Buddhism: A Cultural Perspective

by William R. La Fleur

This book begins with Buddhism's involvement in the culture and thought of India, and observes its moves into other, very different contexts: China, Southeast Asia, Tibet, Japan, and even the West, to a limited extent. The book accepts the diversity within Buddhism, giving roughly equal treatment to its two major traditions -- the Theravada and the Mahayana. KEY TOPICS: Probes the philosophy and religion of Buddhism and how they relate to cultural traditions.

Paperback

First published March 2, 1988

Reviews

[Angie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hate it when professors assign books, and then don’t assign the entire book to read. With this book, there were less than 10 extra pages I had to read in order to complete this book, and they were, by far, the most interesting part of the entire book!

(They were on self-immolation, specifically the incident in Vietnam in 1963 when a Buddhist monk, Thich Quang Duc, set himself on fire as a form of protest.)

This was a very good introductory book to Buddhism and I would recommend it to people who are looking to study Buddhism. It isn’t too heavy-handed, and has many poetic and humorous parts.

I was amused to read that some believe that the Buddha died by eating some bad food, which he forced his cook to give to him and him alone, realizing it was bad. "The disease of dysentery and sharp pains afflicted him even to the point of threatening his life" but he continued eating, so that his cook would not eat the leftovers and die himself.

Hey, I’ve had dysentery, too! The Buddha and I have something in common. :) Only dysentery didn’t kill me, thankfully. (Obviously!)

[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a speed-read textbook for me, primarily looking for points relevant to discussing Buddhism in the context of Japanese history for - surprise! - my Japanese History class. I like the approach that the author takes, considering Buddhism in the various cultural contexts in which it has been found - in India, China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam and others. One of the ideas that I took away from it is that more than simply bursting into a given culture at a static point in its development, Buddhism itself was being developed in the process of meeting with a culture, as that culture itself was undergoing continual and natural change. As far as details about Buddhist philosophy and practice, I learned quite a bit even from the less thorough reading that I did. This book brought to my attention that Westerners, even with the best intentions can be quite misguided or misinformed in their notions about the Buddhist tradition.