Canonical Book of the Buddha's Lengthy Discourses, The I PDF Download

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Publisher: BDK America
ISBN: 9781886439559
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The Chan ahan jingis a translation of the Dirgha Agama done in the fifth century, and was intended to bridge the early Buddhist teachings with the Mahayana Buddhist teachings and scriptures. This is the first in a series of volumes translating The Canonical Book of the Buddha's Lengthy Discourses (Taisho 1). Volume 1 contains sutras 1-10 (of 30). Translations of the remaining sutras will be published in two subsequent volumes.

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781886439689
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This is the third and concluding volume in this translation of The Canonical Book of the Buddha's Lengthy Discourses (Taisho 1). Volume 3 contains sutras 21-30 and was preceded by Volumes 1 (sutras 1-10) and 2 (sutras 11-20). The importance of the work may be signified by its position as the first work to lead off the Taisho edition of the canon. The BDK English Tripitaka Series is an ongoing project to translate the complete Taisho edition of the Chinese Mahayana canon. The work is translated by Shohei Ichimura from the Chinese Chang ahan jing. The Chang ahan jing was translated into Chinese from the Sanskrit Dirgha Agama in the fifth century by the monks Buddha yasas and Zhu Fonian. One of the four Agamas upheld by the orthodox Dharmagup-taka school, the Dirgha Agama has many parallels with the Pali Digha Nikaya preserved in the Theravada tradition, but it is unique in two ways. First, the Agama editors organized the sutras in four major sections, reflecting their major concerns: (1) the centrality of Shakyamuni Buddha as the primary subject, (2) the importance of the Dharma and doctrine, (3) the resultant practice, discipline, and advanced spiritual states, and (4) a record of the cosmological origins of the world. Second, the "Sutra of Cosmology," which is not found in the Pali Digha Nikaya, was added as the last text in the collection in order to present the Buddha's teaching more effectively and attractively to a non-Buddhist audience. Some scholars suggest that the underlying principle of the Chang ahan jing reflects a conciliatory impulse intended to bridge the early Buddhist teachings with Mahayana Buddhist teaching and scriptures.

Author: Bhikkhu Analayo
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1614298270
Category : RELIGION
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
Introduction -- 1. The Recital of the Monastic Rules -- 2. Discourse and Verse Collections -- 3. Memory Errors -- 4. Systematization -- 5. Additions and Innovations -- 6. Implications of Orality -- Conclusion -- Abbreviations -- Notes -- References -- Index -- About the Author.

Author: Eviatar Shulman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197587887
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Visions of the Buddha offers a ground-breaking approach to the nature of the early discourses of the Buddha, the most foundational scriptures of Buddhist religion. Although the early discourses are commonly considered to be attempts to preserve the Buddha's teachings, Shulman demonstrates that these texts are full of creativity, and that their main aim is to beautify the image of the wonderous Buddha. While the texts surely care for the early teachings and for the Buddha's philosophy or his guidelines for meditation, and while at times they may relate real historical events, they are no less interested in telling good stories, in re-working folkloric materials, and in the visionary contemplation of the Buddha in order to sense his unique presence. The texts can thus be, at times, a type of meditation. Eviatar Shulman frames the early discourses as literary masterpieces that helped Buddhism achieve the wonderful success it has obtained. Much of the discourses' masterful storytelling was achieved through a technique of composition defined here as the play of formulas. In the oral literature of early Buddhism, texts were composed of formulas, which are repeated within and between texts. Shulman argues that the formulas are the real texts of Buddhism, and are primary to full discourses. Shaping texts through the play of formulas balances conservative and innovative tendencies within the tradition, making room for creativity within accepted forms and patterns. The texts we find today are thus versions--remnants--chosen by history of a much more vibrant and dynamic creative process.

Author: Peter Skilling
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1614294089
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 680

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Book Description
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.

Author: Asaṅga
Publisher: BDK America
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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The Summary of the Great Vehicle is perhaps the most representative text of the Yogacara school of Mahayana Buddhism. It presents the classic argument for the basic Yogacara themes on conscious interiority, attempting to reinterpret within this context the general Mahayana teachings of emptiness and dependent co-arising. It then proceeds to explain the etiology if imaginative illusion, sketch its reversal by offering an explanation of the nature of conversion, champion the recovered insight into depended co-arising in terms of the converted other-dependent pattern of consciousness, and thus allow for a valid, if limited, role for language-formed, conventional discourse, both commonsense and theoretical.

Author: Vanessa R. Sasson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197649467
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Retellings of the Buddha's life story have animated and sustained Buddhist thought and practice through some 2,500 years of history. To this day, Buddhist holidays and rituals are pinned to the arc of his biography, celebrating his birth, awakening, teaching, and final nirvana. His story is the model that exemplary Buddhists follow. Often, there is a moment of insight akin to the Buddha's experience with the Four Sights, followed by a great departure from home, and a period of searching that it is hoped will lead to final awakening. The Buddha's story is not just the Buddha's story; it is the story of Buddhism. In this book, twelve leading scholars of South Asian texts and traditions articulate the Buddha-life blueprint--the underlying and foundational pattern that holds the life story of a buddha together. They retell the episodes of Buddha Gautama's extended life story, while keeping in mind the cosmic, paradigmatic arc of his narrative. The contributors have dedicated their careers to exploring hagiographical materials, each applying their own methodological and theoretical interests to shed new light on the enduring story of Buddhism. Using multiple perspectives, voices, and sources, this volume underscores the multivalent centrality of this story. The book will be an invaluable resource to practicing Buddhists and students of Buddhist Studies to help them engage in the most foundational story of the tradition.

Author: Peter Skilling
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1614299021
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 556

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Book Description
Twenty translations from the vast corpus of Buddhist literature come alive in this full-color anthology of ancient wisdom for turbulent times, as a master scholar uncovers their sources and significance. Change and loss have always been part of the human condition, but in today’s world, the pace and intensity of uncertainty has reached new extremes. The Buddha observed the truth of impermanence more than 2,500 years ago and diagnosed the source of the anxiety it engenders so incisively that his prescription still resonates and heals here and now. In Buddha’s Words for Tough Times, Peter Skilling, one of the world’s foremost authorities on Buddhist scripture, brings the reader face to face with the wealth of Buddhist literature, from a teaching in a single word, to a seminal collection of verses on impermanence, to narrations of the Buddha’s teaching journeys across the Gangetic Plain. Translating from sources in Tibetan, Sanskrit, and Pali, he uncovers the complex history of the vast writings of the Buddhist canons, and his skill in revealing the meaning of twenty gems from within those riches brings them alive for English readers. We could have no better guide for this exploration, an exploration whose value is more urgent than ever.

Author:
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1614290407
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 1936

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Book Description
The present work offers a complete translation of the Aguttara Nikya, the fourth major collection in the Sutta Piṭaka, or Basket of Discourses, belonging to the Pali Canon

Author: Maria Heim
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190906677
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
What would a Buddhist theory of texts look like through the lens of the 5th-century thinker Buddhaghosa? In Voice of the Buddha, Maria Heim reads from the principal commentator, editor, and translator of the Theravada intellectual tradition, yielding fresh insight into all three collections of the early Pali texts: Vinaya, the Suttas, and the Abhidhamma. Buddhaghosa considered the Buddha to be omniscient, the Buddha's words to be "oceanic." Every word, passage, book--indeed the corpus as a whole--is taken to be "endless and immeasurable" in Buddhaghosa's view. Commentarial practice thus requires disciplined methods of expansion, drawing out the endless possibilities for meaning and application. Heim considers Buddhaghosa's theories of texts, and follows his practices of exegesis to discover how he explored scripture's infinity. By examining the significance of the immeasurability of scripture in commentarial practice and as a general principle, this book offers new tools to understand the huge scriptural and commentarial literature of the Pali tradition. And by taking seriously a traditional commentator's theory of texts, it beckons us to learn from commentaries themselves how we might read and interpret them and the texts on which they comment.