Nirvana And Other Buddhist Felicities

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Nirvana and Other Buddhist Felicities

Author : Steven Collins
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 0521570549
Total Pages : 710 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (215 download)

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Book Synopsis Nirvana and Other Buddhist Felicities by : Steven Collins

Download or read book Nirvana and Other Buddhist Felicities written by Steven Collins and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-05-13 with total page 710 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents an answer to the question: what is nirvana? Part I distinguishes between systematic and narrative thought in the Pali texts of Theravada Buddhism in South and Southeast Asia, arguing that nirvana produces closure in both, and setting nirvana in the wider category of Buddhist Felicities. Part II explores other Buddhist utopias (both eu-topias, 'good places', and ou-topias, 'no-places'), and relates Buddhist utopianism to studies of European and American utopian writing. The book ends with a close reading of the Vessantara Jataka, which highlights the conflict between the ascetic quest for closure and ultimate felicity, and the ongoing demands of ordinary life and society. Steven Collins discusses these issues in relation to textuality, world history and ideology in premodern civilizations, aiming to contribute to an alternate vision of Buddhist history, which can hold both the inside and the outside of texts together.

Nirvana and Other Buddhist Felicities

Author : Steven Collins
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521578424
Total Pages : 712 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (784 download)

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Book Synopsis Nirvana and Other Buddhist Felicities by : Steven Collins

Download or read book Nirvana and Other Buddhist Felicities written by Steven Collins and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-11-02 with total page 712 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a new answer to the question: what is nirvana? Part One distinguishes between systematic and narrative thought in the Pali texts of Theravada Buddhism, looking at the place of nirvana in both. Part Two explores other Buddhist utopias and relates Buddhist utopianism to studies of European and American utopian writing. Steven Collins discusses these issues in relation to textuality, world history, and ideology in premodern civilizations, aiming to contribute to a new vision of Buddhist history that integrates the inside and the outside of texts.

Nirvana

Author : Steven Collins
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 0521881986
Total Pages : 205 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (218 download)

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Book Synopsis Nirvana by : Steven Collins

Download or read book Nirvana written by Steven Collins and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-25 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introduction to the Buddhist concept of nirvana, offering its own interpretations of key texts and translations for non-specialist readers.

Bangkok Utopia

Author : Lawrence Chua
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824884604
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (248 download)

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Book Synopsis Bangkok Utopia by : Lawrence Chua

Download or read book Bangkok Utopia written by Lawrence Chua and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2021-02-28 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Utopia” is a word not often associated with the city of Bangkok, which is better known for its disorderly sprawl, overburdened roads, and stifling levels of pollution. Yet as early as 1782, when the city was officially founded on the banks of the Chao Phraya river as the home of the Chakri dynasty, its orientation was based on material and rhetorical considerations that alluded to ideal times and spaces. The construction of palaces, monastic complexes, walls, forts, and canals created a defensive network while symbolically locating the terrestrial realm of the king within the Theravada Buddhist cosmos. Into the twentieth century, pictorial, narrative, and built representations of utopia were critical to Bangkok’s transformation into a national capital and commercial entrepôt. But as older representations of the universe encountered modern architecture, building technologies, and urban planning, new images of an ideal society attempted to reconcile urban-based understandings of Buddhist liberation and felicitous states like nirvana with worldly models of political community like the nation-state. Bangkok Utopia outlines an alternative genealogy of both utopia and modernism in a part of the world that has often been overlooked by researchers of both. It examines representations of utopia that developed in the city—as expressed in built forms as well as architectural drawings, building manuals, novels, poetry, and ecclesiastical murals—from its first general strike of migrant laborers in 1910 to the overthrow of the military dictatorship in 1973. Using Thai- and Chinese-language archival sources, the book demonstrates how the new spaces of the city became arenas for modern subject formation, utopian desires, political hegemony, and social unrest, arguing that the modern city was a space of antinomy—one able not only to sustain heterogeneous temporalities, but also to support conflicting world views within the urban landscape. By underscoring the paradoxical character of utopias and their formal narrative expressions of both hope and hegemony, Bangkok Utopia provides an innovative way to conceptualize the uneven economic development and fractured political conditions of contemporary global cities.

Wisdom As a Way of Life

Author : Steven Collins
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780231197212
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (972 download)

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Book Synopsis Wisdom As a Way of Life by : Steven Collins

Download or read book Wisdom As a Way of Life written by Steven Collins and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this wide-ranging and field-changing work Steven Collins argues that the study of Theravada Buddhism needs to separated from the rather dated and stagnant field of textual history and approached both "civilizationally" and as a "practice of the self." By civilizationally, he means that instead of seeing Buddhism as a set of "original" teachings of the so-called historical Buddha from the 5th century BC to the present, it should rather be viewed as an effort by many teachers and visionaries over time to make sense of what it means to lead a worthy life. The purveyors of Buddhist philosophy did not consider themselves to be preservers of an archaic body of rules and ethical guidelines; they were designing a dynamic way of living and confronting human problems in a timeless way. Using approaches to the very idea of the self promoted by Foucault and Hadot, he compares Theravada Buddhist ways of understanding and "practicing" the self to modernist and postmodernist ideas about "philosophy as a way of life." Rather than applying positivist and historicist approaches, Buddhism should be assessed philosophically, literarily, and ethically, using its own vocabulary and rhetorical tools. Treated in this manner, Buddhist notions of the self can be applied to contemporary ideas of self-care and the promotion of human flourishing. The book covers topics such as spiritual practice, ultimate versus provisional truth, systematic versus narrative thinking, meditation versus virtue, and history versus philosophy. It is a bold and complex way of understanding the impact that Buddhist ways of knowing can have in the world today, bringing them into conversation with modern psychology, literary studies, ethics, gender and sexuality studies, and philosophy"--

Gender and the Path to Awakening

Author : Martin Seeger
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9788776942588
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (425 download)

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Book Synopsis Gender and the Path to Awakening by : Martin Seeger

Download or read book Gender and the Path to Awakening written by Martin Seeger and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this book Seeger lays out the nuances and varying conceptions of female renunciation in modern Thai Buddhism. Centered on long-term textual and ethnographic research on six remarkable female practitioners, Seeger considers trends and changes over the last 140 years in the practices of female renunciants and their devotees. He also investigates understandings of female sainthood in Thai Buddhism, its expressions in material culture, and the importance of orality and memory in Thai Buddhist epistemology. Supported by interviews and careful study of sermons, hagiographies, and hitherto untranslated and rare Thai sources, this book examines the social backgrounds, modes of expression, veneration, and historical contexts of Thai women pursuing the Buddhist ideal. Rich in ethnographic detail and with additional grounding in foundational Indian Buddhist texts, this book offers new insights into the complexities of female renunciation and gender relations in modern Thai Buddhism."--Publisher's description

Selfless Persons

Author : Steven Collins
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521397261
Total Pages : 344 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (972 download)

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Book Synopsis Selfless Persons by : Steven Collins

Download or read book Selfless Persons written by Steven Collins and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1982 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book seeks to explain carefully and sympathetically the Buddhist doctrine of anatta ('not-self'), which denies the existence of any self, soul or enduring essence in human beings. The author relates this doctrine to its cultural and historical context, particularly to its Brahmanical background, and shows how the Theravada Buddhist tradition has constructed a philosophical and psychological account of personal identity and continuity on the apparently impossible basis of the denial of self.

Wisdom as a Way of Life

Author : Steven Collins
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231552041
Total Pages : 137 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis Wisdom as a Way of Life by : Steven Collins

Download or read book Wisdom as a Way of Life written by Steven Collins and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This wide-ranging and powerful book argues that Theravāda Buddhism provides ways of thinking about the self that can reinvigorate the humanities and offer broader insights into how to learn and how to act. Steven Collins argues that Buddhist philosophy should be approached in the spirit of its historical teachers and visionaries, who saw themselves not as preservers of an archaic body of rules but as part of a timeless effort to understand what it means to lead a worthy life. He contends that Buddhism should be studied philosophically, literarily, and ethically using its own vocabulary and rhetorical tools. Approached in this manner, Buddhist notions of the self help us rethink contemporary ideas of self-care and the promotion of human flourishing. Collins details the insights of Buddhist texts and practices that promote the ideal of active and engaged learning, offering an expansive and lyrical reflection on Theravāda approaches to meditation, asceticism, and physical training. He explores views of monastic life and contemplative practices as complementing and reinforcing textual learning, and argues that the Buddhist tenet that the study of philosophy and ethics involves both rigorous reading and an ascetic lifestyle has striking resonance with modern and postmodern ideas. A bold reappraisal of the history of Buddhist literature and practice, Wisdom as a Way of Life offers students and scholars across the disciplines a nuanced understanding of the significance of Buddhist ways of knowing for the world today.

A Pali Grammar for Students

Author : Steven Collins
Publisher : Silkworm Books
ISBN 13 : 1628406399
Total Pages : 142 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (284 download)

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Book Synopsis A Pali Grammar for Students by : Steven Collins

Download or read book A Pali Grammar for Students written by Steven Collins and published by Silkworm Books. This book was released on 2006-07-01 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is intended for modern students, inside or outside the classroom, as a work of reference rather than a ‘teach yourself’ textbook. It presents an introductory sketch of Pali using both European and South Asian grammatical categories. In English language works, Pali is standardly presented in the traditional terms of English grammar, derived from the classical tradition, with which many modern students are unfamiliar. This work discusses and reflects upon those categories, and has an appendix devoted to them. It also introduces the main categories of traditional Sanskrit and Pali grammar, drawing on, in particular, the medieval Pali text Saddaniti, by Aggavamsa. Each grammatical form is illustrated by examples taken from Pali texts, mostly canonical. Although some previous knowledge of Sanskrit would be helpful, the book can also be used by those without previous linguistic training. A bibliographical appendix refers to other, complementary resources.

Readings of the Vessantara Jātaka

Author : Steven Collins
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231541007
Total Pages : 293 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis Readings of the Vessantara Jātaka by : Steven Collins

Download or read book Readings of the Vessantara Jātaka written by Steven Collins and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-29 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Vessantara Jataka tells the story of Prince Vessantara, who attained the Perfection of Generosity by giving away his fortune, his children, and his wife. Vessantara was the penultimate rebirth as a human of the future Gotama Buddha, and his extreme charity has been represented and reinterpreted in texts, sermons, rituals, and art throughout South and Southeast Asia and beyond. This anthology features well-respected anthropologists, textual scholars in religious and Buddhist studies, and art historians, who engage in sophisticated readings of the text and its ethics of giving, understanding of attachment and nonattachment, depiction of the trickster, and unique performative qualities. They reveal the story to be as brilliantly layered as a Homeric epic or Shakespearean play, with aspects of tragedy, comedy, melodrama, and utopian fantasy intertwined to problematize and scrutinize Theravada Buddhism's cherished virtues.

Subverting Hatred

Author : Daniel L. Smith-Christopher
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 244 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Subverting Hatred by : Daniel L. Smith-Christopher

Download or read book Subverting Hatred written by Daniel L. Smith-Christopher and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Representatives of nine world religions offer insights into the teachings of nonviolence within their tradition, how practice has often fallen short of the ideals, and how they can overcome the contagion of hatred through a return to traditional teachings on nonviolence.

The Flower Ornament Scripture

Author : Thomas Cleary
Publisher : Shambhala Publications
ISBN 13 : 0834824094
Total Pages : 1656 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (348 download)

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Book Synopsis The Flower Ornament Scripture by : Thomas Cleary

Download or read book The Flower Ornament Scripture written by Thomas Cleary and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 1993-10-12 with total page 1656 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Known in Chinese as Hua-yen and in Japanese as Kegon-kyo, the Avatamsaka Sutra, or Flower Ornament Scripture, is held in the highest regard and studied by Buddhists of all traditions. Through its structure and symbolism, as well as through its concisely stated principles, it conveys a vast range of Buddhist teachings. This one-volume edition contains Thomas Cleary's definitive translation of all thirty-nine books of the sutra, along with an introduction, a glossary, and Cleary's translation of Li Tongxuan's seventh-century guide to the final book, the Gandavyuha, "Entry into the Realm of Reality."

The Category of the Person

Author : Michael Carrithers
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521277570
Total Pages : 324 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (775 download)

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Book Synopsis The Category of the Person by : Michael Carrithers

Download or read book The Category of the Person written by Michael Carrithers and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1985-12-27 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept that people have of themselves as a 'person' is one of the most intimate notions that they hold. Yet the way in which the category of the person is conceived varies over time and space. In this volume, anthropologists, philosophers, and historians examine the notion of the person in different cultures, past and present. Taking as their starting point a lecture on the person as a category of the human mind, given by Marcel Mauss in 1938, the contributors critically assess Mauss's speculation that notions of the person, rather than being primarily philosophical or psychological, have a complex social and ideological origin. Discussing societies ranging from ancient Greece, India, and China to modern Africa and Papua New Guinea, they provide fascinating descriptions of how these different cultures define the person. But they also raise deeper theoretical issues: What is universally constant and what is culturally variable in people's thinking about the person? How can these variations be explained? Has there been a general progressive development toward the modern Western view of the person? What is distinctive about this? How do one's notions of the person inform one's ability to comprehend alternative formulations? These questions are of compelling interest for a wide range of anthropologists, philosophers, historians, psychologists, sociologists, orientalists, and classicists. The book will appeal to any reader concerned with understanding one of the most fundamental aspects of human existence.

Surviving Nirvana

Author : Sonya S. Lee
Publisher : Hong Kong University Press
ISBN 13 : 9622091253
Total Pages : 374 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (22 download)

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Book Synopsis Surviving Nirvana by : Sonya S. Lee

Download or read book Surviving Nirvana written by Sonya S. Lee and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-01 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Buddha's nirvana marks the end of the life of a great spiritual figure and the beginning of Buddhism as a world religion. Surviving Nirvana is the first book in the English language to examine how this historic moment was represented and received in the visual culture of China, of which the nirvana image has been a part for over 1,500 years. --Mining a selection of well-documented and well-preserved examples from the sixth to twelfth centuries, Sonya Lee offers a reassessment of medieval Chinese Buddhism by focusing on practices of devotion and image-making that were inspired by the Buddha's "complete extinction." The nirvana image, comprised of a reclining Buddha and a mourning audience, was central to defining the local meanings of the nirvana moment in different times and places. The motif's many guises, whether on a stone-carved stele, inside a pagoda crypt, or as a painted mural in a cave temple, were the product of social interactions, religious institutions, and artistic practices prevalent in a given historical context. They were also cogent responses to the fundamental anxiety about the absence of the Buddha and the prospect of one's salvation. By reinventing the nirvana image to address its own needs, each community of patrons, makers, and viewers sought to recast the Buddha's "death" into an allegory of survival that was charged with local pride and contemporary relevance.- -Thoroughly researched, this study engages methods and debates from the fields of art history, religion, archaeology, architecture, and East Asian history that are relevant to scholars and students alike. The many examples analyzed in the book offer well-defined local contexts to discuss broader historical and theoretical issues concerning representation, patronage, religion and politics, family values, and vision.--Sonya S. Lee is assistant professor of art history and East Asian languages and cultures at University of Southern California.-- -

How Theravāda is Theravāda?

Author : Peter Skilling
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9786162150449
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (54 download)

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Book Synopsis How Theravāda is Theravāda? by : Peter Skilling

Download or read book How Theravāda is Theravāda? written by Peter Skilling and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on presentations at a panel in 2007.

Satipaṭṭhāna

Author : Anālayo
Publisher : Windhorse Publications
ISBN 13 : 9781899579549
Total Pages : 342 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (795 download)

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Book Synopsis Satipaṭṭhāna by : Anālayo

Download or read book Satipaṭṭhāna written by Anālayo and published by Windhorse Publications. This book was released on 2003 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book helps to fill what has long been a glaring gap in the scholarship of early Buddhism, offering us a detailed textual study of the Satipatthāna Sutta, the foundational Buddhist discourse on meditation practice."--Back cover.

Buddhism, Virtue and Environment

Author : David E. Cooper
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1351954326
Total Pages : 170 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (519 download)

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Book Synopsis Buddhism, Virtue and Environment by : David E. Cooper

Download or read book Buddhism, Virtue and Environment written by David E. Cooper and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Buddhism, one increasingly hears, is an 'eco-friendly' religion. It is often said that this is because it promotes an 'ecological' view of things, one stressing the essential unity of human beings and the natural world. Buddhism, Virtue and Environment presents a different view. While agreeing that Buddhism is, in many important respects, in tune with environmental concerns, Cooper and James argue that what makes it 'green' is its view of human life. The true connection between the religion and environmental thought is to be found in Buddhist accounts of the virtues - those traits, such as compassion, equanimity and humility, that characterise the life of a spiritually enlightened individual. Central chapters of this book examine these virtues and their implications for environmental attitudes and practice. Buddhism, Virtue and Environment will be of interest not only to students and teachers of Buddhism and environmental ethics, but to those more generally engaged with moral philosophy. Written in a clear and accessible style, this book presents an original conception of Buddhist environmental thought. The authors also contribute to the wider debate on the place of ethics in Buddhist teachings and practices, and to debates within 'virtue ethics' on the relations between human well-being and environmental concern.