Library > Buddhist Society Publications > The Great Way Review

Published by the Buddhist Society, London, 2006, ISBN 0 901032 30 1   pp. 397, including appendices, special formulae, glossary, index and list of source books and references, £15 (£17 including p&p), paperback. Available from Wisdom Books or The Buddhist Society.

Eric Cheetham's work forms the core of the teaching curriculum at the Buddhist Society as well as its Summer School. This book, published at last, is derived from a series of talks delivered by Eric Cheetham beginning in 1990, and it follows on from his previous published work An Outline of Indian Mahayana, first published as four booklets by the Buddhist Society and later as a single volume by Tuttle and Co.

For all those who are serious about practice, it is useful to know something of the history of the development of Buddhism after its initial stabilization and to follow that maturation before and after it left the great centres of learning and began to spread along the Silk Route and across the Himalayas, there to take root and grow. Particularly now when in the West we see all the schools of Buddhism taking hold, it is important to underline the fact that Buddhism is a tree the trunk being Indian Buddhism, with many branches lest we fall into the mistaken belief that one particular way is the only way. This is well summarized in the Introduction, which places the Theravada and the Pali canon in context as one among many early schools of Indian Buddhism. It also touches on the Saddharma-pundarika Sutra (also known as the Lotus Sutra), the Prajaparamita Sutra and the Vimalakirtinirdesa Sutra as being part of the first phase of the Mahayana or, as the author calls them, the 'Further Teachings', meaning 'a more advanced phase of what has gone before'. Nagarjuna, Asanga, Vasubandhu and Santideva all paid great attention to these early sutras, and the author is keen to point out that these great figures were fundamental in the later deve lopment of the Mahayana.

The book consists of two main parts. Part One covers the themes of the early Mahayana. It looks at the 'Buddha in the Mahayana Perspective' and then deals with many of the themes of the period: the Two Truths, Samsara and Nirvana, wisdom and emptiness, skilful means and elements of the bodhisattva process. No less than three chapters are devoted to the Perfections ( paramitas ). It concludes with a chapter on the 'Great Bodhisattvas: Approaches to Full Enlightenment'. The first part is the foundation of what follows in Part II, in which the themes of the main Indian Mahayana schools are described in considerable detail. All chapters of this part are invaluable and are a thoroughgoing introduction to Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka, to Asanga and Vasubandhu and to the Yogacara Vijanavada. The bodhisattva path is given considerable attention as well as Buddha potentiality and its realization. The final two chapters are devoted to the 'Kashmiri Bridge' and the transmission of the Dharma to Central Asia and China . There is a very useful glossary of terms, and the appendices cover the 75 Dharmas of the Sarvastivadins, a schematic rendering of the Twelve-Linked Chain of Arising Due to Conditions and a diagramatical presentation of the bodhisattva path taking in the paramitas, the bhumis and the margas. The special formulae and the references are useful for further reading and greater exploration into this fascinating area. The Great Way to Indian Mahayana Buddhism must be in the library of all those needing an accessible introduction and an outline of what can become an enduring fascination and a source of spiritual nourishment.

Dr Desmond Biddulph - Vice President, Chairman and Editor of The Middle Way journal of The Buddhist Society