The Spirit of Buddhist Meditation

WARNING

You are viewing an older version of the Yalebooks website. Please visit out new website with more updated information and a better user experience: https://www.yalebooks.com

Sarah Shaw

View Inside Format: Paper
Price: $18.00
YUP
Our shopping cart only supports Mozilla Firefox. Please ensure you're using that browser before attempting to purchase.

A guide to key writings from Buddhism’s meditative tradition and what they reveal about the history and practice of meditation

Is it possible to capture the spirit of Buddhist meditation, which depends so much upon silence and unspoken wisdom? Can this spirit be found after two millennia? This wise and reassuring book reminds us that the Buddhist meditative tradition, geared to such concerns from its inception, has always been transmitted through texts. A great variety of early writings—poems, stories, extended practical guides, commentaries, and chants—were purposely designed to pass teachings on from one generation to the next.
 
Sarah Shaw, a longtime practitioner and teacher of Buddhism, investigates a wide and varied range of ancient and later Buddhist writings on meditation. Many of these texts are barely known in the West but, as the author shows, they can be helpful, moving, and often very funny. She begins with early texts of the Pali canon—those that describe and involve the Buddha and his followers teaching meditations—and moves on to “commentaries,” with their copious range of practical tips, anecdotes, and accounts of early meditators. The author then considers other early texts that were inspirational as Buddhist traditions spread through India and on to China, Korea, Japan, and Tibet. Centuries after being written, early Buddhist texts have lost none of their relevance, this authoritative book shows. In a tradition characterized by flexibility and mobility, these writings offer wisdom unchanged by time.
Sarah Shaw is honorary fellow, Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, and faculty member, Oriental Institute, Oxford University. She lives in Oxford, UK.
ISBN: 9780300198768
Publication Date: October 28, 2014
280 pages, 5 1/2 x 8 1/4
The Spirit of ...
The Spirit of the Quakers

Selected and Introduced by Geoffrey Durham

View details
The Spirit of Zoroastrianism

Translated and edited by Prods Oktor Skjærvø

View details