Buddha

Rating:
Summary: Good starting point
Review: This is a very accessible introduction to the life of the Buddha and Buddhist thought. I found the author's explanations of Buddhist "doctrine" (Gotama would not have used this word) relatively clear. It is striking how similar the Gotama's story is to other prophets-- the stories of miracles, the gathering of disciples, the tempting of Gotama by a being who might be called the Devil in western thought--all very similar to Christian myth. At the same time Buddhism ended up in a very different place--the Buddha constantly urged followers to test his principles and evaluate them based on the person's own experience--the test for the Buddha seems to be whether people felt better and at peace following his way. For sure this is an introduction only, and as with any religion the most interesting part is to examine what happened after--how does all this play out in the modern world. A thought-provoking little volume.

Rating:
Summary: A short history of Buddha
Review: There is not much known about the actual life of Buddha. But the author skillfully weaves those few snippets into an engrossing lecture on the origin of Buddhism and the parallel thoughts of the Axial Age. She reiterates that the Buddha is not a god - there have been 27 others before him. Rather, he teaches that everyone of us must seek his own happiness and he shows us the way to do it. His views are so convincing that they have survived to this day. And the author gives us a lucid and understandable explanation.

Thank you, Karen Armstrong!

Rating:
Summary: good starting point
Review: Having learned Buddhism while growing up in Thailand, my knowledge was based largely on the practice of the religion itself, not the man. This book not only offers good insight into the life of the Buddha, but also the basic history of the axial religions. This book would be beneficial to anyone wanting to expand there knowledge about the religions of the world.....

Rating:
Summary: Buddha Made Accessible to the Western World
Review: Karen Armstrong does the Western World a HUGE service in this little biography of the Buddha. She is an accomplished researcher/writer on religious history, has a brilliant understanding of religious development, and has applied her wealth of knowledge to a man and time that is generally not familiar to the Western mind. She is honest in her assessment of the availability of biographical information, and she is honoring of the recognition that she cannot express with first hand insight the claims of the Buddha regarding the atainment of Nirvana.

Many of the reviewers have expressed concern over Ms. Armstrong's "distance" from the Buddha, writing of his life at an arms length. I believe that is a responsble choice on her part, not a shortcoming. What I look for in a biography of a religious leader is someone who can look at the life of the man without being hopelessly influenced by what they personally believe that leader's life to be about. For instance, a devout Christian cannot write objectively about the life of Jesus, because there is too much personal baggage associated with what they believe about Jesus to write objectively about his life. The same goes for Mohammed, Moses, Confuscious, Lao Tzu, Paul, Joseph Smith, and likewise, the Buddha. I appreciated the arm's length approach, because it provides a certain degree of integrity in analyzing who the man was in the context of his time, not just in the context of his dhamma. For instance, her analysis of the Buddha's unwillingness to allow women into the Sangha is only possible coming from someone who does not feel compelled to apologize, rationalize, or make excuses for their spiritual leader's shortcomings. Furthermore, Ms. Armstrong is keenly aware throughout the book of who her audience is (predominantly American, with a predominantly Christian paradigm of the world), and she frequently demonstrates similarities in the life of the Buddha and the evolution of his Sanhga to the life of Jesus, or likens his experience to Christian elements that the Western mind can easily relate to. From my perspective, that makes the Buddha's life more accessible to those of us who cannot read the Pali Cannon, sanskrit, or any of the source material which she has digested for us.

But all that said, this book does a marvelous job of helping the lay reader appreciate the struggles of the Axial age, and the personal struggles of the Buddha. It serves as a first taste of the fundamental principles of Buddhism, which is probably just right for those who are not Buddhist, but who are interested. A Buddhist with a long history in the tradition might be unsatisfied, however...but that was never her intended audience. There is enough real insight in the book that I found that I had marked it up considerably by the time I was done, and frankly had found some keys that unlocked some personal doors.

Is this the "last" book on the Buddha? Of course not. Look at it...it's tiny. There have been 2,500 years of history, application, study, evolution, culture and science that has come since the Buddha first "went forth," and 189 pages cannot say it all. Nor does she try. What she does do, and she does this well, is introduce the Western mind to the possibility that the Buddha really had achieved something unique, and something extraordinarily powerful. His life was a living testament that people can live in this life without suffering, and that is a message that is timeless. I highly recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: A strange little book.
Review: The author offers her attempt to reconstruct the life and personality of a teacher who did not wish to have his personality commemorated, and for whom there are no verifiable biographical data in the modern sense. There is nothing wrong with this, of course, but not much point to it either. To learn more about the Buddhist path, you may want to look further.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Reconstruction, Truth? Doesn't Matter.
Review: Karen Armstrong extracts the essentials in reconstructing the life of the Buddha in a short and concise exercise in intellectual reasoning. Whether this is the true way that the Buddha lived, we will never know, but the questions answered here are valid and necessary to human beings. Very enjoyable and refreshing.

Rating:
Summary: THE BUDDHA LIVES WITHIN EACH OF US
Review: Basing my simple lifestyle around Buddhist philosophies, I have read many books on Buddhism but few on Buddha, the man. The book intermingles biography, history, philosophy and mythology; it is the story of a prince, a man of humble but meaningful character, filled with love, wisdom, compassion and understanding. The author has researched the book well and painted a colourful and descriptive picture of this incredible man.

Siddhartha Gautama, at the age of 29, left behind all his worldly possessions, comforts and privileges, in search of spiritual enlightenment. The story tells of his finding enlightenment under the boddi tree and his 45 years of teaching along the Ganges. Rich, descriptive and beautiful written, it is the portrait of unique and extraordinary man, his life, his enlightenment and his teachings. Buddha lives within each of us, at the very core of our being, if we choose to find him. If you find your true self, you will find Buddha, the path to enlightenment and a richer, fuller and more peaceful life.

Whether you are a follower of Buddhist philosophies or not, as a kind, caring and compassionate human being, you will enjoy this book for the history and wisdom it contains. Another excellent book on the subject of Buddhism, its history and philosophies, is "Awakening the Buddha Within" by Lama Surya Das. It takes the traditional teachings of Buddha and translates them into concepts used in the modern-day Western World.

Rating:
Summary: "Remember me as one who has woken up."
Review: You will be disappointed if you read this 187-page biography expectingKaren Armstrong to bring Siddhartha Gotama to life, or if you arehoping to understand the man in the Buddha. She acknowledges that thePali canon and other Buddhist scriptures leave the biographer with"little to work with," and the last twenty years of hersubject's life "are almost entirely unrecorded" (p. 122).My criticism with this biography is not that Armstrong fails to revealany "controversial new facts about the Buddha's life"(p. xxi), but that she treats her subject with distance.

FewBuddhists would disagree that any history of the Buddha's life isirrelevant (p. xix). "He who sees the dhamma (the teachings)sees me" (p. xx), the Buddha said. He preferred only to beremembered "as one who has woken up" (p. 161). Despite itsshortcomings, Armstrong's biography succeeds in showing us that anyattempt to examine the Buddha's life "can help us all tounderstand the human predicament" (p. xxi). As one would expect,she follows Siddhartha Gotama's life from his birth in 563 B.C.E, tohis decision to leave his wife and newborn son at age 29 in search forliberation from the suffering of the world. Armstrong observes thatin repudiating the "meaningless and trivial" (p. 3) life ofa householder, Siddhartha also renounced the life of "the marriedman [who] kept the economy going, produced the next generation, paidfor the all-important sacrifices and took care of the political lifeof society" (p. 28). After his "six year quest"(p. 85), resulting in Siddhartha's enlightenment at age 35 under abodhi tree in Bodh Gaya, Armstrong follows the Buddha to Deer Park,where we find him beating "the drum of deathless Nibbana"(p. 97), committed to saving the world through his teachings. Beforehe died at age 80, the Buddha offered final words to live by:"All individual things pass away. Seek your own liberation withdiligence" (p. 187).

Armstrong's biography succeeds in puttingthe Buddha's life into its historical context. Siddhartha livedduring the Axial Age (800 to 200 B.C.E.), which also producedConfucius, Lao Tzu, Socrates and Plato. It was a pivotal time forhumanity. We also learn that Siddhartha was born into a"violent, ruthless society," not much different from ourown, in that "the economy was fueled by greed, and where bankersand merchants locked in aggressive competition, preyed upon oneanother" (pp. 22-23).

I finished Armstrong's book in a singlesitting today. (Noticeably missing from its final pages is abibliography, or a suggested list of dharma books for furtherreading.) Although Armstrong's biography provides interestingreading, it is not as engaging as Walter Nelson's BUDDHA: HIS LIFE AND TEACHINGS (2000).

G. Merritt

Rating:
Summary: not a book for buddhists
Review: In summary, Armstrong's "Buddha" is a brief, sympathetic account of the life of the Buddha in the context of his time. It is marred by brevity and by a distanced, clinical treatment of the Buddha's dhamma that makes it seem little more than an antique, cultural artifact, not a relevant way of life.

I am guessing that the format for the Penguin "Lives" series accounts for some of the shortcomings of this book including: its brief length (less than 200 rather small pages); its lack of illustrations; its rather abrupt end with the Buddha's death (not a word of how one teacher's words grew into a worldwide religion); the absence of a guide to the pronunciation of the many Pali terms; and the omission of an index.

These lacks show the book is not intended as a definitive biography; nor it is it intended to have theological depth that would challenge a well-read Buddhist. This is a popular "life" intended to give a broad picture of the Buddha's life and dhamma to a curious non-Buddhist reader or to a student.

Within the scope of this limited goal Armstrong has done a reasonably good job. Certainly it could not have been easy to shape a conventional, biographical tale from the Pali canon and other Buddhist scriptures. Armstrong stresses that an integral part of the Buddha's teaching was the unimportance of the ego, and for that reason the Buddha's personal attributes virtually disappeared, both from his teachings and from his disciple's accounts. Little is left but the suttas themselves, and some highly-colored legends surrounding the key moments of the Buddha's life.

Armstrong is particularly good at taking the legends and drawing out their inner meaning. She recounts a legend sympathetically; then shows how it make clear sense, not as history but as a statement of belief in the context of the time, or as an archetypal portrait of the human condition. For example, she notes how Mara, Lord of Illusion, "represents ... all the unconscious elements within the psyche which fight against our liberation."

In large measure Armstrong explains the Buddha's dhamma clearly and sympathetically. Yet she always seems to handle it with metaphorical tongs, like an interesting specimen -- not as if it were a living tradition the reader might enter. Part of this impression comes from her consistent use of the perfect tense when describing the dhamma. For example, she writes "The purpose of both mindfulness and the immeasurables was to neutralize the power of that egotism that limits human potential." In this and many similar sentences, she uses the perfect ("was") or the conditional ("would"), as if the dhamma was a teaching that existed only long ago and among distant people. There is no hint that mindfulness IS used for the same purpose by people today.

This is a subtle matter of diction and tone; but its effect is to transmit an unspoken message that Armstrong herself has not entered into the Dhamma, and probably wouldn't care to recommend it to her reader, either. If you think of yourself as being in some degree "buddhist" you may find this air of faint praise makes you uncomfortable.

A less subtle problem is Armstrong's repeated insistence that the Dhamma "could not be understood by rational thinking alone. It only revealed its true significance when it was apprehended 'directly,' according to yogic methods, and in the right ethical context." By "yogic methods" she means the disciplines of mindfulness and meditation. By "ethical context" she means principly the practice of metta, empathy.

Armstrong seems sure that the dhamma is not capable of being defended or supported by discursive argument. Or at any rate, she does not even attempt to sketch its philosophical underpinnings. This is strange. Armstrong is certainly capable of dealing with abstracts and logical argument. And Buddhism is quite respectable as a philosophy, as coherent and complete in its account of the universe and the human condition as anything produced by Plato or Aquinas. Armstrong completely neglects this aspect of the dhamma, leaving the impression that it can only be entered through "yogic methods." In short, she writes as if the dhamma is unapproachable unless you are ready to enter into dubious Eastern practices.

Rating:
Summary: Revisit the Buddha!
Review: This remarkable little book has done more to enhance my understanding of Buddhism and my own Judeo-Christian heritage than I could have imagined. Karen Armstrong's clear and concise writing lead me through some interpretations of the Buddha's life that had never occurred to me and has pointed out some of the same "problems" that I have had with other "sacred" writings.

I have come to appreciate the mythical proportions of the story of Siddhatta Gotama, and realize now that there are as many unknowns about his life as there are about Jesus or other ancient prophets. The story of Siddhatta's originally sheltered life of prince who saw the injustice and suffering in the world, went of to gain special powers, and then came back to "save the people" follows the Joseph Campbell hero's story. In addition, it is a story that was often told in Buddha's time. It is a metaphor for the human mind awakening to the suffering in the world caused by our own acquisitiveness.

Then too, those disciples left after Buddha's death slowly deified him by embellishing the story and expanding it as needed to include the prejudices of those in power at the time of the telling or recording. Gotama did not want deification or a religious cult following. Nevertheless, just as with Jesus and Christianity, those that were left used the hero story to their own ends. They built a two tier order with special education and in depth understanding of the mystical nature of Dhamma for the Bhikkhus and a more lenient worldly teaching for the lay followers.

Like most axial period religions, Bhuddism was not inclusive of women. The contradiction is blatant in that Buddha taught that the Dhamma was open to everybody: gods, animals, robbers, men of all castes - so were women to be excluded? And under what logic? When he was finally convinced that he was wrong not to allow women into the Sangha, Buddha set much stricter rules that subjugated the nuns to the bhikkhu. In other words, the women were once again relegated to second class citizenship in the Buddhist world.

An excellent book with new, fresh insight into this most interesting philosophy. And it is especially interesting to read after hearing Ms. Armstrong speak and learning a little bit about her as a person. A most remarkable opportunity that I can only hope will come again in the future.