The Buddha from Babylon: The Lost History and Cosmic Vision of Siddhartha Gautama

Harvey Kraft's "The Buddha from Babylon:The Lost History and Cosmic Vision of Siddhartha Gautama" is a treasure of that ubiquitous spiritual tradition which Aldus Huxley termed "the perennial philosophy." Kraft transforms what may often be experienced as a rather austere and perhaps overly reverential depiction of the Buddha, his life, and teachings into a dynamic, almost novelistic, and intensely personal--a living and powerfully human--portrayal of Siddhartha's quest for ever-expanding consciousness in the midst of a world of greed, deception, power-politics, and violence. With grace and humaneness, Kraft delivers us to a vision in which, via "the Awakened One's" breakthrough past all of that into the timeless-placeless Realm of the ultimately Benevolent Unity and Bliss of all things, striving is resolved in unutterable Peace. "The Buddha from Babylon" takes us on a breath-taking journey, essentially divided into three parts. The first embodies Kraft's panoramic approach to a mixture of the fields of climatology, paleontology, anthropology, and history of religions, from the first migrations out of Africa to the rise of Zoroastrianism in Iran and Mesopotamia and the emergence of Buddhism in the forests of the Indus River Valley. The second part of the book focuses our attention on Kraft's meticulously researched religious and political developments in Iranian-occupied Mesopotamia, and makes the perhaps startling proposal that Siddhartha Gautama was educated within this both promising and dangerous environment, rose to religious and political prominence there--even temporarily to kingship--and then turned his back on this finally nihilistic "business as usual" of our human nature to find the Gateway that would liberate potentially all human beings from themselves into the all-enfolding dimension of Supra-cosmic Consciousness. The third segment of Kraft's stunning book--the unfolding of the core Buddhist teachings, all of this related in a thoroughly contemporary style and rendered completely accessible--begins with Kraft's imaginatively empathic re-creating of the successive phases of Gautama's Enlightenment under the "Bo Tree" and the "Cosmic Mountain." Kraft's account of the transfiguration of the human into the Divine makes this miracle personal, powerfully moving, believable, and directly appropriable by the reader. That is, I think, the key to the beauty and compelling persuasiveness of Kraft's whole enterprise. With this account of Siddhartha's breakthrough to the Consciousness which underlies, infuses, and potentially lifts us all above nature and our human natures as these appear to be given, through "The Buddha from Babylon," the Buddha, as Kraft writes, "sets into motion a long journey in pursuit of an evolutionary ideal: the eventual pacification of the whole mortal world through self-transfiguration." In my view, there is no greater hope!

Brilliant is the first word I must write. Engaging is another. Each pages revealed more of what we should know. Great read!

Kraft not only puts the Buddha into his historical context but explains the Buddha's teachings far better than anything else many of us may have read or heard before, bringing many epiphanies along the way; especially putting to rest the belief that nirvana is the end-game of human development. The reason it is important to have this context is that it shines a light upon today's religious, economic and political systems, as well.My only complaint about this fine book is that the Afterword clearly was not closely proofread!

This book was absolutely amazing- the amount of research that went into it is hard to fathom but the story that came out of all that hard work was so worth it. It is an academic read so don't expect it to be "a beach book". Many times I stopped, looked things up and then continued in order to better understand what I was absorbing. This book is obviously a labor of love.

The Buddha from Babylon combines a dig into our spiritual past, written as historical content, with a read that at times feels like a fiction thriller. As human's race forward to their destiny, Harvey Kraft has crafted this amazing synthesis of different writing genres to deliver new options for humanity to ponder. Open this book and open your mind!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The Buddha from Babylon is a daring execution combining rich history of a key figure known to most people only superficially, and the form of speculative novel that Heinlein pioneered, a roman a clef or quite possibly a brilliantly intuitive Flow state perception of the actual facts of Siddhartha Gautama's life.

Well researched.

Very well written and the information was insurmountable. One truly gets the message of the Buddha!

Still reading, but a view that seems to make sense despite the tradition...

Very well researched is this true story of the Buddha, which reveals his revolutionary cosmology and the unique historical moment when he appears to give this great gift to humanity. It’s wonderfully presented by a gifted, inspired author. Thank you Harvey

学問的に説得力ある内容。仏教史を見直す必要がありそうだ。先行論文のパール氏の主張と比べても遜色がない。日本の仏教学者はサンスクリットや漢訳に精通していても、古代ペルシャ語までは手が出せるものはほとんどいない。オリエント学をやると仏教目線が確実に変わる。ルーツはオリエントにあり。