To many practitioners of the Mahayana schools of Buddhism of East Asia and the esoteric traditions of the Himalayas and Japan, bodhisattvas, or “enlightenment beings,”
One of the most widely practiced of all Japanese art forms is ikebana, or flower arrangement. The word “ikebana” literally means “living flowers,” suggesting that while
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
In this article, I would like to reflect on how to read Japanese Buddhist texts. To explain my strategies for approaching texts distant in time,
Japan’s esoteric Buddhist traditions boast a rich and diverse array of imagery, ranging from figures of individual deities to elaborate mandalas depicting specific deity families
Victoria Montrose (“Tori” to her friends, a fittingly Japanese epithet) has been immersed in Japanese culture since childhood. Victoria was four when her American father
There are many exciting aspects to Chinese president Xi Jinping’s ambitious development framework known as “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR).* A Eurasian economic resurgence could
There are many heartrending monuments at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, such as the Children’s Peace Monument dedicated to the children that perished from the
In Japan during the Edo period (1600–1868), many people traveled on foot between the military capital, Edo (modern Tokyo), and the ancient imperial capital, Kyoto.
Ani Zamba Chozom was one of the first Westerners to be ordained as a Buddhist nun. Born in England in 1948, a serious illness as
Travelers to Japan notice the impressive gates that mark Shinto shrines, in Japanese, torii, as well as the shimenawa, referring to a type of rope made from
In this three-part series, we explore the Buddhist presence in pop culture media. We first review the second movie in the animated trilogy of Osamu
