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Buddhism: the basics PDF

205 Pages·2010·1.234 MB·English
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BUDDHISM THE BASICS Buddhism: The Basics provides a thorough and accessible introduc- tiontoafascinatingreligion.Examiningthehistoricaldevelopment of Buddhism and its presence today, this guide covers: (cid:2) principal traditions (cid:2) practices and beliefs (cid:2) ethical guidelines and philosophy (cid:2) religious texts (cid:2) community With helpful features including a detailed map of the Buddhist world, glossary of terms, and tips for further study, this is an ideal text for students and interested readers wanting to familiarise themselves with the Buddhist faith. Cathy Cantwell is an academic researcher at the Oriental Institute, UniversityofOxford. Shespecialisesin TibetanBuddhism,andhas worked on eleventh-century manuscripts, an eighteenth-century scriptural collection, and contemporary Buddhist ritual manuals and practice. ShehastaughtwidelyinUKHigherEducationandisjoint author of Early Tibetan Documents on Phur pa from Dunhuang. The Basics ANTHROPOLOGY LITERARYTHEORY(SECONDEDITION) PETERMETCALF HANSBERTENS ARCHAEOLOGY(SECONDEDITION) MANAGEMENT CLIVEGAMBLE MORGENWITZEL ARTHISTORY MARKETING(SECONDEDITION) GRANTPOOKEANDDIANANEWALL KARLMOOREANDNIKETHPAREEK BLUES OPERA DICKWEISSMAN DENISEGALLO BUDDHISM PHILOSOPHY(FOURTHEDITION) CATHYCANTWELL NIGELWARBURTON CRIMINOLOGY POETRY SANDRAWALKLATE JEFFREYWAINWRIGHT ECONOMICS POLITICS(FOURTHEDITION) TONYCLEAVER STEPHENTANSEYANDNIGELJACKSON EUROPEANUNION(SECONDEDITION) THEQUR'AN ALEXWARLEIGH-LACK MASSIMOCAMPANINI FILMSTUDIES RELIGION(SECONDEDITION) AMYVILLAREJO MALORYNYE FINANCE ROMANCATHOLICISM ERIKBANKS MICHAELWALSH FOLKMUSIC SEMIOTICS(SECONDEDITION) RONALDCOHEN DANIELCHANDLER INTERNATIONALRELATIONS SHAKESPEARE(SECONDEDITION) PETERSUTCHANDJUANITAELIAS SEANMCEVOY INTERNET SOCIOLOGY JASONWHITTAKER MARTINALBROW ISLAM TELEVISIONSTUDIES COLINTURNER TOBYMILLER JAZZ THEATRESTUDIES CHRISTOPHERMEEDER ROBERTLEACH JUDAISM WORLDMUSIC JACOBNEUSNER RICHARDNIDEL LANGUAGE(SECONDEDITION) R.L.TRASK BUDDHISM THE BASICS cathy cantwell Firstpublished2010 byRoutledge 2ParkSquare,MiltonPark,Abingdon,Oxon,OX144RN SimultaneouslypublishedintheUSAandCanada byRoutledge 270MadisonAvenue,NewYork,NY10016 RoutledgeisanimprintoftheTaylorandFrancisGroup,aninformabusiness This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. ©2010CathyCantwell Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedorreproducedorutilisedin anyformorbyanyelectronic,mechanical,orothermeans,nowknownorhereafter invented,includingphotocopyingandrecording,orinanyinformationstorageor retrievalsystem,withoutpermissioninwritingfromthepublishers. BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData Cantwell,Cathy. Buddhism:thebasics/CathyCantwell. p.cm.–(Thebasics) 1.Buddhism.I.Title. BQ4012.C362009 294.3–dc22 2009002030 ISBN 0-203-87425-0 Master e-book ISBN ISBN10:0-415-40879-2(hbk) ISBN10:0-415-40880-6(pbk) ISBN10:0-203-87425-0(ebk) ISBN13:978-0-415-40879-0(hbk) ISBN13:978-0-415-40880-6(pbk) ISBN13:978-0-203-87425-7(ebk) CONTENTS Map of Buddhism in Asia vi Acknowledgements viii Introduction 1 1 The Buddha and the roots of the Buddhist tradition 19 2 The Dharma 56 3 The textual heritage and oral transmission 93 4 The Sangha 107 5 The major Buddhist traditions 141 Glossary of technical terms 179 Bibliography 187 Index 191 Map of Buddhism in Asia Showing the main directions of the historical spread of Buddhism, and the approximate locations of the major Buddhistregionsinthemodernworld ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Professor Peter Harvey for his detailed and very helpful comments on a draft of this book. I am also grateful to others who commented on selected sections: Frederick Chen, Lance Cousins, Angie Cantwell, and Robert Mayer, and also to the publisher’s anonymous reviewers, who provided useful feedback at an early stage. Errors and shortcomings remain my own. INTRODUCTION HOW PERENNIAL ARE THE BASICS OF BUDDHISM? A Buddhist friend of mine commented, on hearing that I was writing on the Basics of Buddhism, that the task must be utterly different from writing on many other academic subject areas. For Buddhism, the ‘Basics’ are constant, he reasoned, quite different from a subject such as Sociology, which changes all the time. He hadagoodpoint:asinmostreligions,intheirattitudestotheirspiri- tual heritage, Buddhists hold that the Buddha Dharma, the essential truths revealed by the Buddha, are timeless and unchanging. These teachingswillcertainlybeexploredinthisbook,butitisquitelikely thattheBasicsaspresentedherewilllookatleastalittledifferentfrom howtheBasicsmighthavelookedthirtyyearsago–orindeed,how they might look in thirty years’ time. Why should this be so? OnereasonisthestateofBuddhistStudiesasanacademicdiscipline as opposed to Buddhism as a religious path. The teachings may change little, but our knowledge and understandings of them change and develop. In the early twentieth century, beyond its Asian heartlands, knowledge of Buddhism was sparse. The work of translating the major collections of texts into European languages wasinitsinfancy, andnineteenth-century archaeologicaldiscoveries in India had just begun to uncover evidence that allowed glimpses of the early history of Buddhism. It was not until the second part of the twentieth century that Buddhist Studies began to flourish in various university departments throughout Western countries, not only in the relative obscurity of specialist schools for classical ‘Oriental’ languages, but in Religious Studies, Anthropology,

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