Theology & Religion
Excellence in Scholarship and Learning
Excellence in Scholarship and Learning
Buddhism and the Coronavirus
The Buddha’s Teaching on Suffering
Jeaneane Fowler was formerly Head of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Wales, Newport, and later an Honorary Research fellow. Her publications include Hinduism: Beliefs and Practices (Choice Outstanding Title, 1997; revised and enlarged to two volumes in 2019), and in the same series, Humanism, Chinese Religions, T’ai Chi Ch’üan, Nichiren Daishonin Buddhism in Wales; and books on the Philosophy of Hinduism, the Philosophy of Taoism, The Bhagavad Gita, and Causality.
In The Sussex Library of Religious Beliefs & Practices
This book examines the early teachings of Buddhism associated with the life of the Buddha, Siddhatta Gotama. In these teachings, the Buddha put forward his famous Four Noble Truths concerning the nature of suffering, its causes, the Truth that it can be overcome, and a pathway to end suffering. The suffering experienced in the contemporary coronavirus pandemic may seem to be very distant from the Buddha’s message delivered over two thousand years ago, but the teaching of the Four Noble Truths is as relevant today as it was all that time ago. So this book melds the two, occasionally with discrete treatment of past and present but ever cognizant of the ways in which the teachings of the past inform the present crisis. To understand coronaviruses, the book examines the nature of viruses, their origins, causes and the ways in which they are both friends and enemies of humankind. Importantly and crucially, the book investigates how far humanity itself is the cause of its own suffering in the pandemics that arise – no less in the coronaviruses that have emerged in the twenty-first century.
Chapters include:
• The Buddha
• Viruses: Friends and Enemies
• The Noble Truth of Suffering
• The Second Noble Truth of the Cause of Suffering
• The Third Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering
• The Fourth Noble Truth: The Noble Eightfold Path
• The Noble Eightfold Path: Mindfulness and Concentration
• The Brahma-vihara: Love: Compassion: Sympathetic Joy: Equanimity
| Paperback ISBN: | 978-1-78976-068-2 |
| Paperback Price: | £25 / $34.95 |
| Release Date: | January 2021 |
| Page Extent / Format: | 320 pp. 229 x 152 mm |
| Illustrated: | No |
Preface and Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 The Buddha
The life and death of the Buddha
The Buddha's Dhamma
2 Viruses: Friends and Enemies
The virosphere
The origins of viruses
Bacteria
Characteristics of viruses
Symbiosis of virus and host
Viral enemies and their causes
Coronaviruses
SARS
MERS
Covid-19: a new virus
Characteristics of Covid
The source and causes of Covid-19
The immune system
Measures for protection and prevention
The new normal
3 The Noble Truth of Suffering
The Four Noble Truths
Desire and aversion
Mind and body
The Five Aggregates
Change and transience
4 The Second Noble Truth of the Cause of Suffering
Craving, tanha
Impermanence, annica
The three evils/poisons
Greed
Hatred
Delusion/stupidity
No-self, anatta
5 The Third Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering
Nibbana
Dependent Origination
Kamma
Death
Rebirth
6 The Fourth Noble Truth: The Noble Eightfold Path
The Noble Eightfold Path
Right view/understanding
Right thought/intention
Moral and ethical conduct
Right speech
Right action
Right livelihood
Right effort
7 The Noble Eightfold Path: Mindfulness and Concentration
Mind and body
Meditation/mindfulness
The calm mind
Concentration, samadhi
Meditation: The medical evidence
Insight meditation, vipassana
8 The Brahma-vihara:
Love, Compassion, Sympathetic Joy, Equanimity
Metta: Love, loving-kindness,
Karuna: Compassion
Mudita: Sympathetic joy
Upekkha: Equanimity
Human folly
Epilogue
Notes
Further Reading
Index
Review Quotes to Follow
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