Sherab Chödzin

LibraryThing Review:

This is an excellent book for introducing Buddhism to Western readers. Buddhism is no more "all one thing" than Christianity is "all one thing". There are different schools of thought (different denominations) of Buddhism, just as there are different denominations of Christianity.
The authors don't go into all the sectarian permutations - that would take a set of encyclopedias! However, they do explain certain general philosophical schools in buddhism and how these relate to each other. This might be analogous to describing fundamentalist , main stream protestant, and catholic christianity and how they interelate.
However, don't try to take this analogy any farther than to say there are different categories of Christianity recognized by Christians themselves, as there are different catagories of Buddhism recognized by Buddhist themselves. Buddhism developed differently than Christianity and the categories of Christianity are not equivalent . (For example, Vajrayana Buddism is not similar to Fundamentalist Christianity.)
I'm sure that not every Buddhist would agree with the way the authors describe the development of Buddhist thought. I suspect that Theraveda Buddhists don't consider their sect to be at a lower level of spiritual development than Mahayana Buddhists. In the normal course of things, I'm sure that there is a great deal of overlap in the spiritual development of individuals within each of these Buddhist groups.
I'm also sure that the process of developing thes philosophies was much more complicated than this text describes.
Still, as an introductory text, this book is clear, and fairly easy to read and it's structure makes it easy to understand and remember.
I recommend this readily available book to anyone who wants to get a quick overview of Buddhist thought.
| flag dreamseeker | Aug 27, 2009 |… (mehr)