Reading and Meditating [Session 03 in English] on Buddhism (Edward Conze)
Channel: Buddhism 4 Happiness
Date: 28/12/2018

Reading from a book on Buddhism [titled Buddhism: Its Essence and Development] by scholar and translator Edward Conze.

Upon meditating on what little I read from that book, I come up with the idea that the various forms of Buddhism are flavored by the culture that they arise from. And every Buddhist land has produced its distinct and beautiful art and literature. Examples are Tibet when compared to, say, Thailand or Japan. In the book Conze aims to extract the essence of Buddhism,  still we need to take a look at the histories of the various flavors of Buddhism across the many Buddhist lands. Buddhism has attracted me through the particular culture of Tibet and its art. Tibetan Buddhism has been my favorite flavor of Buddhism for the past ten years. 

Besides the attractive art and cultures encountered when studying Buddhism, one encounters rich literature and teachings on the practice of meditation. Meditation and Buddhism go together like a horse and carriage. Buddhism is well known for providing clear instructions and guidance on meditation. In the West [Europe, the Americas, Australia, and Western-influenced lands], mindfulness-based meditation practice has become very prominent and mainstream. One could say that mindfulness meditation was derived, extracted, repackaged 
 and marketed from an essential component or tool of Buddhist meditation, that tool being that of paying attention to what is happening.

In this session I am reading from "Buddhism: Its Essence and Development" by Edward Conze
Edward Conze was one of the great Buddhist translators - a pioneer scholar who introduced key Buddhist texts to the Western world. This timely new edition of his Buddhist classic reminds us that true happiness is not to be found in material comfort and earthly satisfaction but in the pursuit of a higher ideal. Demonstrating throughout his heartfelt response to the fundamental wisdom of the Buddha, Conze presents a readable introduction to the array of doctrines, methods, and literature that have developed in the many schools of Buddhism as a result of their different approaches to the goal. 
An excellent review of this book retrieved from Goodreads by a reader going by the name of West  follows:
""The earlier work I read by Edward Conze was a history of the spread of Buddhism. Intentionally or not, that work pointed out how the faith has not been as devoid of the blood and oppression associated with other religions as some western orientalists, or indeed some Buddhists, would lead us to believe. This work, however, focuses on elucidating the undeniably impressive and, at times, beautiful system of thought that constitutes what seems to western observers as the most philosophical of all the world's major religions. 
First off, Conze makes clear that Buddhism is not, in fact, philosophical. The sense that a western reader has of finding syllogistic argumentation in ancient Buddhist texts is a rationalization of the western mind, out to digest a foreign concept of thought in its own terms. Having said that, as one who has studied western philosophy, I am the first to admit that I interpreted Conze's survey of this thought as philosophy, and I often found striking analogies to many western thinkers, particularly those from the last 150 or so years. Indeed, to impose philosophical language on Buddhism, I would say that many of its schools could be said to be anti-philosophical, which is why, read as philosophy, they sometimes seem so contemporary. 
""
Retrieved from a review written by William West, concerning the Edward Conze book "Buddhism: Its Essence and Development" although this is only a portion of it. Read complete review at https://tinyurl.com/EConzeBuddhismreview


DateTimeStamp: 20181227 08 03 19

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