Table of Contents

List of illustrations
List of maps
Acknowledgements
Note on citations and pronunciation
1: Buddhism and elephants
2: The Buddha
3: Karma and rebirth
4: The Four Noble Truths
5: The Mahayana
6: The spread of Buddhism in Asia
7: Meditation
8: Ethics
9: Buddhism in the West
Timeline
Further Reading
Index

About the Author

Damien Keown is Emeritus Professor of Buddhist Ethics at Goldsmiths College, London. He is Founding co-editor of the Journal of Buddhist Ethics and a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society. He is also the author of Buddhist Ethics: A Very Short Introduction (2005) and co-editor of Encyclopaedia of Buddhism (Routledge, 2007). He is now retired.

Reviews

`Review from previous edition Damien Keown ... His short account has been tried out in draft on students and is admirably lucid, anticipating and dealing well with the questions that are bound to come up.'
Roger Farrington, The Middle Way, Vol. 71, No. 4, February 1997
`Damien Keown's book is a readable and wonderfully lucid introduction to one of mankind's most beautiful, profound, and compelling systems of wisdom. His impressive powers of explanation help us to come to terms with a vital contemporary reality.'
Bryan Appleyard
`an excellent and highly readable account of a complex and multifarious subject. Even if you were to read nothing else, you would probably come away with a fair idea of what Buddhism is all about.'
Looi Siew Tip, New Straits Times
`impressive'
Sarah Marriott, Irish Times 13/5/00