Books by Glenn Wallis
Basic Teachings of the Buddha (Modern Library Classics (Paperback))
by Buddha, Glenn Wallis
In Basic Teachings of the Buddha, Glenn Wallis selects sixteen essential dialogues drawn from more than five thousand Pali-dialect suttas of the Buddhist canon. The result is a vibrant introductory guide to studying Buddhist thought, applying its principles to everyday life, and gaining a deeper understanding of Buddhist themes in modern literature. Focusing on the most crucial topics for today’s readers, Wallis presents writings that address modern psychological, religious, ethical, and philosophical concerns. This practical, inspiring, and engaging volume provides an overview of the history of Buddhism and an illuminating analysis of the core writings that personalizes the suttas for each reader.
“Glenn Wallis brings wisdom and compassion to this work of scholarship. Everyone should read this book.”
–Christopher Queen, Harvard University
“A valuable sourcebook with a good selection of the fundamental suttas enhanced by an eloquent introduction and comprehensive notes–altogether a very useful text.”
–Peter Matthiessen (Roshi), author of The Snow Leopard and Nine-Headed Dragon River
“Glenn Wallis’s new and accessible translations of some of the Buddha’s lectures to his original students, along with Wallis’s elegant guide to the texts, gives twenty-first-century readers in the modern West a fresh chance to learn from this teacher.”
–Charles Hallisey, University of Wisconsin-Madison
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The Dhammapada: Verses on the Way (Modern Library Classics)
by Buddha, Glenn Wallis
Trembling and quivering is the mind,
Difficult to guard and hard to restrain.
The person of wisdom sets it straight,
As a fletcher does an arrow.
The Dhammapada introduced the actual utterances of the Buddha nearly twenty-five hundred years ago, when the master teacher emerged from his long silence to illuminate for his followers the substance of humankind’s deepest and most abiding concerns. The nature of the self, the value of relationships, the importance of moment-to-moment awareness, the destructiveness of anger, the suffering that attends attachment, the ambiguity of the earth’s beauty, the inevitability of aging, the certainty of death–these dilemmas preoccupy us today as they did centuries ago. No other spiritual texts speak about them more clearly and profoundly than does the Dhammapada.
In this elegant new translation, Sanskrit scholar Glenn Wallis has exclusively referred to and quoted from the canonical suttas–the presumed earliest discourses of the Buddha–to bring us the heartwood of Buddhism, words as compelling today as when the Buddha first spoke them. On violence: All tremble before violence./ All fear death./ Having done the same yourself,/ you should neither harm nor kill. On ignorance: An uninstructed person/ ages like an ox,/ his bulk increases,/ his insight does not. On skillfulness: A person is not skilled/ just because he talks a lot./ Peaceful, friendly, secure–/ that one is called “skilled.”
In 423 verses gathered by subject into chapters, the editor offers us a distillation of core Buddhist teachings that constitutes a prescription for enlightened living, even in the twenty-first century. He also includes a brilliantly informative guide to the verses–a chapter-by-chapter explication that greatly enhances our understanding of them. The text, at every turn, points to practical applications that lead to freedom from fear and suffering, toward the human state of spiritual virtuosity known as awakening.
Glenn Wallis’s translation is an inspired successor to earlier versions of the suttas. Even those readers who are well acquainted with the Dhammapada will be enriched by this fresh encounter with a classic text.
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Cruel Theory - Sublime Practice: Toward a Revaluation of Buddhism
by Glenn Wallis, Tom Pepper, Matthias Steingass
'Cruel Theory Sublime Practice' consists of three parts. Each part addresses both theoretical and practical dimensions of Buddhism. Authored individually, each part nonetheless interacts with the concerns of the others. Those concerns include the formation of an autonomous subject in the face of Buddhism's concealment of its ideological force; the possibility of a practice that thus serves as a theory or science of ideology; the reconstitution of practice as an organon of authoritative structures, including controlling social-conceptual representations; and the perception of Buddhism as the subject of a historical process. Perhaps the most salient theme running throughout the book concerns the crucial necessity of transfusing anemic contemporary Buddhist discourse with the lifeblood of rigorous, creative thought. Will Buddhism in the twenty-first century West help fashion a liberated subject? Or will it continue to be a deceptive mythos spawning subjects who are content to rest at ease in the thrall of predatory capitalism? The three parts of 'Cruel Theory Sublime Practice' share a common concern: to push Buddhism to the brink.
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Mediating the Power of Buddhas: Ritual in the Manjusrimulakalpa (Suny Series in Buddhist Studies)
by Glenn Wallis
Analyzes a seventh-century ritual manual that provides both a rich source of information of medieval Buddhist life and addresses the ongoing concern of how an adherent can encounter the power of a buddha.
Mediating the Power of Buddhas offers a fascinating analysis of the seventh-century ritual manual, the Mañjusrimulakalpa. This medieval text is intended to reveal the path into a ritual universe where the power of a buddha abides. Author Glenn Wallis traces the strategies of the Mañjusrimulakalpa to enable its committed reader to perfect the promised ritual, uncovering what conditions must be met for ritual practice to succeed and what personal characteristics practitioners must possess in order to realize the ritual intentions of the Buddhist community. The manual itself was written at a key point in Buddhist history, one when Hindu forms of practice were still imitated and on the cusp of the shift from Mahayana to Vajrayana (or Tantric) Buddhism. In addition, the Mañjusrimulakalpa presents a rich compendium of Buddhist life in an earlier era, containing information on a variety of its readers' concerns: astrology, astronomy, medicine and healing, ritual practice, iconography, devotion, and meditation.
Wallis sheds much new light on the transition between 'sutra' and 'tantra' literature of Buddhist India. John J. Makransky, author of Buddhahood Embodied: Sources of Controversy in India and Tibet
Wallis brings alive the world of the Mañjusrimulakalpa and its ritual practitioner, and he draws on a variety of medieval and modern sources to illuminate the text. The Mañjusrimulakalpa is a crucial text for understanding medieval Indian Buddhism, yet, because of its immensity, it has been studied rather sparingly and incompletelyand never before with the particular ritual studies-cum-comparative-Indological perspective that Wallis brings to bear. Roger Jackson, coeditor of Buddhist Theology: Critical Reflections by Contemporary Buddhist Scholars
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