Contrary to popular assumption, the thought world of the Pali discourses is well populated with gods and spirits, demons and ghosts, as picturesque as the imagination of a reader of Tolkien’s novels could wish for.

On how the Pāḷi Suttas embrace Brahmā, and not.

From 1982 through 2016, Korean media outlets have reported over 120 instances of vandalism, arson and harassment targeting Buddhist temples and facilities in South Korea. An extension of on-going tensions between South Korea’s Buddhist and Evangelical Protestant communities, this one-sided wave of violence and harassment has caused the destruction of numerous temple buildings and priceless historical artifacts, millions of USD in damages, and one death.

[This article] examines the responses from South Korea’s Buddhist and Evangelical communities and various government agencies, as well as the effects of these responses, before investigating the relationship between these incidents and the mainstream Evangelical doctrines of religious exclusivism, dominionism and spiritual warfare.

Therefore, since it is extremely incongruous to kill and offer up sentient beings to pure gods who are kind and caring, it is only right and proper that you renounce such practices and worship these deities with abundant clean offerings instead.

In addressing Hindu worshippers who engage in animal sacrifice, Jamyang Khyentse highlights the karmic repercussions of taking life and challenges the notion that compassionate deities would ever endorse such a practice.

In the same way, one who has attained to the ultimate truth sees that there’s no such thing as ‘religion.’ There is only a certain nature which can be called whatever we like. We can call it ‘Dhamma,’ we can call it ‘Truth,’ we can call it ‘God,’ ‘Tao,’ or whatever, but we shouldn’t particularize that Dhamma or that Truth as Buddhism, Christianity, Taoism, Judaism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, or Islam, for we can neither capture nor confine it with labels and concepts.

In this 1967 discussion with laywomen in Bangkok, Venerable Buddhadasa explores themes of religious pluralism, the nature of language, and the essence of religious experience. He presents the thought-provoking thesis that true awakening transcends conventional boundaries of religion, leading to a state of “no-religion.”

In Jainism there is no equivalent path to the bodhisatt(v)a path; the karma that guarantees jinahood is bound a mere two births before that attainment, and the person who attracts that karma cannot do so willfully, nor is he aware of it being bound. There is therefore no Jain equivalent to the ubiquitous jātaka literature. In this paper I will explore what the absence of a jātaka genre in Jain traditions tells us about the genre’s role in Buddhism.

Loy’s central thesis is that there are common “spiritual roots” to our ecological crisis and the Buddhist soteriological structure, when properly understood and applied from the individual to the collective case, holds the key to our way out.

Loy’s wish is not simply that we all “stop befoul[ing] our own nest” in the ways already mentioned, but that we all “awaken” to the true causes of environmental spoilage—our false belief in an ultimate “separation from other people and from the natural world” and our dysfunctional striving after “ever-increasing power and control” as a way of resolving our collective anxiety about what it means to be human. If these points weren’t proof enough of Loy’s unwillingness to play by any Maritainian or Rawlsian-inspired rules of compartmentalization, there is also his direct appeal to religions to change their internal lives: to “stop denying evolution and instead refocus their messages on its meaning.”

An article about Buddhist environmentalism and a critique thereof.

There are striking parallels between the Greek methods to train our mental responses to (bad) luck and the Buddhist analysis of unwholesome actions and corresponding advice to improve our karma. Both traditions are still helpful today in our attempts to secure happiness in the face of chance adversity.

Mendicants, if wanderers of other religions were to ask: Reverends, all things have what as their root? …

The concept of the Paccekabuddha presented the opportunity to include pre-Buddhist recluses and seers in Buddhism and in doing so it continued these pre-Buddhist traditions. In this respect it becomes clear why Paccekabuddhas are referred to in the scriptures with all other terms that could be used to denote ascetics: muni, isi, samaṇa, tāpasa, jaṭila, terms which emphasise different aspects of asceticism

An in-depth study of the Paccekabuddha as described in Pali Canonical and Commentarial Literature. This includes pre-Buddhist ideas of sages, i.e. munis, and the importance given to renunciation and solitude in the suttas. Also, this work looks at a Paccekabuddha’s way of life and meditation practices, leading to nibbāna. As the Buddha tells us, “no one but me equals a paccekabuddha” (Isigili Sutta).

Insisting that cremation was sanitary and that it also saved grave space while facilitating- ancestor worship, cremation supporters appropriated state-sanctioned values and aims to win repeal of the ban only two years after it went into effect. Ironically, the end result of the ban was a widely accepted rationale for cremation, which was transformed from a minority practice into a majority one. By the end of the twentieth century, cremation had become the fate of nearly every Japanese.

In the summer of 1873, the Meiji government’s Council of State declared a nationwide ban on cremation, a Buddhist practice that had long been con­sidered barbaric and grossly unfilial by Confucian and nativist scholars. In response to the prohibition, an alliance of Buddhist priests, educated cit­izens, and even government officials proceeded to argue that, far from being an “evil custom” of the past, cremation was a “civilized” practice suited to the future.

Political opponents respect moral beliefs more when they are supported by personal experiences, not facts.

Everyone can appreciate that avoiding harm is rational, even in people who hold different beliefs.

These results provide a concrete demonstration of how to bridge moral divides while also revealing how our intuitions can lead us astray.

… seeking an argument, searching for an argument, thinking: ‘I will refute his thesis,’ it is impossible that he could make that bhikkhu shake…

No-one can refute you if you are well grounded in the four noble truths.

But what is that ultimate splendor compared to which no other splendor is finer?

A wanderer teaches his doctrine of the “highest splendor” but is unable to give a satisfactory account of what that means. The Buddha memorably compares him to someone who is in love with a women he has never met.

Comparative analysis shows that the extent of segregation for different religions is much higher than that for different races and slightly higher than that for different political parties. Furthermore, we study the few cross-religion links and find 46.7% of them are probably related to charitable issues.

For what purpose, friends, is the holy life lived under the ascetic Gotama?

These eight things don’t arise to be developed and cultivated except when a Realized One, a perfected one, a fully awakened Buddha has appeared.

An important sutta in which the Buddha reiterates the uniqueness of his discovery.

A global civilization is in the process of formation. This book is the result of that kind of fermentation. It focuses on the spiritual and ethical foundations and contours of such a civilization when and if genuine global dialogue is pursued. It has taken us eight years, frequent meetings, and continuous correspondence to arrive at this point. We share it with you, dear reader, in the belief that something is to be gained by learning that human experience and ideas are inevitably varied around the world, but when two persons of good will enter into a sincere conversation about their own truths, a more universal truth emerges.

Potthapada—having other views, other practices, other satisfactions, other aims, other teachers—it’s hard for you to know whether perception is a person’s self or if perception is one thing and self another.

The Buddha discusses with a wanderer the nature of perception and how it evolves through deeper states of meditation. None of these, however, should be identified with a self or soul.

… ascetics and brahmins who are not free of greed, hate, and delusion for sights known by the eye, who are not peaceful inside, and who conduct themselves badly among the good by way of body, speech, and mind. They don’t deserve honor, respect, reverence, and veneration.

In discussion with a group of householders, the Buddha helps them to distinguish those spiritual practitioners who are worthy of respect from those who aren’t.

… possessing eight qualities, a bhikkhu is worthy of going on a mission

It’s not what you believe. It’s what you do.

Buddhism focuses less on the issue of why evil and its incumbent suffering are present in the world and more on the question of how to respond to that evil.

This emphasis on soteriology over metaphysics is seen in the characteristic invocation of pragmatic criteria for the evaluation of doctrines and practices; the recurrent motif of the Buddha as therapist rather than theorist; and the pervasive influence of the meta-theory of upāya (expedients or stratagems). This article will examine the soteriological dimension of the broader Buddhist response to evil and explore some of the explicit examinations of the problem of a Buddhist “theodicy” in later Mahāyāna monistic ontologies, which are explored in Korean Buddhist materials: viz., if the mind is innately enlightened or inherently pure, whence do ignorance or defilements arise?

… of all the grounds for making worldly merit, none are worth a sixteenth part of the heart’s release by love.

Goodwill far outshines all other ways of making merit.

Having lost much of their following in the West, churches are now beginning to look for opportunities elsewhere.

A reminder that Christian, missionary zeal in Asia continues to this day.

Buddhist philosophy regards a being not as an enduring entity but as a dynamic process [and], like science, is based on cause and effect

A pair of speeches delivered to an interfaith gathering in 1958 explaining the basics of Buddhism and its relation to the questions of modernity.

My goal is to be honest; looking at the similarities, the differences and the contradictions too. I respect Jesus and the Buddha enough to let them speak for themselves

In this work, the questions pertaining to the means of knowledge known to, criticized in, and accepted by the Buddhism of the Pali Canon are fully discussed. A comprehensive survey of the historical background was indispensable for this purpose.

For Bhante Sujato’s lectures on this book, see Sujato, 2021.

Was the Buddha vedagū according to the Brahmanical understanding of expertise in the three Vedas?

From suffering arises desire to end suffering. The secular humanistic activist sets himself the endless task of satisfying that desire, and perhaps hopes to end social suffering by constructing utopias. The Buddhist, on the other hand, is concerned ultimately with the transformation of desire.

Capitalist industrial society has created conditions of extreme impermanence, and the struggle with a conflict-creating mood of dissatisfaction and frustration. It would be difficult to imagine any social order for which Buddhism is more relevant and needed.

When you build a spiritual, kind community, wherever you are in this world, that is what we rely on

… a history of the future of the Maitreya Project 2.0, a non-existent statue that nonetheless has touched many lives around the world, for better and for worse

We must have a system of spiritual culture which is appropriate to the modern world and which can accord with the principles of every religion

A collection of talks, interviews, and booklets by Ajahn Buddhadāsa giving his view of the world and outline for the future.

… everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances

A short tour of some of the world’s great religious traditions along with the author’s own reflections on what a modern, atheistic reader can glean from them in the project of their own life.

… deliverance from saṃsāra, i.e., the sorrow-laden round of existence, cannot consist in the re-absorption into an eternal Absolute which is at the root of all manifoldness, but can only be achieved by a complete extinguishing of all factors which condition the processes constituting life and world.

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

Not all paths go up the same mountain.

Find another translation by Bhante Sujato on SuttaCentral.