The Doctrine of Awakening: The Attainment of Self-Mastery According to the Earliest Buddhist Texts

Description

In a probing analysis of the oldest Buddhist texts, Julius Evola places the doctrine of liberation in its original context. The early teachings, he suggests, offer the foremost example of an active spirituality that is opposed to the more passive, modern forms of theistic religions. This sophisticated, highly readable analysis of the theory and practice of Buddhist asceticism, first published in Italian in 1943 , elucidates the central truths of the eightfold path and clears away the later accretions of Buddhist doctrine. Evola describes the techniques for conscious liberation from the world of maya and for achieving the state of transcendence beyond dualistic thinking. Most surprisingly, he argues that the widespread belief in reincarnation is not an original Buddhist tenet. Evola presents actual practices of concentration and visualization, and places them in the larger metaphysical context of the Buddhist model of mind and universe. The Doctrine of the Awakening is a provocative study of the teachings of the Buddha by one of Europe's most stimulating thinkers. Varieties of Ascesis 3 The Aryanness of the Doctrine of Awakening 13 The Historical Context of the Doctrine of Awakening 21 Destruction of the Demon of Dialectics 38 The Flame and Samsaric Consciousness 44 Conditioned Genesis 57 Determination of the Vocations 73 The Qualities of the Combatant and the Departure 95 Defense and Consolidation 107 Rightness 118 Sidereal Awareness The Wounds Close 130 The Four Jhana The Irradiant Contemplations 146 The States Free from Form and the Extinction 165 Discrimination Between the Powers 183 Phenomenology of the Great Liberation 191 Signs of the Nonpareil 203 The Void If the Mind Does Not Break 212 Up to Zen 220 The Ariya Are Still Gathered on the Vultures Peak 231