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Swissbuddha
5.0 out of 5 stars Highly insightful biography
Reviewed in the United States on December 14, 2010
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Daisaku Ikeda, a renown and respected religious leader, poet, author and president of Soka Gakkai International, a global Buddhist order, gives us a very easy to understand and insightful look into one of the most important religious figures in history.
This puts into plain English, the story of a man, who renounces the luxurious comforts of his royal heritage and sets out to seek the answers to the questions, "Why do some people live in great comfort and wealth, while others suffer from poverty, illness and other afflictions in their lives?" and "What can be done to help people escape this suffering?"
This book portrays a man with a highly intuitive understanding of life and great compassion for the suffering of his fellow human being, while at the same time giving an outline of the history of religious evolution of ancient India.
As a devout practitioner of Nichiren Buddhism and an active member of Soka Gakkai, I found this book to be a essential reading and one of the most well thought and honest interpretations of the founding and early development of Buddhism. I also have the two other books in this series, and am currently reading the second one, "Buddhism, the First Millennium"
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Toni
5.0 out of 5 stars Best book on the Buddha I’ve ever read
Reviewed in the United States on March 27, 2020
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With frankness, honesty, and yet with a style similar to a friend talking to you, Ikeda gives a refreshing and interpretation of the life of Shakyamuni Buddha and is a must read for those who wish to have a general understanding of who Siddhārtha was and how he became the Buddha, through the lens of yet another famous philosopher and peace activist
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Mr. Paul
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2017
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Great book on the life of the Buddha.
Excellent translation and editing by Burton Watson.
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on September 7, 2017
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looks great
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Movies Make Me Happy
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book for anyone interested in Buddhism.
Reviewed in the United States on December 13, 2013
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The best book ever written about the life of Siddartha Gautama. Clear, insightful, well written. Anyone interested in Buddhism should read this book.
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Coffee Drinker
5.0 out of 5 stars History of Buddhism
Reviewed in the United States on October 25, 2014
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Good overview of the history of Buddhism. 3 books in the series.
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Dana D.
5.0 out of 5 stars Great biography!
Reviewed in the United States on December 2, 2013
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Outstanding biography of Shakyamuni by Ikeda. Inspiring to read - have it already on Kindle but wanted a paperback copy.
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John L. Murphy
5.0 out of 5 stars Concise, lively appraisal of the facts, the followers & the legends
Reviewed in the United States on June 18, 2009
In Japanese, the title's "My View of Shakyamuni." Ikeda, leader of the lay organization Soka Gakkai that stresses outreach, emphasizes how flexible Buddhism can be for our age. He cites Karl Jaspers on how in its origins, it emerged during what scholars call the Axial Age, when Socrates, Confucius, and later Jesus preached. Like them, the Buddha's messages weren't written down until later; like them, his teachings emerged from the "middle of the world" to spread to millions. (See Karen Armstrong's "Buddha" biography in the Penguin Lives series for more social and cross-cultural context.)
Sharing the dharma teaching's foremost; the intellectual understanding, Ikeda tells us, cannot replace action. He places the little factually that we know about the historical Shakyamuni, the sage of the Shakyas, within the legends and suppositions that, as with Socrates and Jesus, grew up around the teacher after his death. One key difference: the Eastern conception of emancipation comes not from an oppressive political system so much as a deceptive personal structure. (See Pankraj Mishra's "An End to Suffering" for more on this comparison and contrast within Western & Hindu intellectual history and philosophy.)
Ikeda admits he searches the scanty information we can verify, while allowing the myths also to enter his study, for from both we, as with Jesus and Socrates, have built our perceptions of such men, far more imaginatively and powerfully than a few facts recited could sway so many millions in centuries since. This narrative takes time to look at those who as "voice hearers" (shravaka) listened to the teachings and found enlightenment.
Here, a comparison with Stephen Batchelor's agnostic "Buddhism Without Beliefs" may be helpful. Batchelor wonders why in the original time of the Buddha's talks, many listeners earned enlightenment by hearing them, whereas now, many eons may be necessary for practitioners to find release. Ikeda appears to at first downplay "voice hearers" as a lower level within the Hindu "arhat" stages of enlightenment; while later he puts this stage at a somewhat higher stage (four out of ten?) for some of the first Buddhists. This issue remained somewhat confusing, although looking up information on Soka Gakkai in Donald Mitchell's excellent "Buddhism: An Introduction" from Oxford UP, the importance of ten stages for SG is emphasized as a key precept that may account for Ikeda's subtle downplaying of hearing teachings rather than making them actively part of one's life.
Ikeda, similarly, favors promoting a simpler "Law of Life" as a core dharma rather than a 12-linked chain of causation to elucidate the difficult doctrine of "dependent origination" that underlies karma and rebirth, issues that gain minor attention here compared to a more socially directed, accessible, and practical Buddhism that allows the strengths of all involved in the world's pursuits to gain from it, not only monks. He shows why monks were sent out to spread the dharma not in groups or pairs, but alone. Why? Ikeda muses that this example demands individual initiative, and a creative, positive, and flexible application of Buddhism to one's own experience in the world. This direction unsurprisingly finds Ikeda reminding readers that Buddhism expects personal responsibility, not blind devotion to leaders, fanatical asceticism, or misdirected yoga marathons or Zen meditation that become ends in themselves for egotistical comfort rather than means to enlightenment.
The dying Buddha reminded listeners to take charge of their improvement. The guide, unlike other "religions" (this term is used throughout Burton Watson's fluid translation despite possible confusion for Westerners; I am not sure what the Japanese equivalent term may have been), remains not focused on some external "absolute," but within the self, where one finds the way to conquer the ego and transcend the same self's delusions. Transformation by active habit, rather than information by passive reception, sums up the heart of dharma.
Ikeda throughout reminds us that the few facts of the Buddha that are in this short text expanded, with nods to scholarship and dissenting perspectives and historical situations, do not tell us much in themselves. The data may be scanty, but the insights prove profound. The "dignity of the individual and one's subjective nature" occupy central stage for the dharma as Ikeda interprets it. From within ourselves, we draw out the Law of Life. Practice makes us responsible, he finds, for our own liberation.
He ends this primer: "In other words, one transforms the present changeable self into the self as it should be, the self that is in perfect harmony with the Law"-- the essence of Buddhism's in this "human revolution" inherent within each of us. (133) The book's glossary and index cross-reference and translate terms concisely for newcomers to the Sanskrit vocabulary and Indian places; this along with Karen Armstrong's work may prove ideal for beginners curious about Siddhartha Gautama. While it moves more into those who followed the Buddha and less on doctrine.
(P.S. I've reviewed Armstrong, Batchelor, Mitchell, and Mishra's books on Amazon. Also see my review of Ikeda's follow-up, "Buddhism: The First Millennium," to be reprinted in the SG History of Buddhism series that this volume starts.)
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Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars The Living Buddha: the most human and understandable portrayal of the Buddha ever written!
Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2014
I am a Nicheren buddhist. This book gives the only humanized and sensible portrayal of "the buddha" that I have ever seen while also giving an understandable account of the Buddha's realization and philosophy. Most of the "western" world still has a very poor concept of these very important ideas and practices. If you have an interest in these things, start here. The Buddha himself said...honestly cast aside the provisional teachings and hew to my essential teaching, the Lotus Sutra!
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Gerald Rosen
5.0 out of 5 stars The Early History of Buddhism
Reviewed in the United States on May 26, 2000
This book, "The Living Buddha, An Interpretive Biography" give the reader an glimpse into the life and times of the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni. (Also known as Siddhartha Gautama). Unlike many other books of its kind, "The Living Buddha" touches mostly on the personality of the Buddha himself, to help us understand his personal motivations and experiences.
Shakyamuni, the "Enlightened One," was a common mortal who achieved enlightenment as to the fundamental nature of life and the universe itself.
"The Living Buddha" is a lucidly written biography by Daisaku Ikeda, president of Soka Gakkai International, the world's largest Buddhist organization and a United Nations NGO.
Through his book, we see that the world and society Shakyamuni lived in is not so different than ours now - that he was faced with the same type of problems we all face. The account of how he conquered these problems is what makes for an inspiring narrative.
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10.0 
