This life story of Milarepa--the important Tibetan religious leader who lived over 800 years ago--is part of a remarkable four-volume series on Tibetan Buddhism produced by the late W.
Books, audiotapes, and classes about yoga are today as familiar as they are widespread, but we in the West have only recently become engaged in the meditative doctrines of the East--only in the last 70 or 80 years, in fact.
The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, which was unknown to the Western world until its first publication in 1954, speaks to the quintessence of the Supreme Path, or Mahayana, and fully reveals the yogic method of attaining Enlightenment.
As a religion concerned with universal liberation, Zen grew out of a Buddhist worldview very different from the currently prevalent scientific materialism.
A great deal of Buddhist literature and scholarly writing about Buddhism of the past 150 years reflects, and indeed constructs, a historically unique modern Buddhism, even while purporting to represent ancient tradition, timeless teaching, or the "e;essentials"e; of Buddhism.
Western esotericism has now emerged as an academic study in its own right, combining spirituality with an empirical observation of the natural world while also relating the humanity to the universe through a harmonious celestial order.
Although Buddhism is often depicted as a religion of meditators and philosophers, some of the earliest writings extant in India offer a very different portrait of the Buddhist practitioner.
Extending their successful series of collections on Zen Buddhism, Heine and Wright present a fifth volume, on what may be the most important topic of all - Zen Masters.
This rendering of the Sugata Saurabha, in a long line of accounts of the Buddha's life dating back almost 2,000 years, may be the last ever to be produced that conforms to the traditions of Indic classic poetry.
Many Western visitors to Japan have been struck by the numerous cemeteries for aborted fetuses, which are characterized by throngs of images of the Bodhisattva Jizo, usually dressed in red baby aprons or other baby garments, and each dedicated to an individual fetus.
This book provides an in-depth textual and literary analysis of the Blue Cliff Record (Chinese Biyanlu, Japanese Hekiganroku), a seminal Chan/Zen Buddhist collection of commentaries on one hundred gongan/koan cases, considered in light of historical, cultural, and intellectual trends from the Song dynasty (960-1279).
The Training Anthology--or Siksa-samuccaya--is a collection of quotations from Buddhist sutras with illuminating and insightful commentary by the eighth-century North Indian master Santideva.
The Training Anthology--or Siksa-samuccaya--is a collection of quotations from Buddhist sutras with illuminating and insightful commentary by the eighth-century North Indian master Santideva.
Throughout the past millennium, certain Tibetan Buddhist yogins have taken on profoundly norm-overturning modes of dress and behavior, including draping themselves in human remains, consuming filth, provoking others to violence, and even performing sacrilege.
The first comprehensive book on alcohol in pre-modern India, An Unholy Brew: Alcohol in Indian History and Religions uses a wide range of sources from the Vedas to the Kamasutra to explore drinks and styles of drinking, as well as rationales for abstinence from the earliest Sanskrit written records through the second millennium CE.
By the early twenty-first century, a phenomenon that once was inconceivable had become nearly commonplace in American society: the public spiritual teacher who neither belongs to, nor is authorized by a major religious tradition.
Envisioning a Tibetan Luminary examines the religious biography of Shardza Tashi Gyaltsen (1859-1934), the most significant modern figure representing the Tibetan Bon religion-a vital minority tradition that is underrepresented in Tibetan studies.
In this wide-ranging exploration of the creation and use of Buddhist art in Andhra Pradesh, India, Catherine Becker examines how material remains and visual experiences shape and reveal essential human concerns.
The Buddha Party tells the story of how the People's Republic of China employs propaganda to define Tibetan Buddhist belief and sway opinion within the country and abroad.
The Buddha Party tells the story of how the People's Republic of China employs propaganda to define Tibetan Buddhist belief and sway opinion within the country and abroad.
Dogen and Soto Zen builds upon and further refines a continuing wave of enthusiastic popular interest and scholarly developments in Western appropriations of Zen.
Buddhists, Hindus, and Sikhs in America explores the challenges that Asian immigrants face when their religion--and consequently culture--is "e;remade in the U.