CONTENTS:- How and When We came to Know; What it is we can know; The Buddha; Who was he; The New Word:Whence it came; The new word: What is was; The new word the middle way; The Wayfarer; The wayfarer's Guide; The way in the worlds; The first missioners and their teaching; The parables and their history; The first missioners: Their living and dying; The aftermen their doings and their recording; Writing and historic truth; An everyman's gospel; The eastward expansion.
DESCRIPTION
The author believes in viewing a subject historically. A religion, she would have said, is not a ready-made, reach-me-down set of notions and conducts, evolved, with no past and no change, from the inner being of any one man, however great. She delves deep into the Pali Pitakas and Sanskrit Sutras of Buddhism, removes the huge mass of arid theology accumulated during the passage of that religion through different periods, different tongues and different races of men, and presents, in its pristine purity, the original message of the Buddha, who so extended the concepts of way and Dharma in the Upanishads, as to suit all men who eddy about here and there, striving blindly, achieving nothing. His original teaching is so simple and direct that it is irresistible, which is the reason why Buddhism has survived as a world-religion to this day. His clarity of thought and diction, in combination with her deep erudition, has contributed in making this manual unique which generates a lot of interest amongst the common readers.