Human-Centered Buddhism--One that Accords with Dharma Principles and Human Dispositions

The processes of Buddhism’s transmission to China in the distant past and its present transmission to the West have striking parallels. The Buddhist scriptures and practices that came gradually into China from India had developed in different historical periods and in different environments. The ways in which the ancient Chinese made sense of the bewildering array of Buddhist doctrines that had developed over hundreds of years in India and adapted them to their own circumstances ultimately gave rise to a uniquely Chinese Buddhism. The West now seems to be much like ancient China, encountering many different threads of Buddhism coming from distant lands, threads which reflect many permutations of Buddhist thought and practice that developed in Asia over the past 2500 years under circumstances quite foreign to the present. Do these various forms have anything in common? What, then, is Buddhism? How will it adapt to Western culture and still be Buddhism? What does it have to offer people living a twenty-first century modern life? In this book, the eminent Chinese Buddhist Master Yinshun gives us some answers.