Customer Reviews

The Buddhist Tradition: In India, China and Japan

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This book is a very good introduction to the Buddhist tradition, historically and cross-culturally. The book incorporates excerpts from basic scriptures and major writings, in an effort to represent the mainstream of Buddhist thought. Although, as they state in the preface, there is "an enormous diversity within Buddhism and no fixed standard of orthodoxy" the editor and authors succeed in presenting the "common ground of discussion" they aim to reveal. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in beginning a study of Buddhist history, thought and culture.

This book was used as a text in my university Buddhism class. It is not a detailed explanation of Buddhism but rather gives a glimpse into various traditions and important writings that have contributed to the growth of Buddhism. It quotes extensively from different sources and provides a glimpse into key points in history and from the lives of those who shaped Buddhism. Excellent book for students of Buddhism because of its informative and well-rounded approach. It may not be the best book, if read alone, for the more casual reader unfamiliar with the fundamentals of Buddhism.

This book is not an history of Buddhism in India, China and Japan. It is a reader broadly divided into 13 sections. These are briefly introduced by the editor. The editor's intrusions are minimal and it is rarely clear why certain "representative" passages have been chosen, and others left out. That said, I felt the book adequately covered the traditions it sought to represent. And, for a text book, it's quite inexpensive.

Theodore de Bary has produced a fine summary of the Buddhist Tradition in India, China, and Japan. For the introductory student of Buddhism, who wants to get a bit beyond the cursory introduction of most college world religion texts, de Bary's compilation offers a very useful and informative introduction. Inside are collected excerpts of some Buddhist texts, from the time of Buddhism's inception in India to it final arrival in Japan centuries later. The text excludes much of Southeast Asia, so it has very little on the Theravada or Hinayana tradition, but it explains in concise form the differentiation of the Mahayana and Hinayana schools. Most dense and difficult (or perhaps just the most tedious) are the Chinese sources on Buddhism and emptiness, following the period of Nagarjuna. There are, however, many sources of rich information that a student of Buddhism will still find useful today.

This is a huge overview of the many sects and schools of Buddhism that developed in India, China, and then Japan. There is very little detail here, and the authors/editors don't dwell on anyone or any subject for long before moving on, but if you are looking for a survey, that is the book's great strength. Another thing to be aware of is that aside from introductions to each country's tradition at the start of the three major sections, the authors/editors prefer to say little and let Buddhist texts (in translation of course) speak for themselves. This might be a negative if you are looking for hand-holding and scholarly exegesis, but personally I found it very rewarding - no book on Buddhism I've ever read has made the various sutras and other texts so accessible, and in such manageable and well-chosen little chunks.

I take one star off because at times a book of this length, yet with no stylistic consistency (due to the enormous variety of sources translated here) and little thematic unity can drag. Reading excerpt after excerpt can get tiring at times when you are looking for the deeper or unitive meaning of what is being taught. Another thing is there's a slight and generally well-concealed, but still evident, bias toward the Mahayana evidenced here, and the occasional derogatory remark toward the selfish little Hinayana school. To be expected, of course, from scholars whose area of expertise is purely Mahayanist nations (China/Japan), but out of place in an otherwise so balanced and scholarly work.

All in all though this book will let you read a lot of the texts/sutras as they are in themselves, and introduce you to an enormous number of Buddhist thinkers, mystics, schools, traditions, lineages, and so on, while providing a decent picture of how Buddhism developed in India and then spread through China to Japan. Recommended for anyone interested in Buddhist history.

I appreciated this book much more than either the old or new "Buddhist Scriptures" volumes from Penguin. There's no denying that de Bary presents snippets rather than fuller texts, but at least to the neophyte, the fuller texts in other anthologies contain a good deal of dross.

If you're going to pick up one book to investigate the gist of Buddhist (and not just Theravada or Zen or whatnot) thought, then you could do a great deal worse than to pick up this one.

it's a great book. i had to get it for buddhism class. love it.