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Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Garland of the Buddha's Past Lives (Volume 1)

Garland of the Buddha's Past Lives (Volume 1)

Hardcover

Series: Clay Sanskrit Library, Book 8

Fiction AnthologiesBuddhism

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 0814795811
ISBN13: 9780814795811
Publisher: Clay Sanskrit
Published: Apr 1 2009
Pages: 548
Weight: 0.80
Height: 1.20 Width: 4.40 Depth: 6.50
Language: English
The Garland of Past Lives is a collection of thirty four stories depicting the miraculous deeds performed by the Buddha in his previous rebirths. Composed in the fourth century C.E. by the Buddhist monk Aryashura, the text's accomplished artistry led Indian aesthetic theorists to praise its elegant mixture of verse and prose. The twenty stories in this first volume deal primarily with the virtues of giving and morality. Ascetics sacrifice their lives for hungry tigers, kings open their veins for demons to drink their blood, helmsmen steer their crew through perilous seas, and quail chicks quench forest fires by proclaiming words of truth. The experience is intended to arouse astonishment in the audience, inspiring devotion, through the future Buddha's transcendence of conventional norms in his quest to acquire enlightenment and save the world from suffering. The importance of such stories of past lives in traditional Buddhist culture, throughout Asia and up to today, cannot be overestimated.

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