Anālayo

"This book helps to fill what has long been a glaring gap in the scholarship of early Buddhism, offering us a detailed textual study of the Satipatthāna Sutta, the foundational Buddhist discourse on meditation practice."--Back cover.

The Direct Path to Realization

Satipaṭṭhāna

In this book, Bhikkhu Anālayo investigates the genesis of the bodhisattva ideal, one of the most important concepts in the history of Buddhist thought. He brings together material from the corpus of the early discourses preserved mainly in Pāli and Chinese that appear to have influenced the arising of the bodhisattva ideal. Anālayo convincingly shows that the early sources do not present compassionate concern for others as a motivating force for the Buddha's quest for awakening. He further offers an analysis of the only reference to Maitreya in the Pāli canon, showing that this reference is most likely a later addition. In sum, Bhikkhu Anālayo is able to delineate a gradual genesis of central aspects of the bodhisattva ideal by documenting (1) an evolution in the bodhisattva concept reflected in the early discourses, (2) the emergence of the notion of a vow to pursue the path to buddhahood, and (3) the possible background for the idea of a prediction an aspirant to buddhahood receives from a former buddha.

The genesis of the bodhisattva ideal

"As mindfulness is increasingly embraced in the contemporary world as a practice that brings peace and self-awareness, Bhikkhu Anālayo casts fresh light on the earliest sources of mindfulness in the Buddhist tradition. The Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta is well known as the main source for Buddhist teachings on mindfulness and its place in the Buddhist path. Ten years after Anālayo's acclaimed study of the Sutta, Perspectives on Satipaṭṭhāna brings a new dimension to our understanding by comparing the Pali text with versions that have survived in Chinese and, until now, been unknown to English speakers. Anālayo also draws on the presentation of mindfulness in a number of other discourses as they survive in Chinese and Tibetan translations as well as in Pali"--Back cover.

Anālayo

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