WHAT IS THIS BOOK, AND WHO IS IT FOR?

This book is a rewritten version of Part I in my Nirvana and Other Buddhist Felicities, published by Cambridge University Press in 1998 (paperback 2006). That book is long, complex, expensive, and not easy to use in teaching. In this book I aim to take the attempt at understanding nirvana offered in the earlier one, and present it in what I hope is a more accessible form; the main text is less crowded with details, all direct references to Pali texts have been removed, and most references to secondary works have been placed in the endnotes. All translations are my own. Although it is intended for that mythical beast, the General Reader, I have had primarily in mind university classes, at either the undergraduate or graduate level, in courses on Buddhism, comparative Religious Studies, History, Anthropology, or other. It is intended to provoke discussion rather than to present unalterable conclusions. In my experience with students at the University of Chicago to whom I have taught what is presented here, the overall methods, arguments, and conclusions are quite comprehensible, when explained pedagogically, whether or not individuals happen to be persuaded. Readers, and teachers using the book in classes, might consult the longer book for more detail, and for the overall argument about nirvana as a part of what I call there the discourse of felicity (explained briefly below), and as part of what the subtitle of that book called Utopias of the Pali Imaginaire.