Download or read book Buddhahood Embodied written by John J. Makransky and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides many new translations of original texts formative of Mahayana concepts of Enlightenment and resolves the 1200-year-old controversy between Indian and Tibetan views of the meaning of buddhahood.
Download or read book Buddhahood Embodied written by John J. Makransky and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1997-07-31 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To enter the Mahayana Buddhist path to enlightenment is to seek both to become free from our dualistic, deluded world and to remain actively engaged in that world until all others are free. How are these two apparently contradictory qualities to be embodied in the attainment of buddhahood (dharmakaya)? How can one's present practice accomplish that? These questions underlie a millennium-old controversy over buddhahood in India and Tibet that centers around a cherished text, the Abhisamayalamkara. Makransky shows how the Abhisamayalamkara's composite redaction, from Abhidharma, Prajnaparamita, and Yogacara traditions, permitted its interpreters to perceive different aspects of those traditions as central in its teaching of buddhahood. This enabled Indians and Tibetans to read very different perspectives on enlightenment into the Abhisamayalamkara, through which they responded to the questions in startlingly different ways. The author shows how these perspectives provide alternative ways to resolve a logical tension at the heart of Mahayana thought, inscribed in the doctrine that buddhahood paradoxically transcends and engages our world simultaneously. Revealing this tension as the basis of the Abhisamayalamkara controversy, Makransky shows its connection to many other Indo-Tibetan controversies revolving around the same tension: disagreements over buddhahood's knowledge, embodiment, and accessibility to beings (in Buddha nature and through the path). Tracing the source of tension to early Mahayana practice intuitions about enlightenment, the author argues that different perspectives in these controversies express different ways of prioritizing those practice intuitions.
Download or read book Awake Where You Are written by Martin Aylward and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The body is of course integral to meditation, but there are only a few books that focus this specifically on the body and the meditative experience. Awake Where You Are addresses that need, and additionally integrates psychological concepts, which provides a more familiar entry point for people less familiar with Buddhism. “Embodied awareness is the way back home—intimacy with where and how we are right now, with what is happening and how we are meeting it. My intention is to lead you into the heart of your life. Inside your body, where everything happens—within a quality of listening rather than knowledge, of feeling rather than reaction. This meditative practice is radically transformative.” —Martin Aylward Pulled around by desires and distractions, we’re so easily disconnected from ourselves. Life is happening right in front of us, and within us—but still, we manage to miss so much of it. Awake Where You Are provides the antidote, inviting us to go deep into our own bodies, to inhabit our sensory experience carefully; to learn the art of living from the inside out, and in the process to find ease, clarity, and an authentic, unshakeable freedom. The practices in the book literally bring us back into our skin, where we can reconnect with a more rich, meaningful, and peaceful life. Aylward writes with sophisticated subtlety, as well as the heart-opening simplicity and clarity born of deep experience. And this book is more than a meditation guide—it’s a guide to living an embodied life. You’ll learn about the following areas and practices: - Understanding and liberating our primal human drives. Aylward explains how the three primary drives—survival, sexual, and social—function within us, and how we can engage their energy to explore, understand, and liberate them. - Integrating psychological understanding with meditative practice. Awake Where You Are goes beyond the broad brushstrokes of Buddhist psychology, inviting the reader into an exploration of their own particular psychological history and conditioning. - Investigating the nuances of love. Readers will learn to see the classical Buddhist heart qualities, or brahmaviharas (loving-kindness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity) as distinct flavors of love, and as the natural resting places of a free heart. “Martin is a marvelous teacher and offers us the refreshing wisdom of an embodied life.” —Jack Kornfield, author of No Time Like the Present
Download or read book Crucified Wisdom written by S. Mark Heim and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2018-12-04 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work provides the first systematic discussion of the Bodhisattva path and its importance for constructive Christian theology. Crucified Wisdom examines specific Buddhist traditions, texts, and practices not as phenomena whose existence requires an apologetic justification but as wells of tested wisdom that invite theological insight. With the increasing participation of Christians in Buddhist practice, many are seeking a deeper understanding of the way the teachings of the two traditions might interface. Christ and the Bodhisattva are often compared superficially in Buddhist–Christian discussion. This text combines a rich exposition of the Bodhisattva path, using Śāntideva’s classic work the Bodicaryāvatāra and subsequent Tibetan commentators, with detailed reflection on its implications for Christian faith and practice. Author S. Mark Heim lays out root tensions constituted by basic Buddhist teachings on the one hand, and Christian teachings on the other, and the ways in which the Bodhisattva or Christ embody and resolve the resulting paradoxes in their respective traditions. An important contribution to the field of comparative theology in general and to the area of Buddhist–Christian studies in particular, Crucified Wisdom proposes that Christian theology can take direct instruction from Mahāyāna Buddhism in two respects: deepening its understanding of our creaturely nature through no-self insights, and revising its vision of divine immanence in dialogue with teachings of emptiness. Heim argues that Christians may affirm the importance of novelty in history, the enduring significance of human persons, and the Trinitarian reality of God, even as they learn to value less familiar, nondual dimensions of Christ’s incarnation, human redemption, and the divine life. Crucified Wisdom focuses on questions of reconciliation and atonement in Christian theology and explores the varying interpretations of the crucifixion of Jesus in Buddhist–Christian discussion. The Bodhisattva path is central for major contemporary Buddhist voices such as the Dalai Lama and Thích Nhât Hanh, who figure prominently as conversation partners in the text. This work will be of particular value for those interested in “dual belonging” in connection to these traditions.
Download or read book Buddhism Christianity and the Question of Creation written by Perry Schmidt-Leukel and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is the world created by a divine creator? Or is it the constant product of karmic forces? The issue of creation was at the heart of the classic controversies between Buddhism and Hindu Theism. In modern times it can be found at the centre of many polemical debates between Buddhism and Christianity. Is this the principal barrier that separates Buddhism from Christianity and other theistic religions? The contributions to Part One explore the various aspects of traditional and contemporary Buddhist objections against the idea of a divine creator as well as Christian possibilities to meet the Buddhist critique. Part Two asks for the potential truth on both sides and suggests a surprising way that the barrier might be overcome. This opens a new round of philosophical and theological dialogue between these two major traditions with challenging insights for both. Contributors: José I. Cabezón, John P. Keenan, Armin Kreiner, Aasulv Lande, John D'Arcy May, Eva K. Neumaier, Perry Schmidt-Leukel, Ernst Steinkellner.
Download or read book The Way to Buddhahood written by 印順 and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1998 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Captures an entire Buddhist tradition--both the classic Chinese experiencend views of the Tibetan monks--through the enlightened words of the greatestiving master of the Buddhist scholar-monk tradition. Original. IP.
Download or read book Mediating the Power of Buddhas written by Glenn Wallis and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mediating the Power of Buddhas offers a fascinating analysis of the seventh-century ritual manual, the Mañjusrimulakalpa. This medieval text is intended to reveal the path into a ritual universe where the power of a buddha abides. Author Glenn Wallis traces the strategies of the Mañjusrimulakalpa to enable its committed reader to perfect the promised ritual, uncovering what conditions must be met for ritual practice to succeed and what personal characteristics practitioners must possess in order to realize the ritual intentions of the Buddhist community. The manual itself was written at a key point in Buddhist history, one when Hindu forms of practice were still imitated and on the cusp of the shift from Mahāyāna to Vajrayāna (or Tantric) Buddhism. In addition, the Mañjusrimulakalpa presents a rich compendium of Buddhist life in an earlier era, containing information on a variety of its readers' concerns: astrology, astronomy, medicine and healing, ritual practice, iconography, devotion, and meditation.
Download or read book Demystifying Awakening written by Stephen Snyder and published by . This book was released on 2022-03-11 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: See the potential that is within each of us-the realization and embodiment of our true natureWith Demystifying Awakening, senior meditation teacher Stephen Snyder skillfully marks the subtle path of the Awakening process. With loving care, personal examples, and gentle suggestions, Stephen plants the seeds of practice and meditation by:- explaining Awakening in an accessible way that draws on Zen and Theravada Buddhist traditions;- guiding readers through more than thirty foundational and advanced meditations and practices that support each step on the path of realization;- offering advice for identifying and working with resistances to Awakening; and- encouraging the embodiment and lived expression of realization through an exploration of the p?ram?s, the Buddhist perfections of behavior. Demystifying Awakening transmits a practice path for Awakening in this lifetime.
Download or read book Existence and Enlightenment in the La k vat ra S tra written by Florin Giripescu Sutton and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1991-01-01 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a systematic analysis of one of the most important concepts characterizing the Yogācāra School of Buddhism (the last creative stage of Indian Buddhism) as outlined and explained in one of its most authoritative and influential texts, Laṅkāvatāra-Sūtra. Compiled in the second half of the fourth-century A.D., this sutra not only represents a comprehensive synthesis of both early and late religio-philosophical ideas crucial to the understanding of Buddhism in India, but it also provides an insight into the very early roots of the Japanese Zen Buddhism in the heart of the South Asian esotericism. The first part of the book outlines the three-fold nature of Being, as conceptualized in Buddhist metaphysics. The author uses an interpretive framework borrowed from the existentialist philosophy of Heidegger, in order to separate the transcendental Essence of Being from its Temporal manifestation as Self, and from its Spatial or Cosmic dimension. The second part clarifies the Buddhist approach to knowledge in its religious, transcendental sense and it shows that the Buddhists were actually first in making use of dialectical reasoning for the purpose of transcending the contradictory dualities imbedded in the common ways of perceiving, thinking, and arguing about reality.
Download or read book Word Embodied written by Halle O'Neal and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Halle O'Neal unpacks jeweled pagoda mandala paintings and their revolutionary entwining of word and image to reveal crucial dynamics underlying Japanese Buddhist art--including invisibility, performative viewing, and the spectacular visualizations of embodiment.
Download or read book A Bull of a Man written by John Powers and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-19 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The androgynous, asexual Buddha of contemporary popular imagination stands in stark contrast to the muscular, virile, and sensual figure presented in Indian Buddhist texts. In early Buddhist literature and art, the Buddha’s perfect physique and sexual prowess are important components of his legend as the world’s “ultimate man.” He is both the scholarly, religiously inclined brahman and the warrior ruler who excels in martial arts, athletic pursuits, and sexual exploits. The Buddha effortlessly performs these dual roles, combining his society’s norms for ideal manhood and creating a powerful image taken up by later followers in promoting their tradition in a hotly contested religious marketplace. In this groundbreaking study of previously unexplored aspects of the early Buddhist tradition, John Powers skillfully adapts methodological approaches from European and North American historiography to the study of early Buddhist literature, art, and iconography, highlighting aspects of the tradition that have been surprisingly invisible in earlier scholarship. The book focuses on the figure of the Buddha and his monastic followers to show how they were constructed as paragons of masculinity, whose powerful bodies and compelling sexuality attracted women, elicited admiration from men, and convinced skeptics of their spiritual attainments.
Download or read book Awakening the Buddha Within written by Lama Surya Das and published by Harmony. This book was released on 1998-06-15 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lama Surya Das, the most highly trained American lama in the Tibetan tradition, presents the definitive book on Western Buddhism for the modern-day spiritual seeker. The radical and compelling message of Buddhism tells us that each of us has the wisdom, awareness, love, and power of the Buddha within; yet most of us are too often like sleeping Buddhas. In Awakening the Buddha Within, Surya Das shows how we can awaken to who we really are in order to lead a more compassionate, enlightened, and balanced life. It illuminates the guidelines and key principles embodied in the noble Eight-Fold Path and the traditional Three Enlightenment Trainings common to all schools of Buddhism: Wisdom Training: Developing clear vision, insight, and inner understanding—seeing reality and ourselves as we really are. Ethics Training: Cultivating virtue, self-discipline, and compassion in what we say and do. Meditation Training: Practicing mindfulness, concentration, and awareness of the present moment. With lively stories, meditations, and spiritual practices, Awakening the Buddha Within is an invaluable text for the novice and experienced student of Buddhism alike.
Download or read book The Origins of O Ma ipadme H written by Alexander Studholme and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oṃ Maṇipadme Hūṃ, perhaps the most well-known of all Buddhist mantras, lies at the heart of the Tibetan system and is cherished by both layman and lama alike. This book documents the origins of the mantra, and presents a new interpretation of the meaning of Oṃ Maṇipadme Hūṃ, and includes a detailed, annotated precis of the Kāraṇḍavyūha Sūtra, opening up this important Mahayana Buddhist work to a wider audience. The Kāraṇḍavyūha— the earliest textual source for Oṃ Maṇipadme Hūṃ—which describes both the compassionate activity of Avalokiteśvara, the bodhisattva whose power the mantra invokes, and the mythical tale of the search for and discovery of the mantra. Through a detailed analysis of this sutra, Studholme explores the historical and doctrinal forces behind the appearance of Oṃ Maṇipadme Hūṃ in India at around the middle of the first millennium C.E. He argues that the Kāraṇḍavyūha has close affinities to non-Buddhist puranic literature, and that the conception of Avalokiteśvara and his six-syllable mantra is informed by the conception of the Hindu deity Śiva and his five-syllable mantra Namaḥ Śivāya. The sutra reflects an historical situation in which the Buddhist monastic establishment was coming into contact with Buddhist tantric practitioners, themselves influenced by Saivite practitioners.
Download or read book Virtuous Bodies written by Susanne Mrozik and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2007-07-20 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Virtuous Bodies breaks new ground in the field of Buddhist ethics by investigating the diverse roles bodies play in ethical development. Traditionally, Buddhists assumed a close connection between body and morality. Thus Buddhist literature contains descriptions of living beings that stink with sin, are disfigured by vices, or are perfumed and adorned with virtues. Taking an influential early medieval Indian Mahayana Buddhist text-Santideva's Compendium of Training (Siksasamuccaya)-as a case study, Susanne Mrozik demonstrates that Buddhists regarded ethical development as a process of physical and moral transformation.Mrozik chooses The Compendium of Training because it quotes from over one hundred Buddhist scriptures, allowing her to reveal a broader Buddhist interest in the ethical significance of bodies. The text is a training manual for bodhisattvas, especially monastic bodhisattvas. In it, bodies function as markers of, and conditions for, one's own ethical development. Most strikingly, bodies also function as instruments for the ethical development of others. When living beings come into contact with the virtuous bodies of bodhisattvas, they are transformed physically and morally for the better.Virtuous Bodies explores both the centrality of bodies to the bodhisattva ideal and the corporeal specificity of that ideal. Arguing that the bodhisattva ideal is an embodied ethical ideal, Mrozik poses an array of fascinating questions: What does virtue look like? What kinds of physical features constitute virtuous bodies? What kinds of bodies have virtuous effects on others? Drawing on a range of contemporary theorists, this book engages in a feminist hermeneutics of recovery and suspicion in order to explore the ethical resources Buddhism offers to scholars and religious practitioners interested in the embodied nature of ethical ideals.
Download or read book Buddhist Theology written by Roger Jackson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-16 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars of Buddhism, themselves Buddhist, here seek to apply the critical tools of the academy to reassess the truth and transformative value of their tradition in its relevance to the contemporary world.
Download or read book Boundless Heart written by Christina Feldman and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2017-03-07 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An esteemed Insight Meditation teacher leads you through the sublime qualities of Buddhism—kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity—and how they can enrich your life Compassion, kindness, equanimity, and joy are not only the fruits of the awakened life but also the path to it—attitudes of mind that can be cultivated through intention and dedication. Also known as the brahma viharas (sublime abodes) and the “Four Immeasurables,” these enobling qualities are far more than simply the “feel-good” states they are often mistaken for. They must be pursued sincerely as a spiritual practice—not just as a means of getting a “spiritual high”—in order to experience the full extent of their power. In Boundless Heart, Christina Feldman presents teachings on the Four Immeasurables, exploring how they balance each other in a way that enhances them all. Her simple practices will lead you toward a life infused with kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity—and to a way of being that promotes those qualities to the world at large.
Download or read book The Philosophy of Buddhism written by A. Verdu and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The riddles that world-causation pose to the human mind lie at the bottom of all cosmological systems of thought. In their origins, all philosophical attitudes are conditioned by partiality and "perspectivism. " The philosopher's attempted flight towards the seemingly remote kingdom of truth is often aborted by the binding twines of perspectival language. Thus his insights lose themselves in conflicting, contradictory manifestos. Greek cosmology, as it is formally set forth by the pre-Socratics, is a clear example of this weary pilgrimage of mind's embodied vision from angle to angle, from perspective to perspective. Not less is to be expected from the systems of Hinduism and, mutatis mutandis, also of Buddhist thought. More confined from the very outset to the study of reality as a study of human existence, of its awareness of embodiment, of its spatio-temporal bondage, and of its ultimate ontological status, Buddhism gave rise to truly astounding theories of "life-world" causation. The process of Buddhist thought, as it refers to the nature of the human experience as "in-the-world" existence, covers a vast range of doctrines, from original theories of pluralism and phenomenalism with sectional, multifarious and relativistic notions of causality, through the unitary conceptions of monistic idealism, up to the top of universal integrationism and dialectical totalism.
