Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations (The Library of Religious Beliefs and Practices)

After a few years of practicing Buddhism and reading Dharma books, I am reading this as my first scholarly text, and I'm very impressed by it. It certainly is NOT an introduction for beginners, but Williams is careful to include just enough explanation to keep me reading without feeling a need to resort to Wikipedia (heh!). His footnotes (endnotes) are amazing -- the book proper is only 266 pages, followed by 121 pages of endnotes. I'm skipping most of these, but when I do dip into them, I'm even more impressed by Williams's unusual ability to stick to a central idea and successfully separate out the interesting surrounding ideas (which need not muddy up the main text). I also appreciate his ability to steer clear of Western philosophy. He is presenting the history, central texts and teachings, and disputes of the Mahayana with well-focused discipline. He does this with clarity, occasional stunning insights, and sometimes even a touch of humor! (I especially like it when he refers to "old and basic" ideas of Buddhism; he seems to have a particularly good sense of his audience for this book.) It's very nice to get a sense of how certain issues were divisive (or not) without being lost in excessive detail about each and every school's (or lineage's) take on the matter. That is not to say Williams is treating the subject superficially but rather another indication of his clear focus. Don't consider this book if you know very little about Buddhism at present. But if you are well-grounded in the teachings and have some idea of the "place" of Mahayana, and you want to experience an academic approach to the subject, this book will not disappoint you. P.S. I'm reading (more than halfway through) the new second edition.

PERFECT. When something is perfect, agile and also accurate in what it explains about the greater and lesser Buddhism you know it is good. I was long a Mahayana Buddhist before the publication of this work. All I read were books of the sayings of the Buddha, Buddhist scholars, books written for initiates tend to turn me off but this is both good for home and as a textbook. Can I, do I recommend you read this? Yes. Over and over. Aside from books in Buddhist monasteries written by Buddhas following our Gautama Buddha there was little that was truly understood. I would always get mad when someone would flippantly, so perfectly jaded and bathed in irony, say Buddhism is not a religion, that there is no God is Buddhism is a fool. Read and learn. Do not accept the lies and fake wisdom of others. Paul Williams, I applaud him in his research and presentation of this greatest of Buddhist sects. I do not like Zen. I think Zen is the Pentecostal side of Buddhism and many will argue with me about it, but if I were Zen then I would be compelled to urinate on them during the argument if I were so inclined. Mahayana Buddhism is the cradle of knowledge. Do not let this die on the shelf. Buy it. Read it. You need not be Buddhist to consume and use the knowledge, you just need a mind capable of understanding cause and effect. Buy this book.

There are already several capable reviews on this thread. However, I add a few remarks. 1. The book does not cover Zen or Tantric Buddhism. It focuses on Indian and Chinese Buddhism, with discussions of selected (non-tantric) doctrines of Tibetan Buddhism. 2. The title means what it says about emphasis on doctrine. There is little or no discussion of practice as such. 3. For most readers the book may be primarily useful as a reference work. It is, as other reviewer noted, thoroughly academic, philological, and detailed. The author truly leaves no stone unturned in the topics he treats. I read all the endnotes, which fill a large part of the book, and there is an enormous amount of valuable material in them as well as in the text. 4. The best parts are on Indian Buddhism, which are superb, especially the sections on Madhyamika. The parts on East Asian Buddhism are very good but not as encyclopedic as the Indian sections. IMO the author did not present an adequate grasp of the Taoist elements in Chinese Buddhism. And of course the limitation on the discussion of Chan and Zen is a drawback. 5. Despite my caveats, I recommend this book highly to anyone who feels interested in the challenge.

A beautiful and informative introduction to Buddhism.

I don’t agree with many of the other reviews; which, I based my purchase on. Big words, and rhetoric do not a “masterpiece” make. The author took relatively simple aspects of Buddhism, turned them into nonsensical analogies, and conceptually hybridized them into oblivion. The book is quite simply the authors philosophical take on Buddhism. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; however, was absolutely not what I was looking for. It’s my opinion that the cover, and title are very misleading. It reads with the nonchalance of Dharma Punx but padded with academic brio. For people looking for reading similar to the Veda’s, Gita’s or even just the facts as we know, you will not get it here. I’m still giving it five stars because overall I was able to glean some new information; albeit, it was buried in a sea of repetition, and really bad analogies (honorably mentioned twice - irony not lost on me but just a heroic amount of analogous prose) 😂.

As the back of the book will tell you, the 1989 publication of this work's first edition made quite a stir and, I quote, "It is still unrivalled." Indeed, it has become a foundational text for courses on Mahayana Buddhism at the university level, and since almost two decades of burgeoning scholarship in the field had passed, a second edition was considered necessary. I can say this much: it is quite a book. If you are smitten with a lust for all things Mahayana--its history, people, practices, and philosophies--look no further. In fact, this book may even cure you of your unwholesome desires. What I mean is that the page count does not give you any idea of what you're getting into. By the numbers: 438 total pages; 266 pages of main text; 122 pages of end notes; 32 pages of bibliography. You can do the math for the rest. Every page is dense with names, dates, terms, unpronounceable sutra titles (if you can actually say Bodhisattvagocaropayavishayavikurvananirdesha Sutra you must already be enlightened) and who knows what else. And just look at the notes to main text pages ratio: 0.46! I scrounged around my shelves, where I have a great many scholarly books on a wide array of topics, but could find nothing comparable. Even Bhikkhu Bodhi's monumental translation of the Samyutta Nikaya clocked in at an anemic 0.25. Usually I'm an assiduous reader of notes (though I confess to loathing endnotes--why oh why did the publishing industry quit on footnotes??), but this time I just gave up. Many of the end notes are so lengthy by the time you finish one you've forgotten where you were on the main page. All of which leads me to my chief complaint about Williams' opus: Loss of control. Sometimes you want to lose control (think sex--especially if you're a woman). But when you're writing something touted as a textbook--and an intro textbook to boot--you want to be measured in just how much data you dump on your audience. One hundred twenty-two pages of endnotes are not only unhelpful, they're positively sadistic--or self-indulgent, which in this case comes to the same thing. Let me put this in perspective: I have a fair education in Buddhist literature under my belt. I'm not as deeply read as most scholars, but I would wager I understand a few things as well as anyone. I will admit though I began to get dizzy in places as I read this book (lack of oxygen?), and resorted to skipping to those areas where I felt greater interest and surer footing. So...reader beware: you are in for a sensory overload with this one; bring the Dramamine. I'll now return to my ordinarily more professional reviewing style. Williams starts with an introduction the likes of which I've never seen. Introductions are usually, well, introductory, but by page 17 (it goes on for 44 pages) he was already enumerating the numbers and types of dhammas according to the Abhidhamma classification scheme! Needless to say, this sort of material is not ordinarily considered introductory. At times I wondered if I'd somehow skipped into the first chapter and missed something, but no...on checking I found I was still in the introduction. I think this is where I started to get worried. To sum up the above complaint and how it affects the text as a whole: it appears Williams felt compelled to put everything he knew into this book, not to mention the obscure article he read the night before. He mixes social history, philosophy, biographies, the history of specific texts and schools, all in a jumble. (See, e.g., p. 67, where a chart would have been so much more helpful.) You can't write a book in this fashion; or at least, I advise against it. Different areas need to be kept separate, or integrated with great care, but that is clearly not what happened. In other words, I don't suggest discussing a sutra's history and provenance, its philosophy, the school that formed around it, and its effects on later readers and its place in the grand scheme of things all on the same page. It's just too much. But this is really the best way to characterize how Williams has gone about summarizing fifteen hundred years of Mahayana doctrinal history. Like I said, "loss of control"... The upside of this avalanche of information is that there's something for everyone. And if you need the latest scholarly speculation on this text or that school, chances are you'll find it in here (somewhere). So this is the other edge of the sword--an abundance of fact and insight (yes, Professor Williams has carefully and intelligently considered his material) that is there if you have the patience and fortitude to dig it out. I'll offer a random list of what were, for me, eye opening or especially intriguing passages: -Page 43 on how the Mahayana began to develop a separate identity vis-à-vis "mainstream" Buddhism; -Pages 48-9 on Conze's outline of Mahayana intellectual history; -Pages 60-1 on some of the internal logical inconsistencies besetting Mahayana Buddhology (authors rarely think out loud like this--I found the honesty refreshing); -Pages 68-9 make clear the meaning of svabhava; -Pages 71-2 indicated to me that Nagarjuna was first and foremost a deconstructionist, not a nihilist as opponents have charged; -Page 74 reassured me that Nagarjuna did not abrogate the teaching of anatta; -Pages 108ff suggested where notions of a True Self in Buddhism came from; -Pages 122ff on the debate over not-self in Thai Buddhism was fascinating, something I was previously unaware of; -Pages 132ff are a wonderful discussion of the Avatamsaka Sutra, the most profound if not most influential of Mahayana scriptures; -Chapter seven on the Lotus Sutra reminded me many times over why I so detest this particular scripture; -Page 184 has an excellent chart on the three bodies of the Buddha; -Chapter nine on the bodhisattva was at once inspiring and comical (on account of all the contradictions found in the texts); -Chapter ten offers a detailed who's who of bodhisattvas and buddhas for all you folks out there who can't figure out which statue is for whom and why. And that about does it. As I said, not only will you be punished in the course of this text, you will be rewarded as well. There is a lot of pleasure and pain to go around.

I would recommend this book for all those who are willing to have a deep knowledge about Buddhism. After reading many books about meditation, and comments about sutras by people like D.Lama and T.Deshimaru, M. Ricard, J Kornfied I thought that it was mandatory to look for the history that was behind those texts that many buddhism's writers talk about. This book was the right answer for my inquietud.

Essential text to understanding Mahayana Buddhism. The Second edition was worth waiting for. Williams provides a short history of the Indian background to Buddhism and then covers such important events as the Prajnaparamita and the development of the Madhyamika.

Delivered a day ahead of schedule. As described and packaged well. Excellent bok not only for students but also those interested in Buddhism

So technically advanced for me. I could only just follow, a few years ago I couldn't. Even now I don't feel in a position to be able to evaluate really.