Download or read book Yasodhara and the Buddha written by Vanessa R. Sasson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-12-10 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By combining the spirit of fiction with the fabulism of Indian mythology and in-depth academic research, Vanessa R. Sasson shares the evocative story of the Buddha from the perspective of a forgotten woman: Yasodhara, the Buddha's wife. Although often marginalized, Yasodhara's narrative here comes to life. Written with a strong feminist voice, we encounter Yasodhara as a fiercely independent, passionate and resilient individual. We witness her joys and sorrows, her expectations and frustrations, her fairy-tale wedding, and her overwhelming devastation at the departure of her beloved. It is through her eyes that we witness Siddhattha's slow transformation, from a sheltered prince to a deeply sensitive young man. On the way, we see how the gods watch over the future Buddha from the clouds, how the king and his ministers try to keep the suffering of the world from him and how he eventually renounces the throne, his wife and newly-born son to seek enlightenment. Along with a foreword from Wendy Doniger, the book includes a scholarly introduction to Yasodhara's narrative and offers extensive notes along with study questions, to help readers navigate the traditional literature in a new way, making this an essential book for anyone wanting to learn about Buddhist narratives.
Download or read book The Buddha s Wife written by Janet Surrey and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-06-30 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the category of women’s spirituality continues to grow, The Buddha’s Wife offers to a broad audience for the first time the intimate and profound story of Princess Yasodhara, the wife Buddha left behind, and her alternative journey to spiritual enlightenment. What do we know of the wife and child the Buddha abandoned when he went off to seek his enlightenment? The Buddha’s Wife brings this rarely told story to the forefront, offering a nuanced portrait of this compelling and compassionate figure while also examining the practical applications her teachings have on our modern lives. Princess Yasodhara’s journey is one full of loss, grief, and suffering. But through it, she discovered her own enlightenment within the deep bonds of community and “ordinary” relationships. While traditional Buddhism emphasizes solitary meditation, Yasodhara’s experience speaks of “The Path of Right Relation,” of achieving awareness not alone but together with others. The Buddha’s Wife is comprised of two parts: the first part is a historical narrative of Yasodhara’s fascinating story, and the second part is a “how-to” reader’s companion filled with life lessons, practices, and reflections for the modern seeker. Her story provides a relational path, one which speaks directly to our everyday lives and offers a doorway to profound spiritual maturation, awakening, and wisdom beyond the solitary, heroic journey.
Download or read book Yasodhar the Wife of the B dhisattva written by and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2014-02-07 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What about Buddha's wife? We all know that Prince Siddhartha left his wife and infant son to begin his journey to enlightenment. The Pali canon does not mention the woman he left behind. Yasodharā enters the commentarial tradition around the first century CE and lives on in the folk tradition, growing from a shadowy figure to a nun and arahat (an Enlightened One), even gaining magical powers. In this book, Ranjini Obeyesekere offers a translation of two works from Sri Lanka on this intriguing figure. The Yasodharāvata (The Story of Yasodharā) is a folk poem, whose best-known verses are Yasodharā's lament over the departure of her husband. The Yasodharāpadānaya (The Sacred Biography of Yasodharā) is an account of Yasodharā as a nun capable of miracles, who has traveled through saṃsāra with the Bodhisattva, and who is praised by him. Obeyesekere places these works within their historical and literary context and provides a glossary of Buddhist terms.
Download or read book Bride of the Buddha written by Barbara McHugh, PhD and published by Monkfish Book Publishing. This book was released on 2021-01-05 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This engrossing exploration of gender dynamics, identity, and the spiritual quest for meaning will appeal to Buddhists and general readers alike." —Publishers Weekly “This is an impressive tapestry of history, spiritual philosophy, and literary drama and an edifying look at the patriarchal limitations of Buddhism’s genesis...An intelligently conceived and artistically executed reconsideration of religious history.” —Kirkus Reviews “Bride of the Buddha is an immersive novel about the founding of Buddhism, told in the voice of a woman who would not be excluded from the spiritual quest, nor from the presence of the man whom she loved.” —ForeWord Magazine This is the story of Yasodhara, the abandoned wife of the Buddha. Facing society’s challenges, she transforms her rage into devotion to the path of liberation. The page-turner about a woman’s struggle in an unapologetic religious patriarchy, Bride of the Buddha offers a penetrating perspective on the milieu of the Buddha.
Download or read book Yasodhara written by Vanessa R. Sasson and published by Speaking Tiger Books. This book was released on 2018-06-10 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A long time ago, in a far-off kingdom, a boy and a girl, born on the same day, were destined to be together--and then painfully wrenched apart. The boy was Siddhattha, heir to the Sakya kingdom and the future Buddha; the girl was the beautiful and precocious Yasodhara, his friend who became his loving wife. In this exquisitely crafted narrative, we encounter Yasodhara as a fiercely independent, passionate and resilient individual. We witness her joys and sorrows, her expectations and frustrations, her fairy-tale wedding, and her overwhelming devastation at the departure of her beloved. It is through her eyes that we witness Siddhattha's slow transformation, from a sheltered prince to a deeply sensitive young man. On the way, we see how the gods watch over the future Buddha from the clouds, how the king and his ministers try to keep the suffering of the world from him and how he eventually renounces the throne, his wife and newly-born son to seek enlightenment. Resurrecting a forgotten woman from the origin stories of the Buddha, Vanessa R. Sasson combines the spirit of fiction and the fabulism of Indian mythology with impeccable scholarship, to tell the evocative and deeply moving story of an extraordinary life.
Download or read book Mansions of the Moon written by Shyam Selvadurai and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2024-04-23 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A breathtaking reimagining of ancient India through the extraordinary life of Yasodhara, the woman who married the Buddha—from the bestselling, award-winning author of Funny Boy and The Hungry Ghosts. In this sweeping tale, at once epic and intimate, Shyam Selvadurai introduces us to Siddhartha Gautama—who will later become “the enlightened one,” or the Buddha—an unusually bright and politically astute young man settling into his upper-caste life as a newlywed to Yasodhara, a woman of great intelligence and spirit. Mansions of the Moon traces the couple’s early love and life together, and then the anguished turmoil that descends upon them both as Siddhartha’s spiritual calling takes over and the marriage partnership slowly, inexorably crumbles. Eventually, Yasodhara is forced to ask what kind of life a woman can lead in ancient India if her husband abandons her—even a well-born woman such as herself. And is there a path she, too, might take towards enlightenment? Award-winning writer Shyam Selvadurai examines these questions with empathy and insight, creating a vivid portrait of a fascinating time and place, the intricate web of power, family and relationships that surround a singular marriage, and the remarkable woman who, until now, has remained a little-understood shadow in the historical record. Mansions of the Moon is an immersive, lively and thrilling feat of literary imagination.
Download or read book Buddha s Wife written by Gabriel Constans and published by Robert Reed Pub. This book was released on 2009 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Buddha's Wife is a novel about compassion, inspiration and forgiveness.What happened to Yasodhara and her infant son son, Rahula, after her husband (Siddhartha) left her sleeping in the middle of the night to seek enlightenment?As Yasodhara lies close to death and shares her experiences as a young girl, a wife, a parent and then a nun, her son Rahula, who has been in self-imposed exile in Sri Lanka, attempts a perilous journey with his wife and child to reach his mother before she dies and releases the secrets about his father that he's kept buried inside. Will Rahula and the other woman in Siddhartha's life reach Yasodhara in time to ask for forgiveness? Can anyone ever forgive the unforgivable?Buddha's Wife tells a fascinating story, little known in the west, about the woman whom Buddha left behind. Gabriel Constans focuses the reader's attention on the strong and complicated women who surrounded Buddha and makes us re-think the nature of spiritual life.-Chitra Divakaruni
Download or read book The Buddha s Wife written by Janet Surrey and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-06-30 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As women’s spirituality continues to gain popularity, The Buddha’s Wife offers to a broad audience for the first time the intimate and profound story of Princess Yasodhara, the wife Buddha left behind, and her alternative journey to spiritual enlightenment. What do we know of the wife and child the Buddha abandoned when he went off to seek his enlightenment? The Buddha’s Wife brings this rarely told story to the forefront, offering a nuanced portrait of this compelling and compassionate figure while also examining the practical applications her teachings have on our modern lives. Princess Yasodhara’s journey is one full of loss, grief, and suffering. But through it, she discovered her own enlightenment within the deep bonds of community and “ordinary” relationships. While traditional Buddhism emphasizes solitary meditation, Yasodhara’s experience speaks of “The Path of Right Relation,” of achieving awareness not alone but together with others. The Buddha’s Wife is comprised of two parts: the first part is a historical narrative of Yasodhara’s fascinating story, and the second part is a “how-to” reader’s companion filled with life lessons, practices, and reflections for the modern seeker. Her story provides a relational path, one which speaks directly to our everyday lives and offers a doorway to profound spiritual maturation, awakening, and wisdom beyond the solitary, heroic journey.
Download or read book Yashodhara written by Volga and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2019-06-25 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of Siddhartha, the future Gautama Buddha, leaving the palace to start his spiritual journey and attain enlightenment has been told innumerable times over the centuries. And yet, have we never wondered why his young wife, Yashodhara, still recovering from the birth of their son nine days ago, sleeps soundly as her husband, the over-protected prince departs, leaving behind his family and wealth and kingdom?In Yashodhara, the gaps of history are imagined with fullness and fierceness: Who was the young girl and what shaped her worldview? When she married Siddhartha at the age of sixteen, did she know her conjugal life would soon change drastically? The Yashodhara we meet in Volga's feminist novel is quick-witted, compassionate and wants to pave a way for women to partake in spiritual learning as equals of men.
Download or read book The Woman Who Raised the Buddha written by Wendy Garling and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2021-03-23 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nautilus Book Award Winner The first full biography of Mahaprajapati Gautami, the woman who raised the Buddha--examining her life through stories and canonical records. Mahaprajapati was the only mother the Buddha ever knew. His birth mother, Maya, died shortly after childbirth, and her sister Mahaprajapati took the infant to her breast, nurturing and raising him into adulthood. While there is a lot of ambiguity overall in the Buddha's biography, this detail remains consistent across all Buddhist traditions and literature. In this first full biography of Mahaprajapati, The Woman Who Raised the Buddha presents her life story, with attention to her early years as sister, queen, matriarch, and mother, as well as her later years as a nun. Drawing from story fragments and canonical records, Wendy Garling reveals just how exceptional Mahaprajapati's role was as leader of the first generation of Buddhist women, helping the Buddha establish an equal community of lay and monastic women and men. Mother to the Buddha, mother to early Buddhist women, mother to the Buddhist faith, Mahaprajapati's journey is finally presented as one interwoven with the founding of Buddhism.
Download or read book Dreaming Me written by Jan Willis and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-06-25 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jan Willis is not Baptist or Buddhist. She is simply both. Dreaming Me is the story of her life, as a child growing up in the Jim Crow South, dealing with racism in an Ivy League college, and becoming involved with the Black Panther Party. But it wasn't until meeting Lama Yeshe, a Tibetan Buddhist monk living in the mountains of Nepal, that she realized who the real Jan Willis was, and how to make the most of the life she was living.
Download or read book The Life of Princess Yashodara Wife and Disciple of the Lord Buddha written by Sunity Devee and published by . This book was released on 2024-06-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Poems of the First Buddhist Women written by and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-23 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Therīgāthā is one of the oldest surviving literatures by women, composed more than two millennia ago and originally collected as part of the Pali canon of Buddhist scripture. These poems were written by some of the first Buddhist women—therīs—honored for their religious achievements. Through imaginative verses about truth and freedom, the women recount their lives before ordination and their joy at attaining liberation from samsara. Poems of the First Buddhist Women offers startling insights into the experiences of women in ancient times that continue to resonate with modern readers. With a spare and elegant style, this powerful translation introduces us to a classic of world literature.
Download or read book The Buddhist World of Southeast Asia written by Donald K. Swearer and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An unparalleled portrait, Donald K. Swearer's Buddhist World of Southeast Asia has been a key source for all those interested in the Theravada homelands since the work's publication in 1995. Expanded and updated, the second edition offers this wide ranging account for readers at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Swearer shows Theravada Buddhism in Southeast Asia to be a dynamic, complex system of thought and practice embedded in the cultures, societies, and histories of Thailand, Myanmar (Burma), Laos, Cambodia, and Sri Lanka. The work focuses on three distinct yet interrelated aspects of this milieu. The first is the popular tradition of life models personified in myths and legends, rites of passage, festival celebrations, and ritual occasions. The second deals with Buddhism and the state, illustrating how King Asoka serves as the paradigmatic Buddhist monarch, discussing the relationship of cosmology and kingship, and detailing the rise of charismatic Buddhist political leaders in the postcolonial period. The third is the modern transformation of Buddhism: the changing roles of monks and laity, modern reform movements, the role of women, and Buddhism in the West.
Download or read book Essential Buddhism written by Jack Maguire and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-09-03 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Four hundred million people call themselves Buddhists today. Yet most Westerners know little about this powerful, Eastern-spawned faith. How did it begin? What do its adherents believe? Why are so many Westerners drawn to it? Essential Buddhism responds to these questions and many more, offering an accessible, global perspective on the religion's past, present, and future. It identifies how the principal concepts and practices originated and evolved through diverse cultural adaptations into three basic formats: * Theraveda (including Vipassana, brought from Vietnam in the 1960s and including such practitioners as Jack Kornfield and Jon Kapat-Zinn) * Mahayana (including Zen Buddhism, originally brought to America by Japanese teachers after World War II and popularized by Jack Kerouac and Thomas Merton) * Vajrayana (including Tibetan Buddhism, from the teachers who fled the Chinese takeover of Tibet in the 1950s as well as the Dalai Lama, and embraced by Allen Ginsberg, Richard Gere, and countless others) Essential Buddhism is the single best resource for the novice and the expert alike, exploring the depths of Buddhism's popularity and illuminating its tenets and sensible approach to living. Written in the lucid prose of a longtime professional storyteller, and full of Buddhist tales, scriptural quotes, ancient stories, and contemporary insights, Essential Buddhism is the first complete guide to the faith and the phenomenon.
Download or read book The Gospel of Buddha written by Paul Carus and published by . This book was released on 1915 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book What the Buddha Taught written by Walpola Rahula and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A terrific introduction to the Buddha’s teachings.” —Paul Blairon, California Literary Review This indispensable volume is a lucid and faithful account of the Buddha’s teachings. “For years,” says the Journal of the Buddhist Society, “the newcomer to Buddhism has lacked a simple and reliable introduction to the complexities of the subject. Dr. Rahula’s What the Buddha Taught fills the need as only could be done by one having a firm grasp of the vast material to be sifted. It is a model of what a book should be that is addressed first of all to ‘the educated and intelligent reader.’ Authoritative and clear, logical and sober, this study is as comprehensive as it is masterly.” This edition contains a selection of illustrative texts from the Suttas and the Dhammapada (specially translated by the author), sixteen illustrations, and a bibliography, glossary, and index. “[Rahula’s] succinct, clear overview of Buddhist concepts has never been surpassed. It is the standard.” —Library Journal