Buddha, Karen Armstrong
Buddha, Karen Armstrong
3 Rating(s)
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Buddha

Author: Karen Armstrong

Narrator: Kate Reading

Unabridged: 6 hr 31 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/29/2001


Synopsis

This rich, timely, and highly original portrait of the Buddha explores both the archetypal religious icon and Buddha the man. In lucid and compelling prose, Armstrong brings to life the Buddha’s quest, from his renunciation of his privileged life to the discovery of a truth that he believed would utterly transform human beings and enable them to live at peace in the midst of life’s suffering. Buddha also expands to focus and meditate on the culture and history of the time, as well as the Buddha’s place in the spiritual history of humanity, and the special relevance of his teachings to our own society as we again face a crisis of faith.

“[P]enetrating, readable, and prescient.”—New York Times Book Review

About The Author

Karen Armstrong is the author of numerous books on religion, including The Case for God, A History of God, The Battle for God, Holy War, Islam, Buddha, and Fields of Blood, as well as a memoir, The Spiral Staircase. Her work has been translated into 45 languages. In 2008 she was awarded the TED Prize and began working with TED on the Charter for Compassion, created online by the general public, crafted by leading thinkers in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. It was launched globally in the fall of 2009. Also in 2008, she was awarded the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Medal. In 2013, she received the British Academy’s inaugural Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Transcultural Understanding.  Kate Reading is the recipient of three AudioFile Earphones Awards, and has narrated everything from Patricia Cornwell to George Eliot. Her favorite BOT recordings include Like Water for ChocolateMiddlemarch, and Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Times series, which she narrated with her husband, Michael Kramer.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Riku on December 02, 2018

Armstrong deftly crystallizes the disjointed fragments of mythology and history into a coherent powerful narrative. The story progresses without many digressions and mythic overtones and the reader manages to get a rare glimpse into the character, the aspirations, the struggles and the real journey......more

Goodreads review by Karan on January 21, 2016

The book humanized the Buddha for me as a flesh and blood man who’d stop at nothing to answer his burning meaning-of-life questions. I pick up the book again and again when I lose momentum on my meditation practice to feel inspired by the Buddha, my hero, again.......more

Goodreads review by Terence on December 26, 2009

Twenty-five years ago or so I read Gore Vidal's Creation and my perception of the Buddha has been fatefully tainted ever since. Cyrus Spitama, the novel's protagonist and the grandson of Zoroaster, finds himself in India at one point and has an opportunity to meet Gautama: We followed Sariputra up th......more

Goodreads review by Adam on October 05, 2014

Maybe it is not possible to write a good biography of a religious leader from the mists of history. Karen Armstrong's book admits that the records about Buddha are not really historical, but rather illustrative and instructional. Then she goes ahead and tries to write a more typical biography, traci......more


Quotes

[Armstrong] offers a frequently inspiring look at this exemplary life... Invaluable. (Los Angeles Times)