Buddhist biographies have different kinds of textual history and are conveyed through various media. They are composed by named poets or written down by anonymous redactors and compilers; they are told by bards and even enacted by performers. They are also written by historical persons as autobiographies, both "public" and "secret." They are addressed to different kinds of readerships and have diverse purposes, including forming a model for emulation, an explanation of the foundation of a particular community, or a narrative explication of doctrine. This book presents a multifaceted, multitradition portrait of Buddhist biographies. Part one deals with biographies of the Buddha, investigating Chinese sources and featuring poetic versions by Ashvaghosha. Part two contains modern Buddhist life stories, including a rare autobiography from Burma. Part three explores the Tibetan tradition. Together, these biographies give students and seekers a thoughtful overview of how diverse Buddhist teachers understand and explain the highest purpose of life.

Lives Lived, Lives Imagined: Biographies of Awakening, Linda Covill (Editor), Ulrike Roesler (Editor), Sarah Shaw (Editor), Wisdom Publications, Paperback,
352 pp, $24.95

Linda Covill received her PhD from the University of Oxford and is the author of Handsome Nanda, a translation and a study of Asvaghosa's Saundarananda. Ulrike Roesler teaches Indian studies at the University of Freiburg in Germany and specializes in the history of the Tibetan Kadampa tradition. Sarah Shaw read Greek and English at Manchester University, where she took a doctorate in English. She studied Pali at Oxford, and is on the steering committee of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies. She is a mother, teacher, and writer. She practises with the Samatha Association of Britain.

	Preface	IX
	Introduction by Ulrike Roesler	1
I	The Buddha: A Life Lived, Imagined, and Living Still
	And That Was I: How the Buddha Himself Creates a Path between Biography and Autobiography by Sarah Shaw	15
	Chips from a Biographical Workshop-Early Chinese Biographies of the Buddha: The Late Birth of Rahula and Yasodhara's Extended Pregnancy by Max Deeg	49
	Truth Under the Guise of Poetry: Asvaghosa's Life of the Buddha by Roland Steiner	89
	Handsome Is as Handsome Does: Asvaghosa's Story of the Buddha's Younger Brother by Linda Covill	123
II	Theravada Biographies in the Twentieth Century
	Seeing Myself as Another Person: The Autobiography of a Burmese Monastic Thinker in the Twentieth Century by Ven. Khammai Dhammasami	139
	Learning, Living, Spreading the Dharma-A Postmodern Journey from Uku Baha, Lalitpur, to Hsi Lai Monastery, Hacienda Heights, California: How Ganesh Kumari Shakya Became Bhikkhuni Dhammawati by Sarah LeVine	161
III	Tibet Re-Narrated: Biographies of Tibetan Masters
	The Evolution of the Biographies of Milarepa and Rechungpa by Peter Alan Roberts	181
	Tibetan Sources on the Life of Serdog Panchen Shakya Chogden (1418-1507) by Volker Caumanns	205
	Narratives of Reincarnation, Politics of Power, and the Emergence of a Scholar: The Very Early Years of Miky� Dorje by Jim Rheingans	241
	The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Circumscription of Saintly Evil in Tibetan Biography by Charles Ramble	299
	Spellings of Tibetan Names	325
	Contributors	333