The Buddha: Life and Afterlife Between East and West

Almond (Mary Magdalene), a professor emeritus of religious studies at the University of Queensland, traces in this sweeping study how the Buddha came to be perceived in the West as a historical figure who taught enlightenment and whose sensibilities roughly align with current attitudes toward religion and mindfulness. Along the way, Almond analyzes early-millenia Indian texts that depicted an “enchanted” being with thousands of previous lives; medieval European writings cataloging “Buddhisms” encountered by Western explorers traveling through Asia (“around 350 different names for the Buddha [exist] in European sources before 1800,” Almond notes); and 19th-century European texts that frame the Buddha as a real-life figure. Contemporary scholarship revises that representation yet again, Almond shows, by taking cues from an individualized “Western naturalized Buddhism” to reframe the Buddha as “the inspiration for every individual’s personal quest for meaning.” Smoothly integrating two millennia’s worth of diverse historical accounts, Almond contextualizes Buddha’s shifting portrayal as divine being, teacher, ideal everyman, and symbol of happiness—an “exemplary human figure” onto which cultural values and understandings of the East are projected and mediated. This belongs on the bookshelf of any serious student of Buddhism. (Feb.)