The Leading eBooks Store Online
for your Apple or Android device, Nook, Kobo, PC, Mac, Sony Reader...
Most popular at the top
Samurai Zenby Trevor Leggett
Routledge 2003; US$ 29.95Samurai Zen brings together 100 of the rare riddles which represent the core spiritual discipline of Japan's ancient Samurai tradition. more...
Buddhist Hagiography in Early Japanby Jonathan Morris Augustine
RoutledgeCurzon 2004; US$ 180.00Much of the Scholarship on Gyôki is based on fantastic medieval biographies and legends. This work, however, makes use of many different lenses to develop multiple perspectives on the life of Gyôki. more...
Mipham's Dialectics and the Debates on Emptinessby Karma Phuntsho
RoutledgeCurzon 2005; US$ 180.00This book explores a number of central themes in connection with the concept of 'emptiness', a highly technical but very central notion in Tibetan Buddhist thought. more...
Sensory Biographiesby Robert Desjarlais
University of California Press 2003; US$ 15.95Robert Desjarlais's graceful ethnography explores the life histories of two Yolmo elders, focusing on how particular sensory orientations and modalities have contributed to the making and the telling of their lives. These two are a woman in her late eighties known as Kisang Omu and a Buddhist priest in his mid-eighties known as Ghang Lama, members of an ethnically Tibetan Buddhist people whose ancestors have lived for three centuries or so along the upper ridges of the Yolmo Valley in north central Nepal. It was clear through their many conversations that both individuals perceived themselves as nearing death, and both were quite willing to share their thoughts about death and dying. The difference between the two was remarkable, however, in... more...
The Buddhaby Michael Carrithers
Oxford University Press 2001; US$ 12.99Michael Carrithers discusses the social and political background of India in the Buddha's time, and traces the development of his thought. He also assesses the rapid and widespread assimilation of Buddhism and its contemporary relevance. more...
Dogen's Manuals of Zen Meditationby Carl Bielefeldt
University of California Press 1990; US$ 25.95Zen Buddhism is perhaps best known for its emphasis on meditation, and probably no figure in the history of Zen is more closely associated with meditation practice than the thirteenth-century Japanese master Dogen, founder of the Soto school. This study examines the historical and religious character of the practice as it is described in Dogen's own meditation texts, introducing new materials and original perspectives on one of the most influential spiritual traditions of East Asian civilization. The Soto version of Zen meditation is known as "just sitting," a practice in which, through the cultivation of the subtle state of "nonthinking," the meditator is said to be brought into perfect accord with the higher consciousness of the "Buddha... more...
Seeing through Zenby John R. McRae
University of California Press 2003; US$ 15.95The tradition of Chan Buddhism?more popularly known as Zen?has been romanticized throughout its history. In this book, John R. McRae shows how modern critical techniques, supported by recent manuscript discoveries, make possible a more skeptical, accurate, and?ultimately?productive assessment of Chan lineages, teaching, fundraising practices, and social organization. Synthesizing twenty years of scholarship, Seeing through Zen offers new, accessible analytic models for the interpretation of Chan spiritual practices and religious history. Writing in a lucid and engaging style, McRae traces the emergence of this Chinese spiritual tradition and its early figureheads, Bodhidharma and the "sixth patriarch" Huineng, through the development of... more...
Chan Buddhism in Ritual Contextby Bernard Faure
Taylor & Francis 2003; US$ 190.00The essays in this volume, by some of the best scholars in the field, attempt to replace the Chan and Zen tradition in their ritual and cultural contexts, looking at various aspects heretofore largely (and unduly) ignored. more...
Dreaming the Great Brahminby Kurtis R. Schaeffer
Oxford University Press 2005; US$ 75.00Explores the creation and recreation of Buddhist saints through narratives, poetry, art, ritual, and even dream visions. This book offers a comprehensive cultural and literary history of the well-known Indian Buddhist poet saint Saraha, known as the Great Brahmin. more...
The Koanby Steven Heine; Dale S. Wright
Oxford University Press 2000; US$ 40.00The essays collected in this volume argue that our understanding of the Koan tradition has been severely limited. The authors try to undermine stereotypes and problematic interpretations by examining unrecognized factors in the formation of this tradition. more...