By providing an annotated translation of, and applying the methods of literary criticism to, a first-century account of the life of the saint Purna, this study introduces the reader to the richness and complexity of an essential Buddhist genre.

In Courtesans and Tantric Consorts, Serinity Young takes the reader on a journey through more than 2000 years of Buddhist history, revealing the colourful mosaic of beliefs that inform Buddhist views about gender and sexuality.

The volume takes us through a historical excursus into the various ports and docks that crisscrossed the littoral and contributed to the augmentation of Mumbai and its trading profile.

This book presents the most detailed and theoretically sophisticated study of the important Mahayana Buddhist scripture Gandavyuha-sutra. The author puts forward a new approach to the study of Mahayana Buddhist sources, the ‘systems approach’, by which literature is viewed as embedded in a social system, and he analyses the key themes of power, wealth and women to its social context in ancient India.

Miracles of Book and Body is the first book to explore the intersection of two key genres of sacred literature in medieval Japan: sutras, or sacred Buddhist texts, and setsuwa, or "explanatory tales," used in sermons and collected in written compilations. For most of East Asia, Buddhist sutras were written in classical Chinese and inaccessible to many devotees. How, then, did such devotees access these texts? Charlotte D. Eubanks argues that the medieval genre of "explanatory tales" illuminates the link between human body (devotee) and sacred text (sutra). Her highly original approach to understanding Buddhist textuality focuses on the sensual aspects of religious experience and also looks beyond Japan to explore pre-modern book history, practices of preaching, miracles of reading, and the Mahayana Buddhist "cult of the book."

Combines the voices of scholars and practitioners in analysing Buddhist women's history. 26 articles document the lives of women who have set in motion changes within Buddhist societies, with analyses of issues such as gender, ethnicity, authority, and class that affect the lives of women in traditional Buddhist cultures and, increasingly, the west.

David Webster explores the notion of desire as found in the Buddhist Pali Canon. Beginning by addressing the idea of a 'paradox of desire', whereby we must desire to end desire, the varieties of desire that are articulated in the Pali texts are examined. A range of views of desire, as found in Western thought, are presented as well as Hindu and Jain approaches. An exploration of the concept of ditthi(view or opinion) is also provided, exploring the way in which 'holding views' can be seen as analogous to the process of desiring. Other subjects investigated include the mind-body relationship, the range of Pali terms for desire, and desire's positive spiritual value. A comparative exploration of the various approaches completes the work.

The work explores the historical and intellectual context of Tsongkhapa's philosophy and addresses the critical issues related to questions of development and originality in Tsongkhapa's thought. It also deals extensively with one of Tsongkhapa's primary concerns, namely his attempts to demonstrate that the Middle Way philosophy's deconstructive analysis does not negate the reality of the everyday world. The study's central focus, however, is the question of the existence and the nature of self. This is explored both in terms of Tsongkhapa's deconstruction of the self and his reconstruction of person. Finally, the work explores the concept of reality that emerges in Tsongkhapa's philosophy, and deals with his understanding of the relationship between critical reasoning, no-self, and religious experience.

The new Buddhist religious movements of Wat Phra Dhammakaya and Santi Asoke, emerged in Thailand in the 1970s at a time of political uncertainty. This book explores why they have come into being, what they have reacted against and what they offer to their members.