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Podcast: New Books in Buddhist Studies
Episode: Dale S. Wright, âWhat is Buddhist Enlightenment?â (Oxford UP, 2016)
Description: The words âBuddhismâ and âenlightenmentâ are, at least in the West, tightly connected. âEveryoneâ knows that the goalâor at least one of the goalsâof Buddhist practice is âenlightenment.â But what the heck is âenlightenment,â exactly? Itâs a tough question, but Dale S. Wright takes it on in his aptly named book What is Buddhist Enlightenment? (Oxford University Press, 2016). Using a kind of Zen approach (my characterization, not his), Wright doesnât slice and dice the concept in order to come up with some Platonic ideal of âenlightenment.â You wonât find any pithy definition of the idea in the pages of this book. Ra...