Buddhist History of the West, A (Suny Series in Religious Studies) [Paperback]

David R. Loy (Author)

Book Description

Series: Suny Series in Religious Studies | Publication Date: January 24, 2002

A Buddhist interpretation of Western history that shows civilization shaped by the self's desire for groundedness.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Buddhism teaches that to become happy, greed, ill-will, and delusion must be transformed into their positive counterparts: generosity, compassion, and wisdom. The history of the West, like all histories, has been plagued by the consequences of greed, ill-will, and delusion. A Buddhist History of the West investigates how individuals have tried to ground themselves to make themselves feel more real. To be self-conscious is to experience ungroundedness as a sense of lack, but what is lacking has been understood differently in different historical periods. Author David R. Loy examines how the understanding of lack changes at historical junctures and shows how those junctures were so crucial in the development of the West. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

David R. Loy is Professor in the Faculty of International Studies at Bunkyo University, Japan. He is the author of Lack and Transcendence: The Problem of Death and Life in Psychotherapy, Existentialism, and Buddhism and Nonduality: A Study in Comparative Philosophy. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 260 pages
• Publisher: State University of New York Press (January 24, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0791452603
• ISBN-13: 978-0791452608
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #993,524 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bringing Buddhism Back Home, February 21, 2002

By 

Wayne Grytting (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Buddhist History of the West, A (Suny Series in Religious Studies) (Paperback)

For Westerners who've had a taste of Buddhist practice or insights, there comes a moment when we must look back on our own cultural heritage and wonder, "What the hell happened?" Why this long 2,500 year detour into dominating nature and building social empires? Why this absorbtion into disconnected individualism? Loy's book is exciting trailblazing into the emerging field of putting Buddhist concepts to work to decode history. Highly recommended. Gassho.

10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly Recommended, July 9, 2003

By 

Stephen R. Kaufman (Shaker Heights, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Buddhist History of the West, A (Suny Series in Religious Studies) (Paperback)

This is an incredibly insightful contribution to our understanding of why Western institutions have become so destuctive of the world around us while generally failing to provide people with a sense of meaning, direction, or pleasure in life. As Loy so clearly articulates, Buddhism offers a perspective that can transform our lives and, perhaps, our self-destructive culture.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Studies in Lack, November 30, 2009

By 

javafusion - See all my reviews

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This review is from: A Buddhist History of the West: Studies in Lack (S U N Y Series in Religious Studies) (Hardcover)

Freedom, progress, fame, money, the nation-state, corporate capitalism, mechanistic science, civil society, consumerism; hardly new themes, but this inquiry into the origins of our preoccupation with them casts them in a different light. Loy's lack approach has not attempted a "balanced" evaluation that weighs the positive against the negative consequences for our historical development - whatever that might mean. Instead, the argument has been that each is problematical in a way that has been little noticed, if at all.

If the argument is valid, what does it mean for us today? Our ever-growing technological powers imply that it is increasingly dangerous for us to be motivated by an unconscious drive for "being", for a grounding that can never be attained in the way we seek it.

From a traditional religious perspective, the most important characteristic of the modern world is its secularity, more precisely our understanding of ourselves as motivated by solely this-worldly possibilities. After lack itself, therefore, the most important thread that winds its way through all the chapters is the notion that a lack of perspective vitiates our usual distinction between sacred and secular. If the problem provided by our sense of lack cannot be avoided, the difference between sacred and secular is reduced to where we think our lack can be resolved. This leaves us, finally, with an urgent question: What does this critique mean for those of us now reluctant to believe in mythological notions of transcendence? If our "secular" responses are not working to assuage our lack, as Loy has argued, then what solutions are possible for those agnostic of other "higher" worlds? The author concludes his study with some reflections on this, which amplify some hints scattered here and there in the chapters.