Reddit Reddit reviews Buddha (Penguin Lives Biographies)

We found 10 Reddit comments about Buddha (Penguin Lives Biographies). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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Buddha (Penguin Lives Biographies)
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10 Reddit comments about Buddha (Penguin Lives Biographies):

u/NomadicVagabond · 5 pointsr/religion

First of all, can I just say how much I love giving and receiving book recommendations? I was a religious studies major in college (and was even a T.A. in the World Religions class) so, this is right up my alley. So, I'm just going to take a seat in front of my book cases...

General:

  1. A History of God by Karen Armstrong

  2. The Great Transformation by Karen Armstrong

  3. Myths: gods, heroes, and saviors by Leonard Biallas (highly recommended)

  4. Natural History of Religion by David Hume

  5. Beyond Tolerance by Gustav Niebuhr

  6. Acts of Faith by Eboo Patel (very highly recommended, completely shaped my view on pluralism and interfaith dialogue)

  7. The Evolution of God by Robert Wright

    Christianity:

  8. Tales of the End by David L. Barr

  9. The Historical Jesus by John Dominic Crossan

  10. Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography by John Dominic Crossan

  11. The Birth of Christianity by John Dominic Crossan

  12. Who Wrote the New Testament? by Burton Mack

  13. Jesus in America by Richard Wightman Fox

  14. The Five Gospels by Robert Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar (highly recommended)

  15. Remedial Christianity by Paul Alan Laughlin

    Judaism:

  16. The Jewish Mystical Tradition by Ben Zion Bokser

  17. Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Elliot Friedman

    Islam:

  18. Muhammad by Karen Armstrong

  19. No God but God by Reza Aslan

  20. Approaching the Qur'an: The Early Revelations by Michael Sells

    Buddhism:

  21. Buddha by Karen Armstrong

  22. Entering the Stream ed. Samuel Bercholz & Sherab Chodzin Kohn

  23. The Life of Milarepa translated by Lobsang P. Lhalungpa

  24. Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism by John Powers

  25. Zen Flesh, Zen Bones compiled by Paul Reps (a classic in Western approached to Buddhism)

  26. Buddhist Thought by Paul Williams (if you're at all interested in Buddhist doctrine and philosophy, you would be doing yourself a disservice by not reading this book)

    Taoism:

  27. The Essential Chuang Tzu trans. by Sam Hamill & J.P. Seaton

    Atheism:

  28. Atheism by Julian Baggini

  29. The Future of an Illusion by Sigmund Freud

  30. Doubt: A History by Jennifer Michael Hecht

  31. When Atheism Becomes Religion by Chris Hedges

  32. Atheism: The Case Against God by George H. Smith
u/Mjonasson · 3 pointsr/religion

Weeeell, it's quite hard to explain it all in a post on reddit. First of all, Buddhist does not consider Buddha to become or transform into a god.

My advice is to read some book about it. For instance Buddha by Karen Armstrong. It's about the person Buddha rather than his teachings. http://www.amazon.com/Buddha-Penguin-Lives-Biographies-Armstrong/dp/0143034367

Good luck!

u/fernly · 3 pointsr/TrueAtheism

Well if you like Armstrong, she wrote Buddha but this was part of the Penguin short biographies series and that rather restricted her scope. For that and other reasons I didn't much like it (mine is on top if you look at the negative reviews).

Huston Smith's The World's Religions includes Hinduism and Buddhism. It's regarded as a classic. Search Amazon on "history religion" to see many others.

u/cahoium · 2 pointsr/books

Buddha by Karen Armstrong is quite good. Non-fiction though, don't know if that's what you were looking for, as vanishingstar said.

u/atheistcoffee · 1 pointr/Buddhism

Well, I think Zen Koans are different than Buddha stories. Here are a few Koans - then are usually short stories and illustrations that force you to consider truth and meaning and reality and face your doubt.

A Buddha story is usually a longer account of an event that illustrates a deeper meaning, like this:

>The Buddha was sitting under a tree talking to his disciples when a man came and spit on his face. He wiped it off, and he asked the man, “What next? What do you want to say next?” The man was a little puzzled because he himself never expected that when you spit on somebody’s face, he will ask, “What next?” He had no such experience in his past. He had insulted people and they had become angry and they had reacted. Or if they were cowards and weaklings, they had smiled, trying to bribe the man. But Buddha was like neither, he was not angry nor in any way offended, nor in any way cowardly. But just matter-of-factly he said, “What next?” There was no reaction on his part.

>Buddha’s disciples became angry, they reacted. His closest disciple, Ananda, said, “This is too much, and we cannot tolerate it. He has to be punished for it. Otherwise everybody will start doing things like this.”

>Buddha said, “You keep silent. He has not offended me, but you are offending me. He is new, a stranger. He must have heard from people something about me, that this man is an atheist, a dangerous man who is throwing people off their track, a revolutionary, a corrupter. And he may have formed some idea, a notion of me. He has not spit on me, he has spit on his notion. He has spit on his idea of me because he does not know me at all, so how can he spit on me?

>“If you think on it deeply,” Buddha said, “he has spit on his own mind. I am not part of it, and I can see that this poor man must have something else to say because this is a way of saying something. Spitting is a way of saying something. There are moments when you feel that language is impotent: in deep love, in intense anger, in hate, in prayer. There are intense moments when language is impotent. Then you have to do something. When you are angry, intensely angry, you hit the person, you spit on him, you are saying something. I can understand him. He must have something more to say, that’s why I’m asking, “What next?”

>The man was even more puzzled! And Buddha said to his disciples, “I am more offended by you because you know me, and you have lived for years with me, and still you react.”

>Puzzled, confused, the man returned home. He could not sleep the whole night. When you see a Buddha, it is difficult, impossible to sleep again the way you used to sleep before. Again and again he was haunted by the experience. He could not explain it to himself, what had happened. He was trembling all over and perspiring. He had never come across such a man; he shattered his whole mind and his whole pattern, his whole past.

>The next morning he was back there. He threw himself at Buddha’s feet. Buddha asked him again, “What next? This, too, is a way of saying something that cannot be said in language. When you come and touch my feet, you are saying something that cannot be said ordinarily, for which all words are a little narrow; it cannot be contained in them.” Buddha said, “Look, Ananda, this man is again here, he is saying something. This man is a man of deep emotions.”

>The man looked at Buddha and said, “Forgive me for what I did yesterday.”

>Buddha said, “Forgive? But I am not the same man to whom you did it. The Ganges goes on flowing, it is never the same Ganges again. Every man is a river. The man you spit upon is no longer here. I look just like him, but I am not the same, much has happened in these twenty-four hours! The river has flowed so much. So I cannot forgive you because I have no grudge against you.”

>“And you also are new. I can see you are not the same man who came yesterday because that man was angry and he spit, whereas you are bowing at my feet, touching my feet. How can you be the same man? You are not the same man, so let us forget about it. Those two people, the man who spit and the man on whom he spit, both are no more. Come closer. Let us talk of something else.”

I don't really have a source for these stories, I just try to collect them when I see them. I usually just get books on Buddhism and read them, and buy the ones I like. You can usually order most any book from your local library for free. Each person has different needs and grows in a different way, so what is meaningful to me may be different from what is meaningful to you.

I gravitate mostly to Zen, and the idea of Direct Pointing. So I like to read books like D.T. Suzuki's Zen Buddhism. I am also currently reading The Life of the Buddha: According to the Pali Canon for a more complete understanding of the Buddha and his teachings - and so far, it is fantastic. A more basic book on the Buddha, and a good place to start in my opinion, is Buddha by Karen Armstrong. However, it is somewhat her interpretation of the Pali Canon's account... and many Buddhists would rather go directly to the source... but I think it's a good beginning.

I also bought this version of the Tao Te Ching. I think it's fantastic, even though it's technically Tao instead of Buddhism... but I find it practically indistinguishable from Koans in its value and wisdom. And the text can be found online for free, but there are many translations.

As mentioned before, I would always first recommend The Way Of Zen as it had the most profound effect on my life and mind of all the books I've read.

Also, make sure to engage in meditation. The direct realization of non-duality is of utmost importance. Book learning and words are the shadows of meaning - direct realization is entering in the gates.

u/abhayakara · 1 pointr/Buddhism

I found this book surprisingly helpful: https://www.amazon.com/Buddha-Penguin-Lives-Biographies-Armstrong/dp/0143034367/ref=sr_1_13?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1479845623&sr=1-13&keywords=buddha

I also recommend reading The Mind Illuminated -- it won't tell you much about Buddhist tradition, but it will tell you how to practice, and practice is the bare essence of Buddhism.

u/EnkiduEnkita · 1 pointr/AskHistorians

Under Buddhism, yes, this is generally the belief followed. However, I believe that OP was specifically asking about historical substance relating to the buddha called Siddartha Gotama.

Personally, I would reccomend Karen Armstrong's book on his life, as it provides very well-consolidated insights into the world that we presume Siddartha came from. Unfortunately, I don't remember any of the texts I've read well enough to provide much more insight than that.

EDIT: Apparently Karen Armstrong is less popular than I had anticipated. I wasn't aware of this.

u/sunstart · 1 pointr/Buddhism

I really enjoy the book ‘Buddha’ by Karen Armstrong.

It’s less a history about Buddhism, but more a micro-history about the founder of Buddhism.

I’m not sure if it’s what you’re looking for though, because Armstrong freely acknowledges that the biography doesn’t match up to modern standards of historical biography. There’s just not enough to go on, and the myths can’t be untangled from what history remains. Still, it’s probably one of the best sources you can get on this particular topic from a neutral POV.

u/The_Dead_See · 1 pointr/Buddhism

Most of the Pali Canon is in the form of the Buddha responding to one question or challenge or another, so you can sort of infer a personality from much of that.

I enjoyed Karen Armstrong's book Buddha which tries to paint a picture of what the actual Buddha may have been like by placing him in his correct historical and sociological context as an ascetic wanderer, philosopher and teacher on the Gangetic Plain of 2,500 years ago.

u/georgesmileyface · 1 pointr/books

Buddha by Karen Armstrong. A good short guide to what's known about his life, and what he actually taught (as opposed to what all the successive generations of Buddhist sects have been teaching).