Make Your Own List. What is goood Buddhist equivalent of the Bible? What is the Dalai Lama's favourite book? Buddhist scholar Donald Lopez picks the best books on Buddhism.
Good buddhist books 2021 made you first become interested in Buddhism? That was where I first learned something about Buddhism. It was that admittedly naive interest that got me started. And Good Buddhist Books Youtube all these years later what do you think will be the effect of the Dalai Lama stepping down as the political leader of the Tibetan government in exile?
It is important politically, as a transition to the political structure that will be required after his death. However, he is held in such high esteem that his counsel will still be sought on all matters of importance. He will remain the central figure for the Tibetan people, both bucdhist exile and in Tibet.
He already spends many hours each day in study and meditation. As far as I know, he will continue to travel around the world to give Good buddhist books 2021 teachings and promote the cause of Tibetan autonomy. It is particularly famous in East Asia, but it was very important in India where it was composed and Tibet as vood. We sometimes think of a religion as having a single sacred text, whether it is the Bible or the Torah or the Koran.
There hooks thousands of texts that are considered canonical by one or another of the Buddhist traditions of Asia. But if I had to choose one sutra it would be The Lotus Sutra. A sutra is a discourse attributed to the Buddha himself, something that he is supposed to have taught. Yet The Lotus Sutra appeared four or five hundred years after the death of the Buddha. He probably died around BC and nothing was written down until four centuries after his death.
Then, for reasons that are not entirely clear, in the first and second centuries of the Common Era, texts started to be written that claimed to be the teachings of the Buddha. It is bookss believed that tensions developed between a more conservative monastic element and groups that had a different view of the person of the Buddha and bpoks nature of the path that he taught. The Lotus Sutra is the most famous of the Mahayana sutras, proclaiming good buddhist books 2021 all beings will eventually achieve buddhahood and declaring that the Buddha did not pass into nirvana at the age of 80 but has a lifespan that is immeasurable.
It does this through the use of a number of famous and often moving parables. Many Buddhists across Asia over the subsequent centuries would come to see bkoks as just. Much of what we understand Buddhism to be today is a direct result of how Buddhism was portrayed buddyist Europe in the 19th century. By the time that the Portuguese arrived in India in the late 15th century � good buddhist books 2021 followed by the Dutch, the French, and the British � Good buddhist books 2021 had effectively disappeared from the subcontinent.
There are a number of reasons. We know from the reports of Chinese pilgrims that Buddhism had been in decline for some time, its good buddhist books 2021 waxing and waning based on royal patronage. It also seems that Hindu priests, more than Buddhist monks, were performing important life cycle rituals for much of the Indian population.
In addition, in the 11th century, Muslim armies carried out a series of incursions into northern India during which a number of Buddhist monasteries were looted. Perhaps the greatest of the monasteries, Nalanda, was sacked in the Muslim troops apparently mistook it for a fortress. As a result of these various factors, when Europeans arrived in India, the birthplace of Buddhism, it was active all around Indiain places like Sri Lanka, Thailand, Burma, China and Tibet, but it was dead in India.
What Europeans found were the remnants of Buddhism � texts, monuments, statues, inscriptions � and from these they built Indian Buddhism as we understand it. They were Buddhist scriptures, long lost in India but good buddhist books 2021 in Nepal.
He found the second text that he looked at to be captivating. It gooks The Lotus Sutra. He knew nothing good buddhist books 2021 its huge importance in the history of Buddhism, but he liked the way it read.
He soon translated the entire text, but he felt it would nooks good buddhist books 2021 without an introduction. He thus wrote a long book, the first of as many good buddhist books 2021 five planned volumes of introduction. It would become the most influential work in the history of the European study of Buddhism, setting good buddhist books 2021 stage for more than a century of subsequent scholarship.
For example, it provides the portrait of the Buddha as we know him today. And I know you had a big part to play in that with the translation you did of his book. My colleague Katia Buffetrille and I translated the entire text, so we have an intimate knowledge of all pages.
After Burnouf, we see much of the European interest in Buddhism moving away from his emphasis on social history toward philosophy and doctrine. European thinkers became fascinated by ideas like karma, nirvana, and no self. Thus, rather than concentrating on canonical philosophical texts, Schopen looked to different sources.
One was the monastic code that explains good buddhist books 2021 great detail how monks and nuns are supposed to live their lives. Another source was epigraphy, especially those inscriptions describing donations made by monks and nuns.
From examining these sources, Schopen was able to show that many of our views of Buddhist monastic life and practice were rather good buddhist books 2021. We tend to think that Buddhist monks and nuns had no possessions. In fact they owned property, which they willed to others when they died.
We think that they had severed all ties with their families when they were good buddhist books 2021, when in fact they did good works and dedicated the merit or good karma to their parents. We think that they spent all their time in meditation when in good buddhist books 2021 meditation was just one of several specialties in the monastery. Of course all religions are cultural and social, but for a variety of reasons, it became easy to lose sight of that in the case of Buddhism, which has sometimes been seen as a free-floating philosophy that benevolently descends on one culture after another without having good buddhist books 2021 effect on the more quotidian elements of human experience.
It is only since the Dalai Lama left Tibet and went into exile in that our perception has changed dramatically.
Today, 52 years later, many Tibetan Buddhist texts have been translated and we know a great deal more about the practice of Tibetan Buddhism. Even afterthere was a certain prejudice in favour of works from the earlier periods 2201 Tibetan Buddhist history, from the 11th to good buddhist books 2021 15th centuries.
Words of My Perfect Teacher is a more recent work, composed in the late 19th century by a meditation master from Eastern Tibet, Patrul Rinpoche. Someone who is interested bookw knowing more about what the practice of Tibetan Buddhism is really like would find this book very useful.
It is conversational, even earthy, in tone, making it all the more powerful. Often it is easy to forget quite how many different schools of Buddhism there are. Why do you think we are so fascinated by the Dalai Lama? Why is he far and away the most famous Buddhist alive?
Good buddhist books 2021 that, the current Dalai Lama is a highly accomplished practitioner and scholar of Buddhism. He is also a Buddhist monk who takes his vows very seriously. So there is a great deal good buddhist books 2021 admire in him as person. He is also a figure from a land whose religion and culture have been ravaged.
The Chinese invaded Tibet in and in the aftermath Buddhism suffered greatly. Thus, there is much sympathy for the Tibetan cause. This combination of the religious and the political in a good buddhist books 2021 person makes the Dalai Lama a compelling figure. Your last choice, Journey to the Westtranslated by Anthony Yuis one of the most popular classics of Chinese literature.
Ina Chinese monk named Xuanzang set out for India in order to retrieve Buddhist scriptures, returning in Xuanzang wrote a detailed account of his travels, entitled Great Tang Records on the Western Regions � if I could choose six books, it would be the sixth.
His long good buddhist books 2021 to India and back, much of it alone, is budduist one of the most remarkable feats in the history of Chinese Buddhism, taking good buddhist books 2021 legendary proportions. It is interesting that outside Buddhist literature itself, when we read Indian dramas or Good buddhist books 2021 novels or Japanese fables, Buddhist monks are often portrayed as lecherous or avaricious or simply foolish.
In Journey to the Westthe protagonist, a monk named Good buddhist books 2021, is well meaning but weak, pious and learned, but inexperienced in the ways of the world, dissolving in tears at the slightest difficulty. He would never have been able to make it to India. Fortunately, he is protected by the bodhisattva of compassion, who provides him with a bodyguard, a mischievous monkey endowed with all manner of magical powers.
Journey good buddhist books 2021 the West is one of the great picaresque novels in world literature, often uproariously funny and filled with all manner of magical derring-do � even better than Harry Potter. Five Books aims to keep its book recommendations and interviews up to date. If you are the interviewee and would like to budchist your choice of books or even just what you say about them please email us at editor fivebooks.
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