The Buddha
Life and Afterlife Between East and West
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- $39.99
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- $39.99
Publisher Description
Alongside Jesus and Muhammad, the Buddha is the most significant figure in the history of religion. Philip Almond's engaging new book is the first to combine a history of early traditions about Siddhartha Gautama's life with an authoritative account of how he and the tantalizing philosophy inspired by him came to the attention of the West. It takes the reader on a remarkable journey encompassing (among other topics) Alexander the Great, the courts of the Mongol Khans, Jesuit missions to China and Japan, and intrepid European travellers and scholars from the modern era. Melding Pali and Sanskrit sources with vivid reception, Almond presents the Buddha's story as multi-layered: one of transition from a world of angels and demons, water and tree spirits, to an altogether different context where Buddhism mixed with the cultural preoccupations of those who tentatively – sometimes following false trails – tried to make sense of its fascinating complexity.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Almond (Mary Magdalene), a professor emeritus of religious studies at the University of Queensland, traces in this sweeping study how the Buddha came to be perceived in the West as a historical figure who taught enlightenment and whose sensibilities roughly align with current attitudes toward religion and mindfulness. Along the way, Almond analyzes early-millenia Indian texts that depicted an "enchanted" being with thousands of previous lives; medieval European writings cataloging "Buddhisms" encountered by Western explorers traveling through Asia ("around 350 different names for the Buddha in European sources before 1800," Almond notes); and 19th-century European texts that frame the Buddha as a real-life figure. Contemporary scholarship revises that representation yet again, Almond shows, by taking cues from an individualized "Western naturalized Buddhism" to reframe the Buddha as "the inspiration for every individual's personal quest for meaning." Smoothly integrating two millennia's worth of diverse historical accounts, Almond contextualizes Buddha's shifting portrayal as divine being, teacher, ideal everyman, and symbol of happiness—an "exemplary human figure" onto which cultural values and understandings of the East are projected and mediated. This belongs on the bookshelf of any serious student of Buddhism.
