Buddhist Monks and Business Matters: Still More Papers on Monastic Buddhism in India (Studies in the Buddhist Tradition)

Rating:
Summary: More digging up of bones and throwing of stones
Review: A brilliant collection of essays. Excellently selected, well edited and full of ideas which demand attention. Perhaps the net effect can best be summed up as scraping away of some old and spreading out smoothly of fresh clean gomaya - the result is a whole new set of answers, questions and provocations. Most of us will have copies of some of the papers, but almost certainly not all and certainly not in such a handy format. This book is an essential item on any buddhologist's bookshelf (come to think of it perhaps Greg can send his niece - see the nice anecdote in his introduction - a copy so she will learn what a good buddhologist does)

Rating:
Summary: Down to Business.
Review: This book is every bit as excellent as Schopen's prior publication. He has an incredible knack for taking what you'd think are boring, dusty details and breathing life into them in order to really explore what Buddhism was in India. This guy never assumes anything, and you never come away from his books with the same view of Buddhism as you had before. And he writes with clarity and verve, which is so painfully rare in the scholarly world today.