Reddit reviews Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations (The Library of Religious Beliefs and Practices)

Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations is a good book on the topic of "mahayana buddhism as a whole". It's written by the scholar Paul Williams.

Mahayana is extremely diverse in terms of how it's practiced.

Jodo-shinshu is a subsect within pure land buddhism. There are many other types of pure land buddhism besides jodo-shinshu, though. If you happen to like it, you can always head over to /r/pureland , or ask /u/iPorkChop for advice (if he's no longer active on reddit he's available at DharmaWheel.net), he knows a lot about japanese pure land (jodo-shinshu and jodo-shu).

In trying to better understand this question, I have found it useful to study how Buddhism evolved over the last 2500 years. To get a better sense of what the historical Buddha may have said and taught, I have found Bhikku Boddhi's translations of the Pali canon and the Theravada tradition useful and it does not seem to emphasize inherent buddha nature.

https://www.amazon.com/Buddhas-Words-Anthology-Discourses-Canon/dp/1536614688

However, later Mahayana schools of thought seem to have emphasized the inherent buddhahood or buddha nature or Tathāgatagarbha nature. I have found Gethin and Williams books useful to understand these later evolutions of the theory and practice of buddhism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tath%C4%81gatagarbha_S%C5%ABtra

https://www.amazon.com/Mahayana-Buddhism-Doctrinal-Foundations-Religious/dp/0415356539

How academic do you want to get? Mahayana Buddhism: Doctrinal Foundations is a very good survey of Mahayana Buddhism, but it will be on the heavy reading side.

The Tree of Enlightenment from budaedu.org has a good summary of the basic concepts.

Thanks for the correction. It seems that at least in Japan the seven Medicine Budhas ("shichibutsu Yakushi") are often portrayed as the main Medicine Buddha and his six emanations.

"The Saptabuddha Sutra is of special interest here because it describes the vows and Pure Lands of seven buddhas. The first six of these were mostly identified as emanations of Yakushi [Medicine Buddha] himself, who is the seventh on the list." https://www.amazon.com/Buddhas-Kami-Japan-Combinatory-Paradigm/dp/0415297478


"There are two sutras particularly devoted to the topic of Bhaisajyaguru - the Bhaisajyaguru Sutra, and a sutra which is best known by the short title of Saptabuddha Sutra. The latter text incorporates much of the Bhaisajyaguru Sutra, but adds a further six Buddhas to Bhaisajyaguru, giving a set of seven.... The Saptabuddha Sutra adds a mantra or dharani which can be used at times of illness, for longevity, and so on." - Paul Williams https://www.amazon.com/Mahayana-Buddhism-Doctrinal-Foundations-Religious/dp/0415356539l







"Many eons ago, seven bodhisattvas strongly prayed for the temporal and ultimate happiness of all sentient beings, that their names become wish-fulfilling in order to heal both the mental and physical sicknesses and diseases of sentient beings... They are called the Seven Medicine Buddhas, the main one is 'Lapis Buddha of Medicine, King of Light'. Buddha Shakyamuni taught the teachings on the Medicine Buddha, and according to one tradition, is also considered as one of the Medicine Buddhas, and hence the Eight Medicine Buddhas." https://kadampa-center.org/medicine-buddha-puja (an FPMT site)

There's only 1 blue-colored Medicine Buddha. https://landofmedicinebuddha.org/about-medicine-buddha/vows-of-medicine-buddhas/

Describe the Four Noble Truths? I sometimes like looking at Wikipedia's simple english version of pages to get good, short overviews of things. I don't think that description of the first step of the Eightfold Path is very good though. The normal english article is better for that one, but other than that it's a good summery.

Many Zen teachers express things differently. They might not go into a lot of detail or focus on lists and texts as much. There are also some differences. For example under Right Action, some Japanese Zen lineages allow monks to marry and have families. In general though all that page will still apply to Zen.

Zen is pretty hard to learn on your own. Koans, which are things you might call spiritual questions, make up a lot of the practice in a lot of Zen, and to practice them you pretty much need to be working with a teacher. I don't know of any good resources that I'd recommend for learning to practice Zen on your own.

If you'd like a good book to learn about Zen from an scholarly point of view this is a good one. It's only going to teach you about Zen, like things you'd learn about the subject if you took a college class. It won't teach you how to practice Zen. If you'd like a book that isn't from an academic point of view this is a nice one, but still, it's not really going to teach you how to practice Zen.

Awesome book that sums up all Mahayana thought, including Prajnaparamita and Madhyamaka

This is a great book: https://global.oup.com/ushe/product/the-foundations-of-buddhism-9780192892232?cc=us&lang=en&

Here's an intro for just Mahayana: https://www.amazon.com/Mahayana-Buddhism-Doctrinal-Foundations-Religious/dp/0415356539

These are two articles on the Buddha's philosophy:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/buddha/
http://www.iep.utm.edu/buddha/#SH3a

https://www.amazon.com/Mahayana-Buddhism-Doctrinal-Foundations-Religious/dp/0415356539

Perhaps a bit academic, but this one gives a really nice overview.