HAPCHEON TO MARK 1000TH BIRTHDAY OF BUDDHIST SCRIPTURES

Hapcheon in South Gyeongsang Province will hold celebrations to mark the 1,000th anniversary of the creation of “Palman Daejanggyeong,’’ or “Tripitaka Koreana,’’ a collection of about 80,000 Buddhist scriptures carved on woodblocks.  The focus of the festival will be to rediscover the legacy of one of the world’s oldest and most comprehensive versions of Buddhist canon in Chinese characters. Image from http://www.korea.net/cheditor40_asp/cheditor/attach/200851617245438227.jpg  Read More →

TIBET: TWO BUDDHIST MONKS HAVE DISAPPEARED.

Buddhist monks Tsundue Gyatso and Sonam Gyatso were arrested in mid-May for interrogation and have not been heard from since. They had protested against persecution by China. Image from http://www.meaus.com/tibet2.GIF  Read More →

WHAT IS MIND?

Link to Free Buddhist Audio and the podcast “What is Mind?“  This is the first in a series of talks from the Western Buddhist Order Convention in 2001 offering different perspectives on the Abhidharma and exploring from a personal perspective what the study of the 51 Mental Events can tell us about our minds and how they work. Based on the classic Tibetan text ‘Necklace of Clear Understanding’.  Read More →

Religious Resistance to Printing?

An interesting question posed by Pam Geller in her recent post “The Poisonous Fruit of Edward Said” at her website, Atlas Shrugs (especially in light of my earlier post “What If The World Were This Way?” which spoke of cultural and religious hindrances to progress): Was the delay of the printing press in India due to a) Hindu reluctance cause by caste concerns (the Brahmins were afraid that the spread of the printing press... Read more

The Quest for the Historical Buddha

Christian scholarship has devoted much effort over the last several hundred years to textual criticism of New Testament manuscripts, providing some with conclusions on what material was original and what was added. Speculation arose that the Synoptic Gospels were based on a common source called Quelle, a source which, by the way, has never actually been found. There has been an ongoing “search for the historical Jesus,” obviously implying that... Read more