These study materials are offered for scholarship and deeper understanding of the teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha.

Quantum Life Buddhism study materials for the Threefold Lotus Kwoon school of Buddhist scholarship

This monumental, four-volume reference overviews significant events and developments in religious history over the course of more than five millennia. Written for high school students, undergraduates, and general readers interested in the history of world religions, this massive reference chronicles developments in religious history from 3500 BCE through the 21st century. The set comprises four volumes, treating the ancient world from 3500 BCE through 499 CE, 500 through 1399, 1400 through 1849, and 1850 through 2009. Each volume includes hundreds of brief entries, arranged chronologically and then further organized by region and religion. The entries provide fundamental information on topics ranging from the neolithic Ggantija temples near Malta through the election of Mary Douglas Glasspool as bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles in 2009. Global in scope and encyclopedic in breadth, this chronology of world religions is an essential purchase for all libraries concerned with the development of human civilization.

This volume contains four important texts in the Tiantai Lotus tradition: The Infinite Meanings Sutra, composed as an introduction to the Lotus Sutra, and The Sutra Expounded by the Buddha on the Practice of the Way through Contemplation of Bodhisattva All-embracing Goodness are part of the so-called Threefold Lotus Sutra. The Commentary on the Lotus Sutra is a translation of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka-sūtra-upadeśa (Jpn. Myōhorengekyō upadaisha), a commentary on the Lotus Sutra attributed to the eminent Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu. A Guide to the Tiantai Fourfold Teachings is a translation of a tenth-century text by the Korean monk Chegwan that presents an introduction to the teachings of Zhiyi (538-597), founder of the Tiantai tradition.

Begins with the linguistic and intellectual foundations of Chinese literature and moves successively through verse, prose, fiction, drama, and commentary and criticism; it then closes with popular and peripheral manifestations. A special feature is the focus on such contextual subjects as the history of popular culture, the effect of religion upon literature, the role of women, and relationships with non-Sinitic languages and peoples.

The second volume of a celebrated translation of the classic Chinese novel This is the second volume in David Roy's celebrated translation of one of the most famous and important novels in Chinese literature. The Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin P’ing Mei is an anonymous sixteenth-century work that focuses on the domestic life of Hsi-men Ch’ing, a corrupt, upwardly mobile merchant in a provincial town, who maintains a harem of six wives and concubines. The novel, known primarily for its erotic realism, is also a landmark in the development of the narrative art form—not only from a specifically Chinese perspective but in a world-historical context. With the possible exception of The Tale of Genji (1010) and Don Quixote (1615), there is no earlier work of prose fiction of equal sophistication in world literature. Although its importance in the history of Chinese narrative has long been recognized, the technical virtuosity of the author, which is more reminiscent of the Dickens of Bleak House, the Joyce of Ulysses, or the Nabokov of Lolita than anything in the earlier Chinese fiction tradition, has not yet received adequate recognition. This is partly because all of the existing European translations are either abridged or based on an inferior recension of the text. This translation and its annotation aim to faithfully represent and elucidate all the rhetorical features of the original in its most authentic form and thereby enable the Western reader to appreciate this Chinese masterpiece at its true worth.

A five-volume translation of the classic sixteenth-century Chinese novel on the domestic life of a corrupt merchant.