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
After a long and difficult journey across the precipices and through the blizzards of the Tian Shan mountain ranges, Xuanzang (fl. c. 602–64) finally reached
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
“No other people on earth, Watson, has produced such intricate beauty in as small a space as the Valley of Katmandu. One trenchant observer has
Pristine Pure Land teacher Master Jingzong (b. 1966) once wrote about why he would not want to be born anywhere else except in China: “For all
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
According to the Washington, DC-based Pew Research Center, 18.2 per cent of China’s population—that is 224 million people—are Buddhists, accounting for about half of the
Miya Ando’s painting Yugen Gold Blue is a Zen koan of sorts. The nocturnal seascape, lit by the hazy glow of a rising moon, is at once a portrait
Tuva is a remote Russian republic in southern Siberia, the capital of which, Kyzyl, lies in the geographic heart of Asia. The Tuvans are a
The organization I direct, Core of Culture, which had already worked with Tantric Buddhist monks in other parts of the Himalayas, was invited to undertake
In November 1989, as an 11-year-old, I watched a puzzling scene unfold on our black-and-white TV: huge crowds of people had gathered in central Prague
Buddhism first came to Russia in the 17th century and became firmly established mainly in three Russian republics, Buryatia, Kalmykia, and Tuva, where it had
