Description: This wide-ranging and powerful book argues that Theravāda Buddhism provides ways of thinking about the self that can reinvigorate the humanities and offer broader insights into how to learn and how to act.
Review Quotes: Collins' previous books have all been field-changing works. Wisdom as a Way of Life is no exception. This powerful work provides original and stimulating ways of understanding Pali texts while creating a bridge between scholars of the Pali world and intellectual historians working elsewhere. His thoughtful comparative engagement with studies of asceticism and courtly-literary culture offers much of value to scholars of South and Southeast Asia, as well as other premodern arenas.--Anne M. Blackburn, author of Locations of Buddhism: Colonialism and Modernity in Sri Lanka