A cornerstone of Buddhist philosophy, the doctrine of the four noble truths maintains that life is replete with suffering, desire is the cause of suffering, nirvana is the end of suffering, and the way to nirvana is the eightfold noble path. Although the attribution of this seminal doctrine to the historical Buddha is ubiquitous, Rethinking the Buddha demonstrates through a careful examination of early Buddhist texts that he did not envision them in this way. Shulman traces the development of what we now call the four noble truths, which in fact originated as observations to be cultivated during deep meditation. The early texts reveal that other central Buddhist doctrines, such as dependent-origination and selflessness, similarly derived from meditative observations. This book challenges the conventional view that the Buddha's teachings represent universal themes of human existence, allowing for a fresh, compelling explanation of the Buddhist theory of liberation.
Rethinking the Buddha: Early Buddhist Philosophy as Meditative Perception, Eviatar Shulman, Cambridge University Press, Paperback, 2017, 226 Pages, $35.99

Eviatar Shulman is a postdoctoral Fellow at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Scholion Center. He has taught at The Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University, Ben-Gurion University and Bar-Ilan University. His articles have appeared in History of Religions, the Journal of Indian Philosophy, the Indo-Iranian Journal, and the Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies. He is the author of two books in translation, The Root Verses of the Middle Way: A Translation of Nagarjuna's Mula-Madhyamaka-karika (2010) and Ancient Buddhist Poetry (forthcoming).

CONTENTS: Rethinking the Buddha
Preface			ix
Acknowledgments			xvi
List of Abbreviations			xviii
1	The structural relationship between philosophy and meditation		1
	1.1	The standard description of liberation	16
	1.2	"Cessation of perception and feeling"	32
	1.3	Broader theoretical perspectives	40
	1.4	Methodological considerations: which texts will be relied on and why?	50
2	A philosophy of being human		61
	2.1	Did the Buddha eschew metaphysics?	64
	2.2	Selflessness	76
	2.3	Dependent-origination (Paticcasamuppada)	86
	2.4	Summary	104
3	Mindfulness, or how philosophy becomes perception		106
	3.1	The Satipatthana-sutta's presentation of mindfulness	112
	3.2	On the relationship between the practice of mindfulness and jhana-meditation	126
	3.3	Summary	134
4	The four noble truths as meditative perception		136
	4.1	This	145
	4.2	The four truths and dependent-origination	158
	4.3	The four thruths and selflessness	164
	4.4	The fourth truth of the path	172
	4.5	The four observations and liberation	179
	4.6	The first sermon reconsidered	184
	4.7	Summary	187
5	Conclusion		188
References			193
Index			205