From bodhi to the true meaning of Zen, this comprehensive new encyclopedia captures the rich diversity of the Buddhist tradition.'Well presented, easy to use and authoritative.' Living TraditionsFrom the teachings of the early masters to the growth of the tradition in the West, this authoritative new reference tool contains over 900 entries supplying information on all the key doctrines, practices, and figures central to Buddhism.

Bill Belichick is a different man on Fridays. With preparations for Sunday's game essentially complete, and the media presence reduced to those regulars Belichick calls the "Friday Warriors," the normally terse coach is known to open up in provocative, entertaining, and expansive fashion. Fridays With Bill provides a rare glimpse inside one of history's greatest football minds, featuring insights and musings from the man who has won five Super Bowl championships and who is destine...

Lucid and economical, this introductory text delivers a brisk, fast-moving survey of Tibetan Buddhism. For many years Powers's nearly 600-page Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism has served as the field's most authoritative and comprehensive overview of Tibet's distinctive Buddhist tradition. A Concise Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism explains the core Buddhist doctrines and the practices of meditation and tantra and provides a survey of the four main schools of Tibetan Budd...

Historical Dictionary of Tibet, Second Edition is a comprehensive resource for Tibetan history, politics, religion, major figures, prehistory and paleontology, with a primary emphasis on the modern period. It also covers the surrounding areas influenced by Tibetan religion and culture, including India, China, Nepal, Bhutan, Central Asia, and Russia.It contains a chronology, a glossary, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 500 cross-referen...

In this unique city, it’s less “Welcome to Boston” and more welcome Boston to you. From street names to driving customs to weather, nothing is as it is wherever you call home, and the locals are proud of it. Boston writer John Powers turned his experience of living in Boston for over fifty years into this fun yet practical guide which brings visitors into the real Boston. Fresh with Peter Wallace’s animated illustrations, The Boston Handbook gives the inside scoop on everything fr...

This is a ground-breaking volume on the role of religion as a major force of cohesion across the Indian Ocean region.A diverse range of experts present a case for conceptualizing religion as an enabler of not only shared religious identities throughout the Indian Ocean world, but multiple shared identities mediated through religion, particularly as religion intersects with other manifestations of human society in this part of the world. This theme is explored throu...

The Bolex camera, 16mm reversal film stocks, commercial film laboratories, and low-budget optical printers were the small-gauge media technologies that provided the infrastructure for experimental filmmaking at the height of its cultural impact. Technology and the Making of Experimental Film Culture examines how the avant-garde embraced these material resources and invested them with meanings and values adjacent to those of semiprofessional film culture. By reasserting the physica...

Rivers of the Asian Highlands introduces readers to the intersecting headwaters of Asia’s eight largest rivers, focusing on the upper reaches of two river systems: the Brahmaputra’s highland tributaries in the eastern Himalayan Mountains and the Dri Chu (upper Yangzi), which descends from the Tibetan Plateau’s east through the Hengduan Mountains.This book guides its readers through these two rivers’ physical, environmental, cultural, social, and political histories before ...

The Buddha Party tells the story of how the People's Republic of China employs propaganda to define Tibetan Buddhist belief and sway opinion within the country and abroad. The narrative they create is at odds with historical facts and deliberately misleading but, John Powers argues, it is widely believed by Han Chinese. Most of China's leaders appear to deeply believe the official line regarding Tibet, which resonates with Han notions of themselves as China's most advanced nationa...

While a short work of only eight verses and a three-page autocommentary, the Investigation of the Percept has inspired epistemologists for centuries and has had a wide-ranging impact in India, Tibet, and China. Dignaga, one of the major figures in Buddhist epistemology, explores issues such as the relation between the mind and its percepts, the problems of idealism and realism, and the nature of intentionality in this brief but profound text. This volume provides a comprehensive h...

The androgynous, asexual Buddha of contemporary popular imagination stands in stark contrast to the muscular, virile, and sensual figure presented in Indian Buddhist texts. In early Buddhist literature and art, the Buddha’s perfect physique and sexual prowess are important components of his legend as the world’s “ultimate man.” He is both the scholarly, religiously inclined brahman and the warrior ruler who excels in martial arts, athletic pursuits, and sexual exploits. The Buddha effortle...

Despite Chinese efforts to stop foreign countries from granting him visas, the Dalai Lama has become one of the most recognizable and best loved people on the planet, drawing enormous crowds wherever he goes. By contrast, China's charismatically-challenged leaders attract crowds of protestors waving Tibetan flags and shouting "Free Tibet!" whenever they visit foreign countries. By now most Westerners probably think they understand the political situation in Tibet. But, John Powers argues, ...