From Publishers Weekly
This illustrated guide to Buddhism skillfully embodies brains, brawn and beauty. With its 200 full-cover photos, maps and reproductions of art and architecture, it is a gorgeous coffee-table book that also succeeds in being both scholarly and lively. Short topical essays, enlightening sidebars and complementary photo cutlines grace almost every two-page spread. In four major sections ("Origins," "Principles and Practice," "Holy Writings" and "Buddhism Today"), general editor and University of Vermont religion professor Trainor and his five contributors craft a rich mosaic of Buddhism, from its specific cultural roots to its global resonances today. Many facets of Buddhism's diamond are held to light, including Buddha's "wondrous birth," ethics, visualization, saints and teachers, women, meditation centers, socially engaged Buddhism and timely groups such as Falun Gong. Picture researcher Cee Weston-Baker deserves special mention for the carefully selected, handsome photographs and art reproductions that offer much more than retail allure. These places, spaces and rituals inform the work beyond normal measure, revealing, for example, the robust tenderness of a young Burmese boy about to become ordained as he sheds the symbolic Buddha's princely robes for the simple ones of a monk. China, Sri Lanka, Tibet, India, Hawaii and the United States are but some of the featured locales in this rich evidence of "right effort." This book will prove useful to the curious, the scholar and the devotee.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Public, academic, and school librarians will find it difficult to categorize this profusely illustrated encyclopedic introduction to the Buddhist world, both past and present. But whatever definition they choose, most should find a home for it in their collections. Trainor (Univ. of Vermont; Relics, Ritual, and Representation in Buddhism) and five academic colleagues draw upon current scholarship to describe the origins, principles, practices, holy writings, and current trends among the major schools and regional variations of this ancient belief. The contributors treat most topics in a few pages, providing a highly accessible text (the discussion of prajna Buddhist wisdom or insight is the clearest yet encountered by this reviewer) sparked by stunning color photographs or illustrations of temples, statues, artifacts, texts, ceremonies, and maps. Though far from comprehensive, this work is recommended as an excellent, one-volume supplement to Charles Prebish's Historical Dictionary of Buddhism (Scarecrow Pr., 1993) and Christmas Humphreys's A Popular Dictionary of Buddhism (McGraw Hill-NTC, 1997). James R. Kuhlman, Univ. of North Carolina Lib., Asheville
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
