{"id":367,"date":"2008-12-30T15:46:15","date_gmt":"2008-12-30T15:46:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/2008\/12\/foundations-of-buddhism.html"},"modified":"2008-12-30T15:46:15","modified_gmt":"2008-12-30T15:46:15","slug":"foundations-of-buddhism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/12\/foundations-of-buddhism.html","title":{"rendered":"Foundations of Buddhism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m addicted to books about Buddhism; I have somewhere between two and three hundred of them. In my estimation one of the very best is <em>Foundations of Buddhism<\/em>, by Rupert Gethin.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/onecity.files.wordpress.com\/2008\/12\/gethin4.jpg\" alt=\"gethin4\" width=\"142\" height=\"212\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-2414\" \/><br \/>\nIt&#8217;s a relatively short book that nonetheless manages to provide a comprehensive overview of the fundamentals of Buddhist doctrine and practice, as well as a study of the textual corpora and historical contexts. Gethin explains difficult concepts with lucid prose and makes excellent use of the latest scholarship (as of 1998) to summarize different theories regarding such controversies as, to give one example, how the Mahayana traditions arose and evolved.<br \/>\n<!--more-->Gethin does a terrific job, in particular, of clarifying concepts we are often hazy on. One thing you&#8217;ll find when you start reading works of Buddhist Studies in addition to Buddhist books is that often the points that we find confusing are points that the tradition itself is confused about. That is to say, there is usually a history of doctrinal conflict and evolution about which it is very helpful to know.<br \/>\nThere are a number of detailed, five-star <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/review\/product\/0192892231\/ref=cm_cr_pr_helpful?%5Fencoding=UTF8&amp;showViewpoints=0\">raves on Amazon.com<\/a>, a few of which make a better case for the book better than I can, so suffice it to say that this is one of the few books on Buddhism I would unreservedly recommend to anyone with more than a passing interest in the subject.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m addicted to books about Buddhism; I have somewhere between two and three hundred of them. In my estimation one of the very best is Foundations of Buddhism, by Rupert Gethin. It&#8217;s a relatively short book that nonetheless manages to provide a comprehensive overview of the fundamentals of Buddhist doctrine and practice, as well as&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":193,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-and-media"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Foundations of Buddhism - One City<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/12\/foundations-of-buddhism.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Foundations of Buddhism - One City\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I&#8217;m addicted to books about Buddhism; I have somewhere between two and three hundred of them. In my estimation one of the very best is Foundations of Buddhism, by Rupert Gethin. It&#8217;s a relatively short book that nonetheless manages to provide a comprehensive overview of the fundamentals of Buddhist doctrine and practice, as well as&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/12\/foundations-of-buddhism.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"One City\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-12-30T15:46:15+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/onecity.files.wordpress.com\/2008\/12\/gethin4.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Greg Zwahlen\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Foundations of Buddhism - One City","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/12\/foundations-of-buddhism.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Foundations of Buddhism - One City","og_description":"I&#8217;m addicted to books about Buddhism; I have somewhere between two and three hundred of them. In my estimation one of the very best is Foundations of Buddhism, by Rupert Gethin. It&#8217;s a relatively short book that nonetheless manages to provide a comprehensive overview of the fundamentals of Buddhist doctrine and practice, as well as&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/12\/foundations-of-buddhism.html","og_site_name":"One City","article_published_time":"2008-12-30T15:46:15+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/onecity.files.wordpress.com\/2008\/12\/gethin4.jpg"}],"author":"Greg Zwahlen","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/12\/foundations-of-buddhism.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/12\/foundations-of-buddhism.html","name":"Foundations of Buddhism - One City","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/12\/foundations-of-buddhism.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/12\/foundations-of-buddhism.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/onecity.files.wordpress.com\/2008\/12\/gethin4.jpg","datePublished":"2008-12-30T15:46:15+00:00","dateModified":"2008-12-30T15:46:15+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#\/schema\/person\/6aede7186f63611a529a4a16cce5df54"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/12\/foundations-of-buddhism.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/12\/foundations-of-buddhism.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/12\/foundations-of-buddhism.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/onecity.files.wordpress.com\/2008\/12\/gethin4.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/onecity.files.wordpress.com\/2008\/12\/gethin4.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/12\/foundations-of-buddhism.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Foundations of Buddhism"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/","name":"One City","description":"The Interdependence Project","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#\/schema\/person\/6aede7186f63611a529a4a16cce5df54","name":"Greg Zwahlen","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/706\/7066c07c9d69ab14d18489c3b85d90d2x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/706\/7066c07c9d69ab14d18489c3b85d90d2x96.jpg","caption":"Greg Zwahlen"},"description":"Greg Zwahlen began practicing meditation and studying Buddhism in 2000 and joined the ID Project at its inception in 2005. He lives in New York City, where he is also a member of the Shambhala Meditation Center of New York. He has undertaken advanced study over the past few years at the Rime Shedra Rime of New York City, the Mipham Academy under Khenpo Gawang, and the Nitartha Institute for Higher Buddhist Studies.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/author\/gzwahlen"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/193"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}