Author: M G Chitkara
Publisher: APH Publishing Corporation
Year: 2002
Language: English
Pages: 1000
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8176481882
Description
As part of a 21-volume series, this book underscroes that The Buddha is aware of both possible extremes, which he emphatically tells us to avoid so as to take the middle course.
The Buddha in his inaugurating sermon said: these two extremes, O monks, are not to be practiced by one who has given up the world. What are the two? The one, devotion to lusts and pleasures, base, sensual, vulgar, ignoble, and useless, and other, devotion of self-mortification, painful, ignoble, and useless, and the other, devotion of self-mortification, painful, ignoble, and useless.
By avoiding these two extremes, O monks, the Tathagata has gained perfect knowledge, of the middle path, which produces insight and knowledge, and conduces to tranquility, to transcendent knowledge, to complete enlightenment, to Nirvana. What is this middle path, O monks? It is the Noble Eightfold Path.
Hence everybody very well knows Buddha’s declaration of following the middle path between the two extremes, in spite of his however, he could not keep from inclining to follow the rigorous side of his moral culture. His middle way, by which he intends to show the mean between the two extremes, indulging exuberant pleasure and leading the severe ascentic life of self-mortification, is still tinged with the colour of asceticism, though of a mild nature.
The philosophy of the Buddha has a special place and significance in Indian thought in as much as it was based on the original and independent thinking of one person Sidhartha called the Buddha. He opposed the Vedic system of thinking g and led to new religious way of life in India. All the orthodox system considered the scripture (the Vedas) as the ultimate ground of truth. Preferred to explain human life and its problems on positivistic basis.
The Buddha experienced both the paths and found them unsatisfactory and hence he preferred the middle path, which is neither indulgence non renunciation, but it consists in controlling desires to that they are subdued. This path is midway between the two paths and is, therefore, known as Middle Path.
The Madhyamaka as a systematic philosophy arose only in the second century CE with the figure of the great scholar and saint Acharya Nagarjuna. However, the essentials of the Madhymaka were anticipated by the earlier Buddhist tradition, as it developed out of the teachings of the Buddha Sakyamuni. The Madhyamaka represents a legitimate interpretation of the original teaching of the Buddha.
The law of interdependent origination (pratiyasamutpada) is universal acknowledged by all the Buddhist schools, including the Madhyamaka, to be the seesence of the teaching of the Buddha.
Contents
Introduction
A Revolutionary Concept of Socio Spiritual Engineering
Advent of Socialism
Agenda 2000: Integration of Science and Spiritual Wisdom
Austerity to Eternal life
Beyond Time and Space
Buddha in the Making
Buddha the Enlightened
Buddha, the Reformist
Desire: The Seed of Mind
Dhamma & Dhammapada
Edifice of Buddhism
Evolution of Consciousness
Four Purusharthas
Globally Accepted Ethics
God: The Uncaused Cause of Creation
Harmonious World Community
Himalayas,The Sangam Sthal
Interdependence: law of nature
Kalachakra for World Peace
Lotus Sutra
Madhyamaka has Soteriological orientation
Mind the Interrelatedness of thoughts
Moral Values & Pure Senses
Re-incarnation, Re-birth & Transmigration
The Self and Selflessness
Shunyata is Buddha
The Jataka Myth & Legend
Life After Death
The Middle Path, Sustainable Development
The Suffering
Truth in Madhyamaka
Vedic Tradition
Vipassana: Buddhas variegate contribution
Bibliography
Appendices
Nagarjuna’s letter to king Gautamiputra
Mulamadhyamakakarika Sanskrit (Roman English) & English
Index