First published in 1995. This study is intended as a contribution to the empirical study of religion, and in particular to the study of religious change. Using empirical method of using documents, interviews and experiments the author tests his old hypotheses in order to formulate new ones that my lead him to the truth. He focusses on the distinctions used throughout this book, that are between what people say they believe and say they do, and what they really believe and really do, using his research of the Sinhalese Buddhists in Ceylon

First published in 1995. This study is intended as a contribution to the empirical study of religion, and in particular to the study of religious change. Using empirical method of using documents, interviews and experiments the author tests his old hypotheses in order to formulate new ones that my lead him to the truth. He focusses on the distinctions used throughout this book, that are between what people say they believe and say they do, and what they really believe and really do, using his research of the Sinhalese Buddhists in Ceylon

When this book was first published in 1971, under the title Buddhist Precept and Practice, The Times Literary Supplement Wrote: This is an epoch-making piece of research which must mark a change in direction and appreciation if it is taken seriously and studied in details. Dr. Gombrich is concerned with religious change in belief and practice, not only in modern times but over the two and a half millennia during which Buddhism has flourished. He concludes that Sinhalese Buddhism has been remarkably conservative and rejects the assumption that it degenerated from an original high standard, by questioning whether it ever was as pure as a superficial reading of classical texts might suggest. It would be very difficult to provide a combination of scholarship and sympathy such as that which pervades Dr. Gombrich s book and makes it a landmark in the study of religion. Out of print for many years, the book is now republished corrected but substantially unchanged. Richard Gombrich has been Boden Professor of Sanskrit, Oxford University and Professor Fellow of Balliol College since 1976. He has published 8 books and about 40 articles, mostly on Buddhism. His most recent books are Theravada Buddhism: A social History from Ancient Benares to Modern Colombo and Buddhism Transformed: Religious Change in Sri Lanka; the latter is intended to do for modern Sinhalese Buddhism in the cities what Precept and Practice did for its traditional manifestation in the countryside.

When this book was first published in 1971, under the title Buddhist Precept and Practice, The Times Literary Supplement Wrote: This is an epoch-making piece of research which must mark a change in direction and appreciation if it is taken seriously and studied in details. Dr. Gombrich is concerned with religious change in belief and practice, not only in modern times but over the two and a half millennia during which Buddhism has flourished. He concludes that Sinhalese Buddhism has been remarkably conservative and rejects the assumption that it degenerated from an original high standard, by questioning whether it ever was as pure as a superficial reading of classical texts might suggest. It would be very difficult to provide a combination of scholarship and sympathy such as that which pervades Dr. Gombrich s book and makes it a landmark in the study of religion. Out of print for many years, the book is now republished corrected but substantially unchanged. Richard Gombrich has been Boden Professor of Sanskrit, Oxford University and Professor Fellow of Balliol College since 1976. He has published 8 books and about 40 articles, mostly on Buddhism. His most recent books are Theravada Buddhism: A social History from Ancient Benares to Modern Colombo and Buddhism Transformed: Religious Change in Sri Lanka; the latter is intended to do for modern Sinhalese Buddhism in the cities what Precept and Practice did for its traditional manifestation in the countryside.

In 1956, Theravada Buddhists in Sri Lanka and throughout Southeast Asia celebrated the 2500th anniversary of the Buddha`s entry into Nirvana and of the establishment of the Buddhist tradition. This book examines this revival of Theravada Buddhism among the laity of Sri Lanka, analysing its origins and its growth up to the present-day. Within the spectrum of reinterpretations that have comprised the revival, the book focuses on four important types or patterns of reinterpretation and response. It examines the rational reformism of the early Protestant Buddhists led by Anagarika Dharmapala and the conservative neotraditionalism of the Jayanti period.Particular attention is given to two of the most recent and dynamic reforms, the insight meditation movement, breaking with tradition, has opened the path of meditation to lay people, enabling them to seek Nirvana without renouncing the world. The sarvodaya Shramadana movement has addressed the social context, reinterpreting the Buddhist heritage to derive authentic forms of Buddhist social development. Comprising this series of interpretations and options for lay Buddhists, the Buddhist revival represents a new gradual path to Nirvana.

This book, first published in 1994, is a compendium of new translations of certain works regarded as fundamental texts in the Serene Reflection Buddhist Tradition (Sōtō Zen). All the texts were in Chinese, either as original works or as translations from Sanskrit. Several of them are central to the ceremonial not only of the Sōtō Zen Tradition but also of other Mahayana Buddhist traditions as well.

Modern Japanese Buddhist monks of all denominations differ from those in other Asian countries because they frequently marry, drink alcohol, and eat meat. This has caused Buddhist scholars and practitioners generally to assume that early Japanese monastics had little interest in precepts and ordinations. Some medieval Japanese exegetes, however, were obsessively concerned with these topics as they strove to understand what it meant to be a Buddhist. This landmark collection of essays by Paul Groner, one of the leading authorities on Tendai Buddhism, examines the medieval Tendai School, which dominated Japanese Buddhism at that time, to uncover the differences in understanding and interpreting monastic precepts and ordinations. Rather than provide an unbroken narrative account—made virtually impossible due to the number of undated apocryphal texts and those lost in the numerous fires and warfare that beset Tendai temples as well as the difficulties of tracing how texts were used—Groner employs a multifaceted approach, focusing on individual monks, texts, ceremonies, exegetical problems, and institutional issues. Early chapters look at a major source of Tendai precepts, the apocryphal Brahma’s Net Sutra; the Tendai scholar Annen’s (b. 841) interpretations of the universal bodhisattva precept ordination and the historical background of his commentary on the subject; Tendai perfect-sudden precepts and the Vinaya; and the role of confession in the bodhisattva ordination. Groner goes on to discuss the Lotus Sutra, another key text for Tendai precepts, and the monk Kōen (1262–1317) and his role in developing the consecrated ordination, which is still performed today. Later essays introduce Jitsudō Ninkū’s (1307–1388) system of training by doctrinal debate and his commentary on ordinations; doctrinal discussions of killing; and Tendai discussions among several lineages on whether the precepts can be lost or violated. Many of the issues discussed in the volume—particularly how to distinguish various types of Buddhist practitioners and how to conduct ordinations—continue to preoccupy Tendai monks centuries later. The book concludes with an examination of the effects of early Tendai precepts on modern practice.

Nirmala S. Salgado offers a groundbreaking study of the politics of representation of Buddhist nuns. Challenging assumptions about writing on gender and Buddhism, Salgado raises important theoretical questions about the applicability of liberal feminist concepts and language to the practices of Buddhist nuns. Based on extensive research in Sri Lanka as well as on interviews with Theravada and Tibetan nuns from around the world, Salgado's study invites a reconsideration of female renunciation. How do scholarly narratives continue to be complicit in reinscribing colonialist and patriarchal stories about Buddhist women? In what ways have recent debates contributed to the construction of the subject of the Theravada bhikkhuni? How do key Buddhist concepts such as dukkha, samsara, and sila ground female renunciant practices? Salgado's provocative analysis of modern discourses about the supposed empowerment of nuns challenges interpretations of female renunciation articulated in terms of secular notions such as ''freedom'' in renunciation, and questions the idea that the higher ordination of nuns constitutes a movement in which female renunciants act as agents seeking to assert their autonomy in a struggle against patriarchal norms. Salgado argues that the concept of a global sisterhood of nuns-an idea grounded in a notion of equality as a universal ideal-promotes a discourse of dominance about the lives of non-Western women and calls for more nuanced readings of the everyday renunciant practices and lives of Buddhist nuns. Buddhist Nuns and Gendered Practice is essential reading for anyone interested in the connections between religion and power, subjectivity and gender, and feminism and postcolonialism.