Buddhists (eBook)

Todd Lewis is Professor in the Religious Studies Department at The College of the Holy Cross. He is one of the world's leading authorities on the social history of Buddhism. His most recent book, Sugata Saurabha: A Poem on the Life of the Buddha by Chittadhar Hridaya of Nepal, was awarded the Toshide Numata Book Prize for the best book in Buddhist Studies in 2010 and the Khyentse Foundation Award in 2012, for the best translation of a Buddhist text. In 2011, Professor Lewis was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.

"...this volume goes far in filling this lacuna in our teaching resources by presenting a series of biographies of Buddhists that demonstrates the way in which they try and live their lives asBuddhists." (H-Net.org, 1 June 2015)

"This volume invites readers to understand what it can
mean to be Buddhist in manifold ways. Rather than approaching
Buddhism as an abstract entity by means of investigating ideas and
practices that form a coherent and fixed system, these humanistic
accounts enable one to situate and to comprehend various ways in
which people have actually LIVED and thereby impacted Buddhist
tradition. One comes away from reading this book with a
knowledge of how Buddhism is a force that is fluid, diverse, and
distinctive in its countless iterations."

John Holt, Bowdoin College

"I know of no other book in Buddhists Studies quite like
this, and it should make fascinating reading for those who really
want to understand what makes Buddhists and Buddhism
'tick', not as a collection of abstract ideas but as an
actual lived way of being in the world and looking forward to the
world(s) to come. Great stuff - this book is highly
recommended!"

Paul Williams, University of Bristol, and author of
Mahâyâna Buddhism: The doctrinal foundations
(Routledge)