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    Being A Buddhist Paid Member

    Being a Buddhist:“Jim Gordon Physicist Huntsville, AL In my understanding of Buddhism, raising my children Buddhist is not forcing anyone to be anything. I offer a place, and I give my children a chance to sit, but I don't say "You have to sit." I once asked my seventeen-year-old, Taylor, whether when he goes to the meditation room and sits, does he ever feel a little calmer? And he said, "Even just walking into the room makes me… More »
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    On Gardening: Gardening at the Green Dragon's Gate Paid Member

    By Wendy Johnson
    Every spring I receive my best gardening instruction from walking along the edge of our cultivated farmland. I walk just inside the fields, right up against the nine-foot-high deer fence, running my hand over the woven wire as I go. On this ragged borderline, I am forced to slow down. Sometimes I walk so slowly I can close my eyes. I smell the wild pennyroyal mint rising out of the wet eye sockets of small mountain springs just outside the fence. On the rim of these springs grows fetid adder’s tongue,“Scoliopus bigelovi,”thrusting its ill-scented flowers into the new spring air. The stench of rotting meat hovers over the strange, brown-speckled blooms as they uncurl, luring the flies that will pollinate them. I can feel the slow water of the pennyroyal springs seep out of the hillside and saturate the farm soil on my side of the fence. A good place for summer leeks, I tell myself. The mountain will keep the land wet well past June. More »
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    Life of the Buddha: The Buddha-charita Paid Member

    This passage is from the“Buddha-charita,”the first complete biography of the Buddha, written by the poet Ashvaghosha, probably in the first century C.E. The“Buddha-charita”is made up of twenty-eight songs recounting events in Shakyamuni Buddha’s life up to the time of his great awakening. These verses speak of Shakyamuni's family and the events that surrounded the birth of the historical Buddha. Original spellings and usages from this 1893 translation by Edward B. Cowell… More »
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    Letter to the Schools of the Buddha Paid Member

    You who are disincarnate, who know at what point in its carnal trajectory, its insensitive coming and going, that the soul finds the absolute verb, the new speech, the interior ground; you who know how one returns to oneself in thought and how the spirit can save itself from itself; you who are interior to yourselves; you for whom the spirit is no longer on the carnal plane here there are hands for whom taking… More »
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    From the Academy: The Buddhist and the Buddhologist Paid Member

    By Donald Lopez
    His Holiness the Dalai Lama visited the University of Michigan from April 21 to April 23, 1994. One of the events planned for his visit was a private seminar with the faculty and graduate students of the Buddhist Studies program on the topic of the origins of the Mahayana school of Buddhism. In the past, His Holiness has shown great interest in the discoveries of Western science, going so far as to say that on…His Holiness the Dalai Lama visited the University of Michigan from April 21 to April 23, 1994. One of the events planned for his visit was a private seminar with the faculty and graduate students of the Buddhist Studies program on the topic of the origins of the Mahayana school of Buddhism. In the past, His Holiness has shown great interest in the discoveries of Western science, going so far as to say that on those points where Buddhist doctrine and scientific findings diverge, the Buddhist position should be discarded. More »
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    Tibet or Not Tibet Paid Member

    At the U.N.'s Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing this past September and the parallel Non Governmental Organizations (NGO) Forum in the suburb of Huairou several issues had delegates and Chinese officials toe to toe. Not the least of these was the issue of Tibetan sovereignty. On September 1, as the rain fell over dozens of supporters, nine Tibetan women held a silent protest. With scarves tied over their mouths, they stood holding hands for… More »