The term “Buddhism in the West” can be rather misleading. Too often, this umbrella term denotes Buddhism in the Anglophone world; namely, Buddhism in the US, Canada, and possibly Britain and Australia. But below the US, in Central America and South America, as well as in the former colonial heartland of Spain, the sphere of […]
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The TLKY International Conference 2021 Interview Series – Dr. Georgios T. Halkias
Welcome to our series of conversations with participating speakers at this year’s Tung Lin Kok Yuen International Conference – Buddhist Canons: In Search of a Theoretical Foundation for a Wisdom-oriented Education (27–28 November 2021). In each blog post, I speak with keynote speakers and paper presenters about their subject at this conference. Register for this […]
Tony Miller’s “The Missing Buddhas”
“In the absence of any government restrictions, China’s Gods have become a lively trade article.” Friedrich Perzynski, Hunt for the Gods (1913) In the early days of the Republic of China, a unique group of sixteen Buddhist sculptures called the “Yixian Luohans” (luohan means arahat in Chinese) appeared on the embryonic market of Chinese art. The […]
Awe Is…
JehovahZeusJahRaOsirisAllahJesusGodYahwehThe GoddessIsisMardukAdonisPenelopeIndraJupiterMarsQuetzalcoatlThorOrpheusGaiaApolloAhura MazdaBrahmaBuddhaBachusIo George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria Poetry Journal, Chronogram Journal, Ampersand Literary Review, The Angle at St. John Fisher College, and 3:16 Journal. George’s blogs, essays and letters have appeared in USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Havana Times, South China Morning Post, The Buffalo News, and […]
The feeling of difference
To the ancient ones, numbers were feelingsof addition and subtraction,and without counting, they knew how equality felt. George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria Poetry Journal, Chronogram Journal, Ampersand Literary Review, The Angle at St. John Fisher College, and 3:16 Journal. George’s blogs, essays and letters have appeared in USA […]
The History of the Earth
The history of the earth is aconstrained blessing. With my warm human hands I receive it, knowing that it was the sun that Joshua commanded to be still. It was not the earth. The earthcannot remain still. As we move, with our families, in and out of dying,a flowing, syncytium over the earth. George Cassidy Payne is a poet from […]
Yashodhara: The Buddha’s Wife in Many Lives
Buddha begging for food in front of his wife Yashodhara and his son Rahula. Cave 17, Ajanta. From personal.carthage.edu Yashodhara, which means “Bearer of Glory,” was the wife of Prince Siddhartha and the mother of their son, Rahula. She was born in the Sun Clan, to the daughter of King Suppabuddha and Amita. Amita was […]
The Great Deeds of Gautami: The Achievements of the First Buddhist Nun
Buddha Shakyamuni with Mahaprajapati Gautami. From dhamma-stream.blogspot.com The stories of a number of nuns (Skt. bhikshuni) in early Buddhism were written down in various parts of the Pali Buddhist scriptures, especially in the Therigatha, commonly translated as Verses of the Elder Nuns, composed about 600 BCE, and also in the Theri Apadana or The Great […]
Chösgyal: Kings of Old Tubo
A stele of a Buddha or bodhisattva image in Purang in Ngari Prefecture, Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, exudes the courtly mystique and power of the ancient Tibetan imperium (Tubo) during the first diffusion of Buddhism. Functioning perhaps as a donative monument or a pillar of a long-lost temple, this stele was erected in either 826 or 838: […]
Buddhism and the Tea Leaf: One Fine Marriage
From this month till December, The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Centre for Buddhist Studies at the University of Toronto is running a workshop series on the relationship between tea and Buddhist culture, history, and practice, along with tasting and sampling sessions with tea sommeliers. In the diverse regions covered in this series (the […]