Anatta or non-self is one of the most important concepts in Theravada Buddhism. Anatta’s main objective is to show that none of the five forms of self exists, and also none of the five aggregates be ...linked to the self. This realization concerning Anatta is devised to have a positive effect on how a follower of Buddhism experiences the world and alleviates suffering. This paper extends the concept of Anatta to contemporary society to understand how it can contribute to the improvement of human behavior and psychotherapy. This includes the fostering of mindfulness to develop empathy and create a therapeutic nexus between the patient and the therapist. It also provides techniques for coping with stress, and can act as a foundational basis for ethical and behavior and mollify the relentless pursuit of one’s desires. Furthermore, it offers insights into Western psychology constructs and how to correct its weaknesses which are often focused too closely on the idea of the self.
"Senshi was born in 964 and died in 1035, in the Heian period of Japanese history (794–1185). Most of the poems discussed here are what may loosely be called Buddhist poems, since they deal with ...Buddhist scriptures, practices, and ideas. For this reason, most of them have been treated as examples of a category or subgenre of waka called Shakkyoka, “Buddhist poems.” Yet many Shakkyoka are more like other poems in the waka canon than they are unlike them. In the case of Senshi’s “Buddhist poems,” their language links them to the traditions of secular verse. Moreover, the poems use the essentially secular public literary language of waka to address and express serious and relatively private religious concerns and aspirations. In reading Senshi’s poems, it is as important to think about their relationship to the traditions and conventions of waka and to other waka texts as it is to think about their relationship to Buddhist thoughts, practices, and texts. The Buddhist Poetry of the Great Kamo Priestess creates a context for the reading of Senshi’s poems by presenting what is known and what has been thought about her and them. As such, it is a vital source for any reader of Senshi and other literature of the Heian period."
Empty Words Garfield, Jay L
2001, 20011206, 2001-11-19, 2002-01-10, 20020101
eBook
This volume collects Jay Garfield's essays on Madhyamaka, Yog-ac-ara, Buddhist ethics and cross-cultural hermeneutics. The first part addresses Madhyamaka, supplementing Garfield's translation of ...Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (OUP, 1995), a foundational philosophical text by the Buddhist saint Nagarjuna. Garfield then considers the work of philosophical rivals, and sheds important light on the relation of Nagarjuna's views to other Buddhist and non-Buddhist philosophical positions.
This is the story of fifth century CE India, when the Yogacarin Buddhists tested the awareness of unawareness, and became aware of human unawareness to an extraordinary degree. They not only ...explicitly differentiated this dimension of mental processes from conscious cognitive processes, but also offered reasoned arguments on behalf of this dimension of mind. This is the concept of the 'Buddhist unconscious', which arose just as philosophical discourse in other circles was fiercely debating the limits of conscious awareness, and these ideas in turn had developed as a systematisation of teachings from the Buddha himself. For us in the twenty-first century, these teachings connect in fascinating ways to the Western conceptions of the 'cognitive unconscious' which have been elaborated in the work of Jung and Freud. This important study reveals how the Buddhist unconscious illuminates and draws out aspects of current western thinking on the unconscious mind. One of the most intriguing connections is the idea that there is in fact no substantial 'self' underlying all mental activity; 'the thoughts themselves are the thinker'. William S. Waldron considers the implications of this radical notion, which, despite only recently gaining plausibility, was in fact first posited 2,500 years ago.
Part I - The Background and Context of the Ãlaya-vijñãna Part II - The Abhidharma Context 15. The Abhidharma Project and its Problematic Part III - The Alaya-vijñana in the Yogacara Tradition, The Alaya-vijñana in the Early Tradition Part IV - The Alaya-Vijñana in the Mahayana-samgraha I : Bringing It All Back Home Part V - The Alaya-Vijñana in the Mahayana-samgraha II: Looking Beyond
William S. Waldron received his PhD in Buddhist Studies from the University of Wisconsin after studying extensively in India, Nepal and Japan. He currently teaches South Asian religions and Buddhist philosophy at Middlebury College, Vermont. His research areas include the Yogacara school of Indian Buddhism, and comparative psychologies and philosophies of mind.
Founded in 1676 during a cosmopolitan early modern period,
Mindröling monastery became a key site for Buddhist education and a
Tibetan civilizational center. Its founders sought to systematize
and ...institutionalize a worldview rooted in Buddhist philosophy,
engaging with contemporaries from across Tibetan Buddhist schools
while crystallizing what it meant to be part of their own Nyingma
school. At the monastery, ritual performance, meditation,
renunciation, and training in the skills of a bureaucrat or member
of the literati went hand in hand. Studying at Mindröling entailed
training the senses and cultivating the objects of the senses
through poetry, ritual music, monastic dance, visual arts, and
incense production, as well as medicine and astrology. Dominique
Townsend investigates the ritual, artistic, and cultural practices
inculcated at Mindröling to demonstrate how early modern Tibetans
integrated Buddhist and worldly activities through training in
aesthetics. Considering laypeople as well as monastics and women as
well as men, A Buddhist Sensibility sheds new light on the
forms of knowledge valued in early modern Tibetan societies,
especially among the ruling classes. Townsend traces how tastes,
values, and sensibilities were cultivated and spread, showing what
it meant for a person, lay or monastic, to be deemed well educated.
Combining historical and literary analysis with fieldwork in
Tibetan Buddhist communities, this book reveals how monastic
institutions work as centers of cultural production beyond the
boundaries of what is conventionally deemed Buddhist.
A cornerstone of Buddhist philosophy, the doctrine of the four noble truths maintains that life is replete with suffering, desire is the cause of suffering, nirvana is the end of suffering, and the ...way to nirvana is the eightfold noble path. Although the attribution of this seminal doctrine to the historical Buddha is ubiquitous, Rethinking the Buddha demonstrates through a careful examination of early Buddhist texts that he did not envision them in this way. Shulman traces the development of what we now call the four noble truths, which in fact originated as observations to be cultivated during deep meditation. The early texts reveal that other central Buddhist doctrines, such as dependent-origination and selflessness, similarly derived from meditative observations. This book challenges the conventional view that the Buddha's teachings represent universal themes of human existence, allowing for a fresh, compelling explanation of the Buddhist theory of liberation.
The Ways of Zen Tsai, C. C; Bruya, Brian
2021, 2021-07-27, Volume:
21
eBook
From bestselling cartoonist C. C. Tsai, a delightfully illustrated collection of classic Zen Buddhist stories that enlighten as they entertain C. C. Tsai is one of Asia's most popular cartoonists, ...and his editions of the Chinese classics have sold more than 40 million copies in over twenty languages. In The Ways of Zen, he has created an entertaining and enlightening masterpiece from the rich collections of the Zen Buddhist tradition, bringing classic stories to life in delightful language and vividly detailed comic illustrations. Combining all the stories previously published in Tsai's Wisdom of the Zen Masters and Zen Speaks, this is the artist's largest collection of selections from the most important and famous Zen texts.The story of the illiterate wood-peddler Huineng, who improbably rises to become the most famous Zen patriarch, is joined by others that trace the development of the five major sects of Zen Buddhism through other masters such as Mazu, Linji, and Yunmen. A shattered antique, a blind man carrying a lantern, sutras set on fire, a cow jumping through a window—each story leads the reader to reflect on fundamental Buddhist ideas. The Ways of Zen also features the original Chinese text in side columns on each page, enriching the book for readers and students of Chinese without distracting from the English-language cartoons.Filled with memorable anecdotes and disarming wisdom, The Ways of Zen is a perfect introduction to Zen Buddhism and an essential addition to any Zen collection.
Chinese Esoteric Buddhism is generally held to have been established as a distinct and institutionalized Buddhist school in eighth-century China by "the Three Great Masters ofKaiyuan": ...Śubhākarasiṃha, Vajrabodhi, and Amoghavajra. Geoffrey C. Goble provides an innovative account of the tradition's emergence that sheds new light on the structures and traditions that shaped its institutionalization. Goble focuses on Amoghavajra (704-774), contending that he was the central figure in Esoteric Buddhism's rapid rise in Tang dynasty China, and the other two "patriarchs" are known primarily through Amoghavajra's teachings and writings. He presents the scriptural, mythological, and practical aspects of Chinese Esoteric Buddhism in the eighth century and places them in the historical contexts within which Amoghavajra operated. By telling the story of Amoghavajra's rise to prominence and of Esoteric Buddhism's corresponding institutionalization in China, Goble makes the case that the evolution of this tradition was predicated on Indic scriptures and practical norms rather than being the product of conscious adaptation to a Chinese cultural environment. He demonstrates that Esoteric Buddhism was employed by Chinese rulers to defeat military and political rivals. Based on close readings of a broad range of textual sources previously untapped by English-language scholarship, this book overturns many assumptions about the origins of Chinese Esoteric Buddhism.
This article examines interpretations of Buddhism that have been occurred to respond to Confucian values. Textual analysis and ethnography to scrutinize Chinese ritual performances in Indonesia were ...employed as research method. It found that in order to serve the Confucian values, Buddhism has to emphasize filial piety alongside monastic practices. It can be seen in the stories of Guanyin saved her father and Mulian saved his mother from hell. Although the origin of these stories can be traced to the Pali and Sanskrit scriptures, they had been reinterpreted and localized to convey Confucian values and Chinese tradition. In addition, these stories also claim the superior aspects of Buddhism on the ground that filial piety should be conducted not only in this very life, but also in other spirit worlds, through a certain level of meditation practice only available in the Buddhist way.
Human beings constantly seek meaning and temporary happiness for themselves. Nevertheless, they live in a perpetual cycle of universal and subjective suffering, affecting their general and mental ...wellness. Scholars in the humanities continue to pursue questions of meaning and interpretation of suffering, and in science there is still no solution for the emancipation of human suffering. This study will try to show that the concept of Bodhisattva in Mahayana Buddhism can address the issue of emancipation of suffering in a meaningful way. Mahayana Buddhism suggests that suffering comes from the objectification of the mind, the notion of self, and the discriminatory mind that arises from dualistic views. Overcoming suffering is possible by using the type of discipline usually reserved for the Bodhisattva. This disciple provides a way even in secular society to emancipate individuals from suffering, and improve their quality of life and mental well-being. In conclusion, the study suggests that Bodhisattva practice can be used in public education as a psychological tool for self-help and the emancipation of sufferings.
