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Notes and Topics: Synopsis of Taranatha's History
SYNOPSIS OF TARANATHA'S HISTORY Synopsis of chapters I - XIII was published in Vol. V, NO.3. Diacritical marks are not used; a standard transcription is followed. MRT CHAPTER XIV Events of the time of Brahmana Rahula King Chandrapala was the ruler of Aparantaka. He gave offerings to the Chaityas and the Sangha. A friend of the king, Indradhruva wrote the Aindra-vyakarana. During the reign of Chandrapala, Acharya Brahmana Rahulabhadra came to Nalanda. He took ordination from Venerable Krishna and stu died the Sravakapitaka. Some state that he was ordained by Rahula prabha and that Krishna was his teacher. He learnt the Sutras and the Tantras of Mahayana and preached the Madhyamika doctrines. There were at that time eight Madhyamika teachers, viz., Bhadantas Rahula garbha, Ghanasa and others. The Tantras were divided into three sections, Kriya (rites and rituals), Charya (practices) and Yoga (medi tation). The Tantric texts were Guhyasamaja, Buddhasamayayoga and Mayajala. Bhadanta Srilabha of Kashmir was a Hinayaist and propagated the Sautrantika doctrines. At this time appeared in Saketa Bhikshu Maha virya and in Varanasi Vaibhashika Mahabhadanta Buddhadeva. There were four other Bhandanta Dharmatrata, Ghoshaka, Vasumitra and Bu dhadeva. This Dharmatrata should not be confused with the author of Udanavarga, Dharmatrata; similarly this Vasumitra with two other Vasumitras, one being thr author of the Sastra-prakarana and the other of the Samayabhedoparachanachakra. [Translated into English by J. Masuda in Asia Major 1] In the eastern countries Odivisa and Bengal appeared Mantrayana along with many Vidyadharas. One of them was Sri Saraha or Mahabrahmana Rahula Brahmachari. At that time were composed the Mahayana Sutras except the Satasahasrika Prajnaparamita. -
What Is the Mind?
What is the Mind? Understanding the nature, characteristics, and functioning of our mind forms the basis of Buddhist philosophy and practice. The Buddha says in the Dhammapada: All things are preceded by the mind, led by the mind, created by the mind According to Buddhism we consist of nothing but mind and body, and it is the mind that is responsible for all our happiness and our suffering. Our body may be healthy and all the external circumstances may work to our advantage, but it depends on our mind to translate this into happiness. Conversely, we may be sick and everything else may go wrong, but we need the mind to translate this into unhappiness and suffering. The mind has the power to determine pleasure and displeasure; it is the sole motivator of all our actions and the creator of our experiences and reality. However, at present we do not have much control over our mind and thus over feeling happy and avoiding problems and difficulties. Hence in order to gain more control we need to transform the mind, an undertaking that must be preceded by the understanding that it can be transformed. Such an understanding in turn can only arise if we cultivate knowledge of the mind, if we gain knowledge that goes far beyond academic study. It is extremely important that learning about the mind, its definition, its divisions, and different functions does not lead to a mere intellectual understanding, but is taken deeper to an experiential level. Only if we obtain a firsthand knowledge of our habitual thought patterns, of the mental events that occur within specific mindsets, etc., can we begin to make changes. -
Not for Kids Only: a History of Surveillance Through Comic Book Images
Not For Kids Only: A History of Surveillance Through Comic Book Images Gary T. Marx I am here to fight for truth, justice and the American way. —Superman 1978 It's too bad for us "literary" enthusiasts, but it's the truth nevertheless—pictures tell any story more effectively than words. —W. M. Moulton (creator of Wonder Woman, and pioneer polygrapher) In Guernica Picasso expresses the tragedy that is taking place without showing piles of bloody flesh. The import- tant thing in art is after all to transpose reality into an image which is sufficiently enthralling and meaningful so that the viewer gets an even better grasp of that reality. —Jacques Ellul1 Gary T. Marx received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. He has held positions there and at Harvard and the University of Colorado. He is Professor Emeritus MIT and the author of Protest and Prejudice (1967); Undercover: Police Surveillance in America (1988); Undercover: Police Surveillance in Comparative Perspective (with C.J. Fijnaut 1995); Windows into the Soul: Surveillance and Society in an Age of High Technology (2017) and articles in the scholarly and popular press. He is rooted in the sociology of knowledge and in the centrality of reflexivity, but with the firm conviction that there are transcendent truths to pursue and fight for. Figuring them out is what it is all about. Additional information is at www.garymarx.net . Ivan Greenberg, illustrated by Everett Patterson and Joseph Canias, forward by Ralph Nader: The Machine Never Blinks A Graphic History of Spying and Surveillance Fantagraphics, Seattle, Wa., 2020, 132 p., $22.99 I grew up with Classic Comic Books and might even have used them as a cheat sheet for books I was supposed to have read. -
Mahasi Sayadaw's Revolution
Deep Dive into Vipassana Copyright © 2020 Lion’s Roar Foundation, except where noted. All rights reserved. Lion’s Roar is an independent non-profit whose mission is to communicate Buddhist wisdom and practices in order to benefit people’s lives, and to support the development of Buddhism in the modern world. Projects of Lion’s Roar include Lion’s Roar magazine, Buddhadharma: The Practitioner’s Quarterly, lionsroar.com, and Lion’s Roar Special Editions and Online Learning. Theravada, which means “Way of the Elders,” is the earliest form of institutionalized Buddhism. It’s a style based primarily on talks the Buddha gave during his forty-six years of teaching. These talks were memorized and recited (before the internet, people could still do that) until they were finally written down a few hundred years later in Sri Lanka, where Theravada still dominates – and where there is also superb surf. In the US, Theravada mostly man- ifests through the teaching of Vipassana, particularly its popular meditation technique, mindfulness, the awareness of what is hap- pening now—thoughts, feelings, sensations—without judgment or attachment. Just as surfing is larger than, say, Kelly Slater, Theravada is larger than mindfulness. It’s a vast system of ethics and philoso- phies. That said, the essence of Theravada is using mindfulness to explore the Buddha’s first teaching, the Four Noble Truths, which go something like this: 1. Life is stressful. 2. Our constant desires make it stressful. 3. Freedom is possible. 4. Living compassionately and mindfully is the way to attain this freedom. 3 DEEP DIVE INTO VIPASSANA LIONSROAR.COM INTRODUCTION About those “constant desires”: Theravada practitioners don’t try to stop desire cold turkey. -
Buddhism and State Power in Myanmar
Buddhism and State Power in Myanmar Asia Report N°290 | 5 September 2017 Headquarters International Crisis Group Avenue Louise 149 • 1050 Brussels, Belgium Tel: +32 2 502 90 38 • Fax: +32 2 502 50 38 [email protected] Preventing War. Shaping Peace. Table of Contents Executive Summary ................................................................................................................... i I. Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 1 II. Buddhist Nationalism in Myanmar and the Region ........................................................ 3 A. Historical Roots in Myanmar .................................................................................... 3 1. Kingdom and monarchy ....................................................................................... 3 2. British colonial period and independence ........................................................... 4 3. Patriotism and religion ......................................................................................... 5 B. Contemporary Drivers ............................................................................................... 6 1. Emergence of nationalism and violence .............................................................. 6 2. Perceived demographic and religious threats ...................................................... 7 3. Economic and cultural anxieties .......................................................................... 8 4. -
The Foundation of All Good Qualities by Lama Tsongkhapa
PRACTICE The Foundation of All Good Qualities By Lama Tsongkhapa In the 11th century, Tibet was blessed by the arrival of capacities of varying practitioners — small, medium, and the Indian Buddhist master Lama Atisha. Motivated to pres- great — which organize practices and meditations on the ent an organized summary of the sutra teachings, Atisha path into gradual stages. composed a short text entitled, The Lamp of the Path. Three Lama Tsongkhapa's famous prayer, The Foundation of hundred years later, Lama Tsongkhapa expanded upon this All Good Qualities, is the most concise and stirring outline text with his opus The Great Exposition on the Stages of the available of the Lam-Rim teachings. In only fourteen stanzas, Path to Enlightenment (Lamrim Chenmo). The often referred Tsongkhapa offers us a prayer that covers the entire graduated to "Lam-Rim teachings" are taken from this seminal text. path to enlightenment, short enough to recite every day, The teachings are presented in three scopes according to the profound enough to study for a lifetime. The foundation of all good qualities is the kind and venerable guru; I will not achieve enlightenment. Correct devotion to him is the root of the path. With my clear recognition of this. By clearly seeing this and applying great effort, Please bless me to practice the bodhisattva vows with great energy. Please bless me to rely upon him with great respect. Once I have pacified distractions to wrong objects Understanding that the precious freedom of this rebirth is found And correctly analyzed the meaning of reality, only once. -
Gandharan Origin of the Amida Buddha Image
Ancient Punjab – Volume 4, 2016-2017 1 GANDHARAN ORIGIN OF THE AMIDA BUDDHA IMAGE Katsumi Tanabe ABSTRACT The most famous Buddha of Mahāyāna Pure Land Buddhism is the Amida (Amitabha/Amitayus) Buddha that has been worshipped as great savior Buddha especially by Japanese Pure Land Buddhists (Jyodoshu and Jyodoshinshu schools). Quite different from other Mahāyāna celestial and non-historical Buddhas, the Amida Buddha has exceptionally two names or epithets: Amitābha alias Amitāyus. Amitābha means in Sanskrit ‘Infinite light’ while Amitāyus ‘Infinite life’. One of the problems concerning the Amida Buddha is why only this Buddha has two names or epithets. This anomaly is, as we shall see below, very important for solving the origin of the Amida Buddha. Keywords: Amida, Śākyamuni, Buddha, Mahāyāna, Buddhist, Gandhara, In Japan there remain many old paintings of the Amida Triad or Trinity: the Amida Buddha flanked by the two bodhisattvas Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāmaprāpta (Fig.1). The function of Avalokiteśvara is compassion while that of Mahāsthāmaprāpta is wisdom. Both of them help the Amida Buddha to save the lives of sentient beings. Therefore, most of such paintings as the Amida Triad feature their visiting a dying Buddhist and attempting to carry the soul of the dead to the AmidaParadise (Sukhāvatī) (cf. Tangut paintings of 12-13 centuries CE from Khara-khoto, The State Hermitage Museum 2008: 324-327, pls. 221-224). Thus, the Amida Buddha and the two regular attendant bodhisattvas became quite popular among Japanese Buddhists and paintings. However, the origin of this Triad and also the Amida Buddha himself is not clarified as yet in spite of many previous studies dedicated to the Amida Buddha, the Amida Triad, and the two regular attendant bodhisattvas (Higuchi 1950; Huntington 1980; Brough 1982; Quagliotti 1996; Salomon/Schopen 2002; Harrison/Lutczanits 2012; Miyaji 2008; Rhi 2003, 2006). -
The Paṭṭhāna (Conditional Relations) and Buddhist Meditation: Application of the Teachings in the Paṭṭhāna in Insight (Vipassanā) Meditation Practice
The Paṭṭhāna (Conditional Relations) and Buddhist Meditation: Application of the Teachings in the Paṭṭhāna in Insight (Vipassanā) Meditation Practice Kyaw, Pyi. Phyo SOAS, London This paper will explore relevance and roles of Abhidhamma, Theravāda philosophy, in meditation practices with reference to some modern Burmese meditation traditions. In particular, I shall focus on the highly mathematical Paṭṭhāna, Pahtan in Burmese, the seventh text of the Abhidhamma Piṭaka, which deals with the functioning of causality and is regarded by Burmese as the most important of the Abhidhamma traditions. I shall explore how and to what extent the teachings in the Paṭṭhāna are applied in insight (vipassanā) meditation practices, assessing the roles of theoretical knowledge of ultimate realities (paramattha-dhammā)1 in meditation. In so doing, I shall attempt to bridge the gap between theoretical and practical aspects of Buddhist meditation. While scholars writing on Theravāda meditation - Cousins,2 King3 and Griffiths4 for example - have focused on distinction between insight meditation (vipassanā) and calm meditation (samatha), this paper will be the first to classify approaches within vipassanā meditation. Vipassanā meditation practices in contemporary Myanmar can be classified into two broad categories, namely, the theoretical based practice and the non- theoretical based practice. Some Burmese meditation masters, Mohnyin Sayadaw Ven. U Sumana (1873-1964)5 and Saddhammaransī Sayadaw Ven. Ashin Kuṇḍalābhivaṃsa (1921- ) and Pa-Auk Sayadaw Ven. Āciṇṇa (1934- ) for example, teach meditators to have theoretical knowledge of ultimate realities. While these meditation masters emphasize theoretical knowledge of the ultimate realities, other meditation masters such as the Sunlun Sayadaw Ven. U Kavi (1878-1952) and the Theinngu Sayadaw Ven. -
Fragility, Aid, and State-Building
Fragility, Aid, and State-building Fragile states pose major development and security challenges. Considerable international resources are therefore devoted to state-building and institutional strengthening in fragile states, with generally mixed results. This volume explores how unpacking the concept of fragility and studying its dimensions and forms can help to build policy-relevant under- standings of how states become more resilient and the role of aid therein. It highlights the particular challenges for donors in dealing with ‘chronically’ (as opposed to ‘temporarily’) fragile states and those with weak legitimacy, as well as how unpacking fragility can provide traction on how to take ‘local context’ into account. Three chapters present new analysis from innovative initiatives to study fragility and fragile state transitions in cross- national perspective. Four chapters offer new focused analysis of selected countries, drawing on comparative methods and spotlighting the role of aid versus historical, institu- tional and other factors. It has become a truism that one-size-fits-all policies do not work in development, whether in fragile or non-fragile states. This should not be confused with a broader rejection of ‘off-the-rack’ policy models that can then be further adjusted in particular situations. Systematic thinking about varieties of fragility helps us to develop this range, drawing lessons – appropriately – from past experience. This book was originally published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly, and is available online as an Open Access monograph. Rachel M. Gisselquist is a political scientist and currently a Research Fellow with UNU-WIDER. She works on the politics of the developing world, with particular attention to ethnic politics and group-based inequality, state fragility, governance and democratiza- tion in sub-Saharan Africa. -
Meeting of Minds.Pdf
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Translation:Wang Ming Yee Geshe Thubten Jinpa, and Guo-gu Editing:Lindley Hanlon Ernest Heau Editorial Assistance:Guo-gu Alex Wang John Anello Production: Guo-gu Cover Design:Guo-gu Chih-ching Lee Cover Photos:Guo-gu Kevin Hsieh Photos in the book:Kevin Hsieh Dharma Drum Mountain gratefully acknowledges all those who generously contributed to the publication and distribution of this book. CONTENTS Foreword Notes to the Reader 08 A Brief Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism By His Holiness the 14 th Dalai Lama 22 A Dialogue on Tibetan and Chinese Buddhism His Holiness the 14 th Dalai Lama and Venerable Chan Master Sheng Yen 68 Glossary 83 Appendix About His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama About the Master Sheng Yen 2 Meeting of Minds Foreword n May 1st through the 3rd, 1998, His Holiness the O 14th Dalai Lama and Venerable Chan Master Sheng Yen presented In the Spirit of Manjushri: the Wisdom Teachings of Buddhism, at the Roseland in New York City. Tibet House New York and the Dharma Drum Mountain Buddhist Association sponsored the event, which drew some 2,500 people from all Buddhist traditions, as well as scholars of medicine, comparative religion, psychology, education, and comparative religion from around the world. It was a three-day discourse designed to promote understanding among Chinese, Tibetan, and Western Buddhists. His Holiness presented two-and-a-half days of teaching on Tibetan Buddhism. A dialogue with Venerable Master Sheng Yen, one of the foremost scholars and teachers of Chinese Chan (Zen) Buddhism, followed on the afternoon of the third day. -
Copyright by Mason Russell Mcwatters 2013
Copyright by Mason Russell McWatters 2013 The Dissertation Committee for Mason Russell McWatters certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: The Unworlding and Worlding of Agoraphobia Committee: ____________________________________ Paul C. Adams, Supervisor ____________________________________ Steven D. Hoelscher ____________________________________ Kathleen C. Stewart ____________________________________ Rebecca M. Torres ____________________________________ Leo E. Zonn The Unworlding and Worlding of Agoraphobia by Mason Russell McWatters, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2013 Dedicated to Catherine, my eternal sunshine. Acknowledgements I want to thank Paul Adams for his many years of support, guidance and mentorship during my both my master’s and doctoral studies. I first encountered Paul when I registered for his “Place, Politics and Culture” graduate seminar during my second semester in the interdisciplinary Latin American Studies master’s program. Up until that point, I had felt placeless at UT, floating between history, government and sociology courses that left me feeling uninspired and intellectually homeless. However, as soon as I set foot in Paul’s seminar, I knew I had found my proverbial academic home in geography. His genuine enthusiasm and creativity as a teacher made the study of place, space and landscape seem limitless, inviting and full of possibility. Through his eyes, mundane practices like walking through a city or looking at advertising in the suburbs became transformed into infinitely fascinating reflections on culture and society. I can say without a doubt that I would have never become a geographer were it not for Paul’s creative inspiration. -
AyyaYeshe How To Be A
Ayya Yeshe How to Be a Light for Yourself and Others in Challenging Times Week One: “Establishing the Basis for Dharma Practice” September 4, 2017 Hi, I'm Ayya Yeshe. I'm an Australian Buddhist nun and I've been ordained 16 years. I'm the director of Bodhicitta Foundation, a charity for people in the slums of Central India, which has been running for over a decade. I'm also the founding abbess of a monastery in Australia, which we are currently raising funds for, called Khandro Ling Hermitage. I'm mainly from the Sakya tradition but I was ordained as a fully ordained nun by Thich Nhat Hanh, the Nobel Peace Prize nominee and Vietnamese Zen master. Today I would like to talk about The Seven Points of Mind Training by Geshe Chekawa, which is mainly from the Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. It's actually quite a long and involved text but it's a wonderful introduction to Mahayana Buddhism. As we go through the text, I hope that I can make some of