The earliest records we have today of what the Buddha said were written down several centuries after his death, and the body of teachings attributed to him continued to evolve in India for centuries afterward across a shifting cultural and political landscape. As one tradition within a diverse religious milieu that included even the Greek kingdoms of northwestern India, Buddhism had many opportunities to both influence and be influenced by competing schools of thought. Even within Buddhism, a proliferation of interpretive traditions produced a dynamic intellectual climate. Johannes Bronkhorst here tracks the development of Buddhist teachings both within the larger Indian context and among Buddhism's many schools, shedding light on the sources and trajectory of such ideas as dharma theory, emptiness, the bodhisattva ideal, buddha nature, formal logic, and idealism. In these pages, we discover the roots of the doctrinal debates that have animated the Buddhist tradition up until the present day.

The issue of saints is a difficult and complicated problem in Buddhology. In this magisterial work, Ray offers the first comprehensive examination of the figure of the Buddhist saint in a wide range of Indian Buddhist evidence. Drawing on an extensive variety of sources, Ray seeks to identify the "classical type" of the Buddhist saint, as it provides the presupposition for, and informs, the different major Buddhist saintly types and subtypes. Discussing the nature, dynamics, and history of Buddhist hagiography, he surveys the ascetic codes, conventions and traditions of Buddhist saints, and the cults both of living saints and of those who have "passed beyond." Ray traces the role of the saints in Indian Buddhist history, examining the beginnings of Buddhism and the origin of Mahayana Buddhism.

Jan Westerhoff unfolds the story of one of the richest episodes in the history of Indian thought, the development of Buddhist philosophy in the first millennium CE. He starts from the composition of the Abhidharma works before the beginning of the common era and continues up to the time of Dharmakirti in the sixth century. This period was characterized by the development of a variety of philosophical schools and approaches that have shaped Buddhist thought up to the present day: the scholasticism of the Abhidharma, the Madhyamaka's theory of emptiness, Yogacara idealism, and the logical and epistemological works of Dinnaga and Dharmakirti. The book attempts to describe the historical development of these schools in their intellectual and cultural context, with particular emphasis on three factors that shaped the development of Buddhist philosophical thought: the need to spell out the contents of canonical texts, the discourses of the historical Buddha and the Mahayana sutras; the desire to defend their positions by sophisticated arguments against criticisms from fellow Buddhists and from non-Buddhist thinkers of classical Indian philosophy; and the need to account for insights gained through the application of specific meditative techniques. While the main focus is the period up to the sixth century CE, Westerhoff also discusses some important thinkers who influenced Buddhist thought between this time and the decline of Buddhist scholastic philosophy in India at the beginning of the thirteenth century. His aim is that the historical presentation will also allow the reader to get a better systematic grasp of key Buddhist concepts such as non-self, suffering, reincarnation, karma, and nirvana.

Organised in broadly chronological terms, this book presents the philosophical arguments of the great Indian Buddhist philosophers of the fifth century BCE to the eighth century CE. Each chapter examines their core ethical, metaphysical and epistemological views as well as the distinctive area of Buddhist ethics that we call today moral psychology. Throughout, this book follows three key themes that both tie the tradition together and are the focus for most critical dialogue: the idea of anatman or no-self, the appearance/reality distinction and the moral aim, or ideal. Indian Buddhist philosophy is shown to be a remarkably rich tradition that deserves much wider engagement from European philosophy. Carpenter shows that while we should recognise the differences and distances between Indian and European philosophy, its driving questions and key conceptions, we must resist the temptation to find in Indian Buddhist philosophy, some Other, something foreign, self-contained and quite detached from anything familiar. Indian Buddhism is shown to be a way of looking at the world that shares many of the features of European philosophy and considers themes central to philosophy understood in the European tradition.

"This volume contains the first full English translation of a thirteenth-century history of Buddhism in India and Tibet. That means most of all a complete life of the Buddha with the history of his renunciate order and of early Buddhist authors in India. Midway through, the action moves to Tibet where there is an emphasis on the Tibetan ruling dynasty, the translators of Buddhist texts, and the lineages that transmitted doctrinal understanding, meditative insights, and practical realization. It concludes with a pessimistic account of the demise of the monastic order followed by optimism with the advent of the future Buddha Maitreya. The composer of this remarkably ecumenical Buddhist history remains anonymous but was likely a follower of rare lineages of Dzogchen and Zhijé teachings. He put together some of the most important early sources on the Tibetan imperial period that had been preserved in his times and supplies the best witnesses we have for many of them in our own times"--

Meet a generous merchant's son, an outlaw-turned-monk and more in 13 thought-provoking stories from India, China, Japan and Tibet. Gentle illustrations and an insightful foreword provide context to help young readers grasp the warmth, wisdom and compassion of Buddhist tradition.

Madhyamaka and Yogacara are the two principal schools of Mahayana Buddhist philosophy. While Madhyamaka asserts the ultimate emptiness and conventional reality of all phenomena, Yogacara is usually considered to be idealistic. This collection of essays addresses the degree to which these philosophical approaches are consistent or complementary. Indian and Tibetan doxographies often take these two schools to be philosophical rivals. They are grounded in distinct bodies of sutra literature and adopt what appear to be very different positions regarding the analysis of emptiness and the status of mind. Madhyamaka-Yogacara polemics abound in Indian Buddhist literature, and Tibetan doxographies regard them as distinct systems. Nonetheless, scholars have tried to synthesize the two positions for centuries. This volume offers new essays by prominent experts on both these traditions, who address the question of the degree to which these philosophical approaches should be seen as rivals or as allies. In answering the question of whether Madhyamaka and Yogacara can be considered compatible, contributors engage with a broad range of canonical literature, and relate the texts to contemporary philosophical problems.

Homeland of the Buddha is a guide for those visiting the major sites of Buddhism which lie on the great plain of the Ganges in India and Nepal. The main emphasis is the life of the Buddha; how each location was significant during his time; and how that history came to be known in the modern world. The book is useful for those wish to travel, as well as those who seek to know where and how the Buddha taught, two and a half thousand years ago. Although it discusses some aspects of the Buddha's teachings, it does not seek to be a book about Buddhism. Detailed maps and numerous colour images enliven the text. A chapter is devoted to each Buddhist site. The first section of each chapter summarises the reason why that place has significance and details how the Buddha, and other individuals contributed to our knowledge of that place. The 'Today' section of each chapter details what the modern traveller can see in each location, in the sequence that they experience them. Every visitor to India is changed, no matter how much, or how little, they may be cossetted by luxury, or how little they are attuned to the realities of life which India forces on them. It is a truism that India alters the way people think about themselves and their lives. In that sense any travel to India is a pilgrimage. How much more so therefore, when your travel is directed to walking the same paths as one of the world's greatest teachers and more so, if your intent is towards self-awareness. Whether you plan to travel in person, or in the mind, 'Homeland of the Buddha' will inform your journey. So that, whatever your intention, the one who returns will be different from the one who set forth. When touring the country of the Buddha, we all carry the metaphorical staff of a pilgrim. The author has visited the holy Buddhist places numerous times since the 1960s and has travelled extensively in Asia, the Himalaya and Tibet. For more than twenty years he has been a practitioner of Zen Buddhism. As a young man, he worked for several years as a doctor in the Mount Everest region of Nepal and has been involved with Sir Edmund Hillary's development work in Nepal since that time.'Homeland of the Buddha' brings this lifetime experience of Asia into focus as a practical, informative guide to the major Buddhist sites of India and Nepal.

Some twenty-five centuries after the Buddha started teaching, his message continues to inspire people across the globe, including those living in predominantly secular societies. What does it mean to adapt religious practices to secular contexts? Stephen Batchelor, an internationally known author and teacher, is committed to a secularized version of the Buddha’s teachings. The time has come, he feels, to articulate a coherent ethical, contemplative, and philosophical vision of Buddhism for our age. After Buddhism, the culmination of four decades of study and practice in the Tibetan, Zen, and Theravada traditions, is his attempt to set the record straight about who the Buddha was and what he was trying to teach. Combining critical readings of the earliest canonical texts with narrative accounts of five members of the Buddha’s inner circle, Batchelor depicts the Buddha as a pragmatic ethicist rather than a dogmatic metaphysician. He envisions Buddhism as a constantly evolving culture of awakening whose long survival is due to its capacity to reinvent itself and interact creatively with each society it encounters. This original and provocative book presents a new framework for understanding the remarkable spread of Buddhism in today’s globalized world. It also reminds us of what was so startling about the Buddha’s vision of human flourishing.

This book deals with the confrontation of Buddhism and Brahmanism in India. Both depended on support from the royal court, but Buddhism had less to offer in return than Brahmanism. Buddhism developed in a manner to make up for this.