Buddha at the Apocalypse: Awakening from a Culture of Destruction »

Timely and audacious, Buddha at the Apocalypse challenges us to look directly at the devastating assumptions underlying the very mechanisms of the modern world. We believe with certainty in the inevitable forward march of progress, in the natural rightness of humankind’s control of the environment, and, most pervasively, in the idea of an epic struggle that requires righteousness to utterly destroy evil. These images of apocalypse and dominance pervade our language, our politics, and, with coming of 2012, even our escapist entertainment. In Buddha at the Apocalypse, Kurt Spellmeyer offers us an alternative view that comes like breath of cool, fresh air in these times. Drawing on the Buddha, Spellmeyer makes an impassioned clarion call to awaken from the culture of destruction — or perish within it. The book also features a foreword by the most high-profile Buddhist academic in America — and possibly the world.

Foreword Robert A. F. Thurman Thurman, Robert A. F.

Introduction Welcome to the Apocalypse 1

Pt. I World Despising

Ch. 1 In the Beginning of History 19

Ch. 2 World Despising and the Origins of the Modern World 33

Pt. II World Embracing

Ch. 3 An End to History, an End to Suffering 51

Ch. 4 One Body - The Hidden Ground of Liberation 69

Ch. 5 From Revolutionary Thinking to an Ecology of Mind 87

Ch. 6 Images of Order in a Complex World 105

Ch. 7 On and Off the Road of History 123

Conclusion: Buddha at the Apocalypse 139

Notes 151

Index 167

About the Author 179