The Foundations of Buddhism
Rupert Gethin
I was looking for a book to give me a general outline of Buddhism and its many forms, and this was the most promising prospect I could find. Overall, it disappointed me a bit, but I think that it is a valuable resource for the beginner nonetheless. Gethin sets out to provide a fairly comprehensive view of those things that unite the disparate forms of Buddhism throughout the world. He gets to the heart of the religion by retracing the story of Siddhartha Gautama and the works of his followers, both ancient and recent. At times, Gethin strays into academic parlance and goes name-dropping despite the book's focus on being readable to the casual reader, but this is only distracting and doesn't affect the rest of the text too horribly in and of itself.
This name-dropping is, however, a symptom of Gethin's underlying self-awareness as an academic. Gethin seems to forget that his target audience is entirely new to Buddhism and is probably Western anyway. The text is riddled, understandably, with very foreign terms that are poorly explained and keep showing up. Gethin doesn't do a good job of defining the difficult concepts in the first place, and when they keep showing up it is easy for the reader to get completely lost. It seemed to me that Gethin added a lot of terms and texts that were unnecessary to his purpose in explaining the general basis of Buddhism. My confusion about necessity only highlights Gethin's lack of focus; if these are the foundations of Buddhism, shouldn't Gethin's interest be in explaining them as clearly as possible?
Some sections make a lot of sense and are extremely helpful. The parts of the book dealing with basic Buddhist philosophy are readable and make sense. Gethin does a good job here of explaining the logic behind the beliefs, the chain of reasoning that leads to suffering as the ultimate cause of rebirth and desire as the ultimate cause of suffering. The tables Gethin provides in these sections actually help the reader see the categorizations of Buddism, and the reader leaves with a good idea of the fundamental ideas of the religion. Less instructive, however, are Gethin's sections on Buddhist cosmology and the types of Buddhism. Gethin devotes an entire chapter to the Mahayana without fully explaining what it is and how it differs from Theravada Buddhism (if it even does).
This book's chapters on the life of the Buddha and the general philosophies of Buddhism are excellent and are good for those seeking a general explanation of Buddhism. The other chapters of this book are sadly muddled and don't appear to do much good to the casual reader unfamiliar with Buddhism and curious about the different branches of it. Gethin occasionally strays into territory a bit too advanced for his puported introductory purposes and doesn't clear up the differences between types of Buddhism. This book is incredibly hit and miss and is useful but not indispensable for those looking for a quick introduction to Buddhism.
Grade: B
Rupert Gethin
I was looking for a book to give me a general outline of Buddhism and its many forms, and this was the most promising prospect I could find. Overall, it disappointed me a bit, but I think that it is a valuable resource for the beginner nonetheless. Gethin sets out to provide a fairly comprehensive view of those things that unite the disparate forms of Buddhism throughout the world. He gets to the heart of the religion by retracing the story of Siddhartha Gautama and the works of his followers, both ancient and recent. At times, Gethin strays into academic parlance and goes name-dropping despite the book's focus on being readable to the casual reader, but this is only distracting and doesn't affect the rest of the text too horribly in and of itself.
This name-dropping is, however, a symptom of Gethin's underlying self-awareness as an academic. Gethin seems to forget that his target audience is entirely new to Buddhism and is probably Western anyway. The text is riddled, understandably, with very foreign terms that are poorly explained and keep showing up. Gethin doesn't do a good job of defining the difficult concepts in the first place, and when they keep showing up it is easy for the reader to get completely lost. It seemed to me that Gethin added a lot of terms and texts that were unnecessary to his purpose in explaining the general basis of Buddhism. My confusion about necessity only highlights Gethin's lack of focus; if these are the foundations of Buddhism, shouldn't Gethin's interest be in explaining them as clearly as possible?
Some sections make a lot of sense and are extremely helpful. The parts of the book dealing with basic Buddhist philosophy are readable and make sense. Gethin does a good job here of explaining the logic behind the beliefs, the chain of reasoning that leads to suffering as the ultimate cause of rebirth and desire as the ultimate cause of suffering. The tables Gethin provides in these sections actually help the reader see the categorizations of Buddism, and the reader leaves with a good idea of the fundamental ideas of the religion. Less instructive, however, are Gethin's sections on Buddhist cosmology and the types of Buddhism. Gethin devotes an entire chapter to the Mahayana without fully explaining what it is and how it differs from Theravada Buddhism (if it even does).
This book's chapters on the life of the Buddha and the general philosophies of Buddhism are excellent and are good for those seeking a general explanation of Buddhism. The other chapters of this book are sadly muddled and don't appear to do much good to the casual reader unfamiliar with Buddhism and curious about the different branches of it. Gethin occasionally strays into territory a bit too advanced for his puported introductory purposes and doesn't clear up the differences between types of Buddhism. This book is incredibly hit and miss and is useful but not indispensable for those looking for a quick introduction to Buddhism.
Grade: B
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