A Less Traveled Path

Saddharmasmrtyupasthanansutra chapter 2: Critically edited with A Study on Its Structure and Significance for the Development of Buddhist Meditation. Volume I and Volume II

by Daniel M. Stuart, edited by Ernst Steinkellner

Book cover: A Less Traveled Path

Extent: 642 pages

Publisher: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press

Subjects: Buddhist Studies

Language: English

Paperback (Published)

(December 2015)

ISBN: 9783700177630

Price: $109.00

In stock

A Less Traveled Path brings to light unique textual evidence of an important transitional moment in Indian Buddhism. This book includes a critical edition and translation of the second chapter of a third- or fourth-century Buddhist Sanskrit text, the Saddharmasmrtyupasthanasutra, which sheds light on the so-called “Middle Period” of Indian Buddhism. In his introduction, Stuart argues that meditative practice, rhetoric, and philosophy were intimately tied to one another when the Saddharmasmrtyupasthanasutra was redacted, and that it serves as an important historical touchstone for understanding the development of Buddhist mind-centered metaphysics. This development is historically significant because it marks a major shift in Indian Buddhist religious practice, which conditioned the emergence of fully developed Mahayana path schemes and power-oriented tantric ritual traditions in the centuries that followed the text’s compilation.

  • By (author) Daniel M Stuart
  • Edited by Ernst Steinkellner