A Meditator's Life of the Buddha: Based on the Early Discourses

by Bhikkhu Analayo

Overview

Bhikkhu Analayo offers an inspiring biography of the Buddha from the viewpoint of his meditative development and practice, based on combining extracts from the early discourses with his own commentary.

The focus is on the Buddha as a meditator, so this is a life story offering inspiration and guidance for readers who are also meditators. Bhikkhu Analayo covers the period up to the Buddha's awakening and from the awakening to the Buddha's final Nirvana. Following this, he explores recollections of the Buddha, a topic that in one way or another underlies all the chapters. Each of the twenty-four chapters concludes with suggestions for meditative practice or conduct.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781909314993
Publisher:	Windhorse Publications
Publication date:	02/27/2018
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	360,246
Product dimensions:	6.25(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Analayo is a professor of Buddhist Studies at the Sri Lanka International Academy in Pallekele. He teaches at the Center for Buddhist Studies of the University of Hamburg and researches at the Dharma Drum Buddhist College in Taiwan. Analayo's published works include Satipatthana: The Direct Path to Realization (2003), Perspectives on Satipatthana (2014), Compassion and Emptiness in Early Buddhist Meditation (2015), and Mindfully Facing Disease and Death (2016).

Read an Excerpt

Read this book slowly.
Savour it and let it sink in.
Make it a manual of practice.
Use the reflections to deepen your journey.
May the teachings, stories and practices here bring you the blessings of the Buddha.
-From the Foreword by Jack Kornfield

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION
1 THE MOTIVATION TO GO FORTH
2 MORAL CONDUCT AND FEAR
3 OBSTACLES TO CONCENTRATION
4 ABSORPTION
5 THE IMMATERIAL ATTAINMENTS
6 FORCEFUL CONTROL OF THE MIND
7 BREATH CONTROL
8 FASTING
9 FINDING THE PATH
10 DETERMINATION
11 RECOLLECTION OF PAST LIVES
12 THE DIVINE EYE
13 AWAKENING
14 THE DECISION TO TEACH
15 THE TWO EXTREMES
16 THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS
17 THE THREE TURNINGS
18 HONOURING THE DHARMA
19 SEEING THROUGH VIEWS
20 DWELLING IN EMPTINESS
21 DAILY CONDUCT
22 TEACHING
23 OLD AGE AND DISEASE
24 FINAL NIRVANA
CONCLUSION
REFERENCES
ABBREVIATIONS

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

A Meditator's Life of the Buddha explores the remarkable inner journey that transformed Siddhartha Gotama into a fully awakened Buddha. It traces the unfolding of the Buddha's path from his going forth and discovery of the path, to the triumphant night of his full awakening, four and a half decades of compassionate teaching, and concludes with his final meditation.

This book is simultaneously a biography of a great man, an insightful study of Early Buddhism, and a practical guidebook for serious meditators. Each chapter offers readers a rare, and often surprisingly intimate, account of how the Buddha met real-life situations. We learn how he faced difficulties and overcame fears, struggled to abandon defilements, prioritized his commitments, mastered concentration states, recognized the significance of insights, and experienced the great peace that finally characterized his life as an awakened one. It is an inspiring guide that will accelerate the reader's own journey of awakening. Highly recommended, and sure to inspire dedicated meditators! - Shaila Catherine, author of Focused and Fearless: A Meditator's Guide to States of Deep Joy, Calm, and Clarity

Analayo is both an outstanding scholar and a devoted practitioner, and this account of the Buddha's life through his engagement with meditation may be his ideal subject. We need more accounts of the Buddha's life that draw out what the early texts say, distinguishing that from the legends that came later. Analayo's mastery of both the Pali and the Chinese sources, as well as the scholarship that surrounds them, makes him an unrivalled authority in this, and an attentive guide to the Buddha's explorations of the mind and meditative states. In another person's hands all this knowledge could have made A Meditator's Life of the Buddha an exercise in scholarship, but Analayo's heartfelt engagement with the material and his dedication to meditation practice is evident on every page. Vishvapani, author of Gautama Buddha: The Life and Teachings of the Awakened One

The Buddha's life story provides an implicit support for one of the most important of early Buddhist meditation practices, the contemplation of the Buddha. Analayo's highly original approach to the familiar story is to present his material in the form of an explicit guide to this practice, laid out in 24 stages, which follow what we know of the Buddha's own meditation practice. Analayo brings his formidable scholarship to elucidating what this consisted in, drawing on discourses preserved in Pali and Chinese that have a reliably early provenance. The extremely useful exercises with which each chapter concludes ground the scholarship in a fervent awareness of the goal, represented by the Buddha, which we should always have in mind in our own practice. — Jinananda, author of Warrior of Peace: The Life of the Buddha

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Mindfully Facing Disease and Death:

In this wonderfully accessible and compassionate book Bhikkhu Analayo illuminates classic Buddhist teachings and offers practical counsel for facing death with clarity and kindness. - Frank Ostaseski

An invaluable and extraordinary resource on the profound teachings by the Buddha on dying, death, and grieving. - Roshi Joan Halifax

These teachings invite us to integrate their guidance directly into the laboratory of our own meditation practice and life, in the spirit of deep investigation and inquiry. As committed meditation practitioners know first hand, there is no more worthy or meaningful introspective undertaking in the world, nor a more difficult challenge for human beings to adopt and sustain throughout life.- from the Foreword, Jon Kabat-Zinn, co-editor (with Mark Williams) of Mindfulness: Diverse Perspectives on Its Meaning, Origins, and Applications

This is an indispensable book for serious students of Buddhism. It has the potential to transform the lives of everyone who reads it. - Toni Bernhard, author of How to Live Well with Chronic Pain and Illness: A Mindful Guide

From the Publisher