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Strange Tales Of An Oriental Idol
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Book Synopsis Strange Tales of an Oriental Idol by : Donald S. Lopez Jr.
Download or read book Strange Tales of an Oriental Idol written by Donald S. Lopez Jr. and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-11-10 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We tend to think that the Buddha has always been seen as the compassionate sage admired around the world today, but until the nineteenth century, Europeans often regarded him as a nefarious figure, an idol worshipped by the pagans of the Orient. Donald S. Lopez Jr. offers here a rich sourcebook of European fantasies about the Buddha drawn from the works of dozens of authors over fifteen hundred years, including Clement of Alexandria, Marco Polo, St. Francis Xavier, Voltaire, and Sir William Jones. Featuring writings by soldiers, adventurers, merchants, missionaries, theologians, and colonial officers, this volume contains a wide range of portraits of the Buddha. The descriptions are rarely flattering, as all manner of reports—some accurate, some inaccurate, and some garbled—came to circulate among European savants and eccentrics, many of whom were famous in their day but are long forgotten in ours. Taken together, these accounts present a fascinating picture, not only of the Buddha as he was understood and misunderstood for centuries, but also of his portrayers.
Download or read book The Buddha written by Philip C. Almond and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-11-30 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book both to tell the story of the Buddha's life and how the Buddha came to the West.
Book Synopsis The Buddha's Tooth by : John S. Strong
Download or read book The Buddha's Tooth written by John S. Strong and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-10-22 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John S. Strong unravels the storm of influences shaping the received narratives of two iconic sacred objects. Bodily relics such as hairs, teeth, fingernails, pieces of bone—supposedly from the Buddha himself—have long served as objects of veneration for many Buddhists. Unsurprisingly, when Western colonial powers subjugated populations in South Asia, they used, manipulated, redefined, and even destroyed these objects to exert control. In The Buddha’s Tooth, John S. Strong examines Western stories, from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, surrounding two significant Sri Lankan sacred objects to illuminate and concretize colonial attitudes toward Asian religions. First, he analyzes a tale about the Portuguese capture and public destruction, in the mid-sixteenth century, of a tooth later identified as a relic of the Buddha. Second, he switches gears to look at the nineteenth-century saga of British dealings with another tooth relic of the Buddha—the famous Daḷadā enshrined in a temple in Kandy—from 1815, when it was taken over by English forces, to 1954, when it was visited by Queen Elizabeth II. As Strong reveals, the stories of both the Portuguese tooth and the Kandyan tooth reflect nascent and developing Western understandings of Buddhism, realizations of the cosmopolitan nature of the tooth, and tensions between secular and religious interests.
Author :馬思途Stuart M. McManus Publisher :The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press ISBN 13 :9882372619 Total Pages :300 pages Book Rating :4.8/5 (823 download)
Book Synopsis 融會中國與西方 Bringing Together China and the West by : 馬思途Stuart M. McManus
Download or read book 融會中國與西方 Bringing Together China and the West written by 馬思途Stuart M. McManus and published by The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press. This book was released on 2023-01-01 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2023年，香港中文大學迎來六十周年校慶。值此重要時刻，當反思大學使命—「結合傳統與現代，融會中國與西方」的歷史意蘊與時代價值。大學圖書館藉此難得機會，舉辦紀念展覽，展示館藏中日益豐富的西方漢學珍本。 本圖錄記錄了展出的藏書，並一一簡述概況，涵蓋從十五至十九世紀中葉的書籍、地圖和手稿。珍藏之中不乏最優秀的早期漢學著作。其中許多作品均由利瑪竇、湯若望等知名耶穌會教士撰寫，他們縱然人數不多，但在深入接觸近代早期中國社會與文化的過程中，一手創立了近代漢學，留下了近距離觀察中國的珍貴記錄。隨著這些傳教士的著作傳回歐洲，關於中國的歐洲書籍愈加準確詳細，歐洲人對中國的了解也與日俱增。本圖錄透過豐富的圖像，以及細緻的介紹和描述，呈現出一幅生動的早期歷史圖景，展現西方對中國持久而深入的興趣和理解，以及中西淵源的交疊與關聯。透過本圖錄，讀者亦可藉此思索如何更好地「結合傳統與現代，融會中國與西方」。 In 2023, The Chinese University of Hong Kong celebrates the sixtieth anniversary of its foundation. This occasion provides a moment for reflection on the historical and contemporary meanings of the university’s mission “to combine tradition with modernity and to bring together China and the West.” To this end, the celebrations include an exhibition of the University Library’s burgeoning collection of Western rare books about China, which is recorded and contextualized in this catalogue. This splendid volume features books, maps, and manuscripts from the fifteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. Among its treasures are some of the very finest works of early Sinology. Many of these were written by celebrated Jesuit missionaries like Matteo Ricci and Johann Adam Schall von Bell, who though few in number almost single-handedly founded modern Sinology through their deep engagement with early modern Chinese society and culture. As the writings of these missionaries percolated back to Europe, knowledge about China grew exponentially as European books about China became more accurate and detailed. Through its extended introduction, images, and descriptions, this catalogue illustrates the dynamic early history of the West’s longstanding and profound interest in China, thereby giving members of the university community and the public at large an opportunity to consider how we might better “combine tradition with modernity and bring together China and the West.”
Book Synopsis The Thousand and One Lives of the Buddha by : Bernard Faure
Download or read book The Thousand and One Lives of the Buddha written by Bernard Faure and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2022-08-31 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Praise for the French edition “This is a book that should be read by all those who are interested, whether near or far, in Buddhism, its history and its interpretations. . . . [Faure] proposes considering the ‘Life of the Buddha’ as a kind of treasure that never ceases to be reinvented and experienced, from story to story, from language to language, from culture to culture.” —Roger-Pol Droit, Le Monde Many biographies of the Buddha have been published in the last 150 years, and all claim to describe the authentic life of the historical Buddha. This book, written by one of the leading scholars of Buddhism and Japanese religion, starts from the opposite assumption and argues that we do not yet possess the archival and archaeological materials required to compose such a biography: All we have are narratives, not facts. Yet traditional biographies have neglected the literary, mythological, and ritual elements in the life of the Buddha. Bernard Faure aims to bridge this gap and shed light on a Buddha that is not historical but has constituted a paradigm of practice and been an object of faith for 2,500 years. The Thousand and One Lives of the Buddha opens with a criticism of the prevalent historicism before examining the mythological elements in a life of the Buddha no longer constrained by an artificial biographical framework. Once the search for the “historical Buddha” is abandoned, there is no longer any need to limit the narrative to early Indian stories. The life—or lives—of the Buddha, as an expression of the creative imaginations of Buddhists, developed beyond India over the centuries. Faure accordingly shifts his focus to East Asia and, more particularly, to Japan. Finally, he examines recent developments of the Buddha’s life in not only Asia but also the modern West and neglected literary genres such as science fiction.
Book Synopsis In the Forest of the Blind by : Matthew W. King
Download or read book In the Forest of the Blind written by Matthew W. King and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Record of Buddhist Kingdoms is a classic travelogue that records the Chinese monk Faxian’s journey in the early fifth century CE to Buddhist sites in Central and South Asia in search of sacred texts. In the nineteenth century, it traveled west to France, becoming in translation the first scholarly book about “Buddhist Asia,” a recent invention of Europe. This text fascinated European academic Orientalists and was avidly studied by Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. The book went on to make a return journey east: it was reintroduced to Inner Asia in an 1850s translation into Mongolian, after which it was rendered into Tibetan in 1917. Amid decades of upheaval, the text was read and reinterpreted by Siberian, Mongolian, and Tibetan scholars and Buddhist monks. Matthew W. King offers a groundbreaking account of the transnational literary, social, and political history of the circulation, translation, and interpretation of Faxian’s Record. He reads its many journeys at multiple levels, contrasting the textual and interpretative traditions of the European academy and the Inner Asian monastery. King shows how the text provided Inner Asian readers with new historical resources to make sense of their histories as well as their own times, in the process developing an Asian historiography independently of Western influence. Reconstructing this circulatory history and featuring annotated translations, In the Forest of the Blind models decolonizing methods and approaches for Buddhist studies and Asian humanities.
Book Synopsis The Book of Secrets by : Walter Brown Gibson
Download or read book The Book of Secrets written by Walter Brown Gibson and published by . This book was released on 1927 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Life and work of Michael Knüppel by : Tnsaemedhin Aberra
Download or read book Life and work of Michael Knüppel written by Tnsaemedhin Aberra and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2022-04-27 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book is a bio-bibliography of the Turkologist, Tungusologist, Altaist, historian of science and ethnologist Michael Knüppel (*1967) for the years 1996-2022.
Book Synopsis The Buddha's Footprint by : Johan Elverskog
Download or read book The Buddha's Footprint written by Johan Elverskog and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2020-01-24 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A corrective to the contemporary idea that Buddhism has always been an environmentally friendly religion In the current popular imagination, Buddhism is often understood to be a religion intrinsically concerned with the environment. The Dharma, the name given to Buddhist teachings by Buddhists, states that all things are interconnected. Therefore, Buddhists are perceived as extending compassion beyond people and animals to include plants and the earth itself out of a concern for the total living environment. In The Buddha's Footprint, Johan Elverskog contends that only by jettisoning this contemporary image of Buddhism as a purely ascetic and apolitical tradition of contemplation can we see the true nature of the Dharma. According to Elverskog, Buddhism is, in fact, an expansive religious and political system premised on generating wealth through the exploitation of natural resources. Elverskog surveys the expansion of Buddhism across Asia in the period between 500 BCE and 1500 CE, when Buddhist institutions were built from Iran and Azerbaijan in the west, to Kazakhstan and Siberia in the north, Japan in the east, and Sri Lanka and Indonesia in the south. He examines the prosperity theology at the heart of the Dharma that declared riches to be a sign of good karma and the means by which spritiual status could be elevated through donations bequeathed to Buddhist institutions. He demonstrates how this scriptural tradition propelled Buddhists to seek wealth and power across Asia and to exploit both the people and the environment. Elverskog shows the ways in which Buddhist expansion not only entailed the displacement of local gods and myths with those of the Dharma—as was the case with Christianity and Islam—but also involved fundamentally transforming earlier social and political structures and networks of economic exchange. The Buddha's Footprint argues that the institutionalization of the Dharma was intimately connected to agricultural expansion, resource extraction, deforestation, urbanization, and the monumentalization of Buddhism itself.
Book Synopsis Ocean of Milk, Ocean of Blood by : Matthew W. King
Download or read book Ocean of Milk, Ocean of Blood written by Matthew W. King and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the fall of the Qing empire, amid nationalist and socialist upheaval, Buddhist monks in the Mongolian frontiers of the Soviet Union and Republican China faced a chaotic and increasingly uncertain world. In this book, Matthew W. King tells the story of one Mongolian monk’s efforts to defend Buddhist monasticism in revolutionary times, revealing an unexplored landscape of countermodern Buddhisms beyond old imperial formations and the newly invented national subject. Ocean of Milk, Ocean of Blood takes up the perspective of the polymath Zava Damdin (1867–1937): a historian, mystic, logician, and pilgrim whose life and works straddled the Qing and its socialist aftermath, between the monastery and the party scientific academy. Drawing on contacts with figures as diverse as the Dalai Lama, mystic monks in China, European scholars inventing the field of Buddhist studies, and a member of the Bakhtin Circle, Zava Damdin labored for thirty years to protect Buddhist tradition against what he called the “bloody tides” of science, social mobility, and socialist party antagonism. Through a rich reading of his works, King reveals that modernity in Asia was not always shaped by epochal contact with Europe and that new models of Buddhist life, neither imperial nor national, unfolded in the post-Qing ruins. The first book to explore countermodern Buddhist monastic thought and practice along the Inner Asian frontiers during these tumultuous years, Ocean of Milk, Ocean of Blood illuminates previously unknown religious and intellectual legacies of the Qing and offers an unparalleled view of Buddhist life in the revolutionary period.
Book Synopsis Introduction to Buddhist Meditation by : Sarah Shaw
Download or read book Introduction to Buddhist Meditation written by Sarah Shaw and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-04-30 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This lively introduction to Buddhist meditation offers students and practitioners alike a deeper understanding of what meditation is and its purpose and place in the context of different Buddhist schools. The historical background and geographical spread of Buddhist meditation is explored alongside an examination of the development of meditative practices. Chapters cover basic meditative practice, types of meditation, meditation in different regions, meditation and doctrine, and the role of chanting within meditation. Although not a practical guide, Introduction to Buddhist Meditation outlines the procedures associated with Buddhist practices and suggests appropriate activities, useful both for students and interested Buddhists. Vivid quotations from Buddhist texts and carefully selected photographs and diagrams help the reader engage fully with this fascinating subject. Thoroughly revised throughout, this new edition also features a glossary and key, making it ideal reading for students approaching the topic of Buddhist meditation for the first time.
Book Synopsis Questioning the Buddha by : Peter Skilling
Download or read book Questioning the Buddha written by Peter Skilling and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-08-17 with total page 680 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An important new book unlocking the words of the Buddha contained in the vast Tibetan canon, one of the main scriptural resources of Buddhism. In the forty-five years the Buddha spent traversing northern India, he shared his wisdom with everyone from beggar women to kings. Hundreds of his discourses, or sutras, were preserved by his followers, first orally and later in written form. Around thirteen hundred years after the Buddha’s enlightenment, the sutras were translated into the Tibetan language, where they have been preserved ever since. To date, only a fraction of these have been made available in English. Questioning the Buddha brings the reader directly into the literary treasure of the Tibetan canon with thoroughly annotated translations of twenty-five different sutras. Often these texts, many translated here in full for the first time, begin with an encounter in which someone poses a question to the Buddha. Peter Skilling, an authority on early Buddhist epigraphy, archaeology, and textual traditions, has been immersed in the Buddhist scriptures of diverse traditions for nearly half a century. In this volume, he draws on his deep and extensive research to render these ancient teachings in a fresh and precise language. His introduction is a fascinating history of the Buddhist sutras, including the transition from oral to written form, the rise of Mahayana literature, the transmission to Tibet, the development of canons, and a look at some of the pioneers of sutra study in the West. Sutras included in this volume are: Four Dharmas Not to Be Taken for Granted; The Benefits of Giving; The Exposition of Four Dharmas; The Merit of the Three Refuges; Four Dharmas Never to Be Abandoned; Advice for Bodhisatva Dharmaketu; Advice for Bodhisatva Jayamati; Sutra Comparing Bodhicitta to Gold; Bodhisatva Maitreya’s Question about the Gift of the Dharma; Four Summaries of the Dharma Spoken to the Naga King Sagara; The Stanza of Dependent Arising; The Heart Formula of Dependent Arising; Prediction of the Boy Brahmasri’s Future Buddhahood; Ksemavati’s Prediction to Future Buddhahood; The City Beggar Woman; An Old Woman’s Questions about Birth and Death; The Questions of Srimati the Brahman Woman; The Questions of the Laywoman Gangottara; Brahma Sahampati’s Question; Advice to King Prasenajit; Passage to the Next Life; Instructions for King Bimbisara; Instructions for King Udayana; Buddhas as Rare as a Grain of Golden Sand; and Predictions on the Eve of the Great Final Nirvana.
Book Synopsis Journeys of Transformation by : John D. Barbour
Download or read book Journeys of Transformation written by John D. Barbour and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-31 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Western Buddhist travel narratives are autobiographical accounts of a journey to a Buddhist culture. Dozens of such narratives have since the 1970s describe treks in Tibet, periods of residence in a Zen monastery, pilgrimages to Buddhist sites and teachers, and other Asian odysseys. The best known of these works is Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard; further reflections emerge from thirty writers including John Blofeld, Jan Van de Wetering, Thomas Merton, Oliver Statler, Robert Thurman, Gretel Ehrlich, and Bill Porter. The Buddhist concept of 'no-self' helps these authors interpret certain pivotal experiences of 'unselfing' and is also a catalyst that provokes and enables such events. The writers' spiritual memoirs describe how their journeys brought about a new understanding of Buddhist enlightenment and so transformed their lives. Showing how travel can elicit self-transformation, this book is a compelling exploration of the journeys and religious changes of both individuals and Buddhism itself.
Book Synopsis The History of Buddhism by : Geoffrey C. Goble
Download or read book The History of Buddhism written by Geoffrey C. Goble and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-10-11 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the world's most popular religions, Buddhism is also one of the most misunderstood. This reference overviews misconceptions related to Buddhism and reveals the truths behind the myths. Buddhism is practiced by millions of adherents around the world. Originating in ancient India, it spread throughout Asia and then to the West, and it exists in multiple traditions. Despite its popularity, it is also the subject of many misconceptions. This book examines those misconceptions along with the historical truths behind the myths. The book begins with an introduction that places Buddhism in its historical and cultural contexts. This is followed by chapters on particular erroneous beliefs related to the religion. Chapters explore whether Buddhism is a singular tradition, if it is a religion or a philosophical system, if it is rational and scientific, whether the Buddha was an ordinary human, and other topics. Each chapter summarizes the misconception and how it spread, along with what we now believe to be the underlying truth behind the falsehood. Quotations and excerpts from primary source documents provide evidence for the mistaken beliefs and the historical truths. The book closes with a selected, general bibliography.
Book Synopsis Buddha Takes the Mound by : Donald S. Lopez, Jr., Ph.D.
Download or read book Buddha Takes the Mound written by Donald S. Lopez, Jr., Ph.D. and published by St. Martin's Essentials. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2010 a Buddhist scroll was found in the ruins of Yankee stadium, and it proved what Buddhist scholar/award-winning author Donald Lopez, Ph.D., had suspected: the Buddha created the game of baseball. Buddha Takes the Mound: Enlightenment in 9 Innings is The Tao of Pooh for baseball. Funny, moving, and enlightening, this is a read that will engross, enrich, and charm any baseball fan. At once a love letter to the sport and an engaging introduction to Buddhism, it shows how the Buddha invented baseball to teach us deep truths about the world, about ourselves, and about each other. Lopez believes that Buddhism provides a lens for us to see baseball in a new way, a way that makes us love the game even more, a way that makes us ponder profound questions about winning and losing, about who we are, about finitude and infinitude, about birth and death. As Lopez reveals, not only is Buddhism integral to baseball; but baseball is Buddhism, and baseball is ourselves.
Book Synopsis Seeking Sakyamuni by : Richard M. Jaffe
Download or read book Seeking Sakyamuni written by Richard M. Jaffe and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-05-20 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though fascinated with the land of their tradition’s birth, virtually no Japanese Buddhists visited the Indian subcontinent before the nineteenth century. In the richly illustrated Seeking Śākyamuni, Richard M. Jaffe reveals the experiences of the first Japanese Buddhists who traveled to South Asia in search of Buddhist knowledge beginning in 1873. Analyzing the impact of these voyages on Japanese conceptions of Buddhism, he argues that South Asia developed into a pivotal nexus for the development of twentieth-century Japanese Buddhism. Jaffe shows that Japan’s growing economic ties to the subcontinent following World War I fostered even more Japanese pilgrimage and study at Buddhism’s foundational sites. Tracking the Japanese travelers who returned home, as well as South Asians who visited Japan, Jaffe describes how the resulting flows of knowledge, personal connections, linguistic expertise, and material artifacts of South and Southeast Asian Buddhism instantiated the growing popular consciousness of Buddhism as a pan-Asian tradition—in the heart of Japan.
Book Synopsis Renunciation and Longing by : Annabella Pitkin
Download or read book Renunciation and Longing written by Annabella Pitkin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-05-20 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through the eventful life of a Himalayan Buddhist teacher, Khunu Lama, this study reimagines cultural continuity beyond the binary of traditional and modern. In the early twentieth century, Khunu Lama journeyed across Tibet and India, meeting Buddhist masters while sometimes living, so his students say, on cold porridge and water. Yet this elusive wandering renunciant became a revered teacher of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. At Khunu Lama’s death in 1977, he was mourned by Himalayan nuns, Tibetan lamas, and American meditators alike. The many surviving stories about him reveal significant dimensions of Tibetan Buddhism, shedding new light on questions of religious affect and memory that reimagines cultural continuity beyond the binary of traditional and modern. In Renunciation and Longing, Annabella Pitkin explores devotion, renunciation, and the teacher-student lineage relationship as resources for understanding Tibetan Buddhist approaches to modernity. By examining narrative accounts of the life of a remarkable twentieth-century Himalayan Buddhist and focusing on his remembered identity as a renunciant bodhisattva, Pitkin illuminates Tibetan and Himalayan practices of memory, affective connection, and mourning. Refuting long-standing caricatures of Tibetan Buddhist communities as unable to be modern because of their religious commitments, Pitkin shows instead how twentieth- and twenty-first-century Tibetan and Himalayan Buddhist narrators have used themes of renunciation, devotion, and lineage as touchstones for negotiating loss and vitalizing continuity.
