A Manual of Buddhism
Book Specification
| Item Code: | IDC896 |
| Author: | Rhys Davids |
| Publisher: | Oriental Books Reprint Corporation |
| Language: | English |
| Edition: | 1978 |
| Pages: | 357 |
| Cover: | Hardcover |
| Other Details | 8.8" X 5.8" |
Book Description
Mrs Rhys Davids, A Nanual of Buddhism delves deep into the Pali Pitakas and Sanskrit Sutras of Buddhism, removes the huge mass of arid theology accumulated during the passage of that religion through different periods, different tongues and different races of men, and presents, in its pristine purity, the original message of the Buddha, who so extended the concepts of "way" and "Dharma" in the Upanishads, as to suit all men who "eddy about here and there, striving blindly, achieving nothing." He showed a way, which steered clear of the two extremes of self-indulgence and severe austerities; which was not an adage of worldly wisdom and prudence, no better than Aristole's "the middle character is in all cases to be praised"; which gave equal emphasis to all the joys and opportunities of life; which involved "a long steep journey through sunk gorges, over mountain in snow"; which became clear as one progressed; which required Dhamma as its only guide, which was one of advance to a clear goal; which was no less adventurous than the one pursued by the prince in Kusa Jataka to win back his lost soulmate. His original teaching is so simple and direct that it is irresistible, which is the reason why Buddhism has survived as world-religion to this day.
Mrs. Rjhy Davids' clarity of thought and diction, in combination with her deep erudition, have contributed in making this manual unique.
About The Author:
Mrs Rhys Davids (27 September 1857 - 26 June 1942), a well-known authority on Buddhism, undertook the difficult task of translating form original Pali a number of Buddhism work which justifiably earned her a place among the foremost scholars of Buddhism. She was pupil of Prof. T. W. Rhys Davids whom she latter married. Besides her translation of the Dhamma-Sangani under the title of A Buddhist Manual of Psychological Ethics she undertook the translation and interpretation of a number of works on Abhidhamma. As the editor of the Pali Text Society, a number of other works were published under her guidance. She was also the author of a number of books ad articles: the more well-known are: Buddhist Psychology, translation of Thera-Therigatha in English verse entitled Psalms of the Early Buddhist Brother and Sister, and The Wayfarers' Words (in three Vols.) and What was the Original Gospel in Buddhism?
| I. | HOW AND WHEN WE CAME TO KNOW | 1 |
| Earliest documentary reference to the "Buddha" - Modern interest in Ceylon - Treaty of Amiens R. C. Childers and T. W. Rhy Davids -"Pali" -J. Prinsep and G. Turnour - Asokan inscriptions - Buddhist origins, Indian - Palm-leaf MSS. Of Ceylon - Pali edition asd V. Fausboll - The work of Max Muller and the S.B.E. - H. Oldenberg - The Pali Text Society - Problem of Derivation. | ||
| II. | WHAT IT IS WE CAN KNOW | 22 |
| Pali and Sanskrit Buddhist scriptures - The written composition and the Buddha-cult - The Pitakas - The Commentaries - The Milinda Questions and post-canonical works - The Mahayana Sutras - Tibetan scriptures - Chinese Pilgrims' Diaries. | ||
| III. | THE "BUDDHA" : WHO WAS HE? | 34 |
| A. His historicity - Deified ideas - Avatars - Siddhattha gotama - His ministry - The legends - His date - His home - Social problems before him - Life's miseries his first concern: not his real problem - The "messengers" - The Indian problem of "life" - Misconceptions. B. The Adventure - The wife - The Jains - The Teachers - Tapas< - The five friends - The two leading disciples - Living, not talking - Jhana. C. Problem and Hesitation - The Tree and Mara Legends - Versions of the solitary meditation - The "Causal Series" - The one-sided application of it - How causation was interesting India - Rejection of it as a gospel - How decision arose. |
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| IV. | The New Word: (A) WHENCE IT CAME | 84 |
| The earnest questioner - Awakening interest - The overlooked preceding movement in Brahman teaching - Translators responsibility - Being and becoming - Deity as immanent in the Upanishads - Felt need for words of becoming and growth to make immanence conceivable - Becoming in creation taught - Waning in the faith in becoming - Becoming materialistically conceived - Substitution of Yoga - Worth in the "other man." | ||
| V. | THE NEW WORD: (B) WHAT IT WAS | 103 |
| Man's need of the New - The New as expansion in the relatively Not New - The Ends and the Middle Way - The First Mantra and its editing - Attha and its meaning - "Ill" made to people Way as central - What the Mantra meant for Gotama - The Wayfarer and his will in choosing - "Ends," not "Extremes" - The significance of "Middle" - The other Ends-and-Middle-Way contexts - What the Way symbolized - No words for "lives" or "words" - The consequent depreciation of the New Word's keynote. | ||
| VI | THE NEW WORD: (c) THE MIDDLE WAY | 124 |
| How the Way was changed into "Eightfold" - The Way without the "Eightfold" - The "Eightfold" without the Way - "Left-in" appreciations of "becoming" - Man as surviving by "becoming" - Salvation in "becoming" - Becoming versus perishing - The growing water-lilies - The quest for helpers, and the passing comment (Upaka's) -The tryping-on of substitutes for "becoming" - The Way as Fourfold - The Way of Life contracted in the Arhan theory | ||
| VII. | THE WAYFARER | 141 |
| "I" as the More than body and mind - Kapila, and the mind as distinct from the "man" - Mind as coming to usurp the main's position - The not-man and egoism - The modern European idea of "Self" -Change in the "I" is "becoming" -The midway position in the Suttas of the man-as-in-mind - The Second Mantras, and the enjoined search for the self - Rupa and nama - Skandhas - Sankhyan influence -No religious reformers attacks the heart of the religion - No founder of a religion teacher man as being a Less - Denial of the self can only of the chute - Wayfarers to the Beyond. | ||
| VIII. | THE WAYFARER'S GUIDE | 160 |
| The new word identified with "dharma" - The first disciples enjoined to teach dharma and God-living - How the meaning in dharma came to be changed - Gotama's profession of Worship of dharma -His upholding the self with dharma a a man's guide - Dharma as the urge to the right - Dharma and conscience. | ||
| IX | THE WAY IN THE WORLDS | 174 |
| Samsara - Way and Wheel - Older and later meaning of Nirvana - The Arahan and earth-life - Great interest of original Buddhism in life in other worlds -Rise of a cosmology - Upanishadic vagueness - Adjudication after death - A people seeking light - Gotama and devas - New concept of "deva" - Jhana as access to deva-intercourse- "Meditation" often a wrong word - Religion and the human unit. | ||
| X. | THE FIRST MISSIONERS AND THEIR TEACHING | 192 |
| The Message summarized - Neither agnostic nor rationalistic - The Way and the individual teacher -The question of inner causation, and the interest in "mind" -The communion of the worlds - The lived religion -Sila, negative and positive - The four televolitions (brahmaviharas) - Appearance of fixed Lists (bodhipakkhiya-dhammas) - Paucity of Way-teachings - The first disciple: Group1, Group 2, Group 3: The man as using body and mind - Assaji - Group 4: The women disciples. | ||
| XI. | THE PARABLES AND THEIR HISTORY | 221 |
| Conflicting Sutta evidence - Personal talks - The similes - Early similes - History of vinnana - Object-lessons - Staff Admonitions - Later similes. | ||
| THE FIRST MISSIONERS: THEIR LIVING AND DYING | 237 | |
| Example as more than talk - The leader's years of work - Dwellings - The rainy season - The recluse and nature-lover - Origin of the "samana" - The joyous band - Appellatives, "brother" never, used -Quarreling among cenobite - Devadatta - Dwindling value in the worth of the man - Freedom and fearlessness - Criterion in a teaching - Faith-healing rare - Psychic gift - Silence as to the dying, save as to one - The last tour - The last tour - The lonely dying - The jhana in it. | ||
| XIII. | THE AFTER-MEN: THEIR DOINGS AND THEIR RECORDING | 264 |
| The absence of evidence of Buddha-cult in the first two Councils - Preoccupation with Vinaya and (a changed) "Dhamma" - Historicity of the Councils - No successor - Admission of women - Soma - Fears for the future - Growing discrepancies - "Self" and "soul" - European and Indian values. | ||
| XIV | WRITING AND HISTORIC TRUTH | 279 |
| Matikas - Outlines and exposition - India's preference for the utterance - Greek influence and needed materials for recording - Testimony from Ceylon and Milinda Questions - Memorizing - Variants - Six main openings for variants - The "nidanas" - The "Bhanakas" - Felt need for unity and standardizing - The Third Council - The difficulties of oral recensions - Our intellectual laziness - Test in Reading. | ||
| XV | EVERYMAN'S GOSPEL | 300 |
| How far "is" Buddhism a dual gospel? - Creeping I of cleavage - Left-in talks to laymen - The gospel for everyman in Asoka's Edicts - Life in the world -Outlook on the next world - All-importance of becoming - Monasticism (Indian) as tending to empty life - Edicts full of "God and the soul" when the Indian point of view is understood - Asoka and the monk. | ||
| XVI. | THE EASTWARD EXPANSION | 315 |
| Asoka and the so-called mission - His inland "vigilance" officials and external messengers - The northern thera-mission - Impoverishment in men and ideas caused by the Patna expulsions - The true pioneer missionaries - The real "hinayana." Motive in missionizing - Nestorian influence - The bodhisattva and the man becoming -Impending revelations from mid-and-east Asia. | ||
| INDEX | 337 | |
| ABBREVIATIONS | 342 |
