商品簡介
Join a rigorous scholar and Buddhist monk on a brisk tour of rebirth from ancient doctrine to contemporary debates.
German Buddhist monk and university professor Bhikkhu Analayo had not given much attention to the topic of rebirth before some friends asked him to explore the treatment of the issue in early Buddhist texts. This succinct volume presents his findings, approaching the topic from four directions. The first chapter examines the doctrine of rebirth as it is presented in the earliest Buddhist sources and the way it relates to core doctrinal principles. The second chapter reviews debates about rebirth throughout Buddhist history and up to modern times, noting the role of confirmation bias in evaluation of evidence. Chapter 3 reviews the merits of current research on rebirth, including near-death experience, past-life regression, and children who recall previous lives. The chapter concludes with an examination of xenoglossy, the ability to speak languages one has not learned previously, and chapter 4 examines the particular case of Dhammaruwan, a Sri Lankan boy who chants Pali texts that he does not appear to have learned in his present life. Rebirth in Early Buddhism and Current Research brings together the many strands of the debate on rebirth in one place, making it both comprehensive and compact. It is not a polemic but an interrogation of the evidence, and it leaves readers to come to their own conclusions.
作者簡介
Bhikkhu Analayo is a scholar of early Buddhism and a popular meditation teacher. Born in Germany in 1962, he took ordination as a Buddhist monk in 1995 and completed his PhD at the University of Peradeniya in 2000 and his habilitation research at the University of Marburg in 2007. He has published extensively on the early Buddhist texts since his first book, Satipa??hana: The Direct Path to Liberation, in 2003, aided by his adept facility with early Buddhist languages, including Sanskrit, Pali, Chinese, and Tibetan. Bhikkhu Analayo is a professor of the Centre for Buddhist Studies at the University of Hamburg and a core faculty member at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies in Massachusetts.
