Essential Buddhism: A Complete Guide to Beliefs and Practices

Couverture
Simon and Schuster, 2001 - 262 pages
Four hundred million people call themselves Buddhists today. Yet most Westerners know little about this powerful, Eastern-spawned faith. How did it begin? What do its adherents believe? Why are so many Westerners drawn to it?
Essential Buddhism responds to these questions and many more, offering an accessible, global perspective on the religion's past, present, and future. It identifies how the principal concepts and practices originated and evolved through diverse cultural adaptations into three basic formats:
* Theraveda (including Vipassana, brought from Vietnam in the 1960s and including such practitioners as Jack Kornfield and Jon Kapat-Zinn)
* Mahayana (including Zen Buddhism, originally brought to America by Japanese teachers after World War II and popularized by Jack Kerouac and Thomas Merton)
* Vajrayana (including Tibetan Buddhism, from the teachers who fled the Chinese takeover of Tibet in the 1950s as well as the Dalai Lama, and embraced by Allen Ginsberg, Richard Gere, and countless others)
Essential Buddhism is the single best resource for the novice and the expert alike, exploring the depths of Buddhism's popularity and illuminating its tenets and sensible approach to living. Written in the lucid prose of a longtime professional storyteller, and full of Buddhist tales, scriptural quotes, ancient stories, and contemporary insights, Essential Buddhism is the first complete guide to the faith and the phenomenon.
 

Table des matières

The Great Awakening The Buddha and His Legacy I
1
The Three Vehicles of Buddhism Theravada Mahayana and Vajrayana
33
The Path to Enlightenment Buddhist Beliefs
75
Walking the Way Buddhist Practices
115
The Dharma Comes to the West
155
Buddhism and the New Millennium
201
Glossary
233
Bibliography
247
Index
253
Droits d'auteur

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À propos de l'auteur (2001)

Jack Maguire was born in Denison, Texas and attended both the University of Texas a Denton and the University of Texas at Austin, where he received the Society of Professional Journalists Award as the "Outstanding Graduate in Journalism" for his writing in the Daily Texan. Maguire was the Executive Director of the University of Texas Institute of Texas Culture from 1976-1986. He has written two textbooks on Texan history and developed a Texas Trivia Game that is used in the classroom. Maguire has written over 1600 columns, more than 500 articles, and nine books. His column, Talk of Texas, is the longest running in the history of Texas.

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