 |
 |
 |
|
"Their Lives, Their Works, Their Legacy"
"Great Disciples of the Buddha" is a unique book- a collection of biographical profiles of some twenty-four extraordinary men and women whom the Buddha himself named his most outstanding disciples. The stories of their lives presented here, based on the Pali Canon and its commentaries, offer a comprehensive record of the most ancient traditions concerning the Buddha's own direct Dharma heirs.
In these engaging tales, told with an eye to the details of ordinary human concerns, you will meet a fascinating and diverse array of people- thinkers and seekers, princes and queens, merchants and housewives, even a serial killer- whose lives were transformed by their encounter with the Buddha.
In his editor's introduction, Bhikkhu Bodhi encourages you to approach this book "as an exercise in comtemplation rather than as an enterprise of objective scholarship. The Buddha says that contemplation of the noble disciples is an essential part of the meditative life.... To contemplate the noble ones, who broke the bonds of egotism and reached the heights of purity and wisdom, is a great encouragement for those who still find themselves far from deliverance. By their examples, these exalted persons inspire us with confidence in the emancipating power of the Dhamma... The stories of the great disciples are just as much a part of the Buddhist heritage as the formal doctrines and practices of Buddhsim: not mere fragments of ancient history, dead and vapid, but a living and luminous legacy that has come down to us at this critical juncture of human history, when our very survival hinges on the capacity for self transcendence these disciples so vividly demonstrate in their lives."
Great Disciples of the Buddha, Thera and Hecker, Wisdom Pubications, Hardcover, 411 pages, $29.95 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
