After Buddhism â " Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age

Batchelor, Stephen

ISBN 10: 030020518X / ISBN 13: 9780300205183

Published by Yale University Press, 2016

About this Item

1st printing. VG condition book with dust jacket. DJ is clean, has fresh colours and has little wear to edges. Book has clean and bright contents with light spotting on the outer edge pages.

Seller Inventory # 9999-999105193453

Bibliographic Details

• Title: After Buddhism â " Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication Date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 030020518X
• ISBN 13: 9780300205183
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included

About this title

Synopsis

A renowned Buddhist teacher’s magnum opus, based on his fresh reading of the tradition’s earliest texts

Some twenty-five centuries after the Buddha started teaching, his message continues to inspire people across the globe, including those living in predominantly secular societies. What does it mean to adapt religious practices to secular contexts?
 
Stephen Batchelor, an internationally known author and teacher, is committed to a secularized version of the Buddha’s teachings. The time has come, he feels, to articulate a coherent ethical, contemplative, and philosophical vision of Buddhism for our age. After Buddhism, the culmination of four decades of study and practice in the Tibetan, Zen, and Theravada traditions, is his attempt to set the record straight about who the Buddha was and what he was trying to teach. Combining critical readings of the earliest canonical texts with narrative accounts of five members of the Buddha’s inner circle, Batchelor depicts the Buddha as a pragmatic ethicist rather than a dogmatic metaphysician. He envisions Buddhism as a constantly evolving culture of awakening whose long survival is due to its capacity to reinvent itself and interact creatively with each society it encounters.
 
This original and provocative book presents a new framework for understanding the remarkable spread of Buddhism in today’s globalized world. It also reminds us of what was so startling about the Buddha’s vision of human flourishing.
 

About the Author

An internationally known author, teacher, and scholar of Buddhism, Stephen Batchelor leads secular Buddhist retreats worldwide, is a founding member of the Bodhi College, and a contributing editor of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. He lives in southwest France.