title: Buddhist Religions: A Historical Introduction (Religious Life in History)
author: Richard H. Robinson
description: Willard L. Johnson received his Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of Wisconsin in 1973. He is now a professor emeritus of San Diego State University, where he teaches world religions, primal religions, shamanism, Asian religions, and religious experience.
zlib_text: #  RELIGIOUS MOTIVATION AND THE ORIGINS OF BUDDHISM
  
  Why did North Indian people from the fifth century BC choose to leave the
  world and join the sect of the Buddha? Were there common themes in the
  religious motivation of these early Buddhists? Is it possible to illuminate
  motivational themes using social psychology?
  
  This is the first book to apply the insights of social psychology in order to
  understand the religious motivation of the people who constituted the early
  Buddhist community. It also addresses the more general and theoretically
  controversial question of how world religions came into being, by focusing on
  the conversion process of the individual believer.
  
  **Torkel Brekke** holds a DPhil in Oriental Studies from the University of
  Oxford on the politics of religious identity in colonial South Asia. He is
  currently a research fellow funded by the Norwegian Research Council. His main
  research interest is the interaction between religious ideas and processes of
  political and hi