Leading Buddhist scholar Donald S. Lopez Jr. explores the origins of this 2,500-year-old religion and traces its major developments up to the present, focusing not only on the essential elemenmts common to all schools of Buddhism but also revealing the differences among the major traditions.
Beginning with the creation and structure of the Buddhist universe, Lopez explores the life of the Buddha, the core Buddhist tenets, and the development of the monastic life and lay practices. Combining brilliant scholarship with fascinating stories -- contemporary and historical, sometimes miraculous, sometimes humorous -- this rich and absorbing volume presents a fresh and expert history of Buddhism and Buddhist life.
robin friedman rated it really liked it
A Scholar's Introduction To Buddhism
Donald Lopez, professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies at the University of Michigan, is one of the best scholars who attempt to present a balanced, accurate picture of Buddhism as it has been practiced over the generations. His book "The Story of Buddhism" considers the actual practice of Buddhism, in all its diverse forms, in Asia, superstitions, magic, idiosyncracies, and all. In this way, it differs from most books that present Buddhism to Americans. which typically focus on meditation, on the liberating, non-theistic character of the Buddha's teaching, and of Buddhism as a guide to life in the difficulties of secular 20th and 21st century America. Such works are valuable and important, but they fail to give the reader a historical sense of Buddhism.
Lopez's book opens with a short treatment of Buddhist cosmology, including its picture of the universe, the earth, and the heavens and hells. There is an all-to-brief discussion of the key Buddhist teaching of Dependent Origination.
The chapter on cosmology is followed by a discussion of the life of the Buddha, taken from a wide variety of textual sources, of the Dharma, Monasticism, Lay Life, and Enlightenment.
The focus of the book is on the various schools of Mahayana Buddhism and on the Buddhism of Tibet. I found surprisingly little discussion of Theravada Buddhism, (practiced historically in Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand) which is likely the earliest version of Buddhism we have today. Lopez describes well how various Mahayana thinkers broke away from earlier teachings but doesn't tell us much about these early teachings themselves.
There is a great deal of emphasis in the book on how the Buddha's teaching was applied and modified over the years. Most of lay practice, Lopez informs us, was devoted to the accumulation of merit by the practice of good deeds. A regular meditation practice, much less textual study of the Sutras, was simply unavailable to most people who have over the generations called themselves Buddhists, either laity or monastic.
Lopez describes well the ritualistic practices of any number of Buddhist schools, emphasizing matters such as relic worship, ancestor worship, fortune-telling and horoscopes, miracle cures, magic, mandalas, and what the modern reader is likely to view as superstition. He briefly describes for the reader a number of Buddhist schools and practices, including Tantric Buddhism, the Pure Land School, and Zen, and their different paths to enlightenment. There is a wonderfully detailed picture of a ritual involving the Heart Sutra, repeated many times, with the use of icons and statues.
This book is a welcome, clear-minded corrective to those who approach Buddhism ahistorically. But there is, indeed, more to the story than this, as Professor Lopez realizes. For all his scholarly distance, Lopez understands the power of the Buddha's message which has attracted many people over the ages, including modern Americans. This is most clearly indicated in the final paragraph of Professor Lopez's book. He writes:
" But there is also another challenge, the challenge provided by the dharma, which makes the remarkable claim that it is possible to live a life untainted by what are called the eight worldly concerns: gain and loss, fame and disgrace, praise and blame, happiness and sorrow."
This is a worthwhile critical introduction to an endlessly fascinating teaching.
Robin Friedman (less)
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Danial Tanvir
May 28, 2017Danial Tanvir rated it it was amazing
i really did like this book a lot.
it is a very well written book written about buddhism and i bought it from a book shop in bangkok,thailand some time ago.
it took me over 2 to 3 days to read it,
it is the best book written on this topic.
it starts off my talking about the buddha and his life.
in the start the author starts by saying that there is no beginning or start to the universe.
he goes on to say that the buddha was born in what is called southern nepal.
it talks about how the buddha left every thing to become a buddha.
it was not that long a book but i enjoyed reading it and in the end the author gives a conclusion and thats how the book ends.
i would like to read more book by this writer and would like to meet him!. (less)
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Ben
May 21, 2017Ben rated it really liked it
As a non-Buddhist American living in Asia, I have found the various Buddhist traditions that I have encountered in Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia, China and Japan equally fascinating and hard to reconcile with each other or with the historical teachings of Siddhārtha Gautama (as described in a typical Wikipedia page or, for instance, in the PBS special "The Buddha").
This book is helpful on that front - the author is clearly extremely knowledgeable on the MANY diverse Buddhist traditions and their historical relationship with each other. I can now get my "hands around" the various traditions and schools of Buddhism to a degree that I was not able to prior to reading this book.
Having said that, the text is dense, the author's writing style is more than a little discursive and the heuristic devices that he uses to organize the book (e.g., "Monastic Life," "Tantra," "Pilgrimage") sometimes feel arbitrary and repetitive of each other.
Still, this has been the most objectively educational (and least proselytizing) of Buddhist books I've read. For that, I'll give it 4 stars. (less)
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N
Mar 12, 2022N rated it really liked it · review of another edition
The conflation of Buddha with Buddhism is at the heart of my superficial understanding, with Buddhism being a South Park song, what would Gautam Buddha do if he were here right now, he’s sure to kick an a** or two, that’s what Gautam Buddha’d do. So this book's done a lot to scaffold the scattered bits of lyrics I've picked up over the years. Otherwise I'd give it a 3, because I came here for a more historiographic evolution of the schools of Buddhism, but that's not what Donald Lopez'd do if he were here right now.
Notes
Ariel and Rapunzel - the cloistering mother, here becomes the neurotic father - Siddhartha’s birth has 7 seers saying either great king or great sage, with 1 saying only great sage. The answer: if renunciates follow from deep spiritual malaise, then protect from all hardship. But not simply pain and suffering but a very specific form of hardship (in sequence he wakes up to disease - old age - death) - enforced impermanence.
Trippy metaphorical attacks of Mara during Buddha’s pre-enlightenment askesis have a sequence and structure that perfectly mirror the barriers to samadhi laid out by Patanjali.
Samas fail: Noble truths - aryasatyani. Truths of the arya - The truths aren’t themselves noble, but that which is known by noble people.
Mahayana as a minority despite dominating the quantity of text. Hinayana as a pejorative used (lesser) against the rival factions. More a generic insult, and doesn’t really correspond to anything today, especially not Theravada.
Bodhisattva - the past life of a future Buddha. Reinterpret Mahayana’s goal of liberation of all beings: pull your past-life into the vortex (entering the stream), that pulls previous etc etc. Now connect laterally the net, pulling all beings not as an objective but as an inevitability.
Finite number of beings (further reducible backwards later) manifesting in infinite number of forms across space and time. That means every single possible combination of patterns between beings has manifested. Sariputra looks at mother eating pork, beating dog, feeding child with tears because he can see - in past lives pig and dog were parents and baby was murderer of those parents.
Compassion: when someone hits with a stick, not angry at the instrument (stick) but the actor. But the actor is himself an instrument to his anger. So your anger is directed at anger itself, resulting in compassion.
6 Perfections - giving, ethics (vow), patience, effort, concentration and wisdom. But there are 36 meta-perfections - giving of giving, giving of ethics, effort of wisdom etc.
Buddha Nature Tathagatagarbha like gold at the bottom of a cesspool. 4 types of seed - Enter Hinayana, perfection of Sravaka, Nirvana without Remainder; Enter Hinayana, perfection of pratyekabuddha, Nirvana without Remainder; Enter Mahayana, Bodhisattva; Icchantika, slave to desire, doomed to Samsara. But how does this reconcile with Mahayana?
Madhyamaka exegetes view of Buddha Nature as emptiness of mind, foundation consciousness. Buddha speaks based on listener, so instead of scary nihilism of emptiness, substantiates it as a tathagathagarbha.
3 Jewels - Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Buddha shows where to find refuge from suffering, undeniable proof of the truth of both suffering and refuge, the way no god can prove. That refuge is Dharma, teaching/doctrine/law/path.
Realized Dharma vs Written Dharma. Since latter compiled many centuries after Buddha, never certain what is authoritative. Fantastical Mahayana sutras vs Pali canon (Theravada holds this to be authoritative).
Buddha to Ananda while dying, appoints no successor - now all I have taught, dharma and vinaya, are your next teacher. The first jewel, Buddha, having demonstrated the existence of the truth, is fully subordinated into the dharma, the truth itself.
Ananda could recite 60,000 words and 15000 stanzas of Buddha’s words without missing a syllable. But he’s an exception. So to preserve the teachings, the sangha is formed, reciters of the discourse.
Dharma - sutras organized by length (long, medium, grouped sutras, and enumerated sutras which talk about pairs, 3, 4 etc to 11). Vinaya - rules of monastic discipline. Abhidharma - analysis and commentary on dharma. Compare with Vedas, Brahamanas and Upanishads.
Sinhalese reign of Varragamani Abhaya, arhats start writing words down that has so far been optimized for oral transmission using same rules as Vedas - redundancy, versification and organization by length.
Definitive knowledge vs provisional knowledge: Turning of wheel of Dharma thrice: 1 - noble truths at Sarnath deer park; 2 - perfection of wisdom; 3 - sutras of unraveling intent (samdhinirmocana - explanation of profound secrets). Madhyamaka wanting primacy, held this to be 3rd turn. Yogacara wanting primacy held this to be still provisional, and perfection of wisdom to be the definitive.
Especially problematic question of authoritativeness of texts in East Asia, where sutras came haphazard and needed to be categorized, dated. Kiikai in Japan made 10 stages of spiritual development from goat-like 1st stage through to Confucian, Daoist, then Srivika, Prayekabuddha, Mahayana, Yogacara, Madhyamaka etc and highest stage was his own school.
Abhidharma schools like Sarvastivadas (everything exists) and sautrantikas (followers of sutras) debating nature of concepts. For instance, unlike unconditioned permanent things like space, nirvana, all others are impermanent thus have 4 characteristics: production, abiding, aging, and disintegration. But isn’t ‘abiding’ counter to impermanence?
Production - pulls an entity out of the future to enter the present: actualization of potential. The oak tree a seed, you in an embryo. But which you is you? The you at death? The you at physical maturity/peak? That represents the transition from abiding to aging. Vasubandhu rejects these 4 as characteristics, merely descriptions of processes of any conditioned being.
Hotoke - Japanese word for ‘buddha’ and ‘dead person’. Deceased categorized into near-dead (relatives dead <33yrs) and distant-dead (ancestral collective).
Buddhaghosa’s 8 contemplations of death: 1. Death as murderer, comes swipes you 2. As ruin of all you have built/accumulated 3. As that which connects you with all great men who have died before you 4. As death of your constituents, and life of that within you that doesn’t die, like bacteria 5. Tenuous nature of life, all things need to be working perfectly, breath, temperature, physical elements etc 6. Uncertainty - no exact next moment can be identified as death 7. Limited time of life 8. Shortness of the moment, life as series of moments of consciousness
7-fold adherence: 1. Obeisance - believe in that which is greater than you. 2. Offerings for 5 senses - the primary pleasures are all subordinated to that which is greater, the pursuit for the objects of pleasure are expressly in service of something more than just the temporary enjoyment of pleasure, thus you can sublimate desire rather than demonize it. 3. Penitence for all your negative karma - the first part of the pursuit of perfection is to recognize and isolate that which needs subtraction 4. Admiration for the positive karma you see in the world - the second part of the pursuit of perfection is to recognize and isolate that which needs addition. 5. Invite the Buddha to stay and not retreat into nirvana 6. Ask the Buddha to teach the Dharma. 7. Commit the purpose of your learning of the Dharma to the liberation of all sentient beings.
Why Mahayana is later than other schools - it takes that much time to establish the perfect wisdom of Buddha and then ask the inevitable question: what sets him apart from the gods of other religions, and the spiritual masters many of whom have undeniably reached the same state of enlightenment? Like accelerating galaxies, the farther you get from the high-gravity center of the body, the faster you’re traveling away. That means the path to enlightenment flings you out from the rest of the world, so all the spiritual masters simply become as gods to us. One galaxy though resists the centrifugal force, and instead uses the momentum to pull the galactic center itself towards enlightenment. The perfection of all living things. A supreme act of will.
The body-mind as two sticks, rub together to produce a flame, wisdom, that then proceeds to consume the sticks.
Buddha simply shows a flower, and only Mahakasyapa gets it, birth of Chan in China, Son in Korea, Zen in Japan, all from Dhyan in Sanskrit, for that teaching which is beyond words. Kung-an as small poems in China, Koans in Japan. The monk’s ability judged on how he is able to comment and interpret koans.
The Buddha appears only when his wisdom disappears from the world, so Sakyamuni came, and when his teachings are gone then Maitreya will come.
In this degenerate time (started 1050AD) that lacks the intelligence or discipline to get onto the path, the only hope is to meditate on Amitabha (infinite light), or Pure Land method. Manifest, intone and invoke. (less)
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Christopher Smith
Mar 25, 2012Christopher Smith rated it it was amazing
Donald Lopez’s The Story of Buddhism is a concise, readable introduction to the intellectual history of Buddhism. Lopez reveals the incredible diversity of Buddhist teaching and practice over the course of its history and the regions to which it spread. He also describes important differences between lay-Buddhism and Buddhism as taught and practiced by monks and philosophers. These distinctions may seem confusing or unimportant to readers looking for an idiot's guide to Buddhist spirituality, but they are very useful for conceptualizing Buddhism as a complex, living religious tradition on the scale of Christianity or Islam. Many of the controversies and trajectories of Buddhist thought will be strikingly familiar to readers who know the intellectual history of another major religious tradition, because at the end of the day we're all just human beings with the same kinds of needs, asking the same kinds of questions, and coming up with the same kinds of answers. (less)
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Rebecca
Aug 25, 2007Rebecca rated it it was amazing
Incredibly well-written, well-researched, and thorough - a highly accessible book that anyone curious about Buddhism should read.
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Litbitch
Feb 06, 2022Litbitch rated it liked it
Shelves: nonfiction, spirit
Meh. Buddha knows why I decided to buy this book, when there are dozens of books on Buddhism that have been recommended to me through reliable sources, but I did want something that wasn't delving too deep, something that would fill in some of my basic gaps in the history and language. I don't know if this really did that, though perhaps it does fulfill its own purpose. What it did do was remind me that Buddhism can be just as messed up as any religion, that no one really agrees on more than a few things that the Buddha said or believed, and that culture has at least as much influence on a religion as the spiritual founder.
I suppose the good part of all that is to reaffirm that I'm not a religious Buddhist and not ready to move in that direction, and that it doesn't really matter what Gautama Buddha did or didn't say - we can pull so much good, such deep wisdom and philosophy and action out of it, regardless of the "authenticity" of our evolving dharma. (less)
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Ron Kastner
Dec 25, 2020Ron Kastner rated it really liked it
a most convoluted history with many parallels with the development of christian theology. In some regards though a very ritualistic religion. How can anyone keeps all the rules straight?
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Melody Kernan
Nov 17, 2021Melody Kernan rated it really liked it
Shelves: religion
A great introduction to Buddhism, but found some language questionable. 3.5 stars for an easy and interesting read! ⭐
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Pablo
Nov 14, 2018Pablo rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Muy completo, excelente redacción y abundantes libros recomendados sobre los temas tratados.
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J.J. Rodeo
May 18, 2015J.J. Rodeo rated it it was ok
Shelves: religion
As this book says, there are four main concepts in Buddhism: 1- Life equals suffering; 2- This suffering is caused by misconducts in our past lives (karma), and we are trapped in a the cycle of rebirth; 3- There is an escape from rebirth, called Nirvana; 4- Buddhism can lead us to that scape, through meditation and understanding that there is no self (i.e. we do not exist).
There is also a shitload of local superstitions for each region of the Buddhist world.
One of my problems with Buddhism is the self-contradictory ideas of rebirth and no-self. If we do not really exist even in our current life, then who is the person who is experiencing the rebirth, and why do we suffer for what that imaginary person did in a another life?
The idea of rebirth is very fundamental to the Buddhist philosophy, because if there is no rebirth, the most rational solution to the problem of suffering would be suicide, and this act is not recommended by this philosophy.
Another discouraging fact about Buddhism is that it aspires to deaden our feelings. An ideal Buddhist is freed from feelings like happiness, sorrow, love, anger, and so on. Well, as I believe that I am going to live only once, I prefer to fully experience my life and savor the beautiful emotions that are available to me.
About the book:
'The Story of Buddhism' was not supposed to be a reference book and it just wanted to provide a deep report on the development and practice of Buddhism throughout Asia. It was full of stories and detailed description of stupid acts and rituals performed by Buddhists. It became a little boring toward the end of the book, and I skipped some passages.
Overall, the book helped me to correct my previous fantasies about Buddhism, and it showed me its true face as another testimony of the stupidity of our ancestors. (less)
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Lydia
Jul 06, 2014Lydia rated it really liked it
I have no idea where I bought this book, nor if there are better sources on Buddhism out there...but I found this book very readable (dense but useful), dissecting all the various types/countries of Buddhism, and tracing the history of The Buddha, The Dharma, rituals of monastic life, lay practice, and achieving enlightenment. My interest is Japanese Buddhism, the Kannon Bodhisattva and trying to understand how it was brought to Japan and the United States, This book answers these questions very well. It also answers questions about karma, tantric practices, sutras, pilgrimages, nuns v. priests, death, and how the religion has developed over 2500+ years-- when Buddhists were illiterate to now. Each chapter includes a suggested reading list, and there is a bibliography of 100+ works for more reading. Thank you Mr. Lopez! (less)
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Evan
Jul 22, 2010Evan rated it really liked it
A good survey of Buddhist practices, history and major texts, which means that it's not for everyone. Others might not care about the differences between the numerous sutras, and the odd doctrinal quarrels of Hiniyana sects. Having dabbled in Buddhism for years, I found it well presented and provocative in presenting Buddhism as a dis-unified set of traditions. Sections on what Buddhism means for ordinary people are also worthwhile.
On subjects of interest, I like to switch between general works like this and others that are more specialized. Lopez's book is just the sort of work I enjoy for that macrocosmic perspective. Makes me want to go and read the Diamond, Heart and Lotus sutras and commentaries. (less)
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Clara
May 04, 2012Clara rated it liked it
The author does a good job with his subject, including differentiating among the various Buddhist traditions. His style is occasionally dense, but that's probably to be expected in any discussion of some of the more esoteric topics--no-self, for instance. The book is for a reader who is serious about understanding the history and key concepts of Buddhism, not for someone with only a passing interest. (less)
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Ian
Dec 11, 2007Ian rated it it was amazing
This is the best introduction to Buddhism out there. Lopez manages to approach the controversial topic of the origins of Buddhism with the same critical lense that he uses in all of his work, but at the same time writes in a way that feels like a friendly monk telling you the story by candlelight. I recommend this for anyone who wants an introduction to Buddhism that doesn't take any particular view of the Buddha at face value (less)
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Marian
Jun 30, 2016Marian rated it really liked it
I really liked how this book exhibited the differences within Buddhism from country to country, and even speculated about how these could have been born. It was a very intriguing way to read the history of Buddhism and I would certainly recommend this book to others who wish to comprehend Buddhism, and a great reminder that we are still trying to comprehend it.
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Carolyn
Nov 17, 2013Carolyn rated it really liked it
This book presents a coherent introduction to Buddhism and its schools and practices in Asia. At times it generalises and lacks nuance, and it is completely out of date (or dismissive) with regard to the study of women in Buddhism and feminist scholarship. I would recommend this book, but only alongside a supplementary text.
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