Georgios T. Halkias, Luminous Bliss: A Religious History of Pure Land Literature in Tibet. Pure Land Buddhist Studies Series; Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2013. xxx + 335 pp. $49.00. ISBN 978-0-82483-590-3 (hardback).
Issue: Vol 8 No. 2 (2014)
Journal: Religions of South Asia
Subject Areas: Religious Studies Buddhist Studies Islamic Studies
Abstract:
Halkias’ work truly is a rich and well-rounded pioneer-study of a comparatively neglected field that introduces the pure-land traditions of India and Tibet with considerable analytical versatility and compelling intelligence. Nearing a decade of sustained research on Pure-Land traditions inside and outside Indo-Tibetan cultural areas enables Halkias to draw on considerable historical and doctrinal details which allows him to fully contextualize and deepen findings explored in a number of noteworthy articles (2004, 2006, 2009, 2013).
Author: Michael M B Zrenner
References :
Halkias, Georgios T. 2004. ‘Tibetan Buddhism Registered: A Catalogue from the Imperial Court of “Phang Thang”’. The Eastern Buddhist 36.1/2: 46–105.
— 2006. ‘Pure-Lands and Other Visions in Seventeenth-Century Tibet: A Gnam-chos sādhana for the Pure-land Sukhāvatī Revealed in 1658 by Gnam-Chos Mi-’gyur-rdo-rje (1645-1667)’. In Bryan J. Cuevas and Kurtis R. Schaeffer (eds.), Power, Politics and the Reinvention of Tradition: Tibet in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century: 103–28. Leiden: Brill.
— 2009. ‘Compassionate Aspirations and their Fulfillment: Dol-po-pa’s “A Prayer for Birth in Sukhāvatī”’. In Edward A. Arnold (ed.), As Long as Space Endures—Essays on the Kālacakra Tantra in Honor of H. H. the Dalai Lama: 259–75. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion.
— 2013. Luminous Bliss: A Religious History of Pure Land Literature in Tibet. Pure Land Buddhist Studies Series; Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
Jones, Charles B. 2014. ‘Reaching the Pure Land of Amitābha from Tibet’. Review of Georgios T. Halkias (2013), Luminous Bliss: A Religious History of Pure Land Literature in Tibet. H-Buddhism, H-Net Reviews. http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=40391 (accessed 7 November 2014).