On her pilgrimage to Ladakh, Rebecca Wong visited the Alchi monastic complex, and investigated a special mural of Green Tara in one of the monasteries
monastery
An Ancient Buddhist Vihara’s Vesper: A Retelling
Recounting an average evening for an ancient Buddhist temple in the Indian heartland
Eye on Southeast Asia: Novices in Love and Living
Very young men or boys joining the sangha without adequate preparation is resulting in real problems
How to Dry Feet
“Don’t pat the feet! We need them to be dry!” Those were the stern words that the abbot of a forest monastery said to me as I was drying his feet and the feet of monks who had just cleansed them with water before entering the meditation hall. Drying the feet of monastics was the […]
Ajahn Brahm’s “Karuna-virus” – A book for these times
Why do we tell stories? Throughout history, the storyteller was the sage, the wise one. Stories have a mythic, primeval place in human society and culture. They are expressions of our deepest intuitions, our oldest folk memories, and our sense of ultimate destiny. At a social level, they speak to our times and advise us […]
Postcard from Raymond: Preservation at its Finest (Cave 26, Ajanta)
Of all the caves at the Ajanta complex, I found Cave 26 to be the most intricate, with the unmistakable sense of, “yes, this is it.” We were looking at the literal, physical transition between the earliest days of itinerant wanderers (sramanas) and the days of settled monastic institutions. Unlike the other caves that I felt […]
Postcard from Raymond: Prayers in the Darkness (Cave 4, Ajanta)
Of the many caves I visited at the Ajanta Caves complex, I felt myself encountering a particularly acute sense of timeless sacrality at Cave 4, one of the earliest cave monasteries. I think it was the vast main chamber that drew me in like a little child, as if I were in the presence of something, […]
Postcard from Raymond: Entering a Sanctuary of Sanctity (Cave 2, Ajanta)
It had been about five years since I visited Ajanta, one of the oldest surviving complexes of rock-cut caves carved into the hillside. Apart from ongoing restoration work by the Archaeological Survey of India, little had changed, including the bright and sunny, humid weather and the understandably large crowds that came from all over India […]
In Praise of the Monastic Experience, a Taste of Chinese Buddhism
In July I read the account of a philosopher spending time at the famous Trappist monastery called the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. This is the place where Thomas Merton lived for a while in the 1960s. Reflecting on the beauty and simplicity of monastic vocation, the philosopher wondered, “why do so few people choose […]
Guan Yin Temple: Flower Ornament and Pure Land Vistas
Raymond Lam “Pay respects to the Buddha first, then to me,” advised my preceptor once, when we visited him at his monastery, Guan Yin Temple. “Because we take refuge in the Buddha first, then in the Dharma, then in the Sangha.” He was implying that compared to the Buddha images of our temple, he was […]