New Richard Gombrich book - What the Buddha Thought

[clw_uk]

Hey


Just wanted to share this, should be an interesting read when its released

http://www.wisdom-books.com/ProductDetail.asp?PID=19312


metta

[thornbush]

Thank you very much. Will certainly do a follow up on it

[sraddha]

Who's Gombrich?

[clw_uk]

Who's Gombrich?

He is a scholar on Buddhism, mostly Theravada and early buddhist history

Gombrich has gone on to become one of the 20th century's important scholars of Theravāda Buddhism. His recent research has focused more on Buddhist origins.

Gombrich stresses the importance of relating Buddhist texts and practices to the rest of Indian religion. Rather than studying Buddhism, Jainism, and Vedism in isolation, Gombrich advocates a comparative method that has shed a great deal of light on both Buddhist thought and Buddhist early history. He has been an active contributor to an ongoing discussion concerning the date of the Buddha's death. He has argued in great detail that data supplied in Pali texts composed in Sri Lanka enable us to date that event to about 404 BCE.

While still an undergraduate, Gombrich helped to edit the volume of papers by Karl Popper entitled “Conjectures and Refutations”. Ever since, he has followed this method in his research, seeking the best hypothesis available and then trying to test it against the evidence. This makes him oppose both facile scepticism and the quest for a method which can in any way substitute for the simple need for critical thought.

He was general editor of the Clay Sanskrit Library from its founding until February 2008.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Gombrich

His books IMO are really good if you want to get a better historical and social understanding of buddhism


I have read one of his called "Theravada Buddhism - A social history from ancient Benares to modern Colombo"

A very good book, its about Theravada (obviously lol) but it discusses the history of the society that the Buddha found himself in which is quite useful to get an idea of where the Buddha was coming from with some of his teachings

Metta

[genkaku]

How in heaven's name could anyone know what the Buddha thought when they can't even know what their dearest friends think?

Sorry ... just a little befuddled by the title.

[clw_uk]

How in heaven's name could anyone know what the Buddha thought when they can't even know what their dearest friends think?

Sorry ... just a little befuddled by the title.

Synopsis:
Due September 2009. This new book argues that the Buddha was one of the most brilliant and original thinkers of all time. While the book is intended to serve as an introduction to the Buddha's thought, and hence to Buddhism itself, it also has larger aims: it argues that we can know far more about the Buddha than 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 relating them to early brahmanical texts, and also to ancient Jainism, gives a much richer picture of his meaning, especially when his sense of irony is appreciated. Incidently, 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. Though the Buddha used metaphor extensively, he did not found his arguments upon it like earlier thinkers: his capacity for abstraction was a breakthrough, His ethicising older ideas of rebirth and karma was also a breakthrough for civilization. His theory of karma is logically central to his thought. Karma is a process, not a thing; moreover, it is neither random nor wholly determined These ideas about karma he generalised to every component of conscious experience - except nirvana, the liberation from the chain of existence.


I think its in terms of his social enviroment and the effect of religious thought that was around at the time. I also think its about how he had radical new ideas for his age

Of course this is all "i think" havent actually read it yet lol

metta

[sraddha]

It's always good to gain different perspectives and views. Thanks for the information!