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Start this year on the path to Zen bliss with the essential beginner's guide to Buddhism
How is an awakening different from enlightenment? Can agnostics and atheists be Buddhist? What are you supposed to think about during meditation? In No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners, author Noah Rasheta--renowned Buddhism teacher and host of the popular Secular Buddhism podcast--delivers an easily accessible introduction to the teachings of Buddhism that anyone can dive into! Inside, you'll discover the basics of Buddhism and how to apply the philosophies in your everyday life.
A 4-part overview--Learn the fundamentals with chapters about the Buddha, key Buddhist concepts, the Buddha's teachings, and current Buddhist practices.
Straightforward Q&As--Simplify the key concepts of Buddhism, like mindfulness, Zen, and why Buddhism is so has been around so long, into easy-to-understand ideas.
Everyday Buddhism Sidebars--Make Buddhism less abstract with quick callouts throughout the book that offer down-to-earth examples of Buddhism that are all around you.
Presented in a simple, conversational style, this friendly spiritual book provides the groundwork for building (or continuing) your own Buddhist practice.
Your capacity to handle suffering determines where you get in life. How do you want to live?
Life is tough, so you better get a helmet. Life is not a walk in the park. You'll run into pain, anguish, and obstacles. But who says that they need to affect you?
Build immunity to emotional, mental, and physical discomfort and suffering. It can be trained.
How to Suffer Well is a literal guidebook to defeating the voices in your head that tell you to give up. Instead, they'll be replaced with voices that tell you it'll be okay, this will pass, and life goes happily on.
It might sound difficult, but this is all teachable. You'll learn how to become the most zen person you know. Wouldn't it be nice to only experience the positive side of emotions?
How to tolerate the rigors of life without collapsing. Increase your mental pain tolerance to that of superhuman levels.
Peter Hollins has studied psychology and peak human performance for over a dozen years and is a bestselling author. He has worked with a multitude of individuals to unlock their potential and path towards success. His writing draws on his academic, coaching, and research experience.
Greatly expand your comfort zone and build layers of mental armor to ensure your happiness.
The Dhammapada is a collection of sayings of the Buddha in verse form. It is one of the most widely read and best known Buddhist scriptures. According to tradition, the Dhammapada's verses were spoken by the Buddha on various occasions. Each saying recorded in the collection was made on a different occasion in response to a unique situation that had arisen in the life of the Buddha and his monastic community.
The Dhammapada is considered one of the most popular pieces of Theravada literature. The text is part of the Khuddaka Nikaya of the Sutta Pitaka, although over half of the verses exist in other parts of the Pali Canon, a collection of Buddhist writings of Theravada Buddhism.
This case laminate collector's edition includes a Victorian inspired dust-jacket.
Images of the Buddha are everywhere--not just in temples but also in museums and homes and online--but what these images mean largely depends on the background and circumstance of those viewing them. In Behold the Buddha, James Dobbins invites readers to imagine how premodern Japanese Buddhists understood and experienced icons in temple settings long before the advent of museums and the internet. Although widely portrayed in the last century as visual emblems of great religious truths or as exquisite works of Asian art, Buddhist images were traditionally treated as the very embodiment of the Buddha, his palpable presence among people. Hence, Buddhists approached them as living entities in their own right--that is, as awakened icons with whom they could interact religiously.
Dobbins begins by reflecting on art museums, where many non-Buddhists first encounter images of the Buddha, before outlining the complex Western response to them in previous centuries. He next elucidates images as visual representations of the story of the Buddha's life followed by an overview of the physical attributes and symbolic gestures found in Buddhist iconography. A variety of Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and other divinities commonly depicted in Japanese Buddhism is introduced, and their living quality discussed in the context of traditional temples and Buddhist rituals. Finally, other religious objects in Japanese Buddhism--relics, scriptures, inscriptions, portraits of masters, and sacred sites--are explained using the Buddhist icon as a model. Dobbins concludes by contemplating art museums further as potential sites for discerning the religious character of Buddhist images. Those interested in Buddhism generally who would like to learn more about its rich iconography--whether encountered in temples or museums--will find much in this concise, well-illustrated volume to help them behold the Buddha.
Surely destined to become the classic commentary on the Satipatthana --Christopher Titmuss Now in its second printing!
Leading Buddhist scholar Donald S. Lopez Jr. explores the origins of this 2,500-year-old religion and traces its major developments up to the present, focusing not only on the essential elemenmts common to all schools of Buddhism but also revealing the differences among the major traditions. Beginning with the creation and structure of the Buddhist universe, Lopez explores the life of the Buddha, the core Buddhist tenets, and the development of the monastic life and lay practices. Combining brilliant scholarship with fascinating stories -- contemporary and historical, sometimes miraculous, sometimes humorous -- this rich and absorbing volume presents a fresh and expert history of Buddhism and Buddhist life.
Many know the Buddha only from seeing countless serene, iconic images. But what of the man himself and the world he lived in? What did he actually do in his roughly eighty years on earth that spawned one of the greatest religions in world history? Armstrong tackles these questions and more by examining the life and times of the Buddha in this engrossing philosophical biography. Against the tumultuous cultural background of his world, she blends history, philosophy, mythology, and biography to create a compelling and illuminating portrait of a man whose awakening continues to inspire millions.
Beginning with an overview of Buddhism, this book explores the religion's origins in northern India and Nepal, through to its development and spread across Asia, to its vibrant and sometimes contradictory present.
The book covers key topics in the study of Buddhism, including its rituals and its scriptures, meditation and monasticism, and death and afterlife. The book also includes contemporary issues such as Buddhism and economics and socially engaged Buddhism. Over 70 illustrations are included throughout, and each chapter contains suggested further reading and a glossary of key terms and concepts. The chapters in this book were first published in the digital collection Bloomsbury Religion in North America. Covering North America's diverse religious traditions, this digital collection provides reliable and peer-reviewed articles and ebooks for students and instructors. Learn more and get access for your library at www.theologyandreligiononline.com/bloomsbury-religion-in-north-america
Written by one of the leading scholars of Japanese religion, Protectors and Predators is the second installment of a multivolume project that promises to be a milestone in our understanding of the mythico-ritual system of esoteric Buddhism--specifically the nature and roles of deities in the religious world of medieval Japan and beyond. Bernard Faure introduces readers to medieval Japanese religiosity and shows the centrality of the gods in religious discourse and ritual. Throughout he engages theoretical insights drawn from structuralism, post-structuralism, and Actor-Network Theory to retrieve the implicit pantheon (as opposed to the explicit orthodox pantheon) of esoteric Japanese Buddhism (Mikkyō). His work is particularly significant given its focus on the deities' multiple and shifting representations, overlappings, and modes of actions rather than on individual characters and functions.
In Protectors and Predators Faure argues that the wild gods of Japan were at the center of the medieval religious landscape and came together in complex webs of association not divisible into the categories of Buddhist, indigenous, or Shinto. Furthermore, among the most important medieval gods, certain ones had roots in Hinduism, others in Daoism and Yin-Yang thought. He displays vast knowledge of his subject and presents his research--much of it in largely unstudied material--with theoretical sophistication. His arguments and analyses assume the centrality of the iconographic record as a complement to the textual record, and so he has brought together a rich and rare collection of more than 170 color and black-and-white images. This emphasis on iconography and the ways in which it complements, supplements, or deconstructs textual orthodoxy is critical to a fuller comprehension of a set of medieval Japanese beliefs and practices and offers a corrective to the traditional division of the field into religious studies, which typically ignores the images, and art history, which oftentimes overlooks their ritual and religious meaning. Protectors and Predators and its companion volumes should persuade readers that the gods constituted a central part of medieval Japanese religion and that the latter cannot be reduced to a simplistic confrontation, parallelism, or complementarity between some monolithic teachings known as Buddhism and Shinto. Once these reductionist labels and categories are discarded, a new and fascinating religious landscape begins to unfold.
Your capacity to handle suffering determines where you get in life. How do you want to live?
Life is tough, so you better get a helmet. Life is not a walk in the park. You'll run into pain, anguish, and obstacles. But who says that they need to affect you?
Build immunity to emotional, mental, and physical discomfort and suffering. It can be trained.
How to Suffer Well is a literal guidebook to defeating the voices in your head that tell you to give up. Instead, they'll be replaced with voices that tell you it'll be okay, this will pass, and life goes happily on.
It might sound difficult, but this is all teachable. You'll learn how to become the most zen person you know. Wouldn't it be nice to only experience the positive side of emotions?
How to tolerate the rigors of life without collapsing. Increase your mental pain tolerance to that of superhuman levels.
Peter Hollins has studied psychology and peak human performance for over a dozen years and is a bestselling author. He has worked with a multitude of individuals to unlock their potential and path towards success. His writing draws on his academic, coaching, and research experience.
Greatly expand your comfort zone and build layers of mental armor to ensure your happiness.
In this groundbreaking work, Sallie Tisdale traces women Buddhist masters and teachers across continents and centuries, drawing upon historical, cultural, and Buddhist records to bring to life these narratives of ancestral Buddhist women.
Written by one of the leading scholars of Japanese religion, The Fluid Pantheon is the first installment of a multivolume project that promises to be a milestone in our understanding of the mythico-ritual system of esoteric Buddhism--specifically the nature and roles of deities in the religious world of medieval Japan and beyond. Bernard Faure introduces readers to medieval Japanese religiosity and shows the centrality of the gods in religious discourse and ritual; in doing so he moves away from the usual textual, historical, and sociological approaches that constitute the method of current religious studies. The approach considers the gods (including buddhas and demons) as meaningful and powerful interlocutors and not merely as cyphers for social groups or projections of the human mind. Throughout he engages insights drawn from structuralism, post-structuralism, and Actor-network theory to retrieve the implicit pantheon (as opposed to the explicit orthodox pantheon) of esoteric Japanese Buddhism (Mikkyō).
Through a number of case studies, Faure describes and analyzes the impressive mythological and ritual efflorescence that marked the medieval period, not only in the religious domain, but also in the political, artistic, and literary spheres. He displays vast knowledge of his subject and presents his research--much of it in largely unstudied material--with theoretical sophistication. His arguments and analyses assume the centrality of the iconographic record, and so he has brought together in this volume a rich and rare collection of more than 180 color and black-and-white images. This emphasis on iconography and the ways in which it complements, supplements, or deconstructs textual orthodoxy is critical to a fuller comprehension of a set of medieval Japanese beliefs and practices. It also offers a corrective to the traditional division of the field into religious studies, which typically ignores the images, and art history, which oftentimes overlooks their ritual and religious meaning. The Fluid Pantheon and its companion volumes should persuade readers that the gods constituted a central part of medieval Japanese religion and that the latter cannot be reduced to a simplistic confrontation, parallelism, or complementarity between some monolithic teachings known as Buddhism and Shinto. Once these reductionist labels and categories are discarded, a new and fascinating religious landscape begins to unfold.
Written by one of the leading scholars of Japanese religion, Rage and Ravage is the third installment of a milestone project in our understanding of the mythico-ritual system of esoteric Buddhism--specifically the nature and roles of deities in the religious world of medieval Japan and beyond. Bernard Faure introduces readers to medieval Japanese religiosity and shows the centrality of the gods in religious discourse and ritual; in doing so he moves away from the usual textual, historical, and sociological approaches that constitute the method of current religious studies. Throughout, he engages theoretical insights drawn from structuralism, post-structuralism, and Actor-Network Theory to retrieve the implicit pantheon (as opposed to the explicit orthodox pantheon) of esoteric Japanese Buddhism (Mikkyō).
In volumes one and two, The Fluid Pantheon and Protectors and Predators, Faure argued against a polarity or dichotomy between buddhas and kami by emphasizing the existence of deities that did not belong to either category, and he rejected the retrospective notion of hybridity. The present work makes a similar case about the reified distinction between gods and demons to show that, due to the fluid nature of the Japanese pantheon, these terms do not represent stable identities: Gods can become demons, and demons are sometimes deified. Divine protectors were often former predators, and in some instances they retained their predatory features even after being converted. After emphasizing the demonic aspects of devas as gods or spirits of obstacles in the earlier volumes, Faure now focuses on the deva-like or divine aspects of deities that have been described as demonic. Rage and Ravage and its companion volumes persuade readers that the gods constituted a central part of medieval Japanese religion and that the latter cannot be reduced to a simplistic confrontation, parallelism, or complementarity between some monolithic teachings known as Buddhism and Shinto. Once these reductionist labels and categories are discarded, a new and fascinating religious landscape begins to unfold.
Today, most Uyghurs are Muslims. For centuries, however, Uyghurs were Buddhists. By around 1000 CE, they, like many of their neighbors, had decisively turned toward the Dharma, and a golden age of Uyghur Buddhism flourished under the Mongol empire. Dwelling along the Silk Road in what is now northwestern China, they stood at the center of Buddhist Eurasia, linking far-flung regions and traditions. But as Muslim power grew, Uyghur Buddhists converted to Islam, rewriting their past and erasing their Buddhist history.
This book presents the first comprehensive history of Buddhism among the Uyghurs from the ninth to the seventeenth century. Johan Elverskog traces how the Uyghurs forged their distinctive tradition, considering a variety of social, political, cultural, and religious contexts. He argues that the religious history of the Uyghurs challenges conventional narratives of the meeting of Buddhism and Islam, showing that conversion took place gradually and was driven by factors such as geopolitics, climate change, and technological innovation. Elverskog also provides a nuanced understanding of lived Buddhism, focusing on ritual practices and materiality as well as the religion's entanglements with economics, politics, and violence. A groundbreaking history of Uyghur Buddhism, this book makes a compelling case for the importance of the Uyghurs in shaping the course of both Buddhist and Asian history.