What is Dharma?


Book Description

To walk in the footsteps of the Buddha we need a clear and thorough guide to the essential principles of Buddhism. Whether we have just begun our journey or are a practitioner with more experience, What is the Dharma? is an indispensable exploration of the Buddha's teachings as found in the main Buddhist traditions.




What Is the Sangha?


Book Description

It can be a surprise to find that Buddhism gives great importance to the Sangha, the spiritual community. Some may feel that their guru or teacher is all that they need. To others, the idea of sharing their inner and outer lives with others can seem a challenge or even a threat. But the spiritual community is not about unthinking conformity or belonging to a comfortable group. Rather, it is the free association of developing individuals choosing to help each other along the path.




Living with Awareness


Book Description

Mindfulness is the means by which our consciousness is transformed, transcended, Enlightened. The Satipatthana Sutta is one of the Buddha's foremost discourses on mindfulness. In Living with Awareness, a commentary on this sutta, Sangharakshita counsels against an over-narrow interpretation of mindfulness as being simply about developing a focused attention on the present moment. To be fully mindful, one needs to look further than the end of one's nose, and integrate even the most rarefied practice into the context of a fully lived human life.




Survey of Buddhism / The Buddha's Noble Eightfold Path


Book Description

This first volume of Sangharakshita's Complete Works includes two foundational texts that have inspired readers for decades in their understanding and practice of Buddhism: A Survey of Buddhism and The Buddha's Noble Eightfold Path.Of the first, the great Buddhist teacher and writer Lama Anagarika Govinda wrote, 'It would be difficult to find a single book in which the history and development of Buddhist thought has been described as vividly and clearly as in this survey.' The first chapter illuminates the doctrines and methods common to all schools and draws out the transcendental unity of Buddhism. Later chapters discuss the teachings and practices of the different schools. The concluding chapter is dedicated to the bodhisattva ideal, 'the perfectly ripened fruit of the whole vast tree of Buddhism'. Sangharakshita's beautiful prose, shot through with poetry, combines with an exceptional clarity of thought to make the Survey one of the most inspiring elucidations of the Dharma.The Buddha's Noble Eightfold Path: Vision and Transformation looks at one of the best known formulations of the Buddha's teaching. We are led step by step from the mundane world to the transcendental, from wrong view to right view, and on to Perfect Vision. A practical perspective shows how we can apply the Buddha's teachings to all aspects of our lives, including the food we eat, our relationships and our work. Sangharakshita goes on to make clear the real meaning of mindfulness and meditation, thus giving the reader both a vision of the whole path and guidance in setting out upon it.This volume includes a full section of endnotes locating the teachings to the suttas and sAtras that inspired them, as well as a Foreword by Dharmachari Subhuti looking at these two texts from an inspirational and a critical perspective, and bringing out the inner connection between them.




The Complete Works of Sangharakshita


Book Description

In this volume Sangharakshita approaches communicating Buddhism in the West from two very different, but equally illuminating, angles. In the first part, in talks given in the early years of his teaching in England, he introduces the apparently exotic worlds of Tibetan Buddhism (1965) and its creative symbols (1972) and Zen Buddhism (1965), clarifying their mysteries while also somehow allowing them to work their magic.




The Thought of Sangharakshita


Book Description

Sangharakshita (1925-2018) was a Buddhist writer and teacher, founder of the Triratna Buddhist Order and Community (previously FWBO). Apart from his practical achievements, Sangharakshita was an original thinker on the adaptation of Buddhism to modern conditions, an autodidact whose intellectual creativity was stimulated by both cross-cultural experience and practical contingency. His thinking is little known or appreciated outside the movement he founded, but over-dominant within it. This means that there is a shortage of balanced critical discussion of his work that finds any middle way between hagiography and dismissal. Sangharakshita has also been an object of controversy in recent years, but his more controversial views and actions need to be seen in proportion to the whole of his thinking. This book surveys Sangharakshita's most important and original ideas with an eye that combines appreciation and critical awareness in equal measure. It celebrates Sangharakshita's pioneering syntheses of Buddhist and Western ideas, but warns against the inconsistencies and dogmas that are also found in Sangharakshita's work - dogmas whose negative practical effects can also be traced.




Sangharakshita Complete Works


Book Description

The nine texts in this volume, composed over a period of more than thirty years, show‚ Sangharakshita's unfolding insight into the meaning, significance and centrality of Going for Refuge.




Guide to the Buddhist Path


Book Description

Buddhism, with its numerous schools and teachings, can feel daunting. How can one practise Buddhism in a systematic way? Profoundly experienced in Buddhist practice, intimately familiar with its main schools, and founder of the Triratna Buddhist Community, an international movement, Sangharakshita is the ideal guide. In this highly readable, reliable and far-reaching guide, he sorts out fact from myth and theory from practice to reveal the principal ideals and teachings of Buddhism.




Sangharakshita


Book Description

Sangharakshita was a Buddhist monk, a writer, a poet, and the founder of the Triratna Buddhist Order and Community – a pioneering worldwide Buddhist movement. He was also an audacious reformer, and for some a deeply controversial figure. In an absorbing narrative, Nagabodhi takes us on a journey through the twists and turns of Sangharakshita’s life; the experiences, insights, and reflections that nurtured his approach as a teacher; what it was like to live among his committed followers; and the controversies he left behind.




Sangharakshita


Book Description

What does it mean to be a Buddhist today? How are we to relate to the diverse forms that have come down to us? Sangharakshita is one of the modern world's most influential and respected Buddhists. After spending many years in the East, he returned to Britain in 1967 to establish an international Buddhist movement and has developed a broad approach to Buddhism that is at once thoroughly traditional and radically original. This unique introduction provides a summary of his contribution not only to Buddhism in the West, but internationally