Mapping the Buddhist Path to Liberation Diversity and Consistency Based on the Pali Nikayas and the Chinese Agamas

Due to the diversity in Buddhism, its essence remains a puzzle. This book investigates the Buddhist path to liberation from a practical and critical perspective by searching for patterns found in the Pali Nikayas and the Chinese Agamas. The early discourses depict the Buddhist path as a network of routes leading to the same goal: liberation from suffering. This book summarizes various teachings in three aspects, provides a template theory for systematically presenting the formulas of the sequential training of the path, and analyses the differences and similarities among diverse descriptions of the path in the early Buddhist texts. By offering a comprehensive map of the Buddhist path, this book will appeal to scholars and students of Buddhist studies as well as those practitioners with a serious interest in the Buddhist path.

Ven. Dr. Jianxun Shi, FHKAH, born as Yi-jung Tsai, is a Buddhist bhiksuni of the Mahayana tradition. She was ordained in 1996 at the Luminary Buddhist Institute in Taiwan and received five years of monastic training there. Between 2005 and 2007, she studied Pali and the Pali Nikayas under the personal guidance of Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi in the U.S. In 2016, she earned a Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies at the Centre of Buddhist Studies of the University of Hong Kong. In 2018, she won the First Book Prize awarded by the Hong Kong Academy of Humanities ("HKAH") and has been recognized as an Early Career Fellow of HKAH ever since. She is currently a research fellow for the Noble Path Buddhist Education Fellowship, a non-profit Buddhist organization in New York. Her research interest focuses on the practical aspects of the Early Buddhist texts preserved by all Buddhist schools. Both traditionally and academically trained, she hopes to play a role in making the profundity of the Buddhist teachings understandable and relevant to the modern practitioners of Buddhism.