In ancient Chinese literature, “the West” refers to India—the birthplace of Buddhism. Nowadays, as in most cultures across the globe, the West for the Chinese
I visited Venerable Nyanaponika Thera at the Forest Hermitage, in Kandy, Sri Lanka, in the mid-1980s, when Bhikkhu Bodhi was still staying there with him,
Who can really practice with a genuine mind? At the end of Master Shandao’s passage on interpreting the Sincere Mind, he states: For [disavowing] the threefold
The World Wide Web is the most powerful platform and enabler for innumerable digital technological and social innovations that can facilitate all aspects of learning,
The world is beset by what are often called “intractable problems.” Agitation and response seem to run in circles of escalating violence, with little apparent
According to the Ekottara Agama Sutra (增一阿含經), the first Buddha image was made of wood. It is said that when the Buddha was teaching his deceased mother in
Whenever I teach Japanese Buddhism, whether in the Americas, Europe, or East Asia, I frequently run into the same assumption among students that Buddhists, for
Last time, we explored how a Pure Land aspirant attains both “genuineness in self-benefiting” and “genuineness in benefiting others” through the dedication of real merits
An increasingly discussed topic these days is that of spiritual bypassing. Here is my contribution to this conversation. The great masters of old were renowned
A shocking piece of news struck the world of “new and old” in the first week of 2017—AlphaGo, an artificial intelligence (AI) program developed by Google
To seek refuge in Amitabha Buddha is to receive his “real” merits and virtues In our discussion of the Sincere Mind in my last three
A most amazing mural is painted on a six-meter-high cylinder on the second floor of Dungtse Lhakhang in Paro, Bhutan. The temple was designed by
