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This book tells the story of the Scientific Buddha, "born" in Europe in the 1800s but commonly confused with the Buddha born in India 2,500 years ago. The Scientific Buddha was sent into battle against Christian missionaries, who were proclaiming across Asia that Buddhism was a form of superstition. He proved the missionaries wrong, teaching a dharma that was in harmony with modern science. And his influence continues. Today his teaching of "mindfulness" is heralded as the cure for all manner of maladies, from depression to high blood pressure. In this potent critique, a well-known chronicler of the West's encounter with Buddhism demonstrates how the Scientific Buddha's teachings deviate in crucial ways from those of the far older Buddha of ancient India. Donald Lopez shows that the Western focus on the Scientific Buddha threatens to bleach Buddhism of its vibrancy, complexity, and power, even as the superficial focus on "mindfulness" turns Buddhism into merely the latest self-help movement. The Scientific Buddha has served his purpose, Lopez argues. It is now time for him to pass into nirvana. This is not to say, however, that the teachings of the ancient Buddha must be dismissed as mere cultural artifacts. They continue to present a potent challenge, even to our modern world.
Twenty discourses from the Pali Canon--including those most essential to the study and teaching of early Buddhism--are provided in fresh translations, accompanied by introductions that highlight the main themes and set the ideas presented in the context of wider philosophical and religious issues. Taken together, these fascinating works give an account of Buddhist teachings directly from the earliest primary sources. In his General Introduction, John J. Holder discusses the structure and language of the Pali Canon--its importance within the Buddhist tradition and the historical context in which it developed--and gives an overview of the basic doctrines of early Buddhism.
This highly original work explores the concept of self-awareness or self-consciousness in Buddhist thought. Its central thesis is that the Buddhist theory of self-cognition originated in a soteriological discussion of omniscience among the Mahasamghikas, and then evolved into a topic of epistemological inquiry among the Yogacarins. To illustrate this central theme, this book explores a large body of primary sources in Chinese, Pali, Sanskrit and Tibetan, most of which are presented to an English readership for the first time. It makes available important resources for the study of the Buddhist philosophy of mind.
All forms of Buddhism--The Theravada, the Mahayana and the Vajrayana--affirm the perfectability of the person, and one finds this notion of perfection embodied in three images; the arahant, the bodhisattva and the mahasiddha. Reader also finds, in scholarly treatments of Buddhism, much made of the perceived differences among these three `vehicles` (yana). By close textual analysis as well as by extensive field work, Katz criticizes this emphasis on difference and prefers to treat Buddhism as a whole, a position he finds in accord with the teachings of both Buddhists and Buddhist texts. By a close examination of these three images of human perfection, bridges among the Theravada, the Mahayana and the Vajrayana are built and continuities within Buddhism are explored. This comparison involves pioneering discussions of Buddhist philosophy of language and hermeneutics, which are facilitated by Katz`s familiarity with Pali, Sanskrit and Tibetan Buddhist texts as well as his sympathetic involvement with the living Buddhist tradition.