Characters in the EBTs
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Even setting aside The Buddha himself, the Early Buddhist Texts are full of fascinating and compelling characters.
A closeup of a Sanskrit manuscript features a drawing of the Buddha with two characters: the joyful Ananda on the left and the elephant Nalagiri to the right. Stories of the early Saṅgha are found throughout Buddhist literature, from the Pāḷi Canon to northern texts such as this one in the Wellcome Collection.
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Books (8)
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A collection of commentarial and canonical Pāli stories telling how the Buddha demonstrated his great compassion.
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An anthology of stories about Buddhist women from the Pāli Canon.
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Canonical Works (37)
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“It would not be appropriate for me to give the Buddha a powerful laxative.”
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What kind of bhikkhu, friend Ānanda, could illuminate the Gosinga Sāla-tree Wood?
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sensual pleasures are time-consuming, full of suffering and despair, and the danger in them is greater still
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Venerable Sāriputta and Venerable Mahāmoggallāna meditate together in peace not even a yakkha could disturb.
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This is indeed that Jeta’s Grove,
frequented by the Saṅgha of hermits… -
Having these six qualities the householder Tapussa is certain
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A noble disciple who has these four things is a stream-enterer
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Documents (19)
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A thorough, statistical survey of the Pāli suttas addressed to lay people, analyzing their breakdown by gender, caste, and attainment.
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I have seen the Blessed One;
This is my last body,
And I will not go
From birth to birth again -
in neither case do the terms function as indicators that the address or the detail of the teaching is solely for monks
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A translation of the Tibetan parallel to MN 44, showcasing the Arahant Bhikkhunī Dhammadinnā’s profound explanations of the Dhamma.
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Unlike others in the [Vessantara Jātaka], [Yasodharā] never breaks precepts, or puts her own wishes, however noble, before the needs and requirements that the beings in the immediate situation demand: she provides the true moral compass of the tale. […] Maddī, like Vessantara, has to give up everything, but, unlike him, she never lets go of her sense of interconnectedness with other beings: whether her husband, her family, her environment, or, perhaps, her vow
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The Pali account of the physician Jīvaka illustrates a well-established āyurvedic medical tradition and preserves at least one practice not found in classical āyurveda.
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individual Brahmās (Sahāṃpati, Baka and an unnamed Brahmā) have different characters … lower than the Buddha and his great disciples[, their] individual names are a new design, not shared in the Vedic tradition of Brahmanism.
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one of the most outstanding testimonies to the Buddha’s capability as a teacher is the conversion of the killer Aṅgulimāla.
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Reginald Ray has argued for a radical reassessment of Devadatta as a forest saint who was unfairly maligned in later monastic Buddhism. His work has been influential, but it relies on omissions and mistaken readings
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the queerness of the figure of Ānanda, whose name can be variously translated as “joy,” “bliss,” or “happiness,” fairly lept off the pages at me
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Audio/Video (6)
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Māra was largely a way to differentiate Buddhism from Hindu competitors by drawing on a number of Hindu stories and then subverting and redeploying their symbolism.
38 min
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