Buddhism focuses most intensively on that aspect of religion that we call spirituality. No religion has set a higher value on states of spiritual insight and liberation, and none has set forth so methodologically and with such a wealth of reflection the various paths and disciplines by which such states are reached. The volume surveys the entire tradition both chronologically and geographically in the varieties of its historical forms and in the great diversity of its teachings. Volume I covers the earlier career of Buddhism as it unfolded in India, Southeast Asia, Tibet and China, and is dominated by the speculative and analytical spirit of India, and its methodical ascetic quest for a definitive liberation (moksha, nirvana), a clinically pure emptying out of all illusion. On the other hand, Volume II takes up further developments in China, Korea and Japan, including Ch’an (zen and new Buddhist movements and is pervaded by the Chinese realization of enlightenment here and now, and by the practical , down-to-earth, this-worldly terms in which the enlightened vision was expressed and enacted. Meditation and emptiness are the regulating themes of the first volume; emphasis on sudden or immediate enlightenment and its accompanying doctrine of immanent Buddha-nature have come to the foreground in the second volume.
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