Table of Contents

The Doctrine of Awakening
The Attainment of Self-Mastery According to the Earliest Buddhist Texts
Translator's Foreword
Preface
Introduction
Part I: Principles
1. Varieties of Ascesis
2. The Aryan-ness of the Doctrine of Awakening
3. The Historical Context of the Doctrine of Awakening
4. Destruction of the Demon of Dialectics
5. The Flame and Samsaric Consciousness
6. Conditioned Genesis
7. Determination of the Vocations
Part II: Practice
8. The Qualities of the Combatant and the "Departure"
9. Defense and Consolidation
10. Rightness
11. Sidereal Awareness: The Wounds Close
12. The Four Jhana: The "Irradiant Contemplations"
13. The States Free from Form and the Extinction
14. Discrimination Between the "Powers"
15. Phenomenology of the Great Liberation
16. Signs of the Nonpareil
17. The Void: "If the Mind Does Not Break"
18. Up to Zen
19. The Ariya Are Still Gathered on the Vulture's Peak
Index

About the Author

A controversial philosopher and critic of modern Western civilization, Julius Evola (1898--1974) wrote widely on Eastern religions, alchemy, sexuality, politics, and mythology. Inner Traditions has published his Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics of Sex, The Yoga of Power, The Hermetic Tradition, Revolt against the Modern World and Mystery of the Grail.

Reviews

"Evola ... had a clarity of mind and a gift for explaining tremendously difficult concepts in nonacademic language. His account of the niddana-chain (the twelve stages of conditioned genesis) is a masterpiece. It equips the reader for a whole new understanding, not only of Buddhism, but of the human state in general."
*Gnosis Magazine*

"In essence, the Buddhist 'Doctrine of Awakening' is, for Evola, the cultivation of a pure, naked, transcendent consciousness, and his book shines in describing the stages leading to this consciousness."
*Richard Smoley, Parabola*

"Evola engages in a well-graduated exposition of Buddhist techniques as seen in this ascetic light, with discussion of the mental/spiritual states encountered. Evola's is the most original book I've ever read on Buddhism."
*Dan Byrnes, New Dawn, March/April 2002*

" . . . a provocative study of the teachings of the Buddha by one of Europe's most stimulating thinkers."
*Buddha Torrents, Oct 2008*