One of my favorite films about aliens is Arrival (2016), based on Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life (1998). It portrays otherworldly visitors as enlightened extraterrestrials with a literally timeless grasp of language and causality. Aside from being spacefaring travellers and inhabiting spacecraft that leave no residue, traces, or pollution, the advanced creatures of Arrival perceive time […]
Mafan
Mafan. 麻烦 or 麻煩 in Simplified and Traditional Chinese, respectively. Meaning: trouble; troublesome; a bother, a thorn in one’s side. Mafanwas one of the first Chinese words I learned as a child. My grandmother (maa maa / 嫲嫲 / nai nai / 奶奶) would utter the word several times throughout the day when I stayed […]
A Mausoleum of Marvels: Murals of the High Tang in Hong Kong
There is a certain poetry in unearthing the vast world of an entire era of Chinese society, culture, politics, and power by using digitization technology on the murals of dead princes and nobles. The exhibit, “A Glimpse of Tang Prosperity from Murals—The Exhibition Tour on Murals of the Tang Dynasty,” features what I would call […]
Conference: Gender Asymmetry in the Different Buddhist Traditions Through the Prism of Nuns
From 16 to 17 May in Perugia (Piazza Morlacchi 30), the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation of International Scholarly Exchange supported a conference titled, “Gender Asymmetry in the Different Buddhist Traditions Through the Prism of Nuns.” This conference examines the perennially sensitive and sociologically complex topic of women in the monastic traditions of Buddhism. This has been […]
Garden Haikus
Haiku #1 Plant the seeds in dirtWait calmly for them to growWhat if they do not Haiku #2 Plant fruit trees for foodTheir roots cut through the soilTheir fruit tastes like dirt Haiku #3 Water the gardenThe plants are hot and thirsty I am thirsty too
Mexican Buddhism: A Meeting of Cultures, Beliefs, and Perspectives
In our last Hispanophone Buddhism post, we spotlighted Ezer R. May May, a pioneering scholar of the Mahayana Buddhist presence in Mexico. Although Mexico is the most populous nation in Central America and the second-most populous in Latin America, the number of scholars examining the life of Buddhism in the country is extremely low. It […]
For Sri Lanka: Assistance and Friendship Amidst Crisis
Sri Lankans are facing their worst economic crisis since 1948. The country’s prime minister, Mahinda Rajapaksa, resigned on 10 May. His brother, president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, is under renewed pressure to quit as well. The country is in talks with India, China, and the IMF for debt relief and further loans. And it has been less than […]
Conoscenza: vincolata o emancipata dal costrutto identitario? Riflessioni epistemiche attraverso il prisma degli insegnamenti del buddhismo antico
Edizione originale in lingua inglese Traduzione italiana a cura di Costanza Ceccarelli© Āgama Research Group Buddhistdoor Global (BDG): Venerabile, potrebbe descriverci il tema e le idee generali esposti nel suo intervento al convegno? Bhikkhunī Dhammadinnā (BD): Il mio intervento si occupa di esaminare come i concetti di esperienza e di costruzione condizionata dell’identità e della […]
Two Years of Pandemic, Two Years of Practice
The content of this post first appeared in the newsletter published by the author’s sangha, City Cave Zen. When the pandemic took hold, my sangha, City Cave Zen, decided to try holding meetings online, to meditate, chant and discuss the Dharma in a way that would be as similar to physical meetings as we could make […]
Dharma and the All-Divine: New Age and Buddhist Thought with Rebecca Wong Howe
In a previous editorial on the Ukraine crisis, we discussed the theological intersection of the country’s two Orthodox denominations and Buddhism. We asked the questions: how can we see the Dharma embodied in other religious traditions and others’ spiritual beliefs? How is the will of the bodhisattvas communicated? How can we learn about our own […]