The Journal of the Oxford Center for Buddhist Studies
Published by The Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies
Find the periodical online here.
A semiannual journal publishing accessible, new contributions to Buddhist Studies in English.
Articles Featured in our Library:
The way the denizens of the ancient Indian pantheon appear in early Buddhist texts exemplifies a mode of thought that scholars have called “inclusivism”.
Buddhist literature offers us the only narratives from this period that feature to any great extent the nautical or maritime traveller as hero.
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.
… independence was perceived as an opportunity for a particular ethnic group
The tale is best understood in the light of the need of the early Buddhist tradition to demarcate its position in the ancient Indian context vis-à-vis ascetic practices and ideology.
Featured in the course, " Imagery in the Early Buddhist Texts"
Featured in the course, " Nibbāna: The Goal of Buddhist Practice"
I am able to show that the four phrases exemplified by “form is emptiness” were once a reference to the well-known simile, “Form is like an illusion”. As the Prajnāpāramitā corpus expanded, the simile became a metaphor, “form is illusion”. It was then deliberately altered by exchanging “illusion” for “emptiness”, leading to the familiar phrases.
I show that in every other occurrence of this passage in Sanskrit and Chinese versions of these texts, Prajnāpāramitā is referred to as a superlative kind of practical knowledge or incantation (vidyā) and there is no mention of a mantra . Nor would we expect one, since these texts predate the assimilation of mantra into Buddhism. This suggests that mantra in the Sanskrit Heart Sutra is a mistranslation of a Chinese rendering of vidyā.
How saññā flattens the world into a symbolic representation for the sake of the intellect.
… this self-effacing, almost anonymous commentator’s proneness to being loved or hated, exalted or reviled, is certainly one of the least expected outcomes of Buddhist history.
Featured in the course, " Nibbāna: The Goal of Buddhist Practice"