Buddhism is a religion based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, born in the 5th century BC in what is today Nepal and northern India. He was called “the Buddha”, which means “awakened”, after experiencing a deep awareness of the nature of life, death and existence. In English, the Buddha is said to be enlightened, […]
Eastern and Western philosophers have struggled with self-concept for many centuries. What is the self? The Buddha taught a doctrine called anatta, which is often defined as “no-self”, or the teaching that the feeling of being a permanent, self-contained self is an illusion. This does not correspond to our ordinary experience. Am I not me? […]
Paintings on sale at Shivaji Park near Chaitya Bhoomi, Dadar, Mumbai one day before the 55th anniversary of Ambedkar’s death | Kalpak Pathak / Hindustan Times via Getty Images Text size: A- A + BThe religious conversion of abasaheb Bhim Rao Ambedkar is often a subject of curiosity and debate among people, who wonder why […]
Virya paramita – the perfection of energy – is the fourth of the six (sometimes ten) traditional paramitas or perfections of Mahayana Buddhism and the fifth of the ten perfections of Theravada Buddhism. What is the perfection of energy? Let’s first look at the Sanskrit word virya. It comes from vira, a word from an […]
For any Buddhist in the world, there is perhaps no more significant day than Buddha Purnima, a full moon day when the Buddha was born, attained enlightenment, and left his mortal body. It is a very unusual case that all three significant events of a man fall on the same day! It happened to the […]
The Buddha taught that to achieve enlightenment, a person must develop two qualities: wisdom and compassion. Wisdom and compassion are sometimes compared to two wings working together to enable flight or two eyes working together to see deeply. In the West, we are taught to think of “wisdom” as something that is primarily intellectual and […]