What the Buddha Thought

by Richard Gombrich

Overview

In What the Buddha Though Richard Gombrich argues that the Buddha was one of the most brilliant and original thinkers of all time.

Intended to serve as an introduction to the Buddha's thought, and hence even to Buddhism itself, the book also has larger aims: it argues that we can know far more about the Buddha than it is fashionable among scholars to admit, and that his thought has a greater coherence than is usually recognized. Interpreters both ancient and modern have taken little account of the historical context of the Buddha's teachings; but by relating them to early brahminical texts, and also to ancient Jainism, Gombrich gives a much richer picture of the Buddha's meaning, especially when his satire and irony are appreciated. Incidentally, since many of the Buddha's allusions can only be traced in the Pali versions of surviving texts, the book establishes the importance of the Pali Canon as evidence.

The book contains much new material. The author stresses the Buddha's capacity for abstraction: though he made extensive use of metaphor, he did not found his arguments upon it, as earlier thinkers had done. He ethicized and radically reinterpreted older ideas of karma (human action) and rebirth. Similarly, building on older texts, he argued for the fundamental importance of love and compassion, and analysed fire as a process which could stand as a model for every component of conscious experience. Morally, the Buddha's theory of karma provided a principle of individuation and asserted each individual's responsibility for his own destiny. To make the book completely accessible to the general reader, the author provides an introductory section of 'BackgroundInformation', for easy reference.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781845536121
Publisher:	Equinox Publishing
Publication date:	08/15/2009
Series:	Children Hearing Gods Voice
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Richard Gombrich is founder and Academic Director of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, and Chairman of the UK Association for Buddhist Studies. Before his retirement in 2004, he held the Boden Chair of Sanskrit at Oxford University and a Professorial Fellowship at Balliol College for 28 years. He supervised nearly 50 theses on Buddhist topics, and is the author of 200 publications. He continues to lecture and teach at universities round the world.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

Background Information xi

Abbreviations xvi

1 Introduction 1

2 More about Karma, and Its Social Context 19

3 The Antecedents of the Karma Doctrine in Brahminism 29

4 Jain Antecedents 45

5 What Did the Buddha Mean by 'No Soul'? 60

6 The Buddha's Positive Values: Love and Compassion 75

7 Assessing the Evidence 92

8 Everything Is Burning: The Centrality of Fire in the Buddha's Thought 111

9 Causation and Non-random Process 129

10 Cognition; Language; Nirvana 144

11 The Buddha's Pragmatism and Intellectual Style 161

12 The Buddha as Satirist; Brahmin Terms as Social Metaphors 180

13 Is This Book To Be Believed? 193

Appendix: The Buddha's Appropriation of Four (or Five?) Brahminical Terms 202

Notes 207

Bibliography 227

Index 233