Boundless Sublime

An Introduction to Early Buddhist Soteriology

The book offers a comprehensive discussion on the Buddhist liberation and meditation concepts based on the original Pāli scriptures of Theravāda Buddhism. It interprets the early Buddhist soteriology critically and sympathetically by interweaving the Buddhological and the Buddhistic debates on understanding the Buddha’s original teaching on bondage, liberation, liberated ones, and meditation. It showcases the liberal and pluralistic character of early Buddhist soteriology by interpreting it psychologically through the lens of the Buddha's recognition of two sets of psychosomatic and epistemic mental configurations active in the human mind. It shows how this dualism pervades the early Buddhist soteriology by pointing out its recognition of craving and ignorance as two causes of suffering; the emancipation of mind and the emancipation by wisdom as two constituents of liberation; and the meditative appeasing and the meditative watching as two methods to attain that liberation. It demonstrates how the Buddha structures a gradual path to liberation enabling individuals to experience many temporary and irreversible secondary goals along the way and allowing them to join the path at any stage appropriate to their temperaments and advancement at a given time and space. The book therefore serves the students and scholars of Buddhism, religion, and psychology to obtain a comprehensive and insightful introduction to Buddhist soteriology.

Boundless Sublime

Iris Murdoch’s Wild Imagination

This book presents the first ecocritical study of novelist, philosopher, poet and public intellectual Iris Murdoch (1919–1999). It brings her love of the natural world into the light, arguing for its critical significance when Murdoch conveys an awareness of intricately interconnected ecologies through her work: an awareness that anticipates the motivations and concerns of modern-day environmental humanities. The book is the first of its kind to assess some of Murdoch's poems, seen as early articulation of the environmental imagination that finds recurrent expression in her novels, philosophical writings and personal journals throughout her writing life. This book offers a significant entry point for a new research direction in Murdoch studies by explicating her unique perspective on the natural world.