Arvind Sharma begins this bold and challenging book with a no less combative questions: ‘Is nothing sacred?’ Both the study of Buddhist philosophy and the philosophy of religion, he states, are founded on this very question, but their answers may be very different. In the course of the book, Sharma interrogates such central issues as the nature of evil, belief or disbelief in God, the nature of human destiny, immortality, Karma and reincarnation. Rather than simply examining each issue separately, he looks at each from the perspective of Buddhist philosophy, seeing where and how there are divergences and commonalities with the tenets of Western-dominated ‘philosophy of religion’. The result is an illuminating and vital study, of interest to students and teachers of the philosophy of religion and for all those interested in Buddhist ways of thinking.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Arvind Sharma
ARVIND SHARMA was born in Varanasi, India. He earned a B.A. in History, Economics, and Sanskrit from Allahabad University in 1958 and continued his interests in economics at Syracuse University, earning an M.A. in 1970. Pursuing a lifelong interest in comparative religion, Dr. Sharma gained an M.T.S. in 1974 and then a Ph.D. in Sanskrit and Indian Studies from Harvard University in 1978. He succeeded to the Birks Chair of Comparative Religion at McGill University in Montreal, Canada and was the first Infinity Foundation Visiting Professor of Indic Studies at Harvard University. He has published over fifty books and five hundred articles in the fields of comparative religion, Hinduism, Indian philosophy and ethics, and the role of women in religion. Widely cited as an authority on Hinduism, amongst his most note-worthy publications are The Hindu Gita: Ancient and Classical Interpretations of the Bhagavadgita (1986), The Experien-tial Dimension of Advaita Vedanta (1993), Our Religions: The Seven World Religions Introduced by Pre-eminent Scholars from Each Tradition (1994), The Philosophy of Religion: A Buddhist Perspective (1995), Classical Hindu Thought: An Introduction (2000), and The Study of Hinduism (2003).
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