Download or read book The Birth of Insight written by Erik Braun and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-11-19 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Insight meditation, which claims to offer practitioners a chance to escape all suffering by perceiving the true nature of reality, is one of the most popular forms of meditation today. The Theravada Buddhist cultures of South and Southeast Asia often see it as the Buddha’s most important gift to humanity. In the first book to examine how this practice came to play such a dominant—and relatively recent—role in Buddhism, Erik Braun takes readers to Burma, revealing that Burmese Buddhists in the colonial period were pioneers in making insight meditation indispensable to modern Buddhism. Braun focuses on the Burmese monk Ledi Sayadaw, a pivotal architect of modern insight meditation, and explores Ledi’s popularization of the study of crucial Buddhist philosophical texts in the early twentieth century. By promoting the study of such abstruse texts, Braun shows, Ledi was able to standardize and simplify meditation methods and make them widely accessible—in part to protect Buddhism in Burma after the British takeover in 1885. Braun also addresses the question of what really constitutes the “modern” in colonial and postcolonial forms of Buddhism, arguing that the emergence of this type of meditation was caused by precolonial factors in Burmese culture as well as the disruptive forces of the colonial era. Offering a readable narrative of the life and legacy of one of modern Buddhism’s most important figures, The Birth of Insight provides an original account of the development of mass meditation.

Download or read book Why Buddhism is True written by Robert Wright and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-08-08 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of America’s most brilliant writers, a New York Times bestselling journey through psychology, philosophy, and lots of meditation to show how Buddhism holds the key to moral clarity and enduring happiness. At the heart of Buddhism is a simple claim: The reason we suffer—and the reason we make other people suffer—is that we don’t see the world clearly. At the heart of Buddhist meditative practice is a radical promise: We can learn to see the world, including ourselves, more clearly and so gain a deep and morally valid happiness. In this “sublime” (The New Yorker), pathbreaking book, Robert Wright shows how taking this promise seriously can change your life—how it can loosen the grip of anxiety, regret, and hatred, and how it can deepen your appreciation of beauty and of other people. He also shows why this transformation works, drawing on the latest in neuroscience and psychology, and armed with an acute understanding of human evolution. This book is the culmination of a personal journey that began with Wright’s landmark book on evolutionary psychology, The Moral Animal, and deepened as he immersed himself in meditative practice and conversed with some of the world’s most skilled meditators. The result is a story that is “provocative, informative and...deeply rewarding” (The New York Times Book Review), and as entertaining as it is illuminating. Written with the wit, clarity, and grace for which Wright is famous, Why Buddhism Is True lays the foundation for a spiritual life in a secular age and shows how, in a time of technological distraction and social division, we can save ourselves from ourselves, both as individuals and as a species.

Download or read book The Experience of Insight written by Joseph Goldstein and published by Buddhist Publication Society. This book was released on 2008-12-01 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every so often, a book appears that has a special value for people who are students of the nature of reality. Joseph Goldstein teaches meditation as a method of experiencing things as they are, entering the remarkable flow of the mind/body process. This work, comprised of unusually clear instructions and discourses given during a 30-day Vipassana meditation retreat, is a day-to-day journey into Mind.

Download or read book After Buddhism written by Stephen Batchelor and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-28 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some twenty-five centuries after the Buddha started teaching, his message continues to inspire people across the globe, including those living in predominantly secular societies. What does it mean to adapt religious practices to secular contexts? Stephen Batchelor, an internationally known author and teacher, is committed to a secularized version of the Buddha’s teachings. The time has come, he feels, to articulate a coherent ethical, contemplative, and philosophical vision of Buddhism for our age. After Buddhism, the culmination of four decades of study and practice in the Tibetan, Zen, and Theravada traditions, is his attempt to set the record straight about who the Buddha was and what he was trying to teach. Combining critical readings of the earliest canonical texts with narrative accounts of five members of the Buddha’s inner circle, Batchelor depicts the Buddha as a pragmatic ethicist rather than a dogmatic metaphysician. He envisions Buddhism as a constantly evolving culture of awakening whose long survival is due to its capacity to reinvent itself and interact creatively with each society it encounters. This original and provocative book presents a new framework for understanding the remarkable spread of Buddhism in today’s globalized world. It also reminds us of what was so startling about the Buddha’s vision of human flourishing.

Download or read book The Progress of Insight written by Mahasi Sayadaw and published by Buddhist Publication Society. This book was released on 1994 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The practice of Vipassana or insight meditation was described by the Buddha as the “direct way” for the overcoming of all sorrow and grief and for realizing Nibbana, the state of perfect liberation from suffering. The essence of this practice consists in the four foundations of mindfulness: mindful contemplation of the body, feelings, states of mind, and mind objects.

Download or read book Teaching Buddhism written by Todd Lewis and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Buddhist studies is a rapidly changing field of research, constantly transforming and adapting to new scholarship. This creates a problem for instructors, both in a university setting and in monastic schools, as they try to develop a curriculum based on a body of scholarship that continually shifts in focus and expands to new areas. Teaching Buddhism establishes a dialogue between the community of instructors of Buddhism and leading scholars in the field who are updating, revising, and correcting earlier understandings of Buddhist traditions. Each chapter presents new ideas within a particular theme of Buddhist studies and explores how courses can be enhanced with these insights. Contributors in the first section focus on the typical approaches, figures, and traditions in undergraduate courses, such as the role of philosophy in Buddhism, Nagarjuna, Yogacara Buddhism, tantric traditions, and Zen Buddhism. They describe the impact of recent developments-like new studies in the cognitive sciences-on scholarship in those areas. Part Two examines how political engagement and ritual practice have shaped the tradition throughout its history. Focus then shifts to the issues facing instructors of Buddhism-dilemmas for the scholar-practitioner in the academic and monastic classroom, the tradition's possible roles in teaching feminism and diversity, and how to present the tradition in the context of a world religions course. In the final section, contributors offer stories of their own experiences teaching, paying particular attention to the ways in which American culture has impacted them. They discuss the development of courses on American Buddhism; using course material on the family and children; the history and trajectory of a Buddhist-Christian dialog; and Buddhist bioethics, environmentalism, economic development, and social justice. In synthesizing this vast and varied body of research, the contributors in this volume have provided an invaluable service to the field

Download or read book Engaging Buddhism written by Jay L. Garfield and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Articulating the basic metaphysical framework common to Buddhist traditions, this book explores questions in metaphysics, the philosophy of mind, phenomenology, epistemology, the philosophy of language, and ethics as they are addressed in a variety of Asian Buddhist traditions. Focusing on philosophical problems, in each case the connections between Buddhist and contemporary Western debates are examined, as are the distinctive contributions the Buddhist tradition can make to Western discussions.

Download or read book Insight into Emptiness written by Jampa Tegchok and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-07-10 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A former abbot of one of the largest Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in the world, Khensur Jampa Tegchok has been teaching Westerners about Buddhism since the 1970s. With a deep respect for the intellectual capacity of his students, Khensur Tegchok here unpacks with great erudition Buddhism's animating philosophical principle - the emptiness of all appearances. Engagingly edited by bestselling author Thubten Chodron, emptiness is here approached from a host of angles far beyond most treatments of the subject, while never sacrificing its conversational approach.

Download or read book Buddhist Meditation written by Kamalashila and published by Windhorse Publications. This book was released on 2013-03-28 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a comprehensive and practical guide to Buddhist meditation, providing a complete introduction for beginners, as well as detailed advice for experienced meditators seeking to deepen their practice. Kamalashila explores the primary aims of Buddhist meditation: enhanced awareness, true happiness, and liberating insight into the nature of reality. This third edition includes new sections on the importance of the imagination, on Just Sitting, and on reflection on the Buddha.

Download or read book Deepening Insight written by Bhikkhu Anālayo and published by Pariyatti. This book was released on 2021-08-07 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deepening Insight presents a selection of passages from the early Buddhist discourses that provide perspectives on the cultivation of liberating insight into vedanā, “sensation,” “feeling,” or “feeling tone.” For meditators, such passages can be of considerable help as a reference point for deepening insight. A metaphor that can offer considerable help when facing vedanās describes bubbles arising on the surface of a pond during rain...they arise and soon enough burst and disappear. Contemplation of the changing nature of vedanā provides a firm foundation for the growth of insight into not self. Such insight proceeds through successive layers of the mind’s ingrained habit of self-referentiality. Based on relinquishing the explicit view of affirming the existence of a permanent self, increasingly subtler traces of conceit and possessiveness need to be successively overcome until with full awakening all selfing in any form will be removed for good. Deepening Insight is based on textual sources that reflect “early Buddhism,” which stands for the development of thought and practices during roughly the first two centuries in the history of Buddhism, from about the fifth to the third century BCE. These sources are the Pāli discourses and their parallels, mostly extant in Chinese translation, which go back to instructions and teachings given orally by the Buddha and his disciples. In those times in India, writing was not employed for such purposes, and for centuries these teachings were transmitted orally. The final results of such oral transmission are available to us nowadays in the form of written texts. Bhikkhu Anālayo's presentation is meant to provide direct access, through the medium of translation, to the Chinese Āgama parallels to relevant Pāli discourses. In commenting on such passages, his chief concern throughout is to bring out practical aspects that are relevant to actual insight meditation. Endorsements In spring 1990 S.N. Goenka initiated an international seminar named The Importance of Vedanā and Sampajañña. It had the purpose to disseminate the prominence of sensations (vedanā) as a core object of meditation to recognize the intrinsic nature of change and impermanence. Venerable Bhikkhu Anālayo now provides a thorough, comprehensive and well selected collection on vedanā as maintained in the original early Pāli Canon. Along with the comparison to the Chinese Āgama, otherwise hardly available, this collection if adapted and applied to practice may indeed serve as an inspiring source for deepening insight. —Klaus Nothnagel, Pāli teacher and Center Teacher for Dhamma Pallava in Poland

Download or read book Early Buddhist Meditation written by Keren Arbel and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-03-16 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a new interpretation of the relationship between 'insight practice' (satipatthana) and the attainment of the four jhànas (i.e., right samàdhi), a key problem in the study of Buddhist meditation. The author challenges the traditional Buddhist understanding of the four jhànas as states of absorption, and shows how these states are the actualization and embodiment of insight (vipassanà). It proposes that the four jhànas and what we call 'vipassanà' are integral dimensions of a single process that leads to awakening. Current literature on the phenomenology of the four jhànas and their relationship with the 'practice of insight' has mostly repeated traditional Theravàda interpretations. No one to date has offered a comprehensive analysis of the fourfold jhàna model independently from traditional interpretations. This book offers such an analysis. It presents a model which speaks in the Nikàyas' distinct voice. It demonstrates that the distinction between the 'practice of serenity' (samatha-bhàvanà) and the 'practice of insight' (vipassanà-bhàvanà) – 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 jhànas as 'altered states of consciousness', absorptions that do not reveal anything about the nature of phenomena, is incompatible with the teachings of the Pàli Nikàyas. By carefully analyzing the descriptions of the four jhànas in the early Buddhist texts in Pàli, 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. Early Buddhist Meditation will be of interest to scholars of Buddhist studies, Asian philosophies and religions, as well as Buddhist practitioners with a serious interest in the process of insight meditation.

Download or read book Why I Am Not a Buddhist written by Evan Thompson and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-28 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A provocative essay challenging the idea of Buddhist exceptionalism, from one of the world's most widely respected philosophers and writers on Buddhism and science. Buddhism has become a uniquely favored religion in our modern age. A burgeoning number of books extol the scientifically proven benefits of meditation and mindfulness for everything ranging from business to romance. There are conferences, courses, and celebrities promoting the notion that Buddhism is spirituality for the rational; compatible with cutting-edge science; indeed, "a science of the mind." In this provocative book, Evan Thompson argues that this representation of Buddhism is false. In lucid and entertaining prose, Thompson dives deep into both Western and Buddhist philosophy to explain how the goals of science and religion are fundamentally different. Efforts to seek their unification are wrongheaded and promote mistaken ideas of both. He suggests cosmopolitanism instead, a worldview with deep roots in both Eastern and Western traditions. Smart, sympathetic, and intellectually ambitious, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in Buddhism's place in our world today."--Provided by publisher.

Download or read book The Message of the Buddha written by K.N. Jayatilleke and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Republished as part of K. N. Jayatilleke, Facets of Buddhist Thought: Collected Essays; Buddhist Publication Society, Kandy, 2008. ISBN: 9789552403354.

Download or read book Being Buddhist in a Christian World written by Sharon A Suh and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2012-09 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenging Western notions of Buddhism as a self-effacing path to rebirth and enlightenment, Sharon Suh shows how first-generation Korean Americans at Sa Chal Temple in Los Angeles have applied Buddhist doctrines to the project of finding and knowing the self in everyday life. Buddhism, for these Buddhists, serves as a source of empowerment and as a wellspring of practical and spiritual relief from myriad everyday troubles. Painful life events and circumstances--psychological stresses, marital discord, adjustments to immigrant life, racial and religious minority status--prompt a turning toward religion in an effort to build self-esteem. The process of coming to find and know the self initiates a transformation that, far from taking future rebirths as its focus, enables the self to enact change in the present. Oral histories from twenty-five men and twenty-five women also offer unexpected insights into distinctly male and female forms of Buddhist worship. As a commentary on ethnicity, Being Buddhist in a Christian World challenges much of the existing literature in Asian American studies by placing religion at the center and illustrating its importance for shaping ethnic identity. Not only does Suh ask how Korean American identity might be grounded in religion, she goes on to examine the implications of this grounding when the religious tradition is considered to be socially marginal.

Download or read book The Path of Serenity and Insight written by Henepola Gunaratana and published by Motilal Banarsidass. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the oldest scriptures of Theravada Buddhism much attention is given to the jhanas, high levels of meditative attainment distinguished by powerful concentration and purity of mind. Ven. Dr Gunaratana examines these jhanas within the context of Buddhist teaching as a whole and particularly within the meditation disciplines taught by the Buddha. Beginning with the ethical foundation for meditation, the role of the teacher, the classical subjects of meditation, and the appropriateness of these subjects to individual practitioners, the author traces the practice of meditation to the higher reaches of realization. The eight stages of jhana are individually analyzed and explained in terms of their relation to one another and to the ultimate goal of the teaching. The author makes the critical distinction between the mundane jhanas and supermundane jhanas, pointing out that the lower four while leading to various mental powers and psychic attainments, are not necessary to full enlightenment and may be developed or bypassed as the meditator wishes. The author goes on to explain the place of the jhanas among the accomplishments of an arahat and elucidate their usefulness for a dedicated meditator. For more info, please log on to www.mlbd.co.in

Download or read book Buddhism in World Cultures written by Stephen C. Berkwitz and published by ABC-CLIO. This book was released on 2006-04-06 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive overview of modern Buddhism across cultures, showing how this ancient religion has adapted to recent social and political change. Collecting the work of leading authorities on Buddhism in different societies around the world, this book details the state of the religion in Asian countries where it is a major cultural influence and in North America. The religion has changed to meet the challenges of modernity; its practitioners have incorporated those innovations and this work examines those changes in-depth. A comprehensive overview of historical Buddhist practice grounds the reader for the entire nine chapters, each of which is organized by geographical area and follows the path Buddhism took as it spread across Asia and into North America. Each chapter presents field research and critical reflection on what constitutes modern Buddhism in one of nine countries or regions. Histories of Buddhism are common; this is the only source for in-depth information on modern Buddhism.

Download or read book Dancing With Life written by Phillip Moffitt and published by Rodale Books. This book was released on 2012-03-27 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do we suffer? Is there a purpose to our pain? Noting that human beings have wrestled with such questions for thousands of years, Phillip Moffitt has found answers for his own life in Buddhist philosophy and meditation. Reflecting on his own journey from Esquire magazine editor-in-chief to Buddhist meditation teacher, Moffitt provides a fresh perspective on the Buddha's ancient wisdom, showing how to move from suffering to new awareness and unanticipated joy. In this deeply spiritual book that is sure to become a Buddhist classic, Moffitt explores the twelve insights that underlie the Buddha's core teaching--the Four Noble Truths--and uses these often neglected ideas to guide readers to a more meaningful relationship to suffering. Moffitt write: "These twelve insights teach you to dance with both the joy and pain, finding peace in a balanced mind and calm spirit. As the most specific, practical life instructions I have ever encountered, they serve as an invaluable tool for anyone who seeks a life filled with meaning and well-being." Practicing these twelve insights, as Moffitt suggests, will help readers experience life's difficulties without being filled with stress and anguish, and they will enhance their moments of happiness. With engaging writing and a strong message of self-empowerment, Dancing with Life offers a prescriptive path for finding joy and peace that will appeal to meditation students and readers of "Dharma Wisdom," Moffitt's column in Yoga Journal, as well as anyone searching for a more authentic life.