Through Which Reality Shines: A Commentary on D. T. Suzuki's 'Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism'

Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism by D. T. Suzuki (1870-1966) was one of the first comprehensive accounts of Mahayana Buddhism in English. For Sangharakshita, a seminar on this pioneering but flawed work provided an occasion to demonstrate his own critical methodology. In doing so, he could also elaborate his synthesis of the key features of Mahayana Buddhism. 'The arising of the Mahayana was not the arbitrary founding of a sect,' he explains, 'but the whole process of Buddhism becoming richer over the course of centuries.' Tracing the contours of Suzuki's work, Sangharakshita offers distinctive interpretations of a wide range of topics that include karma, anatman, and the mysterious dharmakaya. Sparkling in its originality, scope, and fluency, this commentary amounts to a kind of imaginative journey into Sangharakshita's fertile and meticulous sensibility.

Table of Contents:
About the Author Foreword Prologue Introduction 1.General Characterization of Buddhism 2. Historical Characterisation of Mahayanism 3. Speculative Mahayanism 4. Classification of Knoweledge 5. Bhuta-tathata (suchness) 6. Tathagatagarbha and the Alaya-Vijanana 7. The Theory of Non-Atman or Non-Ego 8. Karma 9.The Dharmakaya 10. The Doctrine of Trikaya 11. The Bodhisattava 12. The Ten Stages of Bodhisattvahood 13. Nirvana Conclusion: Verses from the Avatamsaka Sutra Notes and References

About the Author :
Sangharakshita (1925-2018) was a Buddhist teacher who spent twenty years in India before returning to the United Kingdom and founding the Triratna Buddhist Order and Community (originally the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order). He was an important translator of Buddhism into western culture in the latter half of the 20th century. Born in London as Dennis Lingwood, he became a Buddhist monk in India in 1949. He studied with Buddhist teachers from Theravada and Tibetan traditions, and spent several months each year teaching the dalit Buddhist followers of Dr B.R. Ambedkar. In 1964 he returned to the UK and established the FWBO (now Triratna) in 1967, drawing on the riches of the entire Buddhist universe, as well as helpful aspects of Western cultural traditions. Sangharakshita was a prolific author, from his first major work A Survey of Buddhism (1957), to edited lectures and seminars, to a series of memoirs of his time in India and the West. His Complete Works have now been published in 27 volumes by Windhorse Publications. The Triratna Buddhist Order and Community is now a thriving worldwide movement, in which his teachings continue to inspire practitioners new and old.