Buddhist Visions of the Good Life for All. Edited by Sallie B. King. Routledge Critical Studies in Buddhism. Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2021, xvi + 256 pages, ISBN 978-0-367-56181-9 (hardback), $160, 978-1-00-310045-4 (e-book), $44.05.
Reviewed by Timothy Loftus
Living Skillfully: Buddhist Philosophy of Life from the Vimalakīrti Sūtra. By Dale S. Wright. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021, 176 pages. ISBN 978-0-19-758735-5 (hard-back), $29.95/ 978-0-19-758737-9 (e-book), $19.99.
Reviewed by Christopher W. Gowans
Damien Keown
Goldsmiths, University of London (Emeritus)
The claim that Buddhism is exclusively a “religion of peace” has been shown to be untenable. Buddhism now faces the challenge of explaining how the pacifist spirit of its teachings can be reconciled with its well-documented recourse to military and punitive violence. Buddhism is not the only religion to face this challenge, and we first consider the Christian stance on violence as formulated by St. Thomas Aquinas before turning to the views of the Tibetan polymath Jamgön Mipham. We consider to what extent the views of the two thinkers are compatible and conclude with a suggestion as to how what Michael Jerryson calls “the quandary of Buddhism and violence” might be resolved.
Colin Simonds
Queen’s University at Kingston
This article defends and develops the categorization of Buddhist ethics as moral phenomenology. It first examines the use of the term in Western philosophical settings and compares it to how the term is employed in Buddhist settings. After concluding that Western ethical comportment and Buddhist moral phenomenology are commensurate terms, it explores how moral phenomenology has been understood in Buddhist contexts and considers the evidence scholars have used to make this interpretation. The article then looks to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition for further evidence of a moral phenomenological approach to Buddhist ethics and analyzes further proof of this interpretation. Finally, issues that emerge from a moral phenomenological approach to ethics are addressed from a Tibetan Buddhist perspective to strengthen this interpretation and offer moral phenomenology as a viable alternative ethical system.
Brenna Grace Artinger
Independent Scholar
In this article I evaluate ideas of sex and behavior in Pāli Vinaya texts in order to better understand the roles of such terms and their consequences on monastic inclusion. I then contend with the ramifications of such terms on present-day considerations of ordination for transgender individuals, and the ways in which Vinaya texts provide legal precedent for such possibilities.
Superiority Conceit in Buddhist Traditions: A Historical Perspective. By Bhikkhu Anālayo. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2021, 184 pages. ISBN 978-1-61429-719-2 (hard-back), $24.95/978-1-61429-733-8 (e-book), $12.99.
Reviewed by Maria Heim
Lisa Liang and Brianna K. Morseth
Dharma Realm Buddhist University
Across the globe, our continued existence in light of present conditions is uncertain. Rapid spread of disease and risk of complications endanger the human population. Such challenging circumstances may shock and devastate us, inducing mass panic and pandemonium amid the pervasive threat of pandemic. Yet according to Buddhist philosophy, existential unease can also spawn deep transformation. In this paper, we examine a pair of aesthetic emotions (saṃvega/pasāda) from the early Buddhist tradition that together hold the potential to induce critical reflection and productive engagement in response to existential threat. By referring to saṃvega/pasāda as aesthetic emotions, we intend to draw out their distinctive, often visually-oriented soteriological function. While initially disorienting and perhaps even paralyzing, saṃvega and pasāda are ultimately reorienting and motivating factors on the path to liberation from the suffering entailed by cyclic existence.
Wilfrid Sellars and Buddhist Philosophy: Freedom from Foundations. Edited by Jay L. Garfield. Routledge Studies in American Philosophy. London and New York: Routledge, 2019, 254 pages. ISBN 978-0-367-11209-7 (hardback), $128/978-1-03-209415-1 (paperback), $39.16/978-0-429-02794-9 (e-book), $44.05.
Reviewed by Matthew T. Kapstein
Mindfully Facing Climate Change. By Bhikkhu Anālayo. Barre, Massachusetts: Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, 2019, 206 pp., ISBN 978-1-7067-1988-5 (paperback), $9.95. Open access e-book: https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/MindfullyFacingClimateChange.pdf.
Reviewed by Abhinav Anand
Seeking Śākyamuni: South Asia in the Formation of Modern Japanese Buddhism. By Richard M. Jaffe. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2019, xvi + 309 pp., ISBN 978-0-226-39115-1 (paperback), $32.50.
Reviewed by Melissa Anne-Marie Curley
The Fifth Corner of Four: An Essay on Buddhist Metaphysics and the Catuṣkoṭi. By Graham Priest. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018, xx + 172 pp., ISBN 978-0-19-875871-6 (Hardcover), $60.00.
Reviewed by Ronald S. Green
Readings of Śāntideva’s Guide to Bodhisattva Practice. Edited by Jonathan C. Gold and Douglas S. Duckworth. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019, 320 pp., ISBN 978-0-231-19267-5 (Paperback), $30.00.
Reviewed by Stephen Harris
Identity, Rights, and Awareness: Anticaste Activism in India and the Awakening of Justice through Discursive Practices. By Jeremy A. Rinker. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018, xi + 211 pp., ISBN 978-1-4985-4193-0 (Hardcover), $95.00.
Reviewed by Gajendran Ayyathurai
Amod Lele
Boston University
Contemporary engaged Buddhist scholars typically claim either that Buddhism always endorsed social activism, or that its non-endorsement of such activism represented an unwitting lack of progress. This article examines several classical South Asian Buddhist texts that explicitly reject social and political activism. These texts argue for this rejection on the grounds that the most important sources of suffering are not something that activism can fix, and that political involvement interferes with the tranquility required for liberation. The article then examines the history of engaged Buddhism in order to identify why this rejection of activism has not yet been taken sufficiently seriously. Read article
Buddhist Spiritual Practices: Thinking with Pierre Hadot on Buddhism, Philosophy, and the Path. Edited by David V. Fiordalis. Berkeley, CA: Mangalam Press, 2018, 328 pp., ISBN 978-0-89800-117-4 (Paperback), $35.00.
Reviewed by John Pickens
The Golden Age of Indian Buddhist Philosophy. By Jan Westerhoff. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018, 9780198732662 (hardback), $40.00US.
Reviewed by Douglas L. Berger
Martin Kovan
University of Melbourne
The first Buddhist precept prohibits the intentional, even sanctioned, taking of life. However, capital punishment remains legal, and even increasingly applied, in some culturally Buddhist polities and beyond them. The classical Buddhist norm of unconditional compassion as a counterforce to such punishment thus appears insufficient to oppose it. This paper engages classical Buddhist and Western argument for and against capital punishment, locating a Buddhist refutation of deterrent and Kantian retributivist grounds for it not only in Nāgārjunian appeals to compassion, but also the metaphysical and moral constitution of the agent of lethal crime, and thereby the object of its moral consequences. Read article
Bhikkhu Brahmāli
Bodhinyana Monastery
Bhikkhu Anālayo
University of Hamburg
In the present paper the two authors examine dimensions of the canonical exegesis found embedded within the text of the Theravāda Vinaya. In part one, Bhikkhu Anālayo examines the word-commentary on the rules found in the Suttavibhaṅga. In part two, Bhikkhu Brahmāli takes up the function of narrative portions in the Khandhakas.
Paul Nietupski
John Carroll University
This essay is based on sūtras 70–102 in Guṇaprabha’s seventh century Vinayasūtra, his Autocommentary, and the associated sections in all Indian and Tibetan commentaries on the Vinayasūtra. In this excerpt Guṇaprabha and the commentators include remarks on the requirements for monastic community authority and references to relevant authoritative doctrines. The guidelines for monastic authority include applications of procedures in medieval Indian monastic life, including prerequisites and exceptions in the ordination process. The references to authoritative doctrine in Guṇaprabha’s and the commentators’ works include comments on the interface of ethics, concentration, and wisdom, and how ethical guidelines are based on the correct understanding of epistemological value as presented in canonical treatises on doctrine.
Ven. Pandita (Burma)
University of Kelaniya
In this paper, I argue that in the early Vinaya, contrary to the commentarial tradition: (1) two ways of forsaking the Order, equally valid, co-exist; and (2) nuns who have left the Order may be re-ordained without guilt.
Richard K. Payne
Institute of Buddhist Studies, at the Graduate Theological Union
This article develops a perspective on the nature of Buddhist pastoral care by considering the needs of the bereaved. Differentiating the interpretive frameworks of different audiences and understanding different contexts of interpersonal relations are necessary for effective pastoral care. A distinction between the goal of realizing impermanence and the goal of resolving mourning is heuristically useful in theorizing Buddhist pastoral care. The discussion also seeks to underscore the value of upāya as a positive moral injunction on teachers, indicating the need to properly match their audience and to employ the textual tradition responsibly.
Encounters of Mind: Luminosity and Personhood in Indian and Chinese Thought. By Douglas L. Berger. Albany: SUNY Press, 2015, 262 pages, ISBN 9781438454740 (paperback), $24.95.
Reviewed by Leah Kalmanson
Valuing Diversity: Buddhist Reflection on Realizing a More Equitable Global Future. By Peter D. Hershock. Albany: SUNY Press, 2014, vi + 332 pages, ISBN 978-1-4384-4458-1 (paperback), $29.95.
Reviewed by Seth D. Clippard
The Ethics of Śaṅkara and Śāntideva: A Selfless Response to an Illusory World. By Warren Lee Todd. Farnham, Surrey and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013, xii + 220, ISBN: 9781409466819 (hardback), $149.95.
Reviewed by Joseph S. O’Leary
Reason and Experience in Tibetan Buddhism: Mabja Jangchub Tsöndrü and the Traditions of the Middle Way. By Thomas Doctor. Routledge Critical Series in Buddhism. New York: Routledge, 2014, 156 pages, ISBN 9780415722469 (hardback), $145.
Reviewed by Adam C. Krug
Family Matters in Indian Buddhist Monasticisms. By Shayne Clarke. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2014, xiii+275 pages, ISBN 978-0-8248-3647-4 (cloth), $52.
Reviewed by Cuilan Liu
Ven. Pandita (Burma)
University of Kelaniya
Peter Harvey recently argued that the term sacca of ariyasacca should be interpreted as “reality” rather than as “truth,” the common rendition. In this paper, although I basically agree with him, I see quite different implications and come to a wholly new interpretation of the four ariyasaccas.
Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism: History, Semiology, and Transgression in Indian Traditions By Christian Wedemeyer. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013, xx + 313 pages, ISBN 978-0-231-16240-1 (hardback), $50.00.
Reviewed by Joseph P. Elacqua
Marek Sullivan
University of Oxford
“Holistic eco-Buddhism” has been roundly criticized for its heterodoxy and philosophical incoherence: the Buddha never claimed we should protect an “eco-self” and there are serious philosophical problems attendant on “identifying with things.” Yet this essay finds inadequate attention has been paid to East Asian sources. Metaphysical issues surrounding eco-Buddhism, i.e., problems of identity and difference, universalism and particularity, have a long history in Chinese Buddhism. In particular, I examine the notion of “merging with things” in pre-Huayan and Huayan Buddhism, suggesting these offer unexplored possibilities for a coherent holistic eco-Buddhism based on the differentiating effects of activity and functionality.
Amod Lele
Boston University
Western Buddhists often believe and proclaim that metaphysical speculation is irrelevant to Buddhist ethics or practice. This view is problematic even with respect to early Buddhism, and cannot be sustained regarding later Indian Buddhists. In Śāntideva’s famous Bodhicaryāvatāra, multiple claims about the nature of reality are premises for conclusions about how human beings should act; that is, metaphysics logically entails ethics for Śāntideva, as it does for many Western philosophers. This article explores four key arguments that Śāntideva makes from metaphysics to ethics: actions are determined by their causes, and therefore we should not get angry; the body is reducible to its component parts, and therefore we should neither protect it nor lust after other bodies; the self is an illusion, and therefore we should be altruistic; all phenomena are empty, and therefore we should not be attached to them. The exploration of these arguments together shows us why metaphysical claims can matter a great deal for Buddhist ethics, practice and liberation.
Kenneth Hutton
University of Glasgow
Although it is well known that Schopenhauer claimed that Buddhism closely reflected his own philosophy, this claim was largely ignored until the mid-late Twentieth century. Most commentators on Schopenhauer (with some recent exceptions) since then have mentioned his Buddhist affinities but have been quite broad and general in their treatment. I feel that any general comparison of Schopenhauer’s philosophy with “general” Buddhism would most likely lead to general conclusions. In this article I have attempted to offer a more specific comparison of what is central to Schopenhauer’s philosophy with what is central to Mahāyāna Buddhism, and that is the concept of compassion.
Alice Collett
York St John University
Bhikkhu Anālayo
University of Hamburg
In what follows we examine whether the use of the vocative bhikkhave or the nominative bhikkhu in Buddhist canonical texts imply that female monastics are being excluded from the audience. In the course of exploring this basic point, we also take up the vocative of proper names and the absence of the term arahantī in Pāli discourse literature.
The Range of the Bodhisattva: A Mahāyāna Sūtra. Translated by Lozang Jamspal. New York: American Institute of Buddhist Studies, 2011, ISBN 978-1935011071 (cloth), $42.00.
Reviewed by Stephen L. Jenkins
Power, Wealth and Women in Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism: The Gaṇḍavyūha-sūtra. By Douglas Osto. New York: Routledge, 2008, xvi + 177 pages, ISBN978-0-415-50008-1 (paperback), $49.95.
Reviewed by Amy Langenberg
Bhikṣuṇī Jampa Tsedroen and Bhikkhu Anālayo
Academy of World Religions & Center for Buddhist Studies,
University of Hamburg
This article surveys the stipulation on bhikṣuṇī ordination made in the different Vinayas as part of a set of eight principles to be respected (gurudharma), and explores the possibility, indicated by the formulation of the relevant gurudharma, that a legally valid Mūlasarvāstivāda bhikṣuṇī ordination could be conducted by bhikṣus only.
Cross-disciplinary Perspectives on a Contested Site: Bodh Gaya Jataka. Edited by David Geary, Matthew R. Sayers, and Abhisek Sing Amar. London: Routledge, 2012, ISBN 978-0415684521 (hardback), $150.00.
Reviewed by Brooke Schedneck
Charles Goodman
Binghamton University
Several Indian Mahāyāna texts express an ethical perspective that has many features in common with Western forms of universalist consequentialism. Śāntideva, in particular, endorses a strong version of agent-neutrality, claims that compassionate agents should violate Buddhist moral commitments when doing so would produce good results, praises radical altruism, uses a critique of the self to support his ethical views, and even offers a reasonably clear general formulation of what we call act-consequentialism. Meanwhile, Asaṅga’s discussions of the motivation behind rules of moral discipline and the permissible reasons for breaking those rules suggests an interesting and complex version of rule-consequentialism. Evidence for features of consequentialism can be found in several Mahāyāna sūtras as well. In reading these sources, interpretations that draw on virtue ethics may not be as helpful as those that understand the texts as committed to various versions of consequentialism.
Daniel Cozort
Dickinson College
Suffering’s positive side was elucidated beautifully by the eighth century Mahāyāna poet Śāntideva in his Bodhicāryavatāra. Dzongkaba Losang Drakpa, the founder of what came to be known as the Gelukba (dge lugs pa) order of Tibetan Buddhism, used Śāntideva’s text as his main source in the chapter on patience in his masterwork, Lam rim Chenmo. In this article I attempt to explicate Śāntideva’s thought by way of the commentary of Dzongkaba. I then consider it in the context of what Ariel Glucklich has called “Sacred Pain”—the myriad ways in which religious people have found meaning in pain. I conclude with some observations about ways in which some Buddhist-inspired or -influenced therapeutic movements such as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and Positive Psychology are helping contemporary people to reconcile themselves to pain or to discover that it may have positive value.
Ven. Pandita (Burma)
University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka
In this paper, I look at two related issues in Vinaya, (1) the requirement of parental consent for all candidates wishing to join the Order and (2) the additional requirement of spousal consent for female candidates but no such requirement for male candidates, and I try to prove that both these regulations stemmed from the same principle.
Ven. Pandita (Burma)
University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka
I argue in this paper that early Buddhist ethics is one of absolute values and that we can consistently use those absolute values to interpret some early teachings that seemingly show an ethic of context-dependent and negotiable values. My argument is based on the concept of intention as karma, the implications and problems of which I have also discussed.
Nicolas Bommarito
Brown University
In his famous text the Bodhicaryāvatāra, the 8th century Buddhist philosopher Śāntideva argues that anger towards people who harm us is never justified. The usual reading of this argument rests on drawing similarities between harms caused by persons and those caused by non-persons. After laying out my own interpretation of Śāntideva’s reasoning, I offer some objections to Śāntideva’s claim about the similarity between animate and inanimate causes of harm inspired by contemporary philosophical literature in the West. Following this, I argue that by reading Śāntideva’s argument as practical advice rather than as a philosophical claim about rational coherence, his argument can still have important insights even for those who reject his philosophical reasoning.
Bodhisattvas of the Forest and the Formation of the Mahāyāna: A Study and Translation of the Rāṣṭrapālaparipṛcchā-sūtra. By Daniel Boucher. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008, xxiii + 287 pages, ISBN 978-0-8248-2881-3 (cloth), US$54.00.
Reviewed by Alexander Wynne
Against a Hindu God: Buddhist Philosophy of Religion in India. By Paramil Patil. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009, 334 pages, ISBN: 978-0674033290 (hardcover); US $45.00. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009, xi + 406 pages, ISBN 978-0231142229 (cloth), US $50.00.
Reviewed by Michael D. Nichols
Ven. Pandita (Burma)
University of Kelaniya
According to an account recorded in Mahāparinibbānasutta, the Buddha had to meet a royal minister named Vassakāra when King Ajātasattu ordered the latter to visit the Buddha and inform him about the king’s plan to subdue the Vajjīs. After hearing Vassakāra, the Buddha spoke on seven Conditions of Welfare (satta aparihāniyā dhammā), which would ensure the prosperity of the Vajjīs as long as its citizens observed them. Vassakāra shrewdly inferred from the Buddha’s discourse how to defeat the Vajjī people and later actually forced them into submission. Regarding that event, there are some perplexing questions:
This paper will attempt to answer these questions and will argue, in the conclusion, that this event shows the Buddha’s disapproving attitude toward a political role of the Buddhist Order.
A Bull of a Man: Images of Masculinity, Sex, and the Body in Indian Buddhism. By John Powers. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009, 334 pages, ISBN: 978-0674033290 (hardcover); US $45.00.
Reviewed by Vanessa Sasson
Charles S. Prebish
Utah State University
On the surface, new dating for the Buddha’s death doesn’t seem terribly earthshaking, either for Indian Buddhist history or for ancillary studies such as a consideration of Upāli and his lineage of Vinayadharas. Yet it is. If there is a new date for the Buddha’s demise, virtually everything we know about the earliest Indian Buddhism, and especially its sectarian movement, is once again called into question. Dates for the first, second, and third canonical councils—once thought to be certain—must now be reexamined. Kings who presided at these events must be reconsidered. Most importantly, the role of the great Indian King Aśoka, from whose reign much of the previous dating begins, needs to be placed under the scrutiny of the historical microscope again.
Buddhists, Brahmins, and Belief: Epistemology in South Asian Philosophy of Religion. By Dan Arnold. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005, vii + 318 pages, ISBN: 978-0-231-13281-7 (paperback), $24.50 / £14.50, ISBN 0-231-13280-8 (cloth), $52.00 / £30.50.
Reviewed by Roy Tzohar
Imaging Wisdom: Seeing and Knowing in the Art of Indian Buddhism. By Jacob N. Kinnard. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1999, xi + 210 pages, ISBN: 0–7007–1083–3 (cloth), US $55.00.
Reviewed by Kevin Trainor
Passionate Enlightenment: Women in Tantric Buddhism. By Miranda Shaw. Princeton University Press, 1994, xv, 291 pages, ISBN 0-691-01090-0, $14.95 (paperback).
Reviewed by Roy W. Perrett
The Buddhist Doctrine of Momentariness: A Survey of the Origins and Early Phase of This Doctrine Up to Vasubandhu, Alt- und Neu-Indische Studien Nr. 47. By Alexander von Rospatt. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1995, 285 pages, ISBN 3-515-06528-8.
Reviewed By John Powers
Consecration of Images and Stūpas in Indo-Tibetan Tantric Buddhism. By Yael Bentor. Brill’s Indological Library Vol. 11. Edited By Johannes Bronkhorst. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996, xxii + 415 pages, ISBN 90-04-10541-7.
Reviewed by Gareth Sparham
Elaborations on Emptiness: Uses of the Heart Sūtra. By Donald S Lopez, Jr. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996, xii, 264 pages.
Reviewed by Jay Garfield
Charming Cadavers: Horrific Figurations of the Feminine in Indian Buddhist Hagiographic Literature (Women in Culture and Society Series). By Liz Wilson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996, 258 pages, ISBN 0-2269-0054-1, (paperback), $19.95.
Reviewed by Tessa Bartholomeusz
Gregory K. Ornatowski
Boston University
This paper offers an outline of the development of Buddhist economic ethics using examples from early Theravāda Buddhism in India and the Mahāyāna tradition as it evolved in India, medieval China, and medieval and early modern Japan, in order to illustrate the pattern of continuities and transformations these ethics have undergone. By “economic ethics” the paper refers to four broad areas: (1) attitudes toward wealth, i.e., its accumulation, use, and distribution, including the issues of economic justice and equality/ inequality; (2) attitudes toward charity, i.e., how and to whom wealth should be given; (3) attitudes toward human labor and secular occupations in society; and (4) actual economic activities of temples and monasteries which reflect the lived-practice of Buddhist communities’ economic ethics.
Buddhism and Language: A Study of Indo-Tibetan Scholasticism. By José Ignacio Cabezón (Foreword by Frank E. Reynolds), SUNY Series, Toward a Comparative Philosophy of Religions, Frank E. Reynolds and David Tracy, editors. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1994, xiii + 299 pages, ISBN 0-7914-1900-2 (paper).
Reviewed by Mark Siderits
Sexuality in Ancient India: A Study Based on the Pali Vinayapiṭaka. By L.P.N. Perera. Kelaniya, Sri Lanka: The Postgraduate Institute of Pali and Buddhist Studies, 1993.
Reviewed by Tessa Bartholomeusz
Ethics in Early Buddhism. By David J. Kalupahana. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995, ix +171 pages, ISBN: 0-8248-1702-8, US$27.00, cloth.
Reviewed by Peter Harvey
Ian Harris
University College of St. Martin
Environmentalist concerns have moved center stage in most major religious traditions of late and Buddhism is no exception to this rule. This paper shows that the canonical writings of Indic Buddhism possess elements that may harmonize with a de facto ecological consciousness. However, their basic attitude towards the causal process drastically reduces the possibility of developing an authentically Buddhist environmental ethic. The classical treatment of causation fails to resolve successfully the tension between symmetry and asymmetry of relations and this has tended to mean that attempts to inject a telos, or sense of purpose, into the world are likely to founder. The agenda of eco-Buddhism is examined in the light of this fact and found wanting.