In the evening I crossed the river and started for home. Then I saw the corpse running on the other side of the river. It was completely naked, but carried its belt in one hand and its boots in the other. Then I saw a wolf coming after it, felling it to the ground.

Four stories from the Ro-langs narrative tradition explore the Tibetan belief in reanimated corpses—Ro-langs—brought back through sorcery or spirit possession, embodying the intersection of Tibetan folklore and religious beliefs of death and the supernatural.

If your spirituality is just that you want to take yourself beyond, of course this is just illusion. But imagine that for, say, an Amazonian tribesperson. If they were to say that the forest they live in is ‘just illusion,’ they’d be dead within a day, right? Ecology requires us to have a deep attentiveness to the [relational] way reality manifests

Nature is full of intermediary forces. Traditions will always find their way back to intermediary beings because I think we need them.

‘Animism’ is just a Western term to describe the way everybody sees the world.

Reciting the “Hero’s March Spell” every day causes goblins, demons, and strange ghosts to be sincere and refrain from harming people.

The Léngyán Zhòu (楞嚴咒), or Śūraṅgama Mantra, is a protective dhāraṇī that has long been chanted by East Asian Buddhists. This article explores the Śūraṅgama’s history and enduring appeal as well as the distinction between exoteric and esoteric magic.

promising him special access to a better future life and even nibbāna, that possesses great appeal to him. […] When people engage in religious behavior, they are trying to see where there is a concentration of power to which they can connect themselves. So, the question is, where do you think such concentrations of power lie?

When the weizza appear, the sermons that they convey are simple, basic, Buddhist lessons. There’s nothing unusual about what they prescribe to people as the way to be good Buddhists. So, while the circumstances in which these lessons are conveyed is most unusual, their content is altogether garden-variety, Burmese Buddhism.

A discussion on Guillaume Rozenberg’s 2010 French anthropology work on miracle cults in Myanmar (Les immortels: Visages de l’incroyable en Birmanie bouddhiste), published in English translation in 2015.

What’s the cause for the development of the bases of psychic power?

Nuosu manifest potency by writing it into religious scriptures and handwrought effigies, piercing it into embroidered clothing and tattooed bodies, shaping it into public statues, and taming it into animals, all of which bring animate powers and presences to life.

On the mystical power of writing.

Across the Buddhist world, we find not only that our relationships are constituted by karmic affinities, but also that in many contexts those relationships are seen as the media through which karma unfolds.

These understandings not only provide frameworks for interpreting relationships but underwrite ritual technologies through which people can form, maintain, or disperse these affinities.

Justin Ritzinger shares what he learned about the nature of karma after attending the “Lived Karma” conference at Dartmouth in 2022. To read more papers from the conference, see the Journal of Global Buddhism Vol. 24 No. 2.

like the Soka Gakkai cases, our respondents appear to be searching for miracles and spiritual fulfillment that they were not receiving by engaging solely in Christian practices. Although they might be considered “free riders” through a rational choice lens, Master Chu actually encourages this behavior

How a Vietnamese monk in Houston, Texas successfully attracted a Latino following.

But even though the Buddha dropped such an obvious hint, such a clear sign, Ānanda didn’t beg the Buddha, ‘Sir, may the Blessed One please remain for the eon!’

So, for Buddhists, as long as they try to cultivate a mind of equinimity and fortrightness, as long as they are compassionate, or use wisdom and an objective attitude to deal with whatever comes up, then there is no need to worry about whether one has a good fortune or not, or whether Fengshui is correct or not.

Ven. Master Sheng Yen explains that, while supernatural things such as fortunetelling or fengshui are not totally superstitious, they are also not accurate. The mind has the ability to transform and change its fate, so Buddhists need only be concerned with developing a wholesome mind.

I cleared my divine eye and divine ear element to communicate with the Blessed One.

Moggallāna tells Sāriputta about his day’s practice.

Zhiyi was notable as a systematizer and domesticator of Buddhist knowledge, and particularly for his writings on śamatha and vipaśyanā meditation. The excerpt translated below is a complete chapter from the shorter of his meditation treatises. It focuses specifically on how various strands of Indian and Chinese medical and religious knowledge could be employed to diagnose and treat illness while the practitioner remained engaged in seated meditation.

Incorporating both foreign and domestic knowledge into the framework of śamatha and vipaśyanā , this chapter represents one of the earliest examples of systematic Indo-Sinitic medical syncretism, and one of the most important expressions of a unique medieval Chinese Buddhist perspective on healing.

Just now, reverend, as I was descending from Vulture’s Peak Mountain I saw a skeleton flying through the air.

While walking for alms down Vulture’s Peak, Venerable Moggallāna smiled at something invisible. The Buddha confirmed that the man he had seen had been a butcher in his past life.

Could you explain whether the intermediary state is the same as what people call “ghosts”?

… harbingers of death, visions of hell, the Lord of the underworld, and the benefits of making donations to Buddhist monks and temples, can be understood within the framework of beliefs and customs unique to Southeast Asia.

Anthropologists and religious scholars have long debated the relationship between doctrinal Theravada Buddhism, so-called ‘animism’, and other folk practices in southeast Asian societies. A variety of models of this relationship have been proposed on the basis of ethnographic evidence. We provide the first psychometric and quantitative evaluation of these competing models, using a new scale developed for this purpose, the Burmese Buddhist Religiosity Scale.

We argue that this model provides support for a two-dimensional distinction between great and little traditions, shedding light on decades-old theoretical debates. Far from being in conflict, the transnational religious tradition of the literati and the variegated religious practices of locals appear to be reflected in two [orthogonal] dimensions of religiosity.

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.

The present study recruited 12 advanced Buddhist meditators and compared their meditation-induced near-death experiences (MI-NDEs) against two other meditation practices in the same participant group. Changes in the content and profundity of the MI-NDE were assessed longitudinally over a 3-year period. Findings demonstrated that compared to the control conditions, the MI-NDE prompted significantly greater increases in profundity, mysticism and non-attachment. Furthermore, participants demonstrated significant increases in NDE profundity across the 3-year study period.

Findings from an embedded qualitative analysis demonstrated that participants (i) were consciously aware of experiencing near-death experiences (NDEs), (ii) retained volitional control over the content and duration of NDEs and (iii) elicited a rich array of non-worldly encounters and spiritual experiences. In addition to providing corroborating evidence in terms of the content of a “regular” (i.e. non-meditation-induced) NDE, novel NDE features identified in the present study indicate that there exist unexplored and/or poorly understood dimensions to NDEs.

In the poetic commentary Nameless Notes (1211–1216), the poet-priest Kamo no Chōmei explains that unlike prose, a poem “possesses the power to move heaven and earth, to calm demons and gods,” because, among other attributes, “it contains many truths in a single word.”

The supernatural powers of Japanese poetry are widely documented in literature of Heian and medieval Japan. Twentieth-century scholars have tended to follow Orikuchi Shinobu in interpreting and discussing miraculous verses in terms of ancient (pre-Buddhist) beliefs in kotodama, the magic spirit power of special words. In this paper, I argue for application of a more contemporaneous hermeneutical approach: thirteenth-century Japanese dharani theory, according to which Japanese poetry is capable of supernatural effects because it contains truth (kotowari) in a semantic superabundance.

[He dwells] by night as by day, and by day as by night. By means of an awareness thus open & unhampered, he develops a brightened mind.

The Buddha teaches the bases for psychic power and analyzes them in detail.

If he thus goes into seclusion and lives alone, his thoughts aren’t careless. He cultivates diligence, stops mental disturbances, and attains a concentrated state…

For an alternative translation, see Kuan, 2007.

But when gold is freed from these five defilements, it is malleable, wieldy, and luminous, pliant and properly fit for work.

The hindrances are like corruptions in gold.

When they’ve been given up and eliminated, there are fine corruptions: thoughts of family, country, and being looked up to. A sincere, capable mendicant gives these up, gets rid of, eliminates, and obliterates them.

Meditation is like purifying gold. A meditator should progressively eliminate more and more refined corruptions.

… samādhi power was, among other uses, employed to enhance the meditator’s ability to kill others. This article focuses on the abuse of samādhi power within Imperial Japan (1868-1945) with the express hope that once exposed and understood, its abuse will never be repeated.

But because, Master Gotama, monks, nuns, celibate laymen, laymen enjoying sensual pleasures, celibate laywomen, and laywomen enjoying sensual pleasures have all succeeded in this teaching, this spiritual path is complete in that respect.

Vacchagotta finally lets go of his obsession with meaningless speculation and asks directly about spiritual practice.

What need for a well
if there were waters always?

Wanderers of other sects try to keep the Buddha from drinking the water in a well.

… whatever is seen, heard, sensed, cognized, reached, sought after, examined by the mind—that I know.

The Buddha knows what can be known and thus remains poised in the midst of the world.

… how is a bhikkhu skilled in the ways of his own mind?

The Buddha teaches that if you can’t read anyone else’s mind, read your own by regular self-reflection.

I do not recall any mental exultation arising because deities come to me

Ugga the Householder roars his lion’s roar and the Buddha confirms him as a non-returner.

When I offered gifts to monks, she would insult me.

… studies gave statistically significant positive results indicating that people really could tell when they were being looked at from behind

A review of the studies investigating this common form of telepathy.

… these four things are unthinkable. They should not be thought about

If you try to think about these things you will go mad or get frustrated.

Does this twin-category process pluralism avoid the problems of substance-dualism?

To witness the eerie spectacle of a medium entering a trance state and being possessed by the Oracle is to confront profound questions

If the frustrated zombie turns back on the instigator and kills him, the monk incurs a heavy fault. I do not know whether there are any other cases of posthumous penalties in the monastic codes, but here we have at least one.

This article proposes to “decode” the twin miracle and the miracle to convert Aṅgulimāla as coded repudiations of rival karma theories, and to examine their relevance to the modern world.

Much as a soaking in good oil will prime a lamp’s wick for the lighting, miracle stories prepare the audience for the cultivation of potent emotions and resultant ethical transformation.

The Buddhist tradition has tended to associate Moggallāna with concentration or serenity, and Sāriputta with wisdom or insight, and to characterize the former figure along with his outstanding faculty as inferior to the latter.

It’s incredible, reverends, it’s amazing, the power and might of a Realized One!

Venerable Ānanda is invited by the Buddha to speak on the Buddha’s amazing qualities, and proceeds to list the miraculous events accompanying his birth. The Buddha ends the list with what he thinks is amazing.

… there’s no other ascetic or brahmin—whether past, future, or present—whose direct knowledge is superior to the Buddha

The Venerable Sāriputta extols the Buddha’s many remarkable qualities.

For a comparison of this sutta to its parallels, see DiSimone 2016.

Well, Reverend Anuruddha, when you say: ‘With clairvoyance that is purified and surpasses the human, I survey the entire galaxy,’ that’s your conceit.

Anuruddha receives a sharp teaching.

For Bhikkhu Analayo’s comments on this sutta, see Upakkilesa Sutta, 2008.

Bhante Sujato pointed out that this sutta is likely a response to the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.3 which claims that “man’s inner light” is his infinite, eternal “self.” The traditional Hindu commentary on this Upaniṣad (inline above) takes pains to respond to the Buddhist critique.

[A meditator’s] physical discomfort is not completely settled, their dullness and drowsiness is not completely eradicated, and their restlessness and remorse is not completely eliminated. Because of this they practice absorption dimly, as it were. When their body breaks up, after death, they’re reborn in the company of the gods of corrupted radiance.

A lay person becomes confused when encouraged to develop the “limitless” and “expansive” liberations, and asks Venerable Anuruddha to explain whether they are the same or different.

And even those disciples of his who fall out with their companions in the holy life and abandon the training to return to the low life—even they praise the Master and the Dhamma and the Sangha; they blame themselves instead of others, saying: “We were unlucky, we have little merit”

The ascetic Sakuludāyin is amazed at how revered the Buddha is by his disciples, and the Buddha explains why his disciples love and respect him so dearly:

Udāyin, when my disciples have met with suffering and become victims of suffering, prey to suffering, they come to me and ask me about the noble truth of suffering. Being asked, I explain to them the noble truth of suffering, and I satisfy their minds

The Buddha then goes on to enumerate in detail the path of tranquility meditation and its fruits, including several uncommon lists, such as the eight liberations and the ten kasiṇas, the perfection of which is the ultimate reason the Sangha honors and respects their teacher.

Note that the “uncommon lists” here aren’t found in this sutta’s Chinese parallel and are somewhat out of proportion to the rest of the sutta, suggesting that they are late additions.

For a short series of lectures on this sutta by Bhikkhu Bodhi, see The Tathāgata in the MN.

There is a way of developing immersion further

Developing convergence for pleasure, understanding, mindfulness, and for ending the defilements.

… literalism, if not originating from artistic representations, would certainly have been encouraged by them.

Venerable Anālayo makes a compelling argument that fire miracles in the Canon came from symbolism and early Buddhist artistic motifs that came to be taken too literally, showing one example of how early Buddhist art influenced the texts.