Slightly revised version of the author's dissertation--University of Erfurt, 2008.

The Bodhicaryavatara ("Entering the Course towards Awakening") is an Indian Mahayana Buddhist companion to the path of a Bodhisattva, someone motivated by the altruistic "spirit of awakening". Unlike many other Buddhist scriptures, much of this text is written in the very touching form of personal reflections. Despite its late composition (7th-8th cent. CE), the Bodhicaryavatara quickly gained widespread recognition and high appraisal in various parts of the Buddhist world and even beyond. Today it is one of the most widely translated Buddhist texts. The 14th Dalai Lama has emphasized the special impact of this scripture on his own spirituality, and a number of Western scholars have praised it as a true gem among the world's religious classics. After many commentaries by Buddhist scholars throughout the centuries, this is the first commentary from a Christian perspective, exploring the deep resonances between the "spirit of awakening" and the "spirit of Christ".

The Supreme Way is not difficult If only you do not pick and choose. Neither love nor hate, And you will clearly understand. Be off by a hair, And you are as far from it as heaven and earth. These vivid lines begin one of the most beloved and commented upon of all Zen texts, the Hsin Hsin Ming ("Faith in Mind"), a sixth-century poem by the third Chan patriarch, Seng Ts’an. The Hsin Hsin Ming is a masterpiece of economy, expressing the profoundest truth of the enlightened mind in only a few short pages. Master Sheng Yen’s approach is unique among commentaries on the text: he views it as a supremely useful and practical guide to meditation practice. "I do not adopt a scholarly point of view or analytical approach," he says. "Rather, I use the poem as a taking-off point to inspire the practitioner and deal with issues that arise during the course of practice. True faith in mind is the belief grounded in realization that we have a fundamental, unmoving, and unchanging mind. This mind is precisely Buddha mind."

The mind training tradition that developed in Tibet has its source from the great iIndian masters Nagarjuna and Shantideva and it was brought into Tibet by Atisa in the eleventh century. The practice of Mind training is based on the essential Mahayana teachings of impermanence, compassion, and the exchange of self and other. The lojong teachings are a source of inspiration and guidance shared by masters of all Tibetan traditions. The Seven Point Mind Training is a popular Tibetan Buddhist text by a twelveth century Kadampa master Geshe Chekawa. An Extensive Commentary on the Seven Point Mind Training is a commentary on The Seven Point Mind Training by Gesge Lobsang Gyatsho. In this book he explains the practice of Mind Training as the synthesis of all the various trainings of Mahāyāna Buddhism into one practice with nothing omitted whatsoever. He constantly emphasizes the daily practice of the Mind Training teachings over mere study or memorization and enjoins us to place whatever intellectual understanding we may have into pure Dharma practice right now. Since the root text used here comprises pithy statements handed down by the great Kadampa masters of Tibet that require further elucidation, Gen Lobsang Gyatso explains them with the expertise of an individual who has lived these teachings for many years and has come to a personal, experiential mastery of them. He espouses them as the fundamental antidote to our samsaric suffering and afflictive emotions – the adamantine antidote that crushes our own worst enemy – our self-centered attitude. Among many text on Mind Training, Geshe Chekawa’s Seven Points for Training the Mind is widely used Chekhawa, was said to possess all the marks of a great being right from his birth. He received the Milarepa instructions from Rechungpa and had many other great teachers like Geshe Tsan, Jayulpa and so forth. It is said that he had memorized over one hundred scriptures, but always felt incomplete, thinking that there must be some other teaching for achieving enlightenment. Then at thirty he met the great teacher Sharawa who gave him experiential teaching for twelve years. Geshe Chekhawa was very satisfied as we see at the end of his text on the Seven Points of Mind Training where he says, “Now I have no regrets even if I die.” Sharawa gave this practice of exchanging oneself for the other as a secret teaching to Chekhawa. Thus the special focus of this text is how to eliminate self-cherishing attitudes which are the source of all the sufferings and problems that we face in our life.

National Book Award Finalist: “This man’s ideas may be the most influential, not to say controversial, of the second half of the twentieth century.”—Columbus Dispatch At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion—and indeed our future. “Don’t be put off by the academic title of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Its prose is always lucid and often lyrical…he unfolds his case with the utmost intellectual rigor.”—The New York Times “When Julian Jaynes . . . speculates that until late in the twentieth millennium BC men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of the gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis.”—John Updike, The New Yorker “He is as startling as Freud was in The Interpretation of Dreams, and Jaynes is equally as adept at forcing a new view of known human behavior.”—American Journal of Psychiatry

Something is going wrong on many college campuses in the last few years. Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are rising. Speakers are shouted down. Students and professors say they are walking on eggshells and afraid to speak honestly. How did this happen? First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt show how the new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into American childhood and education: what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people. These three Great Untruths are incompatible with basic psychological principles, as well as ancient wisdom from many cultures. They interfere with healthy development. Anyone who embraces these untruths—and the resulting culture of safetyism—is less likely to become an autonomous adult able to navigate the bumpy road of life. Lukianoff and Haidt investigate the many social trends that have intersected to produce these untruths. They situate the conflicts on campus in the context of America’s rapidly rising political polarization, including a rise in hate crimes and off-campus provocation. They explore changes in childhood including the rise of fearful parenting, the decline of unsupervised play, and the new world of social media that has engulfed teenagers in the last decade. This is a book for anyone who is confused by what is happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live, work, and cooperate across party lines.

Epiphanius, Bishop of Constantia on Cyprus from 367 to 403 C.E., was incredibly influential in the last decades of the fourth century. Whereas his major surviving text (the Panarion, an encyclopedia of heresies) is studied for lost sources, Epiphanius himself is often dismissed as an anti-intellectual eccentric, a marginal figure of late antiquity. In this book, Andrew Jacobs moves Epiphanius from the margin back toward the center and proposes we view major cultural themes of late antiquity in a new light altogether. Through an examination of the key cultural concepts of celebrity, conversion, discipline, scripture, and salvation, Jacobs shifts our understanding of "late antiquity" from a transformational period open to new ideas and peoples toward a Christian Empire that posited a troubling, but ever-present, "otherness" at the center of its cultural production.