Exploring Karma & Rebirth | Nagapriya

Exploring Karma & Rebirth | Nagapriya | Worthwhile

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Exploring Karma & ...

	Exploring Karma & Rebirth Nagapriya Windhorse Publications, 2004 - 176 pages average customer review:based on 2 reviews view larger image
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Every Buddhist should read it -David Loy
An excellent introduction -Stephen Batchelor
Cogent, knowledgeable, and penetrating-Norman Fischer

Clarifies, examines and considers these two important but often misunderstood Buddhist doctrines. Offers an imaginative reading of what the teachings could mean for us now.

A Brave New Buddhism

When Stephen Batchelor's BUDDHISM WITHOUT BELIEFS appeared in 1997, a new chapter on philosophy and ethics was added to the evolving story of Buddhism in the West. Batchelor questioned, amongst other things, the need to understand karma and rebirth in such ways as to require belief in lives after lives.

Nagapriya's EXPLORING KARMA & REBIRTH takes the discussion on these pivotal matters even further. In easily readable and convincing prose he asks how the facts of karma and rebirth can be understood without seeing the former as a kind of cosmic retributive principle and the latter as implying reincarnation.

Nagapriya's Buddhism is very much this-worldly, centered on what one does in this life rather than what one should do in preparation for the next.

Rather than cut to his conclusion I would rather people read the book to see how he arrives at it. Suffice it to say that people who would otherwise be attracted to the Dharma but are put off by much of its metaphysics will find a solid approach and a good teacher with Nagapriya.

I do have to say, however, that if enough Buddhists and would-be Buddhists take seriously what Nagapriya is suggesting, and if they flesh out the ramifications of Nagapriya's thesis, Buddhism as we know it will change significantly in the West perhaps first, then (I suspect) wherever the Dharma is practiced.

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Worthwhile

The author is a western Buddhist and his discussion of this topic is from a Buddhist perspective. I believe this book will appeal to those interested in the topic whether or not they are Buddhist.

The author is conversational and engaging rather than didactic and domagtic in his tone. That is not to say that the author lacks a point of view. His viewpoint, for want of a better term, is contemporary Buddhist minimalist. While not entirely dismissive of traditional viewpoints he clearly does not adhere to them. The author seems especially troubled by the beliefs of some Tibetan Buddhists concerning karma.

I was at times frustrated by the author's failing to take into account alternative viewpoints in his discussion of certain aspects of the topic of karma and rebirth. Still, I found reading this book to be rewarding even when I was in substantial disagreement with the author. In fairness, I don't believe the author intended this work to be an exhaustive examination of the topic but rather as a stimulus to thought and contemplation. In this he has succeeded admirably.

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