Buddha Takes the Mound: Enlightenment in 9 Innings

by Donald S. Lopez Jr. Ph.D.

Overview

In 2010 a Buddhist scroll was found in the ruins of Yankee stadium, and it proved what Buddhist scholar/award-winning author Donald Lopez, Ph.D., had suspected: the Buddha created the game of baseball.

Buddha Takes the Mound: Enlightenment in 9 Innings is The Tao of Pooh for baseball. Funny, moving, and enlightening, this is a read that will engross, enrich, and charm any baseball fan.

At once a love letter to the sport and an engaging introduction to Buddhism, it shows how the Buddha invented baseball to teach us deep truths about the world, about ourselves, and about each other. Lopez believes that Buddhism provides a lens for us to see baseball in a new way, a way that makes us love the game even more, a way that makes us ponder profound questions about winning and losing, about who we are, about finitude and infinitude, about birth and death.

As Lopez reveals, not only is Buddhism integral to baseball; but baseball is Buddhism, and baseball is ourselves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250237910
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/05/2020
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.40(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Donald S. Lopez, Jr., Ph.D., has been referred to as the only public intellectual in the field of Buddhist Studies. He has appeared on many television and radio stations, including ABC, NPR, BBC radio, and more. He has written for the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Nation, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, and he has been quoted in countless publications, such as The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, the Chicago Tribune, and The New Yorker, to name a few.

Donald is the author of Buddha Takes the Mound, The Scientific Buddha, and In Search of the Christian Buddha. He has also translated the Dalai Lama's Opening the Eye of New Awareness and edited influential scholarly works including The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism and Critical Terms for the Study of Buddhism.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

preface establishing the bona fides

THE BASEBALL SUTRA, WITH COMMENTARY

1. the prologue

2. the question

3. impermanence

4. suffering

5. no self

6. karma

7. vajrapani

8. the secret teaching

9. enlightenment appendix: the baseball sutra

Editorial Reviews

"Baseball has always been a spiritual force of nature in my life and Buddha Takes The Mound only confirms what I thought I knew." —Ron Darling, New York Times Bestselling author and Emmy Award winning baseball analyst

"Runs all the bases with aplomb." —Kirkus Reviews

"Lopez’s passion for baseball and Buddhism is palpable and contagious, resulting in an odd but earnest introduction to Buddhist teachings." —Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

2020-01-22
The acclaimed Buddhist scholar discusses how Buddha invented baseball to show us the “path,” which may travel through as much misery as exultation.

In baseball, there is an extremely fine line between delight and suffering (one of the Buddha's four noble truths). Consider: A team that loses 4 of every 10 games during the Major League Baseball season goes to the playoffs, while a team that loses 5 of every 10 never does. Lopez—a professor of Buddhist and Tibetan studies at the University of Michigan who has written extensively on the subject and translated several works by the Dalai Lama—first establishes his bona fides as a lifelong student of baseball and fan of the New York Yankees. Baseball is a Buddhist game, and only those seeking enlightenment ever reach nirvana (the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York). Lopez digs into the eternal truth of suffering by telling us there will be baseball happiness in ample supply and that one of the first avenues to joy is the recognition of impermanence and lack of self (the ego strikes out). Out of the book's dugout and bullpen stream a pantheon of baseball greats, not least Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio, each shouldering a critical lesson from the Buddha. In the process, the author throws a few curveballs in elucidating such things as karma, tantra, sutra, Vajrapani, and other terms almost as arcane as baseball's sabermetrics. Pitching Buddhist and baseball history, Lopez’s amusing contrivance of a book is more than a little tongue-in-cheek, but the author’s aim is to enhance our love of the game by a more profound understanding of its fundamentally Buddhist nature. He also seeks to counsel that impermanence itself is impermanent, that the cycle of birth and death is endless, and that even the gods can't hit .400 anymore.

Though a bit overly detailed and repetitive, the book runs all the bases with aplomb.

Kirkus Reviews