{ "item_title" : "The Dharmatrā", "item_author" : [" Lennart Lopin", "Venerable Buddhabhadra "], "item_description" : "Meditation in China and the origins of ShaolinBuddhabhadra (359-429), also known as Buddhabhadra, was an Indian meditation monk during the Northern Wei period. In his early years, he traveled through the Western Regions and later went to the old Northern Wei capital of Heng'an (in present-day Datong, Shanxi) to practice Chan or absorption meditation (Pali: Jhāna / Sanskrit: Dhyāna). Emperor Xiaowen revered his Buddhist teachings and ordered the construction of Shaolin Temple on Mount Shaoshi in the 20th year of the Taihe era (496), appointing him as its first abbot where he taught traditional Indian meditation methods. The meditation practices can be found in this Sutra which was part of his translation effort and propagation of the teachings of his own former teachers. What (meditation) tradition did Buddhabadra bring to China?Buddhabadra brought the living meditation of Kashmir and Gandhāra - the far Buddhist northwest, where for centuries the most rigorous meditation training in the ancient world was worked out and handed down, teacher to pupil, in an unbroken line. Buddhabhadra had learned meditation there in his youth under the master Buddhasena; and the book he translated into Chinese is the written form of that training, bearing the names of the two great meditation-teachers of the northwest it honors - Dharmatrāta and Buddhasena.The Dharmatrāta Dhyāna Sūtra (達摩多羅禪經, Taishō no. 618) thus is a complete, graded course in how to meditate, and one of the first ever to reach China. It is a training manual: how to meditate, how to work the breath, how to steady a bolting mind, how to take the body apart and see it as it is, and how apply that insight through the deepening stages of absorption - dhyāna, which the Chinese heard as chan and Japan as zen - toward ultimate enlightment.What you will find insideMindfulness of breathing in its full sixteen steps and its sixfold method - counting, following, fixing, watching, turning, purifying.The contemplation of the body - the meditation on the body and the corpse that cuts the root of craving - and, pressed to its end, its startling turn into radiant light.The analysis into elements; the four immeasurables - loving-kindness, compassion, joy, equanimity; the aggregates, the sense-fields, and dependent origination - the whole map, each subject set against the very defilement it cures.The visionary dimension that has fascinated every modern reader: discs of light, luminous signs, the body seen transformed - the confirmatory visions by which a teacher could read how far a student had come.The full ascent - through the absorptions and the formless attainments.A translation on two principlesThe English is made to be read and practised: wherever the rendering leans on a parallel elsewhere in the Buddhist canon, an endnote gives the literal wording, names the parallel and its exact place, including one hundred and thirty verified cross-references - in Pāli, Sanskrit, and Chinese - stand behind the notes. Terms are given in Sanskrit and Pāli; an introduction sets the book in its Kashmiri and Sarvāstivāda world; and an appendix traces the deep canonical roots of its visionary meditation.Who it is forFor the meditator - a clear, beautiful handbook by masters who assumed nothing and explained everything.For the student of Buddhism - a fully sourced rendering of a landmark text at the fountainhead of Chinese meditation.For the reader of Zen and mindfulness - a chance to meet the practice at its Indian source, still cold and clear after sixteen centuries.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers1.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/9/79/819/174/9798191746920_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "19.99", "online_price" : "19.99", "our_price" : "19.99", "club_price" : "19.99", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "" } }

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