Wizards with magical powers to heal the sick, possess the bodies of their followers, and defend their tradition against outside threats are far from the typical picture of Buddhism. Yet belief in wizard-saints who protect their devotees and intervene in the world is widespread among Burmese Buddhists. The Buddha’s Wizards is a historically informed ethnographic study that explo...(展开全部)

The Buddha prophesied that his teachings would vanish a few hundred years after his passing, creating an existential dilemma for Chinese Buddhists on the brink of Buddhism’s disappearance. This book examines the origins of this prophecy and the famie 法灭 (‘end of Buddhism’) belief in Indian and Central Asian Buddhism, and the centuries-long struggle of Chinese Buddhists to inter...(展开全部)

A fascinating exploration of the role that magic has played in the history of BuddhismAs far back as we can see in the historical record, Buddhist monks and nuns have offered services including healing, divination, rain making, aggressive magic, and love magic to local clients. Studying this history, scholar Sam van Schaik concludes that magic and healing have played a key role...(展开全部)

This is volume 13 of the Kuroda Institute's excellent Studies in East Asian Buddhism series. The present volume grew out of the conference "Buddhism in the Sung," hosted by the University of Illinois in April 1996. This volume is the first extended scholarly treatment of Buddhism in the Sung (960-1279) to be published in a Western language. It focuses largely on elite figures, ...(展开全部)

This volume is the result of an international collaboration of forty scholars and provides a comprehensive resource on Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in their Chinese, Korean, and Japanese contexts from the first few centuries of the common era right up to the present.--Publisher.

Taking two early Tibetan texts as his starting point, Jacob Dalton explores the ways in which violence has been integral to the development of Tibetan Buddhism. Paying particular attention to the so-called age of fragmentation, Tibet's dark age that spanned from 842 to 986 C.E., he draws on previously unstudied manuscripts discovered in the famous "library cave" near Dunhuang, ...(展开全部)

First published in 1981, The Renewal of Buddhism in China broke new ground in the study of Chinese Buddhism. An interdisciplinary study of a Buddhist master and reformer in late Ming China, it challenged the conventional view that Buddhism had reached its height under the Tang dynasty (618–907) and steadily declined afterward. Chün-fang Yü details how in sixteenth-century China...(展开全部)

On a rainy day, Sylvester finds a magic pebble that can make wishes come true. But when a lion frightens him on his way home, Sylvester makes a wish that brings unexpected results. How Sylvester is eventually reunited with his loving family and restored to his true self makes a story that is beautifully tender and filled with magic. Illustrated with William Steig's glowing pic...(展开全部)

Sylvester the donkey finds a magic pebble and unthinkingly wishes himself a rock when frightened by a lion. Although safe from the lion, Sylvester cannot hold the pebble to wish himself into a donkey again. Caldecott Medal winner. Full-color illustrations.