Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism write by Christian K. Wedemeyer. This book was released on 2014-05-06. Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism fundamentally rethinks the nature of the transgressive theories and practices of the Buddhist Tantric traditions, challenging the notion that the Tantras were “marginal” or primitive and situating them instead—both ideologically and institutionally—within larger trends in mainstream Buddhist and Indian culture. Critically surveying prior scholarship, Wedemeyer exposes the fallacies of attributing Tantric transgression to either the passions of lusty monks, primitive tribal rites, or slavish imitation of Saiva traditions. Through comparative analysis of modern historical narratives—that depict Tantrism as a degenerate form of Buddhism, a primal religious undercurrent, or medieval ritualism—he likewise demonstrates these to be stock patterns in the European historical imagination. Through close analysis of primary sources, Wedemeyer reveals the lived world of Tantric Buddhism as largely continuous with the Indian religious mainstream and deploys contemporary methods of semiotic and structural analysis to make sense of its seemingly repellent and immoral injunctions. Innovative, semiological readings of the influential Guhyasamaja Tantra underscore the text’s overriding concern with purity, pollution, and transcendent insight—issues shared by all Indic religions—and a large-scale, quantitative study of Tantric literature shows its radical antinomianism to be a highly managed ritual observance restricted to a sacerdotal elite. These insights into Tantric scripture and ritual clarify the continuities between South Asian Tantrism and broader currents in Indian religion, illustrating how thoroughly these “radical” communities were integrated into the intellectual, institutional, and social structures of South Asian Buddhism.
Indian Esoteric Buddhism
Indian Esoteric Buddhism - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Indian Esoteric Buddhism write by Ronald M. Davidson. This book was released on 2004. Indian Esoteric Buddhism available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Despite the rapid spread of Buddhism the historical origins of Buddhsit thought and practice remain obscure.This work describes the genesis of the Tantric movement and in some ways an example of the feudalization of Indian society. Drawing on primary documents from sanskrit, prakrit, tibetan, Bengali, and chinese author shows how changes in medieval Indian society, including economic and patronage crises, a decline in women`s participation and the formation of large monastic orders led to the rise of the esoteric tradition in India.
Āryadeva's Lamp that Integrates the Practices (Caryāmelāpakapradīpa)
Āryadeva's Lamp that Integrates the Practices (Caryāmelāpakapradīpa) - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Āryadeva's Lamp that Integrates the Practices (Caryāmelāpakapradīpa) write by Christian K. Wedemeyer. This book was released on 2007. Āryadeva's Lamp that Integrates the Practices (Caryāmelāpakapradīpa) available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The Lamp that Integrates the Practices is a systematic and comprehensive exposition of the most advanced yogas of the Esoteric Communion (Guhyasamaja) Tantra as espoused by the Noble Tradition. Aryadeva's work is perhaps the earliest prose example of a "stages of the mantra path" work in Sanskrit, and it exerted immense influence on later Tibetan tradition. This volume presents the Lamp in a tri-lingual format: its Sanskrit original, a critical edition of the eleventh-century Tibetan, and a thoroughly-annotated English translation. Features a comprehensive, tri-lingual glossary.
The Making of Buddhist Modernism
The Making of Buddhist Modernism - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Making of Buddhist Modernism write by David L. McMahan. This book was released on 2008-11-14. The Making of Buddhist Modernism available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. A great deal of Buddhist literature and scholarly writing about Buddhism of the past 150 years reflects, and indeed constructs, a historically unique modern Buddhism, even while purporting to represent ancient tradition, timeless teaching, or the "essentials" of Buddhism. This literature, Asian as well as Western, weaves together the strands of different traditions to create a novel hybrid that brings Buddhism into alignment with many of the ideologies and sensibilities of the post-Enlightenment West. In this book, David McMahan charts the development of this "Buddhist modernism." McMahan examines and analyzes a wide range of popular and scholarly writings produced by Buddhists around the globe. He focuses on ideological and imaginative encounters between Buddhism and modernity, for example in the realms of science, mythology, literature, art, psychology, and religious pluralism. He shows how certain themes cut across cultural and geographical contexts, and how this form of Buddhism has been created by multiple agents in a variety of times and places. His position is critical but empathetic: while he presents Buddhist modernism as a construction of numerous parties with varying interests, he does not reduce it to a mistake, a misrepresentation, or fabrication. Rather, he presents it as a complex historical process constituted by a variety of responses -- sometimes trivial, often profound -- to some of the most important concerns of the modern era.
Creation and Completion
Creation and Completion - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Creation and Completion write by Jamgon Kongtrul. This book was released on 2014-05-01. Creation and Completion available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Creation and Completion represents some of the most profound teachings of Jamgon Kongtrul (1813-99), one of the true spiritual and literary giants of Tibetan history. Though brief, it offers a lifetime of advice for all who wish to engage in-and deepen-the practice of tantric Buddhist meditation. The original text, beautifully translated and introduced by Sara Harding, is further brought to life by an in-depth commentary by the contemporary master Thrangu Rinpoche. Key Tibetan Buddhist fundamentals are quickly made clear, so that the reader may confidently enter into tantra's oft-misunderstood "creation" and "completion" stages. In the creation stage, practitioners visualize themselves in the form of buddhas and other enlightened beings in order to break down their ordinary concepts of themselves and the world around them. This meditation practice prepares the mind for engaging in the completion stage, where one has a direct encounter with the ultimate nature of mind and reality.
