A JOURNEY WITH THE BUDDHA (Set of 2 Vols.)

A journey with the Buddha – across pan-Asian countries and 27 centuries since the Buddha’s appearance – has been an exciting fact-finding mission: both assimilative and analytical in approach. The questions from the modern man’s context, are: What made the appearance of the Buddha and his credo so compelling to the Indian masses in the 6th century BC? How were the Budhisattvas expected to overcome imperfection before attaining the Buddhahood? What made people to flock to Shakyamumi, an extraordinary savant, so tantalizingly silent even on the existence of God? How could ‘Theravada’ (Hinayana) disavox the norms of rituals and espouse critical methods of investigation, as opposed to blind faith? After the demise of the Master, how were the inevitable doubts and dissent – in the rank and file – resolved entirely democratically? Was the ‘Mahayana’ credo essentially a fruit of backlash from Hinduism, with the earlier faith reasserting itself? How was the supreme assertion made in the Lotus Sutra for all human beings that the Buddhahood was attainable in the same birth? How did ‘Mantrayana’ arise in distant Japan, contributing seminally to the growth of the nascent Japanese culture? How did ‘Vajrayana’ let the Buddhist institutions amalgamate with the esoteric ‘Tantric cult in the pan-Himalayan region? What were the factors that made the Buddhist Acharyas and Siddha poets take to ‘Sahajiya philosophy? What was the inner zeal that led Buddhists cross inaccessible international borders, promoting their faith? Above all, who is the consummate Maitreya, residing in Tushita heaven, looked forward to, by the jaded mankind? The answered received in the quest reveal an amazing ‘gestalt’ of Buddhism, namely, a reality where the sum of individual parts is more than the whole! With propagation and absorption of Buddhism over space and time, the ‘gestaltic’ perception begins right in the beginning.