Buddhism: Spiritual Foundation of a New Civilization

Jan. 23, 2011 - PRLog -- Buddhism is the religion of the future.  Buddhism is a religion that can surmount the divides that separate people today - divides that have caused suffering and misunderstanding and wars for as long as human beings have been on the planet.  

Such is the argument running through all of the books of author James Hilgendorf.  

In his newest book, "The Buddha and the Dream of America", especially, Hilgendorf makes the extraordinary claim - through poetry that reads like prose at times  - that the very roots of America and the American Dream themselves find their source in the unimaginably remote past.   This source was the Lotus Sutra, the greatest of the sutras or teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha, which revealed itself not only in the life of Gautama Buddha, the historical Buddha of twenty-five hundred years ago, but in the life of the eternal Buddha who has existed since time without beginning.

Henry David Thoreau, author of Walden, was the messenger, Hilgendorf claims, who opened the door to the wisdom of the Lotus Sutra to America.  

In the 1844 issue of the Dial magazine, the publication of the New England Transcendentalist Club, Thoreau introduced a translation of the "Parable of the Medicial Herbs" chapter of the Lotus Sutra, the core and heart of all the Buddhist teachings.

Buddhism is a religion that transcends time and space, and all the distinctions between human beings - distinctions of race, ethnicity, social status and gender - that have been the source of conflict and wars since time without beginning.  

Buddhism seeks the primal source of all of humanity - the single, solitary human being that has been at the root of our identity all along.  If we can all get back to our common roots, we become comrades.

"The Buddha and the Dream of America" is available through bookstores, and online through The Tribute Series at http://www.tributeseries.com.  On the website, there are links also to ebook versions of all of Hilgendorf's books through Amazon.com.

James Hilgendorf's other books include "Life & Death: A Buddhist Perspective"; "The Great New Emerging Civilization"; and "The New Superpower."

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The Tribute Series is the producer of a series of highly-acclaimed travel videos. The company also produces corporate videos for domestic and international sales. The company also produces and distributes the books of James Hilgendorf.