Download or read book The Chan Handbook written by Hsuan Hua and published by Buddhist Text Translation Society. This book was released on 2012-10-27 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Not everyone is fortunate enough to attend a meditation retreat with a Chan master, yet everyone can benefit from this handbook that explains the essential principals of chan meditation as taught by the late Tripitika Master Hsuan Hua, former instructor at Nan Hua Monastery in Canton, China, the bodhimanda of the Sixth Patriarch Hui Neng. Compiled from Chinese and translated into English, these talks span a 40 year period during retreats in China and America. Topics covered include - What are the benefits of meditation? - How do we sit in meditation? - What are the states of meditation? - How do we reach nirvana? - What is absolute enlightenment?
Download or read book Middle Land Middle Way written by Shravasti Dhammika and published by Buddhist Publication Society. This book was released on 2008-12-01 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive guidebook to the places in India made sacred by the Buddha’s presence. Beginning with an inspiring account of Buddhist pilgrimage, the author then covers sixteen places in detail. With maps and colour photos, an essential companion for pilgrim and traveler.
Download or read book The Three Pure Land Sutras written by and published by BDK America. This book was released on 2003 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The larger sutra on Amitāyus (Taishō volume 12, number 360) -- The sutra on contemplation of Amitāyus (Taishō volume 12, number 365) -- The smaller sutra on Amitāyus (Taishō volume 12, number 366).
Download or read book Buddhism in America written by Richard Hughes Seager and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2012-07-03 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past half century in America, Buddhism has grown from a transplanted philosophy to a full-fledged religious movement, rich in its own practices, leaders, adherents, and institutions. Long favored as an essential guide to this history, Buddhism in America covers the three major groups that shape the tradition—an emerging Asian immigrant population, native-born converts, and old-line Asian American Buddhists—and their distinct, yet spiritually connected efforts to remake Buddhism in a Western context. This edition updates existing text and adds three new essays on contemporary developments in American Buddhism, particularly the aging of the baby boom population and its effect on American Buddhism's modern character. New material includes revised information on the full range of communities profiled in the first edition; an added study of a second generation of young, Euro-American leaders and teachers; an accessible look at the increasing importance of meditation and neurobiological research; and a provocative consideration of the mindfulness movement in American culture. The volume maintains its detailed account of South and East Asian influences on American Buddhist practices, as well as instances of interreligious dialogue, socially activist Buddhism, and complex gender roles within the community. Introductory chapters describe Buddhism's arrival in America with the nineteenth-century transcendentalists and rapid spread with the Beat poets of the 1950s. The volume now concludes with a frank assessment of the challenges and prospects of American Buddhism in the twenty-first century.
Download or read book The Buddha s Footprint written by Johan Elverskog and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2020-02-21 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A corrective to the contemporary idea that Buddhism has always been an environmentally friendly religion In the current popular imagination, Buddhism is often understood to be a religion intrinsically concerned with the environment. The Dharma, the name given to Buddhist teachings by Buddhists, states that all things are interconnected. Therefore, Buddhists are perceived as extending compassion beyond people and animals to include plants and the earth itself out of a concern for the total living environment. In The Buddha's Footprint, Johan Elverskog contends that only by jettisoning this contemporary image of Buddhism as a purely ascetic and apolitical tradition of contemplation can we see the true nature of the Dharma. According to Elverskog, Buddhism is, in fact, an expansive religious and political system premised on generating wealth through the exploitation of natural resources. Elverskog surveys the expansion of Buddhism across Asia in the period between 500 BCE and 1500 CE, when Buddhist institutions were built from Iran and Azerbaijan in the west, to Kazakhstan and Siberia in the north, Japan in the east, and Sri Lanka and Indonesia in the south. He examines the prosperity theology at the heart of the Dharma that declared riches to be a sign of good karma and the means by which spritiual status could be elevated through donations bequeathed to Buddhist institutions. He demonstrates how this scriptural tradition propelled Buddhists to seek wealth and power across Asia and to exploit both the people and the environment. Elverskog shows the ways in which Buddhist expansion not only entailed the displacement of local gods and myths with those of the Dharma—as was the case with Christianity and Islam—but also involved fundamentally transforming earlier social and political structures and networks of economic exchange. The Buddha's Footprint argues that the institutionalization of the Dharma was intimately connected to agricultural expansion, resource extraction, deforestation, urbanization, and the monumentalization of Buddhism itself.
Download or read book Three Steps One Bow written by Heng Ju (Bhikshu) and published by Buddhist Text Translation Society. This book was released on 2014-08-17 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on the principle that peace in the world begins with peace in our hearts, two American monks, Heng Ju and Heng Yo, undertook an arduous 10 month pilgrimage in 1973. As they bowed down in full prostrations to the ground once every three steps, they prayed for world peace and sought spiritual awakening. A collection of excerpts from the journal they kept, this book offers an honest and moving account of their journey as they relate their internal and external hardships as well as their interactions with their teacher, Master Hsuan Hua, and their awakenings. This book shows Buddhism in its true form: a practice to transform the mind and thereby the world in which we live. This 40th anniversary edition comes with a preface written by Jeanette Testu, daughter of the former Heng Ju who had returned to lay life.
Download or read book Repentance Ritual of the Emperor of Liang written by Buddhist Text Translation Society and published by Buddhist Text Translation Society. This book was released on 2017 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In China Buddhism flourished during the Liang Dyansty (502–587) due in large part to Emperor Wu, who personally met with Bodhidharma, the 28th Indian patriarch from Shakyamuni Buddha. Legend has it that Emperor Wu’s first wife died prematurely and fell into the lower realms. In order to rescue her and to help her spirit ascend to the heavens, Emperor Wu, a great patron of Buddhism, had Chan Master Baozhi compose a repentance ceremony on her behalf. The resulting repentance text was so successful and popular that it is still used in monasteries today. Repentance Dharma of Kindness and Compassion in the Bodhimanda is a complete English translation of what is popularly known as “The Jeweled Repentance of the Emperor of Liang.” It was translated over a period of 15 years by the monks, nuns and laity of the Buddhist Text Translation Society (BTTS). BTTS was founded in 1970 in San Francisco by Tripitaka Master Hsuan Hua as part of the Dharma Realm Buddhist Association. BTTS publishes sutra translations, instructional handbooks, biographies, children’s books, and introductory material on Buddhism.
Download or read book In the Buddha s Words written by Bodhi and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2005-07-28 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This landmark collection is the definitive introduction to the Buddha's teachings in his own words. The American scholar monk Bhikkhu Bodhi, whose voluminous translations have won widespread acclaim, here presents selected discourses of the Buddha from the Pali Canon, the earliest record of what the Buddha taught. Divided into ten thematic chapters, In the Buddha's Words reveals the full scope of the Buddha's discourses, from family life and marriage to renunciation and the path of insight. A concise informative introduction precedes each chapter, guiding the reader toward a deeper understanding of the texts that follow." "In the Buddha's Words allows even readers unacquainted with Buddhism to grasp the significance of the Buddha's contributions to our world heritage. Taken as a whole, these texts bear eloquent testimony to the breadth and intelligence of the Buddha's teachings, and point the way to an ancient yet ever vital path. Students and seekers alike will find this systematic presentation indispensable."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Dharma Rain written by Stephanie Kaza and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2000-02-08 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive collection of classic texts, contemporary interpretations, guidelines for activists, issue-specific information, and materials for environmentally-oriented religious practice. Sources and contributors include Basho, the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, Gary Snyder, Chögyam Trungpa, Gretel Ehrlich, Peter Mathiessen, Helen Tworkov (editor of Tricycle), and Philip Glass.
Download or read book Ma alas in the Making written by Michelle C. Wang and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-12-18 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first scholarly monograph on Buddhist maṇḍalas in China, this book examines the Maṇḍala of Eight Great Bodhisattvas. This iconographic template, in which a central Buddha is flanked by eight attendants, flourished during the Tibetan (786–848) and post-Tibetan Guiyijun (848–1036) periods at Dunhuang. A rare motif that appears in only four cave shrines at the Mogao and Yulin sites, the maṇḍala bore associations with political authority and received patronage from local rulers. Attending to the historical and cultural contexts surrounding this iconography, this book demonstrates that transcultural communication over the Silk Routes during this period, and the religious dialogue between the Chinese and Tibetan communities, were defining characteristics of the visual language of Buddhist maṇḍalas at Dunhuang.
Download or read book The Land of Pure Bliss written by Peter Lunde Johnson and published by . This book was released on 2021-01-28 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Land of Pure Bliss is an in-depth exploration of the nature and practice of faith as it has developed in Mahayana Buddhism over the past two thousand years. The heart of the book is a first-ever full English translation of Shandao's highly influential Commentary in Four Parts Explaining the Scripture About Meditation on the Buddha of Infinite Life (Amitayur Dhyana Sutra, 觀無量壽佛經), which was the inspiration for subsequent schools of 'Pure Land' Buddhism in East Asia. Also included is an introduction to the history and teachings of Pure Land thought as well as a sizable appendix of supplemental translations from other scriptures and discourses that provide insight into the nature and practice of faith as understood in Mahayana Buddhism. In addition to providing key terms in English, Sanskrit & Chinese, this work provides comprehensive footnotes and a thorough index to offer a background on Buddhist concepts and history relevant to the subject. Also included are translations of Pure Land thought from: The Longer Scripture on the Buddha of Infinite Life, The Scripture on the Great Garland of Universal Enlightenment, The Scripture on the Lotus Blossom of Sublime Purpose, The Scripture on the Meditation In Which the Buddhas All Stand Up Before One, 'On the Easier Practice of Faith' attributed to Nagarjuna, Vasubandhu's 'Commentary on the Longer Scripture About the Buddha of Infinite Life', 'On the Practice of Keeping the Buddha on Mind While Ever Walking' by Zhiyi of the Tiantai School, 'An Esoteric Explanation of the Name 'Infinite Life & Light' by Kakuban of the Japanese Mantra (Shingon) School. Honen's 'One Page Testament', and more ...
Download or read book Taixu s On the Establishment of the Pure Land in the Human Realm written by Charles B. Jones and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-01-14 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Charles B. Jones provides the first English language translation of one of the most important texts of modern Chinese Buddhism: monk-reformer Taixu's 'On the Establishment of the Pure Land in the Human Realm'. The essay, written in 1926 as part of Taixu's attempt to revive Chinese Buddhism with a Humanistic Buddhist approach, incorporates Western thought into a reconstruction of the idea of the 'Pure Land in the human realm'. In his commentary on the text, Jones argues that it has been widely misunderstood and mischaracterized. Jones demonstrates that, besides laying out the very modern idea of the Pure Land in the human realm as a slogan for Buddhist engagement with the problems of the modern world, the essay does not, as commonly assumed, discourage practices leading to rebirth in the Pure Land. He also shows that the 'human realm' can mean anywhere in Buddhist cosmology that humans reside, and that the essay's attempts to reconcile Buddhism with modern science is tentative and incomplete. Jones reveals that the essay promotes visions of both paradises and utopias, and that Taixu supports his ideas with many lengthy sutra quotations. The book concludes with an examination of how Taixu's followers developed the idea of the Pure Land in the human realm into a more coherent and modernized ideal.
Download or read book The Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism The translations written by Bdud-ʼjoms ʼJigs-bral-ye-śes-rdo-rje and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 973 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most complete and exhaustive reference work on the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism available.
Download or read book Journeys on the Silk Road written by Joyce Morgan and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2012-08-22 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When a Chinese monk broke into a hidden cave in 1900, he uncovered one of the world’s great literary secrets: a time capsule from the ancient Silk Road. Inside, scrolls were piled from floor to ceiling, undisturbed for a thousand years. The gem within was the Diamond Sutra of AD 868. This key Buddhist teaching, made 500 years before Gutenberg inked his press, is the world’s oldest printed book. The Silk Road once linked China with the Mediterranean. It conveyed merchants, pilgrims and ideas. But its cultures and oases were swallowed by shifting sands. Central to the Silk Road’s rediscovery was a man named Aurel Stein, a Hungarian-born scholar and archaeologist employed by the British service. Undaunted by the vast Gobi Desert, Stein crossed thousands of desolate miles with his fox terrier Dash. Stein met the Chinese monk and secured the Diamond Sutra and much more. The scroll’s journey—by camel through arid desert, by boat to London’s curious scholars, by train to evade the bombs of World War II—merges an explorer’s adventures, political intrigue, and continued controversy. The Diamond Sutra has inspired Jack Kerouac and the Dalai Lama. Its journey has coincided with the growing appeal of Buddhism in the West. As the Gutenberg Age cedes to the Google Age, the survival of the Silk Road’s greatest treasure is testament to the endurance of the written word.
Download or read book With One Heart Bowing to the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas written by Heng Sure (Bhikshu) and published by . This book was released on 1979 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Concept of the Buddha written by Guang Xing and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Guang Xing gives an analysis of one of the fundamental Mahayana Buddhist teachings, namely the three bodies of the Buddha (the trikaya Theory), which is considered the foundation of Mahayana philosophy. He examines how and why the philosophical concept of three bodies was formed, particularly the Sambhogakaya, which is the Buddha to be worshipped by all Mayahanists. Written in an accessible way, this work is an outstanding research text for students and scholars of Mayahana Buddhism and anyone interested in Buddhist philosophy.
Download or read book A Pictorial Biography of the Venerable Master Hsu Yun written by Hsuan Hua and published by Buddhist Text Translation Society. This book was released on with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Master Hsu Yun (虛雲, alternately romanized as Xuyun; “Empty Cloud”) was a renowned Chan master and one of the most influential Chinese Buddhist teachers of the 19th and 20th centuries. He founded Zhenru Monastery in Jiangxi Province and restored Nanhua Monastery in Guangdong Province, the monastery of the Sixth Chan Patriarch Huineng. At Nanhua Monastery, he transmitted the Dharma-seal of the Weiyang lineage of the Chan school to Tripitaka Master Hsuan Hua (then Tu Lun). Over his 119-year lifespan (1840–1959), he witnessed the end of imperial rule in China, the short-lived rise of the democratic republic, two world wars, and the eventual rule of the Chinese Communist Party. Volume One covers Venerable Master Hsu Yun’s birth and enlightenment. Volume Two covers Venerable Master Hsu Yun’s propagation of Buddhism