Buddha [Paperback]

Karen Armstrong (Author)

Book Description

Release date: September 28, 2004

With such bestsellers as A History of God and Islam, Karen Armstrong has consistently delivered ?penetrating, readable, and prescient? (The New York Times) works that have lucidly engaged a wide range of religions and religious issues. In Buddha she turns to a figure whose thought is still reverberating throughout the world 2,500 years after his death.

Many know the Buddha only from seeing countless serene, iconic images. But what of the man himself and the world he lived in? What did he actually do in his roughly eighty years on earth that spawned one of the greatest religions in world history? Armstrong tackles these questions and more by examining the life and times of the Buddha in this engrossing philosophical biography. Against the tumultuous cultural background of his world, she blends history, philosophy, mythology, and biography to create a compelling and illuminating portrait of a man whose awakening continues to inspire millions.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Books on Buddhism may overflow the shelves, but the life story of the Buddha himself has remained obscure despite over 2,500 years of influence on millions of people around the world. In an attempt to rectify this, and to make the Buddha and Buddhism accessible to Westerners, the beloved scholar and author of such sweeping religious studies as A History of God has written a readable, sophisticated, and somewhat unconventional biography of one of the most influential people of all time. Buddha himself fought against the cult of personality, and the Buddhist scriptures were faithful, giving few details of his life and personality. Karen Armstrong mines these early scriptures, as well as later biographies, then fleshes the story out with an explanation of the cultural landscape of the 6th century B.C., creating a deft blend of biography, history, philosophy, and mythology.

At the age of 29, Siddhartha Gautama walked away from the insulated pleasure palace that had been his home and joined a growing force of wandering monks searching for spiritual enlightenment during an age of upheaval. Armstrong traces Gautama's journey through yoga and asceticism and grounds it in the varied religious teachings of the time. In many parts of the world during this so-called axial age, new religions were developing as a response to growing urbanization and market forces. Yet each shared a common impulse--they placed faith increasingly on the individual who was to seek inner depth rather than magical control. Taoism and Confucianism, Hinduism, monotheism in the Middle East and Iran, and Greek rationalism were all emerging as Gautama made his determined way towards enlightenment under the boddhi tree and during the next 45 years that he spent teaching along the banks of the Ganges. Armstrong, in her intelligent and clarifying style, is quick to point out the Buddha's relevance to our own time of transition, struggle, and spiritual void in both his approach--which was based on skepticism and empiricism--and his teachings.

Despite the lack of typical historical documentation, Armstrong has written a rich and revealing description of both a unique time in history and an unusual man. Buddha is a terrific primer for those interested in the origins and fundamentals of Buddhism. --Lesley Reed --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Armstrong's esteemed works, including such standards as A History of God and The Battle for God, have primarily focused on the monotheism of the Middle East. Now she turns farther eastward to craft this short biography for the Penguin Lives series. Armstrong carefully ties the Buddha's time to our own and champions his spiritual discoveries with an understated dignity that even the Buddha might bless. While exercising a scholar's restraint, she reveals a detectable compassion for Sidhatta Gotama, the radical who walked away from a pleasure palace because he refused to "remain locked in an undeveloped version" [of himself]. Armstrong overcame peculiar challenges to write about this historical figure who became "a type rather than an individual," as his personality and life particulars evaporated into the power of his selflessness. She turned this lack of details for a conventional biography to our advantage, opting to enhance Gotama's story with the broad canvas of his time and culture, thus making him accessibly human. This handsome and solid portrait is sure to become a classic; it is a refined and readable biography of a pivotal character in human history. It is likely true that when the 80-year-old Buddha died he had, as the sutra says, "gone beyond the power of words," but in this thoughtful and revealing study, Armstrong has come near to proving the scriptures wrong. (Feb.) Forecast: Despite the plethora of Buddhist books on the market, few recent Buddha biographies have been written for a general audience. Armstrong's superb reputation should help sales, and Viking plans a six-city author tour and national publicity.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books (September 28, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0143034367
• ISBN-13: 978-0143034360
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (102 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #22,626 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #2 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( B ) > Buddha

More About the Author

Karen Armstrong is the author of numerous other books on religious affairs-including A History of God, The Battle for God, Holy War, Islam, Buddha, and The Great Transformation-and two memoirs, Through the Narrow Gate and The Spiral Staircase. Her work has been translated into forty-five languages. She has addressed members of the U.S. Congress on three occasions; lectured to policy makers at the U.S. State Department; participated in the World Economic Forum in New York, Jordan, and Davos; addressed the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington and New York; is increasingly invited to speak in Muslim countries; and is now an ambassador for the UN Alliance of Civilizations. In February 2008 she was awarded the TED Prize and is currently working with TED on a major international project to launch and propagate a Charter for Compassion, created online by the general public and crafted by leading thinkers in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, to be signed in the fall of 2009 by a thousand religious and secular leaders. She lives in London.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 55 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Biographer of the Divine March 10, 2001

By matthew osborne

Format:Hardcover

Karen Armstrong has made quite a career out of writing biographies, not only about manifestations of the divine, but the early history of the movements they inspire. If the potential reader is looking for esoteric tracts on yogic practice (and the Buddha would have abhorred such fascination) then this is not the book they need.

Rather, this delicious and brief treat of a book explains what Buddha and Buddhism meant in the context of their early history. India had become a place where great business republics were involved in rapid economic growth (like today's global economy) and were being consumed by the new monarchical states. A huge middle class was emerging that could not be pigeonholed into the old caste system, and therefore rejected it; life had become overly materialistic and people were desperately turning to anything for a sense of spiritual well-being (sort of like today.)

What Armstrong does simply and wonderfully is reveal this worldwide phase of history and the contribution of the Buddha in meeting its challenges. His teachings are decidedly NOT the mysterious, esoteric bunk that priesthoods of every religion have invented to maintain their exhalted position, but were in fact very practical means for bringing the unhappy people of the age into enlightenment-- sort of like what people are looking for today.

I was especially happy to read this book because of these larger, "global" contexts that are expressed or implied. Buddhism belongs in the hall of great world religions, as Buddha belongs among the great manifestations of the divine. Armstrong has delivered a fine portrait of the Buddha's life that puts them both in their proper place, yet she avoids the trap of making them such objects of adoration that the text would become a mere tract.

I sincerely hope that Karen Armstrong will see fit to examine other religions and manifestations like this. I would particularly like to read anything she has to say about Zoroaster or Baha'u'llah.

137 of 162 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars not a book for buddhists April 2, 2001

By David VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

In summary, Armstrong's "Buddha" is a brief, sympathetic account of the life of the Buddha in the context of his time. It is marred by brevity and by a distanced, clinical treatment of the Buddha's dhamma that makes it seem little more than an antique, cultural artifact, not a relevant way of life.

I am guessing that the format for the Penguin "Lives" series accounts for some of the shortcomings of this book including: its brief length (less than 200 rather small pages); its lack of illustrations; its rather abrupt end with the Buddha's death (not a word of how one teacher's words grew into a worldwide religion); the absence of a guide to the pronunciation of the many Pali terms; and the omission of an index.

These lacks show the book is not intended as a definitive biography; nor it is it intended to have theological depth that would challenge a well-read Buddhist. This is a popular "life" intended to give a broad picture of the Buddha's life and dhamma to a curious non-Buddhist reader or to a student.

Within the scope of this limited goal Armstrong has done a reasonably good job. Certainly it could not have been easy to shape a conventional, biographical tale from the Pali canon and other Buddhist scriptures. Armstrong stresses that an integral part of the Buddha's teaching was the unimportance of the ego, and for that reason the Buddha's personal attributes virtually disappeared, both from his teachings and from his disciple's accounts. Little is left but the suttas themselves, and some highly-colored legends surrounding the key moments of the Buddha's life.

Armstrong is particularly good at taking the legends and drawing out their inner meaning. She recounts a legend sympathetically; then shows how it make clear sense, not as history but as a statement of belief in the context of the time, or as an archetypal portrait of the human condition. For example, she notes how Mara, Lord of Illusion, "represents ... all the unconscious elements within the psyche which fight against our liberation."

In large measure Armstrong explains the Buddha's dhamma clearly and sympathetically. Yet she always seems to handle it with metaphorical tongs, like an interesting specimen -- not as if it were a living tradition the reader might enter. Part of this impression comes from her consistent use of the perfect tense when describing the dhamma. For example, she writes "The purpose of both mindfulness and the immeasurables was to neutralize the power of that egotism that limits human potential." In this and many similar sentences, she uses the perfect ("was") or the conditional ("would"), as if the dhamma was a teaching that existed only long ago and among distant people. There is no hint that mindfulness IS used for the same purpose by people today.

This is a subtle matter of diction and tone; but its effect is to transmit an unspoken message that Armstrong herself has not entered into the Dhamma, and probably wouldn't care to recommend it to her reader, either. If you think of yourself as being in some degree "buddhist" you may find this air of faint praise makes you uncomfortable.

A less subtle problem is Armstrong's repeated insistence that the Dhamma "could not be understood by rational thinking alone. It only revealed its true significance when it was apprehended 'directly,' according to yogic methods, and in the right ethical context." By "yogic methods" she means the disciplines of mindfulness and meditation. By "ethical context" she means principly the practice of metta, empathy.

Armstrong seems sure that the dhamma is not capable of being defended or supported by discursive argument. Or at any rate, she does not even attempt to sketch its philosophical underpinnings. This is strange. Armstrong is certainly capable of dealing with abstracts and logical argument. And Buddhism is quite respectable as a philosophy, as coherent and complete in its account of the universe and the human condition as anything produced by Plato or Aquinas. Armstrong completely neglects this aspect of the dhamma, leaving the impression that it can only be entered through "yogic methods." In short, she writes as if the dhamma is unapproachable unless you are ready to enter into dubious Eastern practices.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Buddha in context February 27, 2002

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

As a student of Buddhism for some 40 years, I found Armstrong's engagingly written account one of the few books I have run across that clearly explains the social and historical context in which the Buddha lived and taught. It provides a basic introduction to the philosophical concepts of Buddhism, but its real focus is to reveal who the Buddha was and how he came to be that way. In this, I think, it succeeds admirably. I was a bit frustrated by the use of Pali rather than Sanscrit, and regretted the lack of a bibliography. But, I think, Armstrong successfully resisted the temptation to "go beyond the evidence," and she has no clear axe to grind or stake in any particular Buddhist sect. Criticisms of the book as "Theravada centered" are off the mark; she describes a period before sects and shows the roots of both Thervada and Mahayana. Her discussion of the Axial Age and her comparisons to other creeds and philosophies were helpful and insightful. I can't wait to read her book on Islam; if it's this good, I can see why it's a best-seller.