The Psychological Attitude of Early Buddhist Philosophy

The Psychological Attitude of Early Buddhist Philosophy – Lama Anagarika Govinda

Lama Anagarika Govinda was born in Germany in 1898, and describes himself as ‘an Indian National of European descent and Buddhist faith, belonging to a Tibetan order and believing in the Brotherhood of Man’.

Lama Govinda shows not only what the ideas of early Buddhism were, but how they came into existence and why they took the form in which we now know them. It is a brilliant summary of Pali Buddhism, and in addition it constitutes a logical approach to the problems of Mahayana and Tantric philosophy which grew out of the consistent application of one and the same principle: the inter-relatedness and nonsubstantiality of all phenomena. The text is further clarified by the provision of a series of well-conceived diagrams, and a group of seven appendices with appropriate charts.

The book forms a companion volume to Lama Govinda’s Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism; The two titles together, provide for the first time in the English language, a complete picture of the organic and systematic develop-ment of Buddhist thought from Vedic and Upanishadic times up to the Tantric period of Indian and Tibetan Buddhism.

World Buddhism ‘The subject of Buddhist philosophy or Abhidamma has been discussed and eluci-dated by Buddhist authors of various climes and countries, but one of the most lucid expositions of this deep aspect of the Dhamma is contained in this book …’