And who is the bearer of the burden [of the five aggregates]? The individual (puggalo), it should be said;

This infamous passage became a point of contention centuries after the Buddha, as the “Pudgalavādins” argued that the “puggalo” here was an ultimately real being “neither identical with nor separate from the aggregates” — a position which earned them much ridicule from the Theravādins.

But, if we don’t read this passage as metaphysical, how should we read it?

Bhante Sujato, in his notes on this translation, proposes that we read this sutta instead as a reformulation of the Four Noble Truths, with “bearing the burden” here meaning not “what metaphysical entity owns the aggregates” but rather, “who is responsible for them?”

This study examines the early career of the renowned Buddhologist Lü Cheng as an aspiring revolutionary. My findings reveal that Lü’s rhetoric of “aesthetic revolution” both catapulted him into the center of the New Culture Movement and popularized a Buddhist idealism—Yogācāra—among thinkers who sought alternative social theories.

Buddhist soteriology supplied powerful tools for theorizing the social: The doctrine of no-self refuted philosophical solipsism and curtailed individualism; dependent-origination refashioned social evolution as collective spiritual progress.

… a critical assessment of naturalism and a reevaluation of the most recent forms of Buddhist modernism, including the extraordinary success of Mindfulness. It argues for a more balanced and encompassing approach that would extol the richness of the Buddhist tradition.

We explore how Japanese Buddhists of varying contexts drew upon Buddhist ideas and practices to make sense of their lives, to solve problems, and to create a meaningful world – a cosmos – out of chaos.

This academic overview of Japanese Buddhist history serves as an excellent launching pad for further study as it makes passing reference to a large number of historical events and figures showing how they fit into the larger evolution of Buddhist thought in Japan.

… because I have discerned the teachings by perceiving my own mind, I feel respect for the tradition that bases itself on mind [i.e., Chan]. Moreover, because I have understood the cultivation of mind by discerning the teachings, I have reverent regard for the meaning of the teachings.

This paper provides a close reading of a few lines from the beginning of Zongmi’s Comprehensive Preface to the Collected Writings on the Source of Chan (Chányuán zhūquánjí dūxù 禪源諸詮集都序), written in 833.

This passage is of special interest because in it Zongmi gives an account of what might be called an ‘enlightenment experience’ that he had, which provides the basis on which he claims unique authority to be able to resolve the central problem that the text addresses: to bridge the gap between textualists and meditators so as to make the tradition whole again.

the ritual texts and proselytizing efforts of Jōkei 貞慶 (1155–1213), a prominent monk in the Hossō 法相 school of the early medieval era in Japan. I will seek to interpret his personal devotion and evangelism in the context of broader ideological clashes taking place. More specifically, this study will ask how we should make sense of Jōkei’s gradually evolving devotional allegiance to Kan-non 観音 in the last ten or so years of his life. I will contend that Kannon served as the perfect symbolic foil for Jōkei to counter the popular senju nenbutsu 専修 念仏 (exclusive practice of the nenbutsu) teachings expounded by Hōnen 法然 (1133–1212) and the threat it represented to established Buddhism in Japan.

Early Buddhism, as embodied in the Pali Nikāyas and the Chinese Āgamas, is radically different from all these schools, at least as far as their philosophical content is concerned.

A brief overview of the development of Buddhist metaphysics from the Early Texts to the Mādhyamikas.

Generally, even if we are attached to our own tradition, it is important that we have no antipathy towards other traditions.

A humorous, but insightful, analysis of Tibetan Buddhism’s four schools.

There are thus a great many systems of Dharma teaching in Tibet,
But aside from their nominal variations,
There is really no significant difference between them
All share the crucial point of seeking ultimate awakening.

In this concise work, Chökyi Lodrö offers a clear and accessible overview of the four major Tibetan Buddhist traditions—Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya, and Gelug—highlighting their unique lineages, practices, and shared objectives. He emphasizes the universal path to enlightenment through ethical discipline, meditation, and wisdom, providing practical guidance on cultivating virtues and accumulating merit to achieve lasting happiness.

This work however introduces the ten transcendent perfections and eleven bhūmis on the basis of relative truth and, on the basis of the ultimate truth, explains how there is no arising even conventionally according to the four extremes. Thus, this commentary on the intent of the Middle Way includes several uncommon features not found in the works of other scholars.

Khenpo Shenga’s prologue to Madhyamakāvatāra emphasizes that Candrakīrti’s text serves as a comprehensive introduction to Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamaka-kārikā, elucidating the two truths—relative and ultimate—and their interdependence.

On the one hand, it stands squarely upon a Mahayana Buddhist conception of enlightened wisdom as radically nondichotomous and nondual with reality. On the other hand, it directly confronts the nature of human existence in its ineluctable finitude: karmically conditioned, discriminative and reifying in awareness, and given to the afflicting passions…

From its origins in the Buddha Fields of the early Mahāyāna, to Hōnen’s twelfth century Nembutsu teachings, to Shin’s twentieth century engagements with Christian philosophy, this encyclopedia entry gives an overview of the history of Pure Land thought in Japan.

Hirakawa and Matsunami think that a moribund Buddhism can be revived by understanding traditional doctrines. Akizuki’s new Māhāyana turns out to be nothing but the old Zen. Endō is a harsh critic with no particular plan for reform. Fujii and Sasaki recognize that Buddhism must undergo rebirth, but suggest that current forms will suffice.

A scathing review of several recent books on the state of Buddhism in Japan by traditional Buddhists, suggesting that the “New Religious Movements” in Japan are where the real reforms are happening.

Even as Vajirayan criticized the supernaturalism of indigenous Siamese religious forms, certain ideas and practices were left intact. In particular was a focus on karma or merit and morality…

The Western-style murals adorning the walls at Wat Bovorn Niwet reflect Prince Mongut’s vision for a reformed Thai Buddhism that would adopt the rationalism and advances of the West but still place the Buddha at its center.

one can speak of a mature philosophical system only when a coherent edifice of demonstration and argumentation has been perfected. In this sense, Buddhism has reached its maturity.

Who can be held accountable for violence if everyone is, at once, perpetrator and victim? Given this mode of being-in-the-world, how do people find resilience in the face of past trauma?

Why should Buddhists have been considered socially inactive, either by themselves or by others? And what is new about today’s “engaged” Buddhism that has not been characteristic of Buddhism in the past?

As Zen aspirants beat a path to Suzuki’s door, he seemed to embrace his new role as Zen’s champion [in the West]. By then his earlier goals of rehabilitating Buddhism in Japan and legitimating Mahayana were largely accomplished.

A fairly thorough biography of one of modern Buddhism’s most influential thinkers.

The fifth-century philosopher Buddhaghosa influenced conceptions of the human throughout South and Southeast Asia for a millennium and a half, and continues to do so today.

the Western tradition of virtue ethics and an introductory sketch of how it might provide a foundation for ecology in Buddhism

This is a preliminary research note on the cluster concepts of collective karma in Chinese Canonical sources.

The basic claim of this dissertation is that there is a concept of the ‘Unconscious’ in early Buddhism independent of the theory of bhavaṅga or ālayavijñāna.

Masahiro Mori is a well-known Japanese robotics scholar whose notion of Uncanny Valley is worldly famous. Mori is also a student of Buddhism and a practitioner of Zen.

One cannot arrive at a conception of good without “looking before and after”. It introduces the question of palliative or cure.

A Buddhist response to Western accusations of being insufficiently interested in social welfare.

… in Huayan philosophy in particular the notion of interconnectedness or interdependence arose, according to which all phenomena relate to each other in one way or another. Despite its traction in the contemporary setting, this notion needs to be recognized as a later development that is by no means identical with the basic Buddhist teaching on dependent arising.

… dependent origination in early Buddhism was transmuted from a causal chain binding beings to samsara—something to get free from—into contemporary interpretations of interdependence as a web of interconnected beings and events to celebrate, embrace, and become one with.

The early conception of dependent origination is first reframed in the Mahayana, through ideas such as interpenetration in the Avatamsaka Sutra and the reverence for the natural world in East Asia. The concept then picks up western influences from Romanticism, Transcendentalism, systems theory, deep ecology, and popular accounts of quantum physics. The recent synthesis of these elements is a hybrid concept of interdependence unique to contemporary Buddhism that combines cosmology and world-affirming wonder with ethical, political, and ecological imperatives.

The debate that we staged among the monks in our very last activity session about whether to edit the human genome was outstanding, and demonstrated how effective the monks are as thinkers once I had presented the underlying science and issues involved. And despite the fact that when they come to the West, they often seem very quiet and serious, in the monastery, they are very boisterous and willing to try anything.

In June 2018, I traveled to India to teach in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery under the auspices of the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative, a program that brings aspects of science education to the three major Tibetan monastic universities in exile. My role was to teach developmental biology to the monks over a 9-day period, and I found zebrafish development to be an excellent vehicle for introducing them to both the wonder of embryonic development and to some of the most advanced findings in the field of developmental biology. I describe here my experiences, observations, and thoughts about how the monastic system will need to change if the monks are really to develop the ability to think like scientists.

These, and other, statements of his have been reinterpreted in ways that I feel Nāgārjuna would find difficult to recognize as fitting into his Buddhist worldview.

On taking Nāgārjuna seriously as both a philosopher and as a Buddhist

The weaving together of first- and third-person narration in the JA allows the Buddha to identify himself with the story whilst simultaneously stepping back from it.

The Abhidhamma is not for those timid souls who are not content that a philosophical thought should not actually contradict Buddhist tradition, but demand that it must be expressly, even literally, supported by canonical or commentarial authority. Such an attitude is contrary to the letter and the spirit of the BuddhaDhamma.

In this collection of essays, Venerable Nyanaponika Thera makes the complex principles and methods of the Abhidhamma accessible, focusing on Dhammasangani. He delves into the nature of consciousness, time, and the psychology of spiritual development. The book highlights the ongoing relevance of Buddhist thought for contemporary philosophical and psychological inquiry.

To ask whether Buddhism accepts the instrumental use of animals, whether human or otherwise is, again, to look for Western concepts and ideas, and perhaps even specifically modern ones, in an ancient, Asian tradition. I do not want to take sides on the issue at all; my concern, rather, is to identify any hidden assumptions that may prevent us from judging the tradition on its own terms.

This article defends Buddhism against Paul Waldau’s accusation of speciesism, arguing that Waldau incorrectly attributes certain Western moral concepts to Buddhism. It suggests that these concepts, such as intrinsic moral value based on specific traits and ethical treatment of humans, may not be inherent to Buddhism. Additionally, it highlights that Pāli texts do not seem to grant intrinsic value to any life form, suggesting that Buddhists should seek explanations within their own tradition for ecological concerns.

They must have done a good deed to be experienced as pleasant either previously or later, or else at the time of death they undertook Right View. And that’s why, when their body broke up, after death, they were reborn in a good place, a heavenly realm.

When Samiddhi presented an poorly distilled summary of the Buddha’s teachings to an outsider (saying that all deeds ultimately result in suffering), the Buddha corrected him by emphasizing the nuances of how karma can play out over multiple lifetimes.

Nagarjuna’s illocution seems an attempt to radicalize his difference from a developing Nyaya extensionalist theory of the pramanas, a theory in which the Buddhists and the Naiyayikas are closer than anywhere else.

Now, what we can say is that, it is within these spaces of practices of mental cultivation that poetry, in the Buddhist world, takes its place, as well as being part of literary culture; as well as being part of religious culture. But, it has a central place in the practice of mental cultivation. 

In this lecture, Professor Charles Hallisey describes how Buddhism has historically used poetry as a vehicle for its teachings. Further, through various examples, he offers the idea that, in the Buddhist world, scholatiscism and poetry are forms of mental cultivation as much as meditation and ritual and have always been so. 

Nagarjuna seems willing to embrace contradictions while at the same time making use of classic reductio arguments. He asserts that he rejects all philosophical views including his own-that he asserts nothing-and appears to mean it. It is argued here that he, like many philosophers in the West and, indeed, like many of his Buddhist colleagues, discovers and explores true contradictions arising at the limits of thought. For those who share a dialetheist’s comfort with the possibility of true contradictions commanding rational assent, for Nagarjuna to endorse such contradictions would not undermine but instead confirm the impression that he is indeed a highly rational thinker. It is argued that the contradictions he discovers are structurally analogous to many discovered by Western philosophers and mathematicians.

It’s easy to think of Emptiness as the “right” view in an ontological sense. What the sutra is saying is that there isn’t a “right” way to characterize reality. “Thusness” is ineffable. So, Emptiness is not so much the “right” characterization as it is the remedy to our tendency to reify things into essences.

A lengthy interview with Prof Waldron on his new book which explores Yogacara thought within its Indian, Buddhist context and in light of contemporary neuroscience and politics.

For me, understanding is more and more taking the form of understanding the necessity of the tensions and problems and the simple importance of my grappling with them. I do not seek their dissolution, for that would negate the human experience; rather, I seek to understand them, my relations to them, and how best to navigate them.

Creativity is a human exercise that is only possible when we are free.

A Korean, Buddhist philosopher talks about contemporary philosophy—Western and Eastern.

What does it mean to meditate on anger?

How Buddhism engages with modern, Western social critique.

The Tathagata’s lion’s roar has content, and its content varies in the different suttas that contain the simile.

Comparing the Buddha to a lion is common in the Sutta Piṭaka, though it carries different meanings. This article is a study of the simile of the Buddha as a lion and, in particular, his lion’s roar. The author goes through the various uages, providing useful explanations and cross-references.

The Buddhist attitude to any such revelation would be that of accepting what is true, good and sound and rejecting what is false, evil and unsound after a dispassionate analysis of its contents without giving way to prejudice, hatred, fear or ignorance.

K. N. Jayatilleke outlines three broad means of spiritual knowledge, where Buddhist thought fits in, and how this compares to the major religious thought at the time of the Buddha.

The three means are: revelation, reason, and direct experience. Jayatilleke places Buddhism squarely in the third category. He then explores these means of knowledge as viewed by the materialists, Jains, and followers of the Vedas, comparing them with Buddhist thought.

Widely read as he was in Western philosophy, one of Nishida’s main concerns was to find possible points of contact between his own heritage and the philosophical background of the modern civilization that was taking shape in Japan during his lifetime.

A comparative analysis of Kitarō Nishida and Dōgen Kigen’s thoughts on space and time and how these concepts are presented throughout their life’s work. The article largely focuses on the thought of Nishida, a 20th-century Japanese philosopher. While it is known that Nishida was greatly influenced by Western philosophy, the author brings Nishida into dialogue with Dōgen, particularly his Being-Time, in an attempt to show that Nishida was firmly rooted in Asian thought.

But gaining mystical experience is not the purpose of our spiritual practice. The purpose of spiritual practice is to empty ourselves of self-identity.

A fascinating conversation between Master Sheng-Yen and former astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell, narrated by Professor Raymond Yeh. The discussion began with Mitchell recounting his mystical experience upon returning to Earth after a lunar mission.

For an important task of the Zen philosopher is to police the border between the factual and the non-factual, between the sayable and the non-sayable, between the contingent and the necessary. But this task cannot be reduced to just policing. The Zen master must somehow point the disciple to the realm of the non-sayable while at the same time keeping him or her firmly anchored in the sayable.

Looking at Wittgenstein’s Tractatus logico-philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations, this article compares the philosopher’s analysis of language to that of Zen Buddhism, particularly “koan Zen.” The author begins by highlighting the seeming resemblance between Wittgenstein’s idea of only saying “what can be said” and Zen’s attempts to use words to point to what is beyond words. Much of the remaining article compares Wittenstein’s methodology with Zen’s usage of koans.

Conversation is a means of accomplishing many subtle and indirect things.

A well-written musing encouraging us to not be so shy about “preaching to the choir.”

Is the aim to have right view, or go beyond views; or is right view about not being attached to any view?

This study examines the phenomenon of borrowing and reusing portions of texts without attributing them to their ‘legitimate authors’ within the Buddhist world of contemporary Tibet. It shows that not only is such a practice not at all infrequent and is often socially accepted, but that it is used in this case as a platform to advance specific claims and promote an explicit agenda. Therefore, rather than considering these as instances of plagiarism, this essay looks at the practice of copying and borrowing as an exercise in intertextuality, intended as the faithful retransmission of ancient truths, and as an indication of the public domain of texts in Tibet.

We find the claim that time is not real in both Western and Eastern philosophical traditions and, more recently, in contemporary physics. Yet it seems unlikely that when McTaggart, Godel, Barbour, and Dzogchen practitioners say that there is no time, they are denying the existence of the same thing. This essay is an attempt to set out a taxonomy of different views about what it takes for there to be time and, alongside that, a taxonomy of views about whether or not there is time.

The main topics of each lecture are:

1. The historical background of non-Buddhist thought at the time of the Buddha
2. The Buddha’s critique of those existing epistemological attitudes
3. The uses and limits of logic
4. The role of authority and reason on the path
5. The limits of knowledge

More info on the classes can be found on the course page on SC:D&D.

I do not dispute with the world; rather, it is the world that disputes with me.

The Buddha explains that he doesn’t teach that nothing exists.

‘What does your teacher say, what does he teach?’ Being asked thus, friends, you should answer: ‘Our teacher, friends, teaches the removal of desire and lust.’

A number of mendicants are heading for lands West, but the Buddha advises them to speak with Sāriputta before they go. Sāriputta teaches them how to reply to inquiries into their beliefs.

Kassapa, if one thinks, ‘The one who acts is the same as the one who experiences the result,’ then one asserts with reference to one existing from the beginning: ‘Suffering is created by oneself.’ When one asserts thus, this amounts to eternalism.

A naked ascetic named Kassapa approaches the Buddha while he is on alms round and asks whether suffering is created by oneself, by another, by both, or by chance. Explaining why he rejects all these options, the Buddha asserts that suffering arises due to impersonal conditions.

He asserts that all religious lineages other than Shingon encounter the raw teachings that emanate directly from Mahāvairocana in only symbolic and indirect ways. Thus he designates them as “exoteric.” Shingon practices, on the other hand, bestow the capacity to enter into the very source of Mahāvairocana’s teaching, into the depths of His own profoundly enlightened samādhi, such that the practitioner unites directly with the spontaneous expression of this buddha’s body, speech, and mind. This is the “esoteric” approach, and its practice reveals that this deeper, hidden dimension is always present in any kind of teaching…

Madhyamaka is thus conceived of as a means, with liberation as its ultimate end. But the question remains, how does philosophical argumentation lead to spiritual goals?

This article explains the basic tenets of Madhyamaka thought found in Nagarjuna’s Mūla-madhyamaka-kārikās, and then, focusing on chapter 23, proceeds to show how such philosophical inquiry and its resultant understanding lead to final liberation (nibbana).

‘This contemplative Gotama whom you praise is a nihilist, one who doesn’t declare anything.’
‘I tell you, venerable sirs, that the Blessed One righteously declares that “This is skillful.” He declares that “This is unskillful.”’

The householder Vajjiya Māhita visits some wanderers and the Buddha praises his defense of the Dhamma, explaining in detail what religious practices the Buddha does praise.

The author moves through the premises, inferences, and conclusions of the conservative conception of objects and also the eliminative and permissive views, problimatizing each one. The analysis ends with a brief discussion about which objects may exist fundamentally.

If something is interdependent, it is necessarily emptiness.

In this short teaching, Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo summarizes five logical arguments of Nagarjuna’s Mādhyamaka (Middle Way).

There is, brahmin, a sense in which you could rightly say that I’m a teacher of annihilationism. For I teach the annihilation of greed, hate, and delusion, and the many kinds of unskillful things.

The brahmin Verañja rebukes the Buddha for his lack of respect for senior brahmins. He levels a series of criticisms, each of which the Buddha deflects by redefining terms. The Buddha affirms that his claim to superiority is because he was the first to achieve awakening.

It has to do with spending a great amount of time in a meditative state where I am able to connect with people [energetically] in anticipation of meeting them [physically].

An African-American, Buddhist herbalist explains how she’s able to build communities of care across political and cultural divides.

If as spiritual practitioners we ignore the discoveries of science, our practice is also impoverished…

Even as groups like the International Network of Engaged Buddhists are attempting to frame a unified Buddhist position on environmental issues, Buddhists in different places are interpreting and adapting Buddhist teachings in ways specific to and meaningful in each society. Can the efforts of Buddhists to develop and implement an environmental ethic or activism in one location be translated into other Buddhist societies?

Buddhism does, in fact, contain transcendence and mystery and it is quite capable of taking a seat at the open table of postmodern spirituality.

The teaching of rebirth crops up almost everywhere in the Canon, and is so closely bound to a host of other doctrines that to remove it would virtually reduce the Dhamma to tatters.

In this article, Bhikkhu Bodhi explains how rebirth is an intelligible view, both intrinsically and in terms of the Dhamma, and how the concept of rebirth can help a person make better sense of the world. It is further shown how the concept of rebirth is crucial if the Dhamma is to be a consistent set of teachings. The Venerable approaches the topic from three philosophical standpoints: the ethical, the ontological, and the soteriological.

The Kauṣītaki Upaniṣad employs the chariot imagery in the service of a unitary notion of, and perpetual correspondence between, the different particles of being that make up the different dimensions of a person. The particles of intelligence (prajñā) and the breath are all fastened together just as in a chariot the rim is fastened to the spokes and the spokes to the hub.

Śailā puts all of this down to none other than a mass of duḥkha.

The assonances evoked by the reinterpretation of these Vedic and Upaniṣadic themes would have had a powerful effect in the ancient Indian oral culture, where the impact of a visual image invested with sacred meanings such as the chariot imagery would have had a deep resonance for the audience. This background puts into its broader ideological perspective the significance of the early Buddhist use of the chariot simile to illustrate the characteristic of absence of an unchanging and essentialised self in subjective experience, based on the analysis by way of the five-aggregates model.

Three fundamental ways of approaching the relationship between Buddhism and science are outlined: (a) rejection (Buddhism and science are not, and cannot be, compatible); (b) acceptance (Buddhism and science share important commonalities); (c) construction (Buddhism and science are compatible because they have been made compatible in the course of specific historical processes).

… with special emphasis on the distinction between construing Buddhism as a “living” versus “dead” tradition.

… sexuality in its various manifestations is among the urges that are not intrinsically directed at specific objects and activities. Objects and activities come to play a role [only] because the mind has the tendency of keeping a record of objects and activities rather than of the states which are the real causes of satisfaction.

An admirable attempt to square Western psychological theories (especially those of Freud) with the Buddha’s experience of jhāna. The two essays in this volume provide novel psychological models which neuroscientists and meditators alike will find provocative as they grapple with the implications of this incredible state of consciousness.

A ‘position,’ Vaccha, is something that a Tathāgata has done away with.

Refusing to take a stance regarding useless metaphysical speculations, the Buddha illustrates the spiritual goal with the simile of a flame going out.

Within the framework of experience, there is no quantum enigma; the boxed cat, being outside of one’s experiential frame of reference, doesn’t exist. Once I observe the cat, then it exists

The first way to explain this unlikely fusion of merciful religion and a quite merciless modern creed is to remember to what degree the impact of Social Darwinism on early modern Korean intelligentsia was strong and lasting.

For many young intellectuals aspiring to understand the basic principles of the new, “enlightened and modern” world, Social Darwinism was to very high degree synonymous with “foreign thought” and “modernity” as such – the more so, as this creed was on the one hand totally unconnected to the ideologies of traditional time, having no analogues, not even very crude ones, among them, and on the other hand structurally close to orthodox Neo-Confucianism as a philosophy explaining both natural and social phenomena.

The resulting synthesis leads to a worldview based on information that overcomes limitations of the currently dominating physics-based worldview.

The peace movements are weaker and largely reactive to and restrained by the [state-backed,] radical, Buddhist nationalist movements.

Consistent with the idea that analytical meditation helps to train concentration, we observed that over the course of the debate, mid-frontal theta oscillations—a correlate of absorption—increased significantly. This increase was stronger for more experienced monks as compared to monks at the beginning of their education. In addition, we found evidence for increases in synchrony in frontal alpha oscillations between paired debaters during moments of agreement as compared to disagreement on a set of premises.

What is this body full of piss and shit?
I wouldn’t even want to touch it with my foot.

Māgandiya offers the Buddha his daughter in marriage. The Buddha refuses and further subdues Māgandiya’s pride by describing a state of peace Māgandiya doesn’t even understand.

Whoever should take to himself certain views, thinking them the best…

The conceit that comes from clinging to practices or views—even if they’re supreme—is a fetter.

I see some fervent mortifiers who takes it easy reborn in a place of loss. But I see another fervent mortifier who takes it easy reborn in a good place, a heavenly realm.

The Buddha tells a naked ascetic the true meaning of austerity.

… there is no true wandering: that is how it appears to me

Venerable Udena explains to a polite but sceptical Brahmin what makes someone a true recluse.

When right view is assisted by five factors, it has liberation of mind as its fruit…

It is when doubts regarding the nature of reality, ourselves, or our beliefs arise that we start to ponder philosophical questions…

The [seven] studies presented in this book stem from a symposium of the same name which was held at the University of Hamburg in November 2017

Bhikkhus, do not engage in disputatious talk

Don’t argue. Instead, converse on the four noble truths.

For Early Buddhism, “public knowledge” would be a contradiction in terms.

Contrasting the Early Buddhist theory of knowledge with logical positivism, to which it is sometimes compared.

Despite the title, this book is not a standard primer and instead takes a more critical stance. For a more standard introduction, see King, 2009.

It’s inappropriate to talk to an unfaithful person about faith…

… when a mendicant explains what is not the teaching as the teaching…

Ten roots for disputes in the Saṅgha.

Unlike cadaver donation in the West, which has to a large degree maintained the anonymity of the body used to teach medical students, the Taiwanese Tzu Chi Buddhist Silent Mentor programme at the centre of this article foregrounds the identity of the training cadaver as an essential element of medical pedagogy

… the lives and thought of two rather different radical, Zen Buddhists of late Meiji Japan in order to discern whether and in what ways their progressive political ideals were influenced by Chan thought and practice.

Seno’o Giro’s personal pilgrimage spanned tradition and modernity, and took him from the political right to the extreme left such that in the vicissitudes of this one life is somehow recapitulated the whole dilemma of Japanese Buddhism since the Meiji Restoration. It highlights well the unresolved conflicts at the heart of modern liberal Buddhism.

… for all of its rhetoric about not relying on words and letters and functioning compassionately as a politically detached, iconoclastic religion, Zen has generally failed to criticize ideologies–and specific social and political conditions–that stand in tension with core Buddhist values.

Yet a close examination of Zen theory and praxis indicates that the tradition does possess resources for resisting dominant ideologies and engaging in critique.

In response to Shintoist criticism of Buddhism in the early 1930s, a group of prominent Buddhists and Buddhologists wrote articles on Buddhism and Japanese spirit for a special issue of Chūō Bukkyo in 1934. They highlighted historical connections between Japanese Buddhism and the state, and drew correspondences between Buddhist doctrines and various Shinto and Confucian concepts that were central to discourses on Japanese culture and the imperial system in the early-Showa period. In drawing those doctrinal correspondences, they aligned Japanese Buddhism with main components of the imperial ideology at that time.

What is meant by its central philosophical concept of “absolute nothingness,” and how did the Kyoto School philosophers variously develop this Eastern inspired idea in dialogue and debate with Western thought and with one another?

Buddhist ideas about suffering narrow the shape any acceptable theory of welfare may take. [This] narrowing process itself is enough to reconstruct a philosophical defense of the forms of life endorsed in Buddhist texts.

In early Buddhist logic, it was standard to assume that for any state of affairs there were four possibilities: that it held, that it did not, both, or neither. This is the catuskoti (or tetralemma). Classical logicians have had a hard time making sense of this, but it makes perfectly good sense in the semantics of various paraconsistent logics, such as First Degree Entailment (FDE).

Matters are more complicated for later Buddhist thinkers, such as Nagarjuna, who appear to suggest that none of these options, or more than one, may hold. The point of this paper is to examine the matter, including the formal logical machinery that may be appropriate.

Tuning in, meditatively, all these things can loosen up. And it’s the loosening that’s the main thing.

Today, artists practicing Nichiren Buddhism are active around the world. Through our dialogue, I want to explore with you the bright future prospects of a cultural movement based on Buddhism.

A transcript of a series of conversations between two great Jazz musicians and the president of Soka Gakkai.

In the early decades of the twentieth century, as Japanese society became engulfed in war and increasing nationalism, the majority of Buddhist leaders and institutions capitulated to the status quo. One notable exception to this trend, however, was the Shinko Bukkyo Seinen Domei (Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism), founded on 5 April 1931.

Led by Nichiren Buddhist layman Seno’o Giro and made up of young social activists who were critical of capitalism, internationalist in outlook, and committed to a pan-sectarian and humanist form of Buddhism that would work for social justice and world peace, the league’s motto was “carry the Buddha on your backs and go out into the streets”

I’d hold his head with my left hand, and take [the stone] out using a hooked finger of my right hand, even if it drew blood.

The leader of the Jains, Nigaṇṭha Nātaputta, gives his disciple Prince Abhaya a dilemma to pose to the Buddha.

… five drawbacks for a person who talks a lot

And the benefits to being reserved.

While [Engaged Buddhists] constantly imply that social activists would do well to adopt meditation, mindfulness, compassion, nonviolence and other Buddhist qualities, they rarely acknowledge that they themselves might have anything to learn from non-Buddhists

This interview explores David Max Moerman’s study of the largely unknown history of Japanese, Buddhist world maps. His work uncovers an alternative history of Japanese Buddhism shaped by a Buddhist geographic imaginary that engaged multiple cartographic and cosmological worldviews.

It is remarkable that there was a cosmology in Buddhism twenty-five centuries ago that doesn’t conflict with modern physics.

Ajahn Brahm explores how Buddhism and scientific inquiry aren’t opposed but complement each other.

… mindfulness is being used to reinforce the capitalist system

… a view of our sense of self as an emergent process of “I-making” that is constructed in relation to our environment and the body on which it depends

But when discourses spoken by the Realized One—deep, profound, transcendent, dealing with emptiness—are being recited the mendicants do want to listen. They pay attention and apply their minds

… my main intention is to indicate a new approach to philosophy which the Buddha tends to suggest in the modern context

A pitch for taking Buddhist Philosophy seriously

The true success of Tzu-chi – not just growth in numbers but modern cultivation of the virtues of compassion – would have important implications for ecumenical engagement with the crises of modernity.

If anyone were to learn his dhamma for the purpose of censuring or reproaching others who held different views with feelings of hostility, or for the purpose of defending one’s own dogma against the criticism of others, the Buddha says that they make an abuse of the dhamma.

There’s enough overlap to make conversation possible and enough difference to make that conversation worthwhile.

Philosopher Jay Garfield talks about getting into Buddhist philosophy from the Western, academic tradition, and introduces the classic book of Mahāyana ethics by Śāntideva.

For a translation of this sutta’s semicanonical commentaries, see Bhikkhu Bodhi’s The Root of Existence.

If the fragmenting forces of late modernity have shattered the illusion of a fixed self, anātman provides a way of rethinking subjectivity in its absence.

The four toraṇas, or gateways, [put] the stūpa, symbolically, at the place where four roads meet, as is specified in the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta.

How the early Buddhists took the burial mounds and sacrificial posts of prehistoric India and adapted them to fit their new religious context:

… the stūpa symbolises the Dharma and the transformations it brings

The (possibly tenth century?) epistle had some influence on later summaries of the doctrine. It shows how essential cosmology and ethics has been for the preservation and dissemination of “the True Dhamma.”

This article contains just the translation from Hazlewood’s 1983 Master’s thesis on the text.

We talk about “Right View” and “Wrong View,” but what we actually have, if we really look at our minds, is confusion!

You can use logic and reason and so on in a destructive manner and if you do that too much, of course, you can get what we’re all familiar with: the kind of modern nihilism and cynicism and all of these kinds of things. That comes from too much of that. So, obviously there needs to be a balance. There needs to be some ability to deconstruct, but that needs to go hand-in-hand with a constructive and a positive approach, so that the deconstruction has a context

Intuition is just a natural function of the mind, that’s all. Sometimes it’s right, sometimes it’s wrong. […] It’s not the infallible voice of God. It’s just a part of us.

Just as a river is geographically conditioned to flow in a certain direction, [compassionate] efforts are predetermined to move toward success (as sentient beings are endowed with Buddha nature). But just as a river will never dry up, their project will never end.

A lengthy summary of Tan Sitong’s 仁學 (Rénxué), which outlined his eclectic Buddhist defense of non-discriminating compassion’s agency in the unfolding of history, this paper shows how one Chinese philosopher grappled with the challenges of modernity emerging at his time and how his themes continue in the work of Buddhists such as Thich Nhat Hanh.

To deal with social dukkha, habitual tendencies rooted in the Three Poisons have to be identified and redressed in the constitutive social, cultural, and political environments too. In other words, Buddhist social theory recognizes that the manifestations of the Three Poisons are as much a matter of institutionalized, normative knowledge-practices as they are private, personal tendencies.

To formulate a viable, systematic Buddhist environmental ethic, they must clarify on Buddhist grounds what an optimal world might be

… the majority of philosophy is based on assumptions about the basic cognitive endowments of average individuals that totally disregard what is known about human development

A critique of the Western assumption of the rational citizen and a full-throated defense of education as activism.

Deep contemplative experiences and the philosophical conclusions which they yield are beyond history. Or are they?…

I’m gripped by a somewhat peculiar trepidation as I tiptoe into the hallowed portals of the abhidhamma, my feet echoing too loudly in the cavernous austerity.

The Buddha was not a butterfly collector.

When examined closely, the doctrines of the schools cannot be explained away as simplistic errors or alien infiltrations or deliberate corruptions. It would then follow that more sympathetic and gentle perspectives on the schools are likely to be more objective.

Those who wanted to uphold the radical non-substantialist position of early Buddhism were faced with the dual task of responding to the enormously substantialist and absolutist think­ing of the non-Buddhist traditions as well as to those within the Buddhist tradition who fell prey to such thinking.

… a consolidation of thirty years of research and reflection on early Buddhism as well as on some of the major schools and philosophers associated with the later Buddhist tradi­tions

Only a man could dream of Heaven as a place where he can lie about all day, surrounded by beautiful women

On how the Buddhists transformed the Indian image of heaven.

The way the denizens of the ancient Indian pantheon appear in early Buddhist texts exemplifies a mode of thought that scholars have called “inclusivism”.

Although fairly short, this book presents several challenges. Not all of these are easily digested, and I anticipate that some of my readers will not feel comfortable with the material collected here and will experience at least parts of it as unwelcome and even enervating. I would like to apologize in advance if anything I say is felt as an affront. It is definitely not my intention to offend or be dismissive, but only to offer perspectives that might help to diminish conceit, even though the medicine might at times taste bitter.

While tourism does disrupt, it is not at odds with larger Buddhist goals to spread the Dharma.

A chat about the interaction between emplaced Buddhism and mobile capitalism in contemporary Asia based on the interviewee’s new editted volume on the subject.

Wisdom and consciousness–these things are mixed, not separate. And you can never completely dissect them

Venerable Sāriputta deftly defines a bewildering array of terms.

… simultaneously donning a tolerant posture while claiming the overriding-ness of one’s religion was in fact a distinct phenomenon from what could be called “synthesis,” and has in actuality characterized many syncretistic endeavors in Chinese history.

How Ming era Buddhist apologists adapted Chan to Yogacara doctrine.

Insofar as it disintegrates, it is called the ‘world.’

When Westerners come to Buddhism, they usually approach it through the doors of psychology, history of religions, or perennial philosophy, all of which are dominated by Romantic ways of thinking.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu takes us on a long tour of Romantic philosophy before eventually showing how Romantic sensibilities affected the reception of Buddhism in the West. Most helpful is his list in chapter 7 where he outlines specifically the differences he sees between Buddhism and Western Romanticism.

Even if you ultimately disagree with Ajahn Geoff’s analysis, this is still an important work to engage with seriously, as it forces a direct confrontation with Western religious assumptions and motivations.

Western writers too readily described Buddhism as a nihilistic doctrine teaching annihilation as its highest goal, a view these writers condemned as philosophically absurd and ethically reprehensible. Similar statements still sometimes appear in prejudiced non-Buddhist literature. The pendular reaction to that view was the conception of Nibbāna as existence. It was now interpreted in the light of already familiar religious and philosophical notions [such] as pure being, pure consciousness, pure self or some other metaphysical concept.

A short booklet on seeing Nibbāna as the ultimate expression of the middle way between existence and non-existence.

Interesting to note: one of the methods mentioned was tried recently, with results exactly as reported.

Ānanda, are all precepts and observances, lifestyles, and spiritual paths fruitful?

Not all paths go up the same mountain.

What do you think, chief? Could a broad rock rise up or float because of prayers?

The Buddha excoriates a chief for believing that prayers can send someone to heaven.

See also AN 5.197 for a discussion on the causes of the weather!

… in Burma the book has actually been included in the Sutta Piṭaka itself, as part of the Khuddaka Nikāya or Miscellaneous Collection. Although the Buddhists of the other Theravāda countries have not gone quite so far in expressing their esteem, in all those lands where the Pali Tipiṭaka reigns supreme the Milindapañhā stands just behind it as a weighty textual source

‘By this virtue or observance or asceticism or holy life I shall become a great god or some lesser god,’ that is wrong view in his case. Now there are two destinations for one with wrong view, I say: hell or the animal realm. So, Puṇṇa, if his dog-duty succeeds, it will lead him to the company of dogs; if it fails, it will lead him to hell.

It isn’t just breaking the precepts that can lead one to hell. Contrary to contemporary ecumenical sensibilities, the Buddha pulled no punches condemning wrong view. What do you think makes wrong view so “wrong” in this case?

See also, Bhante Suddhaso’s translation of this sutta

… it is only here that there is the contemplative

The Buddha tells the difference between his religion and others’ and gives a clear discourse on the meaning of enlightenment.

The text jumps inside me to help me out.
…
So, when you’re studying Buddhism, what are you studying?
I know the answer. I’m studying me.
I’m studying me.

The idea of the Buddha nature, or the earlier idea that “this mind is brightly shining, but it is defiled by visiting defilements,” point to a potential for good deep in everyone…

A defense of Buddhism in light of some Western critiques and an encouragement to try out one particular Eastern practice.

Freud in particular developed the concept that freedom means acting on one’s desires. … From a Buddhist standpoint, this notion is totally twisted

Buddhism has a lot to contribute to the pressing problems of modernity. In this article, Powers briefly explores four such domains: individualism, science, freedom, and morality.