Books about Walpola from Amazon.com

Beneath the enormous umbrella of Buddhism, there is a diverse galaxy of customs and beliefs, but there is also a kernel of truth that every sect holds dear. Rahula Walpola, scholar and monk, discovers this foundation of Buddhism for us first through straightforward explication, never skipping over a point that has yet to be substantiated, then through translations from key scriptures. Logical and focused, these are the essentials of Buddhism; know them first, then move comfortably on to other Buddhist works..
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Truth is regularly stranger than fiction for the abbot of a Buddhist temple in the far-from-tranquil inner city of Los Angeles, California Whether he is talking a dangerously unbalanced man out of buying a gun, confronting a naked woman in his meditation hall, or helping gamblers reform, Bhante Walpola Piyananda demonstrates that every experience can be an opportunity for learning and appreciating the Buddha's teachings.

Bhante Piyananda also reflects on social and political issues such as the racial tension in his neighborhood after the Rodney King trail and the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afganistan..
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There is more to being a monk than meditating and walking around in spiffy robes. Just ask Bhante Walpola Piyananda, a Sri Lankan Buddhist monk who has been serving the Los Angeles community for many years. Although one of the highest-ranking Theravadan monks in America, his spiritual generosity brings him to the aid of punks, prostitutes, and destitute immigrants. Saffron Days in L.A. is his story of these colorful encounters. Not only does he help reconcile a teenager with her strict parents, get a drunk off the bottle, and help a psychotic back to normal life, he explains how he does it. Occasionally, it's through chanting exercises or outside help, but mostly this compassionate, erudite monk picks out the perfect teaching from his own experience or from the vast corpus of Buddhist sutras that he seems to have in his head, and that does the trick. So here we get not only stories and stories within stories, but the basics of Buddhism in a form that's easy to digest. Sometimes, Piyananda's successes seem to come a bit too easily, like something from a Buddhist version of Touched by an Angel, but the teachings--about how to get along, be happy, and walk the Middle Path--still hit home. --Brian Bruya.
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There are two systems of Abhidharma, according to Tibetan tradition, lower and higher. The lower system is taught in the Abhidharmakosa, while the higher system is taught in the Abhidharmasamuccaya Thus the two books form a complementary pair. Asanga, author of the Abhidharmasamuccaya, is founder of the Yogacara school of Mahayana Buddhism. His younger brother Vasubandhu wrote the Abhidharnmakosa before Asanga converted him to Mahayana Buddhism. Yet the Kosa is written in verse, usual for Mahayana treatises, while the Samuccaya follows the traditional prose and answer style of the older Pali Abhidharma texts. Walpola Rahula, in preparing his 1971 French translation of this Mahayana text from the Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan, has brought to bear on its many technical terms his extensive background and great expertise in the Pali canon. J. W. de Jong says in his review of this work:"Rahula deserves our gratitude for his excellent translation of this difficult text." Sara Boin-Webb is well known for her accurate English translations of Buddhist books from the French. She has now made accessible in English Rahula's French translation, the first into a modern language, of this fundamental text. .
Price: $64.19 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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