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
“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
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
The transmission of Buddhist art from India to China is a fascinating topic. Indeed, how did pious and profound art, along with a complex belief
There are not so many places left on Earth where the population is virtually 100 per cent Tantric Buddhist. Spiti Valley in Himachal Pradesh, India,
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
Qianfo’an (千佛庵), the Temple of One Thousand Buddhas, better known as Xiaoxitian (小西天) or the Little Western Paradise, is located in present-day Xi County, Linfen
