An Archaeological History of Indian Buddhism
An Archaeological History of Indian Buddhism Acknowledgments ix A Note on Transliteration xi Introduction: The Archaeology and History of Indian Buddhism 1 The Material of Religion 34 From the Buddha to Ashoka: c. 600–200 bce 70 The Sangha and the Laity: c. 200 bce–200 ce 104 The Beginnings of Mahayana Buddhism, Buddha Images, and Monastic […]
Buddhism in the Shadow of Brahmanism
Buddhism in the Shadow of Brahmanism Handbook of Oriental StudiesEdited by Johannes Bronkhorst VOLUME 24 Buddhism in the Shadow of Brahmanism By Johannes Bronkhorst Chapter One Introduction: Buddhism Before the New Brahmanism ……………………………………………………………….. 1 The original context …………………………………………………… 1 Interactions ………………………………………………………………… 6 Imperial help 12 Chapter Two Brahmanism 27 The new Brahmanism 27 The spread […]
Sunyata
Śūnyatā (/ʃuːnˈjɑːtɑː/ shoon-YAH-tah; Sanskrit: शून्यता, romanized: śūnyatā; Pali: suññatā), translated most often as “emptiness”, “vacuity”, and sometimes “voidness”, or “nothingness” is an Indian philosophical concept. Within Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and other philosophical strands, the concept has multiple meanings depending on its doctrinal context. It is either an ontological feature of reality, a meditative state, or a […]
Toxic positive psychology
What is toxic positivity? It is a “pressure to stay upbeat no matter how dire one’s circumstance is”, which may prevent emotional coping by feeling otherwise natural emotions. Toxic positivity happens when people believe that negative thoughts about anything should be avoided. Even in response to events which normally would evoke sadness, such as loss […]
Short Definitions
Abhidharma Literally meaning “higher knowledge,” Abhidharma refers to a collection of Buddhist scriptures that pertain to psychology, phenomenology, and cosmology. anatman Literally meaning “no-self,” anatman refers to an important Buddhist teaching according to which any notion of an eternal principle that is thought to constitute the real self of our existence is rejected. arhat Literally “foe destroyer,” arhat […]
The Chinese Room Argument
The argument and thought-experiment now generally known as the Chinese Room Argument was first published in a 1980 article by American philosopher John Searle (1932– ). It has become one of the best-known arguments in recent philosophy. Searle imagines himself alone in a room following a computer program for responding to Chinese characters slipped under […]
Absurdism
This article is about the philosophy. For an extremely unreasonable, silly, or foolish thing, see Absurdity. For absurdist humour, see surreal humour. For the literary genre, see Absurdist fiction. Sisyphus, the symbol of the absurdity of existence, painting by Franz Stuck (1920). Absurdism is the philosophical theory that existence in general is absurd. This implies […]
GENERATING THE ALTRUISTIC MIND OF AWAKENING
The ceremony for generating bodhicitta, the altruistic mind of awakening. Among the audience, those who are practicing Buddhists can participate fully in this ceremony. Those who are not Buddhists can participate in the ceremony as a means to strengthen your commitment to the ideals of compassion and altruism. Before you participate in the actual ceremony, […]
Eight Verses on Training the Mind
n essence, the short text entitled Eight Verses on Training the Mind presents the practices of cultivating both conventional bodhicitta, or the altruistic aspiration to attain buddhahood for the benefit of all beings, and ultimate bodhicitta, the profound insight into the ultimate nature of reality or “the ultimate mind of enlightenment.” The first seven stanzas […]
Reality
Also known as “meat space” to differentiate it from cyberspace and regular space, which is a vacuum. “How can this chair be a chair and also a quantum probability and also mostly empty space? How do those different realities co-exist? How can the same “object” follow one set of physics at a conventional scale […]
