BUDDHISM: The Illustrated Guide

This illustrated guide to Buddhism skillfully embodies brains, brawn and beauty. With its 200 full-cover photos, maps and reproductions of art and architecture, it is a gorgeous coffee-table book that also succeeds in being both scholarly and lively. Short topical essays, enlightening sidebars and complementary photo cutlines grace almost every two-page spread. In four major sections ("Origins," "Principles and Practice," "Holy Writings" and "Buddhism Today"), general editor and University of Vermont religion professor Trainor and his five contributors craft a rich mosaic of Buddhism, from its specific cultural roots to its global resonances today. Many facets of Buddhism's diamond are held to light, including Buddha's "wondrous birth," ethics, visualization, saints and teachers, women, meditation centers, socially engaged Buddhism and timely groups such as Falun Gong. Picture researcher Cee Weston-Baker deserves special mention for the carefully selected, handsome photographs and art reproductions that offer much more than retail allure. These places, spaces and rituals inform the work beyond normal measure, revealing, for example, the robust tenderness of a young Burmese boy about to become ordained as he sheds the symbolic Buddha's princely robes for the simple ones of a monk. China, Sri Lanka, Tibet, India, Hawaii and the United States are but some of the featured locales in this rich evidence of "right effort." This book will prove useful to the curious, the scholar and the devotee. (Dec.)