Author: Maria Heim Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199331057 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 262
Book Description
Scholars have long been intrigued by the Buddha's defining action (karma) as intention. This book explores systematically how intention, agency, and moral psychology were interpreted in all branches of early Theravada thought, paying special attention to the thought of the 5th-century commentator Buddhaghosa.
Author: Maria Heim Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199331030 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 262
Book Description
Scholars have long been intrigued by the Buddha's defining action (karma) as intention. This book explores systematically how intention, agency, and moral psychology were interpreted in all branches of early Theravada thought, paying special attention to the thought of the 5th-century commentator Buddhaghosa.
Author: Maria Heim Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0190906677 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 400
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.
Author: Stephen Batchelor Publisher: Yale University Press ISBN: 030021622X Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 396
Book Description
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.
Author: Abd-ru-shin Publisher: ISBN: 9781574610086 Category : Taoism Languages : en Pages : 283
Book Description
Little is known of the life and work of this enlightened Chinese sage. In this wonderful biography, the personality of this leader and the events of his life are simply and clearly portrayed. Lao-Tse describes how he came to the recognition of his own destiny, and how he then set about to fulfill his mission. The first in a series, this work was transcribed from the direct experience of living pictures taken from the Book of Life by one gifted to do so.
Author: Samuel Ridout Publisher: Irving Risch ISBN: Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 176
Book Description
Preliminary Remarks To many, a handbook on such a subject may seem needless, and an intrusion into what must ever be left to the individual alone as guided by the Spirit of God. Others, already diligent workers in this field, will find, perhaps, little to help; but it is hoped that large numbers of the Lord's people who have a longing to become better acquainted with the contents of His word may find useful suggestions in the following pages. A few preliminary remarks may not be amiss. First. No method of Bible study, however useful in itself and suggestive, can do away with the absolute necessity for repentance and new birth. The natural mind is "alienated from the life of God," and no amount of education, even in the word of truth itself, can change the character of that which is "enmity against God." The Sunday-school teacher must never forget this as he faces a class of bright, intelligent young people, week by week. If they have not been brought to repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ, the great work has not even been begun which is to form the foundation of their whole life. Well would it be for all who are seeking to make plain the word of God, to remember this, and with all the enthusiasm that they bring to the opening up of this wonderful storehouse of divine riches, to agonize in prayer for the conversion of those who, in the providence of God, have been committed to them. The same, of course, applies to all who come to the Scriptures without having a knowledge of God in the forgiveness of their sins. While we can never refuse such any help which we may be able to give them, let us ever remember that "one thing is needful." It is to be feared that this is overlooked in much of the activity in Bible study of the day, and without doubt the rise and growth of the higher criticism may largely be due to the handling of the Scriptures by unconverted men in a coldly intellectual manner. No doubt, much of the mixture in established churches is due to the indiscriminate participation, by converted and unconverted alike, in truths which can only really be spiritually learned. Second. Similarly, no method of Bible study, even for the children of God, can be substituted for the inestimable blessedness and guidance of the Holy Spirit in the believer. "He will guide you into all truth" is a promise not only for the apostles, a pledge of infallible inspiration for whatever God had to give to His Church in the way of a written Word through them, but in a more general sense, the Spirit is an enlightener of the minds of the saints, leading them into that which is needed for their upbuilding on their most holy faith. The most complete and logical methods of Bible study, pursued in the most diligent manner,with approved helps of every variety, are all worthless apart from the special and controlling guidance of Him who delights to take of the things of Christ and to show them unto us. How indispensably precious a privilege it is to have the Author of the perfect and infinite word of God present with us, not merely to point out its manifold beauties and perfections, and to give us the key to its arrangement, and lead us on step by step in a knowledge of the vast plan contained in it, but to have this divine Person dwelling in us! — our hearts through grace capable of appreciating what He makes known, and of assimilating the truths of those deep things which the Spirit searcheth, and of carrying them out in obedient lives. Here, as in all else, "the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal," and "we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God." We would pause here and lay down our pen if we thought that one word of what follows would divert the mind of the child of God from the glorious fact of the Spirit's presence and dwelling in him, competent to lead, direct, correct and control through an understanding of that Word which He himself has inspired. Let us at the very outset of what may be said, remember this, — give Him room for the exercise of that activity of grace in which He so delights. The communion of the Holy Ghost is that fellowship with the Father and His Son which He produces, a fellowship one with another, too, which is founded upon the assimilation of the word of God; for it would be the greatest mistake to put the Spirit's enlightenment in opposition to the written Word. The Scriptures are indeed the instrument of the Holy Spirit. All the truth that He unfolds is revealed truth already recorded in the word of God. We may be sure that if ever any are tempted to think of receiving revelations from the Spirit apart from the Scriptures, they are in grave peril. We find in the very types given of the Spirit and His work that His ministry is in and through the word of God — both vivifying and cleansing the heart. Thus, "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God" shows that the water of the Word (seeEph. 5:26) is the instrument used by the Spirit of God. "Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever." Thus it is by the word of God ministered to the soul by the Spirit of God that man is born anew. It is this fact which encourages us to go on instructing children and others in the word of God. It might be said that until a person is converted he cannot rightly understand Scripture, and therefore it were needless to trouble ourselves to impart it to them. But we never know when the Spirit of God may work, and indeed the very exercise on our part in imparting the knowledge of the word of God to others should encourage us to believe that the Spirit of truth is already at work in their hearts. The teaching of the Bible to unconverted children has been likened to laying the paper and wood all ready for kindling a fire. There is no fire in the paper or the wood, and yet they are necessary: so a knowledge of Scripture, in some measure at least, either by hearing the gospel or reading it, is necessary for the conversion of souls. Third. In line with what has already been said, it is well to remember that all our study of the Bible must be in a reverent spirit in which all self-sufficiency and dependence upon carnal wisdom are refused, and we realize that if we are to know anything aright it must be from God alone. "The word of God and prayer" are put together as the sanctifying power in the enjoyment of all the natural gifts of God (1 Tim. 4:5). Thus the Scripture will always, if rightly apprehended, reveal our ignorance and shortcomings to us, leading us to a spirit of prayer; and in like manner our very ignorance of God's word will turn us to Him who is so ready to fulfil His word: "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him" (James 1:5). This, however, must suffice here. Later on in our little book we may point out the place of prayer in connection with the study of the Bible. We turn now to the immediate subject.
Author: Diarmaid MacCulloch Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0190616822 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 473
Book Description
The most profound characteristic of Western Europe in the Middle Ages was its cultural and religious unity, a unity secured by a common alignment with the Pope in Rome, and a common language - Latin - for worship and scholarship. The Reformation shattered that unity, and the consequences are still with us today. In All Things Made New, Diarmaid MacCulloch, author of the New York Times bestseller Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, examines not only the Reformation's impact across Europe, but also the Catholic Counter-Reformation and the special evolution of religion in England, revealing how one of the most turbulent, bloody, and transformational events in Western history has shaped modern society. The Reformation may have launched a social revolution, MacCulloch argues, but it was not caused by social and economic forces, or even by a secular idea like nationalism; it sprang from a big idea about death, salvation, and the afterlife. This idea - that salvation was entirely in God's hands and there was nothing humans could do to alter his decision - ended the Catholic Church's monopoly in Europe and altered the trajectory of the entire future of the West. By turns passionate, funny, meditative, and subversive, All Things Made New takes readers onto fascinating new ground, exploring the original conflicts of the Reformation and cutting through prejudices that continue to distort popular conceptions of a religious divide still with us after five centuries. This monumental work, from one of the most distinguished scholars of Christianity writing today, explores the ways in which historians have told the tale of the Reformation, why their interpretations have changed so dramatically over time, and ultimately, how the contested legacy of this revolution continues to impact the world today.
Author: Chung-ying Cheng Publisher: State University of New York Press ISBN: 1438494076 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 398
Book Description
In The Philosophy of Change, the distinguished scholar of Chinese philosophy Chung-ying Cheng advances our understanding of the Yijing by analyzing its philosophy in comparison to Western philosophical traditions. Cheng focuses on critically comparing philosophies of science, religion, and metaphysics in Leibniz, Whitehead, Neville, and Cobb alongside classical Chinese views on reality, divinity, knowledge, and morality. The book begins and ends with questions related to the character of Chinese metaphysical traditions, which contrast with the mainline metaphysical traditions found in Western Europe and North America. Cheng argues throughout the book that the philosophical underpinnings of basic concepts in Chinese culture are ultimately rooted in key claims found within the Yijing 易經 and one of its standard commentaries, the Yizhuan 易傳. The book serves as a complementary volume to the author's previous book, The Primary Way: Philosophy of the Yijing, which lays out a comprehensive and systematic philosophy based on the symbolism and text of the classical document and its traditional commentaries.
Author: Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing ISBN: 1467449652 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 826
Book Description
This Church’s Bible volume on the Gospel of John contains carefully selected and translated homilies and commentaries from such church fathers as Cyril of Alexandria, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory the Great, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Augustine, Athanasius, and the Venerable Bede. Ranging chronologically from the second century to the ninth, these substantial patristic selections provide an illuminating window into the breadth of the church’s interpretive tradition on John’s Gospel. Authors of Works Excerpted Ambrose of Milan Ammonius of Alexandria Aphrahat Apostolic Constitutions Athanasius of Alexandria Augustine of Hippo Basil of Caesarea Bede Caesarius of Arles Clement of Alexandria Cyprian of Carthage Cyril of Alexandria Cyril of Jerusalem Didymus the Blind Ephrem the Syrian Gregory of Nazianzus Gregory of Nyssa Gregory the Great Hilary of Poitiers Hippolytus of Rome Irenaeus of Lyons Jerome John Cassian John Chrysostom John of Damascus John Scotus Eriugena Justin Martyr Leo the Great Maximus of Turin Novatian Origen of Alexandria Peter Chrysologus Romanos the Melodist Rufinus of Aquileia Severian of Gabala Sophronius of Jerusalem Tertullian of Carthage Theodore of Mopsuestia Theodoret of Cyrus Theophilus of Alexandria
Author: Maria Heim
Author: Maria Heim
Author: Maria Heim
Author: Stephen Batchelor
Author: Abd-ru-shin
Author: 
Author: Samuel Ridout
Author: Diarmaid MacCulloch
Author: Chung-ying Cheng
Author: