Books by William Edelglass
Routledge Handbook of Indian Buddhist Philosophy, 2022
The Routledge Handbook of Indian Buddhist Philosophy is the first scholarly reference volume to h... more The Routledge Handbook of Indian Buddhist Philosophy is the first scholarly reference volume to highlight the diversity and individuality of a large number of the most influential philosophers to have contributed to the evolution of Buddhist thought in India. By placing the author at the center of inquiry, the volume highlights the often unrecognized innovation and multiplicity of India’s Buddhist thinkers, whose unique contributions are commonly subsumed in more general doctrinal presentations of philosophical schools. Here, instead, the reader is invited to explore the works and ideas of India’s most important Buddhist philosophers in a manner that takes seriously the weight of their philosophical thought.
The forty chapters by an international and interdisciplinary team of renowned contributors each seek to offer both a wide-ranging overview and a philosophically astute reading of the works of the most seminal Indian Buddhist authors from the earliest writings to the twentieth century. The volume thus also provides thorough coverage of all the main figures, texts, traditions, and debates animating Indian Buddhist thought, and as such can serve as an in-depth introduction to Buddhist philosophy in India for those new to the field.
Essential reading for students and researchers in Asian and comparative philosophy, The Routledge Handbook of Indian Buddhist Philosophy is also an excellent resource for specialists in Buddhist philosophy, as well as for contemporary philosophers interested in learning about the rigorous and rich traditions of Buddhist philosophy in India.
Buddhist Philosophy: Essential Readings, 2009
The Buddhist philosophical tradition is vast, internally diverse, and comprises texts written in ... more The Buddhist philosophical tradition is vast, internally diverse, and comprises texts written in a variety of canonical languages. It is hence often difficult for those with training in Western philosophy who wish to approach this tradition for the first time to know where to start, and difficult for those who wish to introduce and teach courses in Buddhist philosophy to find suitable textbooks that adequately represent the diversity of the tradition, expose students to important primary texts in reliable translations, that contextualize those texts, and that foreground specifically philosophical issues.
Buddhist Philosophy fills that lacuna. It collects important philosophical texts from each major Buddhist tradition. Each text is translated and introduced by a recognized authority in Buddhist studies. Each introduction sets the text in context and introduces the philosophical issues it addresses and arguments it presents, providing a useful and authoritative guide to reading and to teaching the text. The volume is organized into topical sections that reflect the way that Western philosophers think about the structure of the discipline, and each section is introduced by an essay explaining Buddhist approaches to that subject matter, and the place of the texts collected in that section in the enterprise.
This volume is an ideal single text for an intermediate or advanced course in Buddhist philosophy, and makes this tradition immediately accessible to the philosopher or student versed in Western philosophy coming to Buddhism for the first time. It is also ideal for the scholar or student of Buddhist studies who is interested specifically in the philosophical dimensions of the Buddhist tradition.
Oxford Handbook of World Philosophy, 2011
This book provides a set of introductions to each of the world's major non-European philosophical... more This book provides a set of introductions to each of the world's major non-European philosophical traditions. It offers the non-specialist a way into unfamiliar philosophical texts and methods and the opportunity to explore non-European philosophical terrain and to connect their work in one tradition to philosophical ideas or texts from another. Sections on Chinese philosophy, Indian philosophy, Buddhist philosophy, East Asian philosophy, African philosophy, and recent trends in global philosophy are each edited by an expert in the field. Each section includes a general introduction and a set of articles written by scholars, designed to provide a broad overview of a major topic or figure.
Papers by William Edelglass
Oxford Encyclopedia of Religion, 2021
Summary
Buddhism is a vast and heterogeneous set of traditions embedded in many different environ... more Summary
Buddhism is a vast and heterogeneous set of traditions embedded in many different environments over more than two millennia. Still, there have been some similar practices across Buddhist cultures that contributed to the construction of local Buddhist environments. These practices included innumerable stories placing prominent Buddhist figures, including the historical Buddha, in particular places. Many of these stories concerned the conversion of local serpent spirits, dragons, and other beings associated with a local place who then themselves became Buddhist and were said to protect Buddhism in their locales. Events in the stories as well as relics and landscape features were marked by pillars, reliquary shrines (stupas), caves, temples, or monasteries that often became the focus of pilgrimage or considered particularly auspicious places for Buddhist practice, where one could encounter buddhas and bodhisattvas. Through ritual practices such as pilgrimage, circumambulation, and offerings, Buddhists engaged environments and their local spirits. Landscapes were transformed into Buddhist sites that were mapped and made meaningful according to Buddhist stories and cosmology. Farmers, herders, traders, and others in Buddhist cultures whose livelihood depended on their environments engaged the spirits of the land, whose blessings they needed for their own good.
Just as they transformed the meaning of local environments, Buddhists also transformed the material environment. In addition to building monasteries, stupas, and other religious structures, Buddhist monastics developed administrative and engineering expertise that enabled large-scale irrigation systems. As Buddhism spread through Asia, it brought agricultural technologies that created the watery landscapes enabling rice production and increasing the agricultural surplus that made possible large monasteries and urbanization.
In the last decades of the 20th century and the first decades of the 21st, eco-Buddhist scholars and practitioners have found resources in Buddhist traditions to construct a Buddhist environmental ethic. Some have argued that concepts such as dependent origination, the ethics of loving-kindness and compassion, and other ideas from classical Buddhist traditions suggest that Buddhism has always been particularly attuned to the environment. Critics have charged that eco-Buddhists are distorting Buddhist traditions by claiming that premodern traditions were responding to contemporary environmental concerns. Moreover, they argue, Buddhist ideas such as dependent origination, or its more environmentally resonant interpretation as “interdependence,” do not in fact provide a satisfying grounding for an environmental ethic. Partly in response to such critics, much scholarly work on Buddhism and the environment became more focused on concrete phenomena, informed by a variety of disciplines, including anthropology,
Page 2 of 21
Printed from Oxford Research Encyclopedias, Religion. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a
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Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 22 July 2021
archaeology, place studies, art history, pilgrimage studies, and the study of activism. Instead of focusing primarily on universal concepts found in ancient texts, scholars are just as likely to look at how local communities have drawn on Buddhist ontology, ethics, cosmology, symbolism, and rituals to develop Buddhist responses to local environmental needs, developing contemporary Buddhist environmentalisms.
The Routledge Handbook of Indian Buddhist Philosophy, 2022
B.R. Ambedkar (1891-1956), was born into an outcaste community, the Mahars, and went on to earn m... more B.R. Ambedkar (1891-1956), was born into an outcaste community, the Mahars, and went on to earn multiple graduate degrees at both Columbia and the London School of Economics, eventually becoming the first Minister of Law in the newly independent India and Chair of the Drafting Committee of the Indian Constitution. While he is primarily known as the chief architect of the constitution, Ambedkar was also a prolific author who worked in disciplines across the social sciences and humanities, including philosophy. According to Ambedkar’s analysis, the inequality that permeated Indian society was due in part to the dominant forms of Indian religion; he argued that not only caste had to be annihilated, but also the religious framework that justified caste hierarchy. However, Ambedkar believed religion was still important as it could provide the basis for a sacred morality and responsibility to others that would bind social groups together in a democratic society. Ambedkar devoted the last decade of his life to developing a Buddhist philosophy and practice that would explicitly center the experience of marginalized communities and lead to a more free, just, and equitable society. This chapter traces three intertwined threads in Ambedkar’s work: philosophy of religion, Buddhism as socially engaged, and Buddhist political philosophy.
Routledge eBooks, Jun 22, 2022
Routledge eBooks, Jun 22, 2022
Routledge eBooks, Jun 22, 2022
Oxford Scholarship Online
The widespread discourse of happiness and meditation is part of a “happiness turn” in contemporar... more The widespread discourse of happiness and meditation is part of a “happiness turn” in contemporary Western Buddhism, in which meditation is presented as a path to happiness. This turn is justified, in part, by empirical research on happiness, which appears to be a straightforward scientific inquiry into the causes and conditions of happiness. The two most widespread methods for measuring happiness, life satisfaction questionnaires and random experience sampling, are each committed to a particular theory of happiness: implicit in the random experience sampling method is a hedonic conception of happiness as positive affect or pleasure. In contrast, Śāntideva suggests that cultivating mindfulness and awareness entails relinquishing of self and increasing skill in addressing others’ needs. This contrast demonstrates that the scientific study of meditation and happiness is not value neutral but reframes the meaning of meditation.
Buddhism and Jainism, 2017
Journal of Dharma Studies, 2019
Teaching Philosophy, 2014
Environmental Philosophy, 2006
His current research is focused on Indian Mahāyāna ethics; and he is co-editing Buddhist Philosop... more His current research is focused on Indian Mahāyāna ethics; and he is co-editing Buddhist Philosophy, with Jay Garfield, forthcoming from Oxford University Press. J. Baird Callicott claims that moral pluralism leads to relativism, skepticism, and the undermining of moral obligations. Buddhist ethics provides a counterexample to Callicott; it is a robust tradition of moral pluralism. Focusing on one of the most significant texts in Buddhist ethics, Śāntideva's Bodhicaryāvatāra, I show how it draws on a multiplicity of moral principles determined by context and skillful means (upāya kauśalya). In contrast to Callicott's description of pluralism as detrimental to moral life, I suggest that South Asian Buddhist traditions provide a model of moral reasoning that is both robust and flexible, a model appropriate for the many kinds of moral obligations that arise in the context of environmental ethics.
Asian Philosophies and the Idea of Religion: Beyond Faith and Reason. Edited by Sonia Sikka and Ashwani Peetush. Routledge, 2020, 2020
I this chapter I situate Walpola Rahula’s presentation of Buddhism as a rational tradition that e... more I this chapter I situate Walpola Rahula’s presentation of Buddhism as a rational tradition that eschews faith in the broader context of Buddhist modernizers who responded to European modernity and colonialism by articulating a Buddhism that conformed to modern European values. Their rejection of faith, I argue, is a rejection of a modern European notion of faith, a Kantian understanding of faith as a belief about that which is beyond the realm of experience, and therefore beyond the realm of knowledge. It is a faith defined against knowledge, which is understood as its opposite. While there are many different accounts of faith in Buddhist traditions, in this chapter I am focusing on several Indian Mahāyāna texts on the path, in which faith, while including belief, is not primarily defined in contrast to reason and knowledge and includes behavioral and affective elements. Asaṅga, for example, understands faith (Sanskrit śraddhā; Pāli saddhā) to have three aspects: (1) a conviction in the good qualities of the Buddha, the teachings of the Buddha, and the community of those who follow the Buddha’s teachings; (2) a serene joy or gladdening made possible by this conviction; and (3) a confidence in one’s ability to make progress on the Buddhist path. While the teachings of the Buddha are initially taken on faith, for Asaṅga, the more understanding one develops, the more one acts faithfully, the more one’s faith increases. Indeed, faith – providing the trust in evidence that reason requires – is the very condition of rational activity. Faith and reason, then, are not oriented toward different realms; they are mutually enhancing. I illustrate this by showing how faith and devotional practices operate in Śāntideva’s Introduction to the Way of Life of a Bodhisattva and Training Anthology. In these texts, Śāntideva presents faith as the origin and source of awakening, because it sets the practitioner on the path. But faith is not merely necessary to initiate the path; according to Śāntideva, and many other Indian Buddhist authors, faith is necessary to continue to motivate progress along the path and is necessary until the end. Still, while worship of the Buddha and other practices to generate faith may be essential elements of the path, the goal is to become a Buddha oneself, which requires, along with transforming affect and action, attaining wisdom through analytic meditation and rational arguments. Śraddhā, as understood by Asaṅga and Śāntideva, while very different from a Kantian conception, resonates with some other Western accounts of faith, both classical and contemporary, that emphasize the affective and behavioral elements, as well as the cognitive. While my main point here is that for Asaṅga and Śāntideva, śraddhā is not in tension with but complements reason, I conclude by arguing that its range of meaning in Indian Buddhist literature on the path is best captured by the English term faith.
Teaching Philosophy, 2009
Sophia, 2006
... Echoing the well-known sentence that begins Totality and Infinity, in 'Useless Suffering&... more ... Echoing the well-known sentence that begins Totality and Infinity, in 'Useless Suffering' Levinas writes, 'The philosophical problem, then, that is posed by the useless pain that appears in its fundamental malignancy through the events of the twentieth century, concerns the ...
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2011
Emmanuel/A Companion to Buddhist Philosophy, 2013
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Books by William Edelglass
The forty chapters by an international and interdisciplinary team of renowned contributors each seek to offer both a wide-ranging overview and a philosophically astute reading of the works of the most seminal Indian Buddhist authors from the earliest writings to the twentieth century. The volume thus also provides thorough coverage of all the main figures, texts, traditions, and debates animating Indian Buddhist thought, and as such can serve as an in-depth introduction to Buddhist philosophy in India for those new to the field.
Essential reading for students and researchers in Asian and comparative philosophy, The Routledge Handbook of Indian Buddhist Philosophy is also an excellent resource for specialists in Buddhist philosophy, as well as for contemporary philosophers interested in learning about the rigorous and rich traditions of Buddhist philosophy in India.
Buddhist Philosophy fills that lacuna. It collects important philosophical texts from each major Buddhist tradition. Each text is translated and introduced by a recognized authority in Buddhist studies. Each introduction sets the text in context and introduces the philosophical issues it addresses and arguments it presents, providing a useful and authoritative guide to reading and to teaching the text. The volume is organized into topical sections that reflect the way that Western philosophers think about the structure of the discipline, and each section is introduced by an essay explaining Buddhist approaches to that subject matter, and the place of the texts collected in that section in the enterprise.
This volume is an ideal single text for an intermediate or advanced course in Buddhist philosophy, and makes this tradition immediately accessible to the philosopher or student versed in Western philosophy coming to Buddhism for the first time. It is also ideal for the scholar or student of Buddhist studies who is interested specifically in the philosophical dimensions of the Buddhist tradition.
Papers by William Edelglass
Buddhism is a vast and heterogeneous set of traditions embedded in many different environments over more than two millennia. Still, there have been some similar practices across Buddhist cultures that contributed to the construction of local Buddhist environments. These practices included innumerable stories placing prominent Buddhist figures, including the historical Buddha, in particular places. Many of these stories concerned the conversion of local serpent spirits, dragons, and other beings associated with a local place who then themselves became Buddhist and were said to protect Buddhism in their locales. Events in the stories as well as relics and landscape features were marked by pillars, reliquary shrines (stupas), caves, temples, or monasteries that often became the focus of pilgrimage or considered particularly auspicious places for Buddhist practice, where one could encounter buddhas and bodhisattvas. Through ritual practices such as pilgrimage, circumambulation, and offerings, Buddhists engaged environments and their local spirits. Landscapes were transformed into Buddhist sites that were mapped and made meaningful according to Buddhist stories and cosmology. Farmers, herders, traders, and others in Buddhist cultures whose livelihood depended on their environments engaged the spirits of the land, whose blessings they needed for their own good.
Just as they transformed the meaning of local environments, Buddhists also transformed the material environment. In addition to building monasteries, stupas, and other religious structures, Buddhist monastics developed administrative and engineering expertise that enabled large-scale irrigation systems. As Buddhism spread through Asia, it brought agricultural technologies that created the watery landscapes enabling rice production and increasing the agricultural surplus that made possible large monasteries and urbanization.
In the last decades of the 20th century and the first decades of the 21st, eco-Buddhist scholars and practitioners have found resources in Buddhist traditions to construct a Buddhist environmental ethic. Some have argued that concepts such as dependent origination, the ethics of loving-kindness and compassion, and other ideas from classical Buddhist traditions suggest that Buddhism has always been particularly attuned to the environment. Critics have charged that eco-Buddhists are distorting Buddhist traditions by claiming that premodern traditions were responding to contemporary environmental concerns. Moreover, they argue, Buddhist ideas such as dependent origination, or its more environmentally resonant interpretation as “interdependence,” do not in fact provide a satisfying grounding for an environmental ethic. Partly in response to such critics, much scholarly work on Buddhism and the environment became more focused on concrete phenomena, informed by a variety of disciplines, including anthropology,
Page 2 of 21
Printed from Oxford Research Encyclopedias, Religion. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a
single article for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).
Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 22 July 2021
archaeology, place studies, art history, pilgrimage studies, and the study of activism. Instead of focusing primarily on universal concepts found in ancient texts, scholars are just as likely to look at how local communities have drawn on Buddhist ontology, ethics, cosmology, symbolism, and rituals to develop Buddhist responses to local environmental needs, developing contemporary Buddhist environmentalisms.
The forty chapters by an international and interdisciplinary team of renowned contributors each seek to offer both a wide-ranging overview and a philosophically astute reading of the works of the most seminal Indian Buddhist authors from the earliest writings to the twentieth century. The volume thus also provides thorough coverage of all the main figures, texts, traditions, and debates animating Indian Buddhist thought, and as such can serve as an in-depth introduction to Buddhist philosophy in India for those new to the field.
Essential reading for students and researchers in Asian and comparative philosophy, The Routledge Handbook of Indian Buddhist Philosophy is also an excellent resource for specialists in Buddhist philosophy, as well as for contemporary philosophers interested in learning about the rigorous and rich traditions of Buddhist philosophy in India.
Buddhist Philosophy fills that lacuna. It collects important philosophical texts from each major Buddhist tradition. Each text is translated and introduced by a recognized authority in Buddhist studies. Each introduction sets the text in context and introduces the philosophical issues it addresses and arguments it presents, providing a useful and authoritative guide to reading and to teaching the text. The volume is organized into topical sections that reflect the way that Western philosophers think about the structure of the discipline, and each section is introduced by an essay explaining Buddhist approaches to that subject matter, and the place of the texts collected in that section in the enterprise.
This volume is an ideal single text for an intermediate or advanced course in Buddhist philosophy, and makes this tradition immediately accessible to the philosopher or student versed in Western philosophy coming to Buddhism for the first time. It is also ideal for the scholar or student of Buddhist studies who is interested specifically in the philosophical dimensions of the Buddhist tradition.
Buddhism is a vast and heterogeneous set of traditions embedded in many different environments over more than two millennia. Still, there have been some similar practices across Buddhist cultures that contributed to the construction of local Buddhist environments. These practices included innumerable stories placing prominent Buddhist figures, including the historical Buddha, in particular places. Many of these stories concerned the conversion of local serpent spirits, dragons, and other beings associated with a local place who then themselves became Buddhist and were said to protect Buddhism in their locales. Events in the stories as well as relics and landscape features were marked by pillars, reliquary shrines (stupas), caves, temples, or monasteries that often became the focus of pilgrimage or considered particularly auspicious places for Buddhist practice, where one could encounter buddhas and bodhisattvas. Through ritual practices such as pilgrimage, circumambulation, and offerings, Buddhists engaged environments and their local spirits. Landscapes were transformed into Buddhist sites that were mapped and made meaningful according to Buddhist stories and cosmology. Farmers, herders, traders, and others in Buddhist cultures whose livelihood depended on their environments engaged the spirits of the land, whose blessings they needed for their own good.
Just as they transformed the meaning of local environments, Buddhists also transformed the material environment. In addition to building monasteries, stupas, and other religious structures, Buddhist monastics developed administrative and engineering expertise that enabled large-scale irrigation systems. As Buddhism spread through Asia, it brought agricultural technologies that created the watery landscapes enabling rice production and increasing the agricultural surplus that made possible large monasteries and urbanization.
In the last decades of the 20th century and the first decades of the 21st, eco-Buddhist scholars and practitioners have found resources in Buddhist traditions to construct a Buddhist environmental ethic. Some have argued that concepts such as dependent origination, the ethics of loving-kindness and compassion, and other ideas from classical Buddhist traditions suggest that Buddhism has always been particularly attuned to the environment. Critics have charged that eco-Buddhists are distorting Buddhist traditions by claiming that premodern traditions were responding to contemporary environmental concerns. Moreover, they argue, Buddhist ideas such as dependent origination, or its more environmentally resonant interpretation as “interdependence,” do not in fact provide a satisfying grounding for an environmental ethic. Partly in response to such critics, much scholarly work on Buddhism and the environment became more focused on concrete phenomena, informed by a variety of disciplines, including anthropology,
Page 2 of 21
Printed from Oxford Research Encyclopedias, Religion. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a
single article for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).
Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 22 July 2021
archaeology, place studies, art history, pilgrimage studies, and the study of activism. Instead of focusing primarily on universal concepts found in ancient texts, scholars are just as likely to look at how local communities have drawn on Buddhist ontology, ethics, cosmology, symbolism, and rituals to develop Buddhist responses to local environmental needs, developing contemporary Buddhist environmentalisms.