A multivolume series with more than 5OO contributing scholars worldwide, presenting the spiritual wisdom of the human race in its historical unfolding, from prehistoric times, through the great religions to the meeting of traditions at the present.
Of all the great religions, it is Buddhism that has focused most intensively on that aspect of religion that we call spirituality. No religion has set a higher value on states of spiritual insight and liberation, and none has set worth so methodologically and with such a wealth of reflection the various paths and disciplines by which such states are reached.
The aim of the two volumes on Buddhism in the World Spirituality series is to survey the entire tradition both chronologically and geographically in the varieties of its historical forms and in the great diversity of its teachings. As the first volume covered the earlier career of Buddhism as it unfolded in India, Southeast Asia, Tibet, and China, the present volume takes up further developments in China, Korea, and Japan, including Ch'an (Zen) and new Buddhist movements.
The first volume was dominated by the speculative and analytical spirit of India, and its methodical ascetic quest for a definitive liberation (moksa, nirvāna), a clinically pure emptying out of all illusion. The present volume, in contrast, is pervaded by the Chinese realization of enlightenment here and now and by the practical, down-to-earth, this worldly terms in which the enlightened vision was expressed and enacted.