The Foundations of Buddhism

The book is organized as a broad foundational guide to Buddhism, beginning with preliminary materials such as maps, tables, and a note on Buddhist languages, before moving into ten major chapters. Chapter 1, “The Buddha: The Story of the Awakened One,” introduces the historical Buddha, the legendary Buddha, and the nature of a buddha. Chapter 2, “The Word of the Buddha: Buddhist Scriptures and Schools,” explains Dharma as text, practice, and realization, together with the first recitation of scriptures, Sūtra, Abhidharma, early Buddhist schools, and Mahāyāna sūtras. Chapter 3, “Four Truths: The Disease, the Cause, the Cure, the Medicine,” presents the structure of the Buddha’s teaching through suffering, its origin, cessation, and the path. Chapter 4, “The Buddhist Community: Monks, Nuns, and Lay Followers,” studies the Buddhist order, Vinaya, monastic discipline, spiritual life, and lay community. Chapter 5, “The Buddhist Cosmos,” explains Buddhist world-systems, cosmology, psychology, folk religion, and modern science. Chapter 6, “No Self: Personal Continuity and Dependent Arising,” examines the Buddhist critique of self, continuity, ignorance, attachment, dependent arising, and the question of whether the Buddha denied the self. Chapter 7, “The Buddhist Path: The Way of Calm and Insight,” discusses faith, good conduct, calm meditation, insight meditation, and their relationship. Chapter 8, “The Abhidharma: The Higher Teaching,” introduces Abhidharma texts, authors, Buddhist analysis, consciousness, karma, rebirth, and doctrinal problems. Chapter 9, “The Mahāyāna: The Great Vehicle,” explains the Bodhisattva ideal, transcendent buddhas, emptiness, Madhyamaka, Yogācāra, and tathāgatagarbha. Chapter 10, “Evolving Traditions of Buddhism: South, East, North, and West,” surveys Theravāda Buddhism in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, East Asian Buddhism in China, Korea, and Japan, Tibetan and Mongolian Buddhism, and Buddhism in the West.