Description
The Outline of Indian Mahayana Series
There are few works in English devoted exclusively to introducing Indian Mahayana to western readers. This series attempts that task and will encompass the Mainstream Hinayana environment wherein Mahayana originated. Mahayana roots are traced among the doctrines and against the background of the early Buddhist schools using specialist researches and textual studies by leading Buddhist scholars. A group of the first Mahayana sutras are examined to extract their characteristic teachings and to bring together the primary themes of early Mahayana schools, drawn from the texts themselves. The series concludes with some traditional biographies of the foremost Mahayana masters who established and propagated Mahayana doctrines derivated from the content of Mahayana sutras.
This series is not aimed at specialists or scholars. On the contrary, the aim is to inform the reader in plain language about Indian Mahayana and its connecting links to its predecessor, Mainstream Hinayana. Much of the exposition presupposes an acquaintance with the earlier Mainstream doctrines. Far from being a body of doctrine and practice of uncertain origin, Indian Buddhists themselves always maintained that the Mahayana is “the second turning of the Wheel of Dharma”.
An Outline of Indian Mahayana Vol. 1: The Pre-Mahayana Landscape – Eric Cheetham, The Buddhist Society, London, 1989.
