Cover Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- List of Tables and Figure -- List of Maps -- A Note on Buddhist Languages -- INTRODUCTIONI -- I. THE BUDDHA: THE STORY OF THE AWAKENED ONE -- The historical Buddha -- The legend of the Buddha -- The nature of a buddha -- 2. THE WORD OF THE BUDDHA: BUDDHIST SCRIPTURES AND SCHOOLS -- Dharma: texts, practice, and realization -- The first recitation of scriptures -- Sutra and Abhidharma -- The origin of the ancient Buddhist schools -- The Mahāyāna sūtras -- 3. FOUR TRUTHS: THE DISEASE, THE CAUSE, THE CURE, THE MEDICINE -- The orientation of the Buddha's teaching -- The disease of suffering -- The origin of suffering: attachment, aversion, and delusion -- The cessation of suffering: nirvāṇa -- The way leading to the cessation of suffering -- 4. THE BUDDHIST COMMUNITY: MONKS, NUNS, AND LAY FOLLOWERS -- The Buddha's followers and the origin of the Buddhist order -- Ordination and the Buddhist monastic ideal -- The underlying concerns of the Vinaya -- From wandering to settled life -- The spiritual life -- The lay community -- Spiro's schema: apotropaic, kammatic, and nibbānic Buddhism -- 5. THE BUDDHIST COSMOS: THE THRICE-THOUSANDFOLD WORLD -- Of space and time: world-systems -- Cosmology and psychology: macrocosm and microcosm -- Cosmology, folk religion, and modern science -- 6. No SELF: PERSONAL CONTINUITY AND DEPENDENT ARISING -- The Buddhist critique of self as unchanging -- The problem of personal continuity -- Ignorance, attachment, and views of the self -- The elaboration of the teaching of dependent arising -- Did the Buddha deny the existence of the self? -- 7. THE BUDDHISM PATH: THE WAY OF CALM AND INSIGHT -- Introductory remarks -- The role of faith -- Good conduct -- The practice of calm meditation -- The stages of insight meditation.

The relationship of calm and insight -- 8. THE ABHIDHARMA: THE HIGHER TEACHING -- Stories, legends, texts, and authors -- The Abhidharma as a system of Buddhist thought -- The consciousness process, karma, and rebirth -- Some Abhidharma problems -- 9. THE MAHĀYĀNA: THE GREAT VEHICLE -- The beginnings of the Mahāyāna -- The vehicle of the bodhisattva -- Transcendent buddhas -- Emptiness and the 'perfection of wisdom' -- Nāgārjuna and the 'middle' (Madhyamaka) school -- 'Ideas only' (vijñapti-mātra) and the Yogācāra -- The Tathāgatagarbha -- 10. EVOLVING TRADITIONS OF BUDDHISM: SOUTH, EAST, NORTH, AND WEST -- Theravāda Buddhism in Sri Lanka and South-East Asia: Southern Buddhism -- China, Korea, and Japan: East Asian Buddhism -- Tibet and Mongolia: Northern Buddhism -- A final note: Buddhism in the West -- Notes -- Select Bibliography -- Glossary -- Index.