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cliophate's review against another edition
3.0
If a book is called "Buddha", you kind of expect it to be a biography of, well, the Buddha. Karen Armstrong's Buddha looks like a biography of Siddharta Gautama but is rather a retelling of how Buddhism came to be. (To be fair, there doesn't seem to be enough source material to create a complete biography of Gautama Buddha.)
It's still a good book, but not entirely what I expected. For a biography of the Buddha, I preferred Thich Nhat Hanh's "Old Path White Clouds" more, though due to the "no-sources-issue", it's more a fictional than factual biography.
It's still a good book, but not entirely what I expected. For a biography of the Buddha, I preferred Thich Nhat Hanh's "Old Path White Clouds" more, though due to the "no-sources-issue", it's more a fictional than factual biography.
norvis13's review against another edition
3.0
Karen Armstrong is a respected and lucid scholar of religion, albeit one who comes to the topics she tackles with her own particular biases and evident background (she was a Catholic nun for some years before leaving the convent and becoming a scholar/author). In "Buddha," she gives readers a thorough, scholarly, and mostly accessible account of the life of Siddhatta Gotama, the man who became the Buddha. Her book is perched in an interesting position: both scholarly and relatively brief, engaged in Buddhist doctrine but not immersed in it, it feels at times too straightforward for those who have deep experience with Buddhism, but potentially too complex for those who have no background in the subject matter.
Armstrong's writing is largely engaging, though it can also be dry at times--there were chapters I struggled to finish, and it does not help that the book is divided into only six chapters, with nary a single break in the text to be found. The text moves, sometimes very quickly, from event to event, mostly in chronological order, which can be disorienting and make it hard to find spots to pause if you're trying to read the book casually (e.g. on your commute or before bed, as I was). Armstrong's voice is also very scholarly, and while it's generally readable there are parts that can become very dry. I didn't have this problem with "The Case for God," the other book I've read of hers, so perhaps this was simply a less polished effort (or perhaps my prior familiarity with the material made it less appealing to me).
Overall, though, this book is still a very worthwhile addition to the canon of Western interpretations of the Buddha's life. Accessible enough for a determined beginner to get a sense of the central figure of Buddhism, the book is still a meaningful touchstone for a practitioner who's already familiar with the material but would like to revisit the fundamentals (or who have been introduced to Buddhism primarily through religious/doctrinal texts, and would like to contextualize that with the known history of Gotama and the region/period in which Buddhism arose). Armstrong's biases pop up, and will be more recognizable to readers who've read her other work: she has a tendency to try to draw parallels between the Buddha and Christian mystic interpretations of God, and to slot the Buddha into one of her favorite theories, Karl Jaspers's idea of the "Axial Age." None of this is to say that those parallels don't exist, or that Armstrong is wrong to raise them--but she makes similar arguments in other books that deal more directly with comparative religion, and one wonders whether Buddhist practitioners would agree with all of her interpolations. (I am personally also suspicious of the sweeping, modernist interpretation of history that the Axial Age proposes, but that is not to say that it's without merit.)
"Buddha" is a solid introduction to the life of the Buddha that will stand both readers with experience in Buddhist history and literature and (determined) novices in good stead.
Armstrong's writing is largely engaging, though it can also be dry at times--there were chapters I struggled to finish, and it does not help that the book is divided into only six chapters, with nary a single break in the text to be found. The text moves, sometimes very quickly, from event to event, mostly in chronological order, which can be disorienting and make it hard to find spots to pause if you're trying to read the book casually (e.g. on your commute or before bed, as I was). Armstrong's voice is also very scholarly, and while it's generally readable there are parts that can become very dry. I didn't have this problem with "The Case for God," the other book I've read of hers, so perhaps this was simply a less polished effort (or perhaps my prior familiarity with the material made it less appealing to me).
Overall, though, this book is still a very worthwhile addition to the canon of Western interpretations of the Buddha's life. Accessible enough for a determined beginner to get a sense of the central figure of Buddhism, the book is still a meaningful touchstone for a practitioner who's already familiar with the material but would like to revisit the fundamentals (or who have been introduced to Buddhism primarily through religious/doctrinal texts, and would like to contextualize that with the known history of Gotama and the region/period in which Buddhism arose). Armstrong's biases pop up, and will be more recognizable to readers who've read her other work: she has a tendency to try to draw parallels between the Buddha and Christian mystic interpretations of God, and to slot the Buddha into one of her favorite theories, Karl Jaspers's idea of the "Axial Age." None of this is to say that those parallels don't exist, or that Armstrong is wrong to raise them--but she makes similar arguments in other books that deal more directly with comparative religion, and one wonders whether Buddhist practitioners would agree with all of her interpolations. (I am personally also suspicious of the sweeping, modernist interpretation of history that the Axial Age proposes, but that is not to say that it's without merit.)
"Buddha" is a solid introduction to the life of the Buddha that will stand both readers with experience in Buddhist history and literature and (determined) novices in good stead.
retiredlibrarylady's review against another edition
3.0
Very informative but hard to plow through in places. I like learning about other spiritual paths, and this one taught me a lot of Buddhism and indeed the ancient history of India and other areas. I was glad for the glossary but wish it had included pronunciations.
jackgoss's review against another edition
5.0
I just finished Chapter 2, and then stayed up 1/2 the night journaling my philosophy of life.
erikaellr's review against another edition
4.0
This book was enlightening - not religiously, but culturally. I have much better understanding for who the Buddha was and why he ended up such an important figure to so many. It is a thoughtful narrative about his life and times, and it is incredibly dense with information about historical and mythical context, what we think we know about the Buddha and why we think we know it and the differing viewpoints about it all ... but the author keeps it accessible and very coherent, where it could easily be overwhelming and unfocused.
toastyk's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
adamt216's review against another edition
4.0
Insightful look into the life of Buddha. A nice balance between biographic commentary and theological analysis of the resulting religion.