A Concise History of Buddhism
From 500 BCE-1900 CE
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Narrated by:
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Jinananda
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By:
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Andrew Skilton
About this listen
An ideal introduction to the history of Buddhism.
Andrew Skilton - Senior Research Fellow in Buddhist Studies, Kings College, London - explains the development of the basic concepts of Buddhism and its spread across the continents during its 2,500 years of history.
He begins with a close look at Buddhism in India, where it flourished until the 12th/13th century CE, charting the growth of different schools and practices. By the time it disappeared from its homeland midway through the millennium, it had become established in Central Asia and the Far East in a variety of forms.
Skilton looks at Buddhism in Sri Lanka, Burma and Southeast Asia, China, Korea, Japan, Tibet and Mongolia and in countries where there are now only archeological remains, such as Iran. This is a fascinating and useful insight into the historical progress of one of the world's great religions.
Download the accompanying reference guide.©1994 Andrew Skilton (P)2016 Ukemi Productions LtdListeners also enjoyed...
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Moving from the Paleolithic age to the present, Karen Armstrong details the great lengths to which humankind has gone in order to experience a sacred reality that it called by many names, such as God, Brahman, Nirvana, Allah, or Dao. Focusing especially on Christianity but including Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Chinese spiritualities, Armstrong examines the diminished impulse toward religion in our own time, when a significant number of people either want nothing to do with God or question the efficacy of faith. Why has God become unbelievable?
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Great recasting of how God should be interpreted
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Ibn Khaldun
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- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
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Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) is generally regarded as the greatest intellectual ever to have appeared in the Arab world - a genius who ranks as one of the world's great minds. Yet the author of the Muqaddima, the most important study of history ever produced in the Islamic world, is not as well known as he should be, and his ideas are widely misunderstood. In this groundbreaking intellectual biography, Robert Irwin provides an engaging and authoritative account of Ibn Khaldun's extraordinary life, times, writings, and ideas.
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Issues with accuracy, pronounciation
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Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (The Samuel and Althea Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies)
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Winner of the National Jewish Book Award for History. This book discusses the troubling and possibly irreconcilable split between Jewish memory and Jewish historiography.
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Best book of history of Judaism written in centuries
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Forbidden Faith
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The success of books such as Elaine Pagels's Gnostic Gospels and Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code proves beyond a doubt that there is a tremendous thirst today for finding the hidden truths of Christianity - truths that may have been lost or buried by institutional religion over the last two millennia. In Forbidden Faith, Richard Smoley narrates a popular history of one such truth, the ancient esoteric religion of gnosticism, which flourished between the first and fourth centuries AD, but whose legacy remains even today, having survived secretly throughout the ages.
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An absolute must for understanding Gnosticism.
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Western civilization has given us modern science, the wealth of free-market economics, the security of law, a sense of human rights and freedom, charity as a virtue, splendid art and music, philosophy grounded in reason, and innumerable other gifts we take for granted.
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Fascinating and informative
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Long before the European Enlightenment and the Darwinian revolution, which we often take to mark the birth of the modern revolt against religious explanations of the world, brave people doubted the power of the gods. Religion provoked skepticism in ancient Greece, and heretics argued that history must be understood as a result of human action rather than divine intervention. They devised theories of the cosmos based on matter and notions of matter based on atoms.
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We have a history as long and as rich as any relig
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What does it mean to say that we live in a secular age? Almost everyone would agree that we - in the West, at least - largely do. And clearly the place of religion in our societies has changed profoundly in the last few centuries. In what will be a defining book for our time, Charles Taylor takes up the question of what these changes mean - of what, precisely, happens when a society in which it is virtually impossible not to believe in God becomes one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is only one human possibility among others.
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Needs Guest Narrators for French and German
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The Yugas
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Today's view of history cannot account for ancient anomalies, such as the Pyramids and advanced knowledge contained in India's Vedas. But in 1894, an Indian sage gave us an explanation not only for our hidden past but for the trends of today and for our future enlightenment - the 24,000-year yuga cycle.
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Excellent book but one slight problem
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God and the Evolving Universe
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In God and the Evolving Universe, James Redfield and Michael Murphy present an important message of hope and a vision for the future. The authors contend that thousands of years of human striving have delivered us to this very moment, in which each act of self-development is creating a new stage in planetary evolution and the emergence of a human species possessed of vastly expanded spiritual experience.
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higher is better
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The Monk and the Philosopher
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Twenty-seven years ago, Matthieu Ricard gave up a promising career as a scientist to study Tibetan Buddhism - not as a detached observer but by immersing himself in its practice under the guidance of its greatest living masters. Years later, this project was born, and Richard met with his father, Jean-Francois Revel - a French philosopher who became world famous for his challenges to both Communism and Christianity. At an inn, these two profoundly thoughtful men explored questions that have occupied humankind throughout its history.
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The dialogues themselves proved tranquility is attainable.
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The History of Philosophy
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The story of philosophy is an epic tale, spanning civilizations and continents. It explores some of the most creative minds in history. But not since the long-popular classic by Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, published in 1945, has there been a comprehensive and entertaining single-volume history of this great, intellectual, world-shaping journey.
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A much needed update to Bertrand Russell's classic
- By Michael on 06-27-20
By: A. C. Grayling
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What listeners say about A Concise History of Buddhism
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Anonymous User
- 10-25-19
read buy ?
My store in more words or another. Was my favorite to begin with still lessoning from time to time
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- Heavypen
- 04-18-18
Difficult for the indoctrinated
Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?
I have some experience with Buddhism - introduced as a child - and there were a few places in this work that helped clarify key points of Buddhism philosophy. However, the historical narrative is so slow and muddled to the point where listening is extremely difficult. In my opinion, this work needs prior experience with Buddhism. It is not for the rank beginner - although that's the marketing position. Minus one star for not being honest. Minus another star for muddling pronunciation of various words to the point where the narrative slows down to a crawl.
Would you be willing to try another book from Andrew Skilton? Why or why not?
I may. Depends on the topic.
What three words best describe Jinananda’s voice?
Unexciting.
Did A Concise History of Buddhism inspire you to do anything?
This book inspired me to look for another book to read.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Jan
- 12-19-20
Great overview of the development of Buddhism!
The book gives a concise and systematized overview of Buddhism in India (primarily) and the rest of Asia (secondarily). Narration is also brilliant!
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- g. hull
- 09-01-22
Good book w ok narration
A great fairly concise history of Buddhism. It feels quite a bit more focused on the earlier stage of Buddhism within India and then a bit rushed when covering the later history within different Buddhist nations. The narrator overall is fine but there are some pronunciation mistakes, which can be somewhat annoying because the author tends to explain technical Buddhist terms in English once and then uses the Sanskrit/Pāli/etc throughout
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- Amazon Customer
- 04-10-20
Good book, weirdly edited.
Kinda confused at the end, seems to have cut off at random, then foreword again?
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