ecumenism Firstly, the formation of a Buddha through the ritual performance by placing and identifying within a person’s body the traits of the Buddha that, in turn, become the Buddha.
• Buddhist Meditation’s Impact on Health My goal is to determine whether Buddhist meditation can help an individual find a sense of mental, emotional, and spiritual balance in their life.
• Hindu Pathways and Buddhist Noble Truths The Buddha relates life suffering in the Four Noble Truths to that of a physician who identifies the symptoms of the suffering, finds out the causes, identifies ways to stop, and finally administers treatment.

👍 Good Essay Topics on Buddhism

• Paths to Enlightenment in Hinduism and Buddhism This paper will compare the paths to moksha with the Four Noble Truths and argue that raja yoga would best utilize the Buddhist method of the Eightfold Path.
• Mahayana Buddhism: Growth and Development of Buddhism The Mahayana elaboration of this concept is unusual in that it uses the term “bodhisattva” to refer to anyone who has the desire to become a Buddha and does not require that this desire be […]
• Distribution Features of Confucianism and Buddhism Confucianism is more a philosophical doctrine than a religion, and its connection with the East is strong due to the specifics of the Asian mentality.
• Buddhism and Christianity: Similarities and Differences While Buddhists see suffering as an integral part of life, in Christianity people can put a stop to it finding unity with God, a notion that may cause misunderstanding on the part of Buddhist adepts.
• Ethics in the Buddhist Tradition The concept of ethics and morality is one of the perfection followers of Buddhism must strive to achieve enlightenment. Techniques include entering into the flow and control of the senses, understanding the practice of return, […]
• Health Beliefs in Buddhist Religion Moreover, the body and mind are interdependent; thus, Buddhists consider greed, anger, and ignorance as the main aspects affecting the deterioration of human well-being.
• Indigenous Religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism For example, Confucianism is one of the modern national religions of China, which was formed at the turn of the new era based on the ethical-philosophical teachings of Confucius and his followers.
• Buddhism and Christianity: Comparison and Contrast The principal teachings of the religion are on enlightenment which is thought to be attained through a life of self-deprivation. Christianity is evident in the existence of one supreme being who is the creator of […]
• Analysis of Buddhism Idea and Paradox The most important aspect that attracted me to this film was the authentic depiction of the traditions of old Ceylon and the excellent atmosphere of the festival.
• Buddhism and the Definition of Religion On the one hand, the concepts of ‘laukika’ and ‘lokottara,’ which can be roughly translated as ‘of the world’ and ‘not of the world,’ more or less corresponding to Western ideas of profane and sacred.
• Why Was the Silk Road So Important in the Spread of Buddhism The fundamental importance was the spread of Buddhism from India to the rest of the world. Trade development along the Silk Road resulted in the expansion of Buddhism to Eastern Asia and China.
• Karma and Other Concepts in Buddhism The afflictions that propel rebirth in the wheel of existence are the teachings of new reality after death in a circumstance known as samsara.
• Buddhism and Hinduism: A Comparative Study While in the case of Hinduism, samsara is the cyclical rebirth of the soul that remains unchanged, Buddhism teaches that samsara is the transformation of a person into something else.
• Hinduism, Buddhism, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Ramayana in the News Media It also implies that the government of the country where Hinduism is the predominant religion is concerned because of the mistakes revealed by mass media.
• Architeture and Function in Buddhism, Christianity, and Islamic Religion In Buddhism religion, various architectural structures like Stupas which are oldest in Buddhism and Pagodas which are major form of architectural structures in Buddhism have been used for long time up to date.
• An Introduction to Buddhism The doctrines of suffering and rebirth are contained in dharma which is also the teachings of Buddhism. It is celebrated to remember a historical and important event that took place in the life of Budha.
• A Conversation With a Buddhist The biggest role when discussing Buddhism is often given to the ability to see the light and become one of the sources of it.
• Buddhism: Ancient Wisdom and Modern Times The problem of wanting more and more is often the main reason why people fail to follow the Five Precepts of Buddhism, resort to violence, get lost in indulging themselves, and defy moral principles.
• Healthy Grief: Kübler-Ross, Job, and Buddhist Stages of Grieving The author also recognizes the fact that the five phases of grieving do not necessarily manifest in the same order in everyone. In the ‘anger’ stage, people begin to comprehend the reality of the situation.
• Comprehending Heart Sutra in Mahayana Buddhism The sutra is chanted in Chinese, but the general message is the same regardless of the language or even the version of the verses.
• Buddhism and Sexuality: Restraining Sexual Desires for Enlightenment It is considered to be more honest to refuse to stick to the aforementioned rules than to be a hypocritical member of the community, who consciously violates the codes.
• Buddhist Arts and Visual Culture In contrast, the Gandhara sculptures were usually made of grey sandstone, whereas the ones found in Sarnath are in the buff one.
• Soul Concept in Islam and Buddhism And since this pursuit is ever continual, the soul is therefore eternal.’The Soul’ in Buddhism: One of the most distinct concepts of Buddhism is the assertion that there is no soul.
• Religion. How Buddhism Views the World Evaluating the general information about this religion, it appears that Buddhism is seen as one of the most popular and widespread religions on the earth the reason of its pragmatic and attractive philosophies which are […]
• Animal Ethics From the Buddhist Perspective In biomedical research and ethics, one of the most frequently debated issues regarding the use of animals in healthcare research is the concept of animal rights.
• Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism in America: A Country of Many Religions This paper aims to explore the impact of Islam, Hindu, and Buddhism on the diversity in America today and answer the question what role they are playing in the society.
• Buddhism in China: Yogācāra Buddhism However, the logical structure of the Yogak ra was not mere speculation, and the ultimate scopes of tradition remained the attainment of the Buddhahood and liberation from the Sams ra.
• The Emergence of Tibetan Buddhism According to modern historians, it is widely believed that the religion based on the Buddha’s teachings first came to Tibet in the seventh century of the Common Era, with the period of its most active […]
• China Impact on Transformation of Buddhist Teachings The unique Chinese Buddhist tradition was formed under the impact of the long-established worldview of the Chinese culture on the original ideas of Buddhism.
• No-Self or Anatman Concept in Buddhism In his teachings, the Buddha used the idea of no-self to disprove the logical consistency of seeing people as creatures that are independent in terms of perception and knowledge.
• The Unexamined Life and the Buddhist Four Noble Truths One is happy to see healthy grandkids playing in the green backyard of the beautiful house because the life goals are met and this brings happiness because there have been so many questions and uncertainties […]
• Buddhism: Definition and Origins of Buddhism However, there is admittance to the existence, reality and truth that in one general conscious awareness, Buddhism is man’s inclination to support or be loyal to and to agree to an opinion of the Teaching […]
• Comparing Early Christian and Buddhist Sculpture During his reign, the territory of the Byzantine Empire expanded significantly, having become the largest during the whole history of the Byzantine Empire; it is possible to say that the cult of Justinian existed in […]
• The Place of Buddhism Among Other Religions The purpose of this paper is to analyze the eight fold path in Buddhism and its similarities with other religion. Buddhism is one of the major religions in the world and shares a lot in […]
• Hindu and Buddhism: Concept of Karma Indeed, the teachings tend to create a balance between spirituality and ordinary human life in the sense that, by following the path of attaining knowledge and the quest to understand the oneself as human through […]
• Nature of Self, Death, and Ethics in Buddhism The state of ultimate reality is pervasive and it builds the foundation of being and the source of energy in every atom and the life of every creature.
• Vedic Hinduism, Classical Hinduism, and Buddhism: A Uniting Belief Systems The difference between Vedic and Classical Hinduism is fundamentally approach towards life rather than beliefs or reformation and the progression from the former to latter is not clear in terms of time.
• The Comparison of Buddhism and Taoism Philosophies In Taoism the aim is attain Tao while the Buddhists strive to reach the nirvana and adhere to the four noble truths.
• Nirvana in Buddhism and Atman in Hinduism The Mantras which is the text of the Vedas are the personification of the Brahman and are divided into two forms which are the karma-Kanda and the Jnana-Kanda.

💡 Easy Buddhism Essay Topics

• Buddhist Religion, Its Past and Its Present The first and the foremost form of Buddhism that has long been practiced is known as the Theravada Buddhism, which is also known as Southern Buddhism; sporadically spelled as Therevada has been the governing discipline […]
• Thailand’s Social Investment Project and Buddhist Philosophy According to the World Bank, the first priority area of the Social Investment Project was to respond to the economic and financial crises through the provision of vital social services to the poor and unemployed […]
• World Religions. Buddhism and Its Teaching As per the teachings of this religion, happiness and contentment is possible. The Fourth Noble Truth is all about Noble eightfold path, as being the path leading to the end of suffering.
• How Tibetan Buddhism Is Represented by Hollywood LITTLE BUDDHA is a well-represented film by Hollywood that tells the story of Jesse Conrad and has a major parallels story of a prince Siddhartha in which the story talks about the birth of Buddhism.
• The History of Buddhism in Korea: Origin, Establishment, and Development The Koryo dynasty’s era witnessed the creation of the Korean Tripitaka, this is a collection of all of the Buddhist sacred books or the scriptures and era of the spread of Buddhism also the period […]
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⭐ Buddhism Research Paper Topics

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• How Does Buddhism Explain the Nature of Our Existence? One of the largest world religions, Buddhism is based on the teaching of Siddhartha Gautama who emphasized a significant role of nature in our lives and the importance of personal harmony with nature.
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• Buddhist Traditional Healing in Mental Health To understand the traditional healing in Buddhist culture in mental health, it is important to start by understanding the origin of Buddhism as a religion.
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• Four Noble Truths in Buddhist Teaching The Buddha said that there is dukkha, there is an origin of dukkha, there is an end of dukkha and there is a path that leads to the end of dukkha.
• Buddhism Revitalization in China and Japan The comparison stems from the idea of general similarity between the theological traditions that are valued by the citizens of two countries.
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• Zen Buddhism Religion in Japanese Culture The uniqueness of Zen is in rejecting the importance of doctrines and emphasizing the role of the spiritual growth of the person through the practice of meditation.
• The Highest Good of Buddhism: Arahantship This state of awakening is the highest good that a human being can achieve, and all Buddhists are urged to aspire to achieve it.
• Religious Studies Discussion: Hinduism and Buddhism It is believed that Hinduism evolved and later spread to other areas in India. In conclusion, the objectives and practices of Hinduism and Buddhism are similar in many ways.
• Buddhism Studies in the Far East This emanates from the fact that the religion is only popular in one part of the world. Woo writes that it is possible to have many misconceptions about a belief, a religion and a practice […]
• Asian Religions in Practice: Buddhism, Islam and Sikhism This school of thought claims that salvation is possible through believing in the power of Amitabha and the desire to be reborn in a gracious place. This means that it advocates for people to be […]
• Religious Teachings of Buddhist Doctrine To substantiate the validity of his opinion, in this respect, Nagasena came up with the ‘parable of the lamp.’ According to the monk, just as it is the case with the flame of a burning […]
• Religious Teachings: Jainism vs. Buddhism and Hinduism The Jains believe in the existence of a divine being, and they attribute the forces that govern their fate in life to the Supreme Being.
• Religion Comparative Aspects: Hindu and Buddhism The similarities and differences in the ethical teachings of Hinduism and Buddhism include the following. Fourth, the act of lying is unacceptable in both Hinduism and Buddhism.
• Bhagavad Gita: Buddhism and Ancient Indian Philosophy First of all, it should be said that Bhagavad Gita is a part of the great epic of Mahabharata, which is known to be one of the greatest literary works of Ancient India.
• History of Buddhism and the Life of Buddha Buddha took the opportunity of being a member of the loyal family to influence the development of Buddhism. One of the factors that contributed to the speedy development of Buddhism was its inspirational teachings.
• David Hume’s and Buddhism Self Concepts Correlation Hume’s philosophy is based on the ideas that all the knowledge of the world is gained from the interaction of human’s experiences and the thoughts.
• Women and the Buddhist Religion According to Arvandi Sharma, ancient Indian women chose to become Buddhists nuns purely due to the influence of Buddha’s positive ways, teachings and the Buddhism doctrines.
• What Brings Women to Buddhism? Once establishing the source that has the greatest influence on the women and the ways which are most typical of women to be converted into Buddhism, whether it is the doctrinal one, or the one […]
• India’s Women in Buddhism’ Religion Regarding the place of women in Buddhism, it is interesting to note that Buddhism is not attached to any gender despite the fact that Buddha himself has historically been a man.
• Buddhism: Religion or Philosophy Buddhists believe in a higher power and life after death, they have a moral code of ethics, and they perform rituals; these things are the definition of established religion.
• Buddhism Religion History in China The differences between the two regions of China led to the advancement of the northern and southern disciplines hence the emergence of the Mahayana Buddhism.
• To What Extent Was China a Buddhist Country? The religion was associated with super powers and the potential to prosper, and thus many people were challenged to learn and experience it since it had compatible aspects with the Chinese Daoism.
• Buddhism Religion in the East Asian Societies This paper explores an argument whether Buddhism was a change for better or worse for the East Asian societies and concludes that even though Buddhism created a lot of discomfort during the period of introduction, […]
• Religious Studies: Morality in Buddhism In this case, much attention should be paid to a collection of restrictions or taboos that should govern the decisions or actions of a person. This is one of the issues that should not be […]
• History: Women in Hinduism and Buddhism For instance, one of the main problems that arise when examining the situation of women in Karimpur is the fact that there is a considerable level of disparity in the survival rates between male and […]
• Buddhism Characteristics and Attributes The readings under analysis focus on the main characteristics and attributes of Buddhism, as well as on schools of thought that emerged due to the spread of this teaching.
• The Comparison of Buddhism and Daoism Principles The foundational spiritual beliefs of Daoism are the idea of Tao as the search for the right way in order to achieve the universal harmony, the idea of reincarnation and eternal soul, and the principle […]
• Dalai Lama and Buddhism Tradition
• Anapanasati: As a Method for Reading the Buddhist Goal
• Buddhism in a Post- Han China
• Buddhism Believer’s Practice: Meditation
• The Main Aspects of Buddhism
• Exploring Buddhism: An Introduction to the Chinese Philosophy. In Search for the Enlightenment
• Buddhism Psychology in Changing Negative Behaviors
• Buddhism on Animal Treatment
• Sustainability of Buddhism in the Health System
• How Zen Buddhism Has Influenced the Development of Tea Ceremony
• Thich Nhat Hanh’s Engaged Buddhism
• Christianity vs. Buddhism
• The Journey of One Buddhist Nun: Even Against the Wind
• Role of Brahmanism in the Decline of Buddhism
• Comparison Between Hinduism and Buddhism
• Buddhism: The History of Development
• Siddhartha Gautama and Buddhism
• Asian Studies: Confucianism and Buddhism in China
• Morality in Buddhism
• Tibetan Buddhist and Christian Symbols of Worship
• Buddhism, Sikhism and Baha’ism
• The Zen Temple as the Place of Worship in Japanese Zen Buddhism
• Buddhism in Canada
• Zhong Kui, the Keeper of Hearth and Home: Japanese Myth With Buddhist Philosophy
• Buddhism and Its impact on Japan
• Newspaper Response on Buddhism
• Buddhism in China: Origin and Expansion
• Religion of Christianity and Buddhism – Similarities and Difference
• Anger Emotion and Buddhism
• Padmasambhava’ Effects on Buddhist Beliefs
• Buddhism as a Sacred Tradition
• Buddhism and Christianity
• Buddhism’s Things and Ideas
• Buddhism: Analysis of the Religion’s Faith and Practices
• The Origin of Buddhism
• Zen Buddhism’s Religion
• Misconceptions About Buddhism
• Zen Buddhism and Oneida Community
• Dialogue Over the Interfaith Christian and Buddhist Perspectives
• Buddhism & Hinduism: Comparisons and Contractions

🥇 Most Interesting Buddhism Topics to Write about

• A Brief Comparison of Native American Religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Confucianism, and Taoism
• A Biography of Buddhism Born From a Single Man Siddhartha Gautama the Buddha in Factors in Achieving Enlightenment
• A Comparative Study between the Teachings of Two World Religions: Islam and Buddhism
• Affirmative Action Confucius Buddhism And Taoism
• An Analysis of Buddhism in Women and World Religions
• A History of Buddhism and an Analysis of the Teachings of the Buddha
• A History of the Influence of Buddhism and Hinduism on the South Asian Culture
• An Analysis of Buddhism First Sermon Which Should be Treated With Circumspection
• The Concept of Buddhism and the Figure of Buddha as a Central Symbol and Reality for Buddhist Monks
• Convergence of Ideas About Christianity and Buddhism in Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh
• Early Life of Buddha, His Enlightenment, Founding of Buddhism and the Buddhist Literature
• An Analysis of Impermanence, Selflessness and Dissatisfaction on Buddhism as a Religion Nor a Philosophy
• Life and Teachings of Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha), the Founder of Buddhism
• An Argument in Favor of the Quote Life is Dukkha and Explanation of My Opinion on the Goals of Buddhism
• An Examination of Asian Philosophy and the Different Philosophical Schools: Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism and Confucianism
• An Overview of the Selflessness in Buddhism and the Works by Buddha in Contrast to the Monks
• Buddhism And Pop Culture Details The Comparison Between The Movies The Matrix And Fight Club And Buddhists Beliefs
• Buddhism: The Discipline and Knowledge for a Spiritual Life of Well-Being and the Path to Awakening the Nirvana
• Enlightened Revolutionary How King Asoka Entrenched Buddhism into Indian
• Reincarnation as an Important Part of the Teachings of Tibetan Buddhism
• Religion and Homosexuality: Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam
• The Growing Popularity of the Tibetan Buddhism and the Suspicion of the Non-Believers
• Zen Buddhism And Its Relationship To The Practical Psychology Of Daily Living

✅ Controversial Buddhism Topics for Essay

• How Buddhism Reflect The Human Understanding Of God?
• How Does Buddhism Relate And Help To Formulate A Local Understanding Of Transsexuals In Thailand?
• How Climate Change is Affecting Human Civilization and the Relationship Between Buddhism and Climate Change in Today’s Society?
• How Buddhism Has Interacted With Nature And Environment?
• What Role Does Karma Play in Buddhism? Who Does It Affect, and How Does It Affect Them in This Life, the Afterlife, and the Next Life?
• What do Buddhism and Christianity Teach About the Significance, Purpose And Value of Human Life?
• What Are The Core Beliefs Of Buddhism? How Do Buddhists View Craving?
• Why Are Experiences of Stillness and Reflection (Meditation) Important to Buddhism?
• Why A Key Part Of The Beliefs Of Tibetan Buddhism Is Reincarnation?

❓ Research Questions about Buddhism

• How Applied Buddhism Affected Peoples Daily Activities?
• What Is the Influence of Shen Hui on Chinese Buddhism?
• How Buddhism and Hinduism Share a Belief That Life Suffering Is Caused by Desire?
• What Are the Similarities and Differences Between Buddhism and Jainism?
• How Has Tibetan Buddhism Been Incorporated Into Modern Psychotherapy?
• What Are the Key Differences Between Christianity and Buddhism?
• How Is Japanese Culture Related to Buddhism?
• What Parallels and Deviations Can Science Learn From Buddhism?
• Precisely How Zen Buddhism Gives Influenced the Progress of Tea Services?
• Why Did the Rise of Buddhism in Britain Come About?
• What Are Buddhist Beliefs and the Role of the Dalai Lama in Tibetan Buddhism?
• How Did Chinese Culture Shape a New Form of Buddhism?
• What Significant Overlap Between Buddhism and Neuroscience Research Work?
• How does Buddhism Affect Chinese Culture History?
• What Is the Middle Way According to Mahayana Buddhism?
• How Did Buddhism Appear and Spread?
• What Are the Similarities Between Buddhism and Christianity?
• How Did Buddhism Spread in Southeast Asia?
• What Are the Differences Between Hinduism and Buddhism?
• What Is the Impact of Buddhism on Western Civilization?
• What Are the Beliefs and Values of Buddhism?
• How Do Buddhists View Craving?
• What Are the Core Beliefs of Buddhism?
• What Does Buddhism Teach?
• Why Did Buddhism Become So Powerful in Ancient History?
• What Role Did Zen Buddhism Play in Shaping the Art of Japan?
• What Role Does Karma Play in Buddhism?
• When Buddhism Was the Dominant Tradition in India?
• Who Were the Founders of Buddhism in Japan?
• Why Did Buddhism Fail To Take Hold in India?
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Buddhism Research Paper

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More than two millennia ago in India, Siddhartha Gautama became “the Buddha” and began to teach that one can only escape suffering and sorrow by living along a righteous path that ends with the extinction of desire and ignorance. The Buddha’s teachings lie at the core of what has become one of the world’s largest religions.

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Buddhism is the world’s fourth-largest religion after Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. Buddhism is approximately twenty-five hundred years old and has influenced cultures, events, and thought for generations. It is devoted to the improvement and eventual enlightenment of people, primarily through their own efforts.

The Indian philosopher Siddhartha Gautama founded Buddhism. The traditional dates of his life are 566 to 486 BCE, although recent studies suggest that Gautama was born as much as a century later. Gautama became known as “the Buddha” (the Enlightened One) after achieving enlightenment. He was born a prince of the Sakya clan in a small Indian kingdom in what is now Nepal. He had every luxury of the day and on the surface an apparently satisfying life. He married, had a son, and was destined to inherit his father’s kingdom. However, at the age of twenty-nine he became dissatisfied with his life of ease after being exposed to the true lot of humankind: suffering, old age, disease, and death. His father had protected him from these things because of a prophecy that Siddhartha would become either a great king or a great spiritual leader. His father’s hopes for a powerful successor were dashed when Siddhartha walked away from this life of ease and became an ascetic, a wandering holy man.

For six years he studied and learned from various gurus and holy men while depriving himself of all but the most meager nourishment. Siddhartha discovered that the extremes of self-deprivation were no better than the extremes of luxury and self-indulgence, so he sought the “Middle Way,” another name for Buddhism. Gautama found enlightenment while meditating under a bodhi tree. The Buddha achieved nirvana—the extinction of all desire and ignorance—and proceeded to teach others how to achieve the same state for the next forty-five years. Through discussions, parables, teaching, and living, the Buddha taught the “path of truth or righteousness” (Dhammapada). The scripture (sutta), “The Foundation of the Kingdom of Righteousness,” contains a succinct exposition of the major points that the Buddha taught.

Basic Beliefs

The Buddha preached “the Four Noble Truths” that define the existence of humankind: (1) Life is sorrow or suffering, (2) this suffering is caused by our selfish craving and desires, (3) we can remove sorrow by removing our desires, and (4) the removal of our desires is achieved by following the Noble Eightfold Path. The Noble Eightfold Path defines the “correct” behavior as right conduct, right effort, right speech, right views, right purpose or aspiration, right livelihood, right mindfulness, and right contemplation or meditation. The Buddha had few prohibitions but listed “five precepts” that good Buddhists should generally adhere to: not to kill, not to steal, not to lie, not to imbibe intoxicants, and not to be unchaste or unfaithful.

The Buddha taught that skandas (experiential data) create our existence from moment to moment and that only karma (the law of cause and effect) operates through our experience and is never lost. However, everything is changeable and impermanent. The Buddha made few concrete statements about the afterlife or the nature of “god”—realizing that the Middle Way can be taught but that each person must experience dharma—the realization of nirvana. His final admonition to his followers was to “work out your salvation with diligence” (Buddhist suttas 2000, 114).

After the Buddha—Growth in India

The Buddha was a practical teacher who knew that people need instruction, and he established the sangha (community of Buddhist monks and nuns) to carry on his work and the work of their own salvation. The Buddha instructed the sangha that it could change or delete any of the lesser rules after his passing if the sangha saw fit. Ultimately, the Buddha urged his followers to be “a lamp unto themselves.” Buddhism provides a system that demonstrates where we err and how to correct our errors not by miracles but rather by hard work and contemplation.

One of the most noted people who helped to expand Buddhism was the Mauryan ruler Asoka, who ruled from 272 to 231 BCE. The Maurya Empire (c. 324–200 BCE) grew from the state of Magadha after the time of the Buddha and rapidly expanded after Alexander of Macedon invaded India in the 320s bce, creating the first really unified kingdom in India. Asoka became a convert to Buddhism and helped to expand it by providing for missionaries and monks, so that Buddhism became a world religion while Hinduism remained confined to India. He is often compared with Roman emperor Constantine in the West, whose conversion to Christianity in 312 CE helped that religion to grow. Inscriptions on pillars and rocks throughout Asoka’s realm encouraged the citizens of the empire to follow the dharma, limit the killing and cruelty to animals, and live a righteous life. Like Christianity, Buddhism may also have provided Asoka and the Mauryans with a code of conduct and a way to help manage, enlarge, and consolidate the empire. Buddhism also benefited from the patronage of a king who helped it to reach beyond the borders of India.

Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana Sects

The Maha-Parinibbana Sutta (Book of the Great Decease) concerns the final days and death of the Buddha and is important because the Buddha did not consider himself to be a deity. It illustrates the relationship between the Buddha and Ananda, a cousin of the Buddha who was a disciple and his personal servant. A warm, trusting relationship between the two shines through the text. The first Council of Buddhism met to organize and retain the teachings of the Buddha several months after his death. The Buddhist Suttas, probably recorded by the first or second century BCE, is the canon of the Buddhist faith.

However, by the second and first centuries BCE Buddhism had already begun to diverge into schools of thought that evolved into the major sects of Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana. The Theravada claimed to adhere closely to the original teachings of the Buddha and evolved along more monastic lines to spread through Southeast Asia to Sri Lanka, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, and Cambodia. Theravada is also known as “Hinayana,” which means “lesser vehicle.” Mahayana (greater vehicle) Buddhism became the more adaptive Buddhism. With an emphasis on compassion and flexibility, it meshed with the cultures it encountered to spread to China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. Mahayanists also developed the idea of the bodhisattva (a being who compassionately refrains from entering nirvana in order to save others and is worshipped as a deity). Vajrayana (diamond vehicle) Buddhism is also known as “tantric Buddhism” and spread to Central Asia, primarily Tibet.

The Silk Roads and the Spread of Buddhism in Asia

A network of trade routes called the Silk Roads made travel possible from China to the Mediterranean and to India from about the second century CE to approximately the fifteenth century, connecting the world in ways it had not been before. Religions in particular found their way to new lands and different cultures via the Silk Roads. Buddhism originated in India and spread to the Kushan areas, part of what is today Pakistan and Afghanistan, by the first century CE. Buddhism developed a number of sects, built many monasteries, and became a consumer of many of the luxuries of the day, especially silk. Buddhist monasteries often provided solace for weary travelers, and Buddhist monks, nuns, and their devotees acquired massive quantities of silk for ceremonial functions. A symbiotic relationship existed whereby the growth of Buddhist monasteries increased demand for silk while also supporting its trade and movement.

The earliest schools of Buddhism to spread along the Silk Roads were the Mahasanghikas, Dharmaguptakas, and Sarvastivadins, eventually to be subsumed by the Mahayana sect. As Buddhism spread to Central Asia and China, pilgrims began to seek the origins of Buddhism, visiting its holy sites and bringing home its sacred texts. The travels of fifty-four Buddhists, starting as early as 260 CE, are documented in Chinese sources.

Xuanzang, also known as Hsuan-tsang, was a Chinese Buddhist monk; like many others he sought a more in-depth understanding of his faith by seeking out original documents and visiting places where the faith began in India. Xuanzang began his 16,000- kilometer journey in 629 CE and returned in 645. As Xuanzang began his journey, the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE) emperor, Taizong, was beginning to restore China and make it a powerful force in Central Asia.

Xuanzang encountered Buddhist stupas (usually dome-shaped structures serving as Buddhist shrines) at Balkh and two large Buddhist figures at Bamian in Afghanistan. Although many areas of former Buddhist expansion were in decline, Xuanzang found in Kashmir one hundred Buddhist monasteries and five thousand monks. Welcomed in India at Nalanda by thousands, Xuanzang found a place of intellectual ferment. Cave paintings at Dunhuang record the triumphant passage of Xuanzang back to China; Xuanzang finished The Record of the Western Regions in 646 to document his journey. Gaozong, Taizong’s son and successor, built the Big Wild Goose Pagoda at Xuanzang’s urging to house relics and Buddhist scriptures.

A chaotic period of religious exchange and development began with the rise of the Mongols during the 1100s and 1200s. The Silk Roads’ pivotal role in cultural and religious exchange eventually declined with the advent of the Age of Exploration during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Additionally, Muslim control of long-distance trade routes helped to enhance the Islamization of Central Asia. Central Asian peoples apparently therefore accommodated themselves to those people who were the major participants in their trade connections. Trade led to cultural exchange; thus trade was an important factor in spreading the world’s great religions.

Buddhism in China and Japan

Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam spread in various areas, but to truly make a home in foreign lands these faiths often accommodated themselves to the local culture and modified or even changed some of their values or traditions. In China Buddhists spreading the faith emphasized the compassionate aspects of the faith rather than the disciplined aspects of Theravada Buddhism, and Nestorian Christians used Daoist (relating to a religion developed from Daoist philosophy and folk and Buddhist religion) or Buddhist terms, calling the books of the Bible “sutras” (precepts summarizing Vedic teaching).

Buddhism reached China by the first century CE, and a number of Mahayana sects developed there, including Tiantai, Huayan, Pure Land, and Chan. Pure Land developed as a way to reach the general population without its members having to grasp all the intricate philosophical teachings of Buddhism. Followers of Pure Land simply were to call or chant the name of Amitabha Buddha for salvation in paradise or the Pure Land.

The Indian monk Bodhidhanna is reputed to have brought Chan Buddhism to China during the sixth century CE. The word Chan (Zen in Japanese) derives from the Sanskrit word dhyana and means “meditation,” so Chan is meditation Buddhism. Towering figures such as Huineng (638–713) and Zhaozhou (778–897) strengthened Chan so that by the ninth century major schools of Chan called “Linji” and “Caodong” had developed and would later be exported to Japan as the Zen sects of Rinzai and Soto.

Buddhism had already arrived in Japan from China and Korea during the 500s CE. During the Kamakura period of Japanese history, from 1185 to 1333, Buddhism experienced dramatic growth and reinvigoration. Energetic and charismatic figures such as Nichiren (1222–1282) founded new sects. The medieval period has been characterized as one of the most religious times in Japanese history.

Buddhism had evolved in China to the point that, during the Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279), Chan or Zen dominated Buddhist teachings. Scholars usually credit Myozen Eisai (1141–1215) for introducing Rinzai Zen and Dogen Kigen (1200–1253) for introducing Soto Zen. The Rinzai sect emphasizes koan (spiritual exercise) as its prime tool for achieving understanding and enlightenment, whereas the Soto sect emphasizes zazen (sitting meditation). Both Eisai and Dogen studied in China under Chan masters, receiving recognition of their enlightenment—an official document of lineage is important in Zen and helps to provide credentials to teach upon one’s return home. During the twentieth century, appreciation of Dogen’s work grew, and today Dogen is perceived as one of Japan’s greatest geniuses and the most noted Zen figure in Japan.

With the influx of Chinese masters during the 1200s and 1300s, Japanese Zen more closely resembled its Chinese Chan counterpart. In fact, the Five Mountains system of temple organization, which arose during the late 1300s, was based on the Chinese model. The ironic aspect of Zen growth is that Zen had few real practitioners. Its primary role initially was transmitting Chinese culture to Japan. The Japanese and Chinese masters achieved influence and success because of their access to Chinese culture during the Song dynasty (960–1279).

Buddhism and the West

Much of the early Western exposure to Buddhism came through the Japanese. Eight people, including three Buddhist priests, represented Japanese Buddhism at the World Parliament of Religions in 1893, held in Chicago. The writings of D. T. Suzuki helped to open Western eyes to Buddhism and began to popularize Zen Buddhism. During the last half of the twentieth century, new patterns of immigration and many U.S. and European citizens who turned to non-Western faiths helped Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, and Daoism have an impact on Western culture. Older and recent emigrants from Asia—Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, and Tibetans—have played a large role in establishing a Buddhist foothold in the West and exposing Westerners (Euro-Americans) to the traditions of Asia.

Buddhism’s rise in the United States can be attributed to people’s search for answers and the rapid changes brought about by a modern and consumer-driven society. Buddhism’s rise is also because of dedicated teachers, such as Sylvia Boorstein, Chogyam Trungpa, and Jon Kabat-Zinn, who have helped to popularize the faith. The Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh has had an important influence on U.S. Buddhism. The Dalai Lama (the spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism) also has promoted a more engaged Buddhism with his pleas for Tibetan freedom from China. The Tibetan diaspora (scattering) has opened up access to teachers and lamas (monks) who, until the Chinese occupied Tibet in 1959, were little known outside their own country. The Dalai Lama himself has come to symbolize for many the face of Buddhism shown to the world. His character and compassion in the face of difficulties for his own people exemplify for many the best attributes of the Buddhist life.

Shunryu Suzuki was a Japanese Zen priest who came to the United States in 1959 and settled at a small temple in San Francisco. He is credited with establishing the first Zen monastery in the United States at Tassajara, California, in 1967. The Three Pillars of Zen (1965) by Philip Kapleau was one of the first books in English that discussed the practice of Zen Buddhism. The book has had an impact far beyond the students of Kapleau because many people in the United States lacked access to a Buddhist teacher but were shown how to begin meditating and practice on their own by Kapleau’s book. Much of the Buddhist faith in Asia is centered on the sangha, whereas in the United States no real sangha exists.

Buddhism and Change

Buddhism flowered in the West during the last three decades of the twentieth century, and Zen became a cottage industry. What attracted Westerners, particularly well-educated and professional people, to the faith? The beliefs of Buddhism “are more compatible with a secular scientific worldview than those of the more established Western religions” (Coleman 2001, 205).

In a world that grows smaller each day, the Internet has provided a link to the Buddhist communities of the world and has begun to house the vast amount of Buddhist scriptural writing. The Internet may hold hope for many who practice alone or who are in ill health to have access to qualified teachers. Nonetheless, Buddhism is uniquely suited to isolated practice and meditation. Whether Buddhism will continue to broaden its appeal in the West is difficult to say. Even in Asia monasteries and monkhood are difficult choices in an ever-broadening world consumer culture. Buddhism, like many of the great faiths of the world, has found ways to adapt and survive for centuries. Buddhism continues as a way, the Middle Way, to work toward peace, compassion, and enlightenment. Yet, we have only to look back to the Buddha’s own words to find the future of Buddhism. The Buddha said that the only really permanent thing in this world is change.

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