Since February this year, we have been discussing the importance of faith and its role in Pure Land Buddhism. In this instalment I hope to
The 1st ASEAN Buddhist Conference (ABC-1) on ASEAN Buddhists: Beyond the 26th Buddhist Century was held on 22–23 September at Nakhonpathom Rajabhat University in Thailand. I
A finger pointing at the moon The simple question of “What is a Buddha?” was raised in a casual discussion with a venerable Pure Land
On 7–9 September, the international scientific conference “Buddhism in the Third Millennium: Trends and Prospects for Development” was held in the sacred land of Tuva.
In my previous article,* I introduced a method of reading Japanese Buddhist texts, especially writings by the Japanese Zen master Dōgen (1200–53).** Here, I would
Imagine this: a young woman, heavily pregnant and in labor, makes the journey to a grove of trees sacred to the local goddess. The village
David McMahan is professor of Religious Studies at Franklin & Marshall College, Pennsylvania. In recent years he has offered the Buddhist Studies community a more
Causes of rebirth in different realms With regard to my previous article* discussing the cause of assured rebirth in Amitabha’s Pure Land, many readers were surprised
It is said that the Buddha taught 84,000 different methods for the liberation of sentient beings because of the diversity of sentient beings in their
Accuracy in explaining the Buddha’s words In my previous three articles I emphasized that Pure Land Buddhism sees faith as an expedient means, while the
Recently, I was sitting on a train coming back home from Sydney Central and couldn’t help but overhear a conversation between a teenaged girl and
We do not like to think that humans are inherently cruel or violent. Even the suggestion that homo sapiens might, as a species, be inclined to violence sits uneasily
