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The Latest in the Wisdom Collection

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  Castles Made of Sand

  By Andrew Olendzki

  Perhaps you will go to the beach sometime this summer and have a chance to watch children at play in the sand. How engrossed they can get in their projects! When building a sand castle, nothing in the world seems more important than shaping it, embellishing it, and protecting it from the encroaching sea or from other children who might threaten it. This must be a timeless pursuit, for the Buddha offers the following image in a discussion with an elder monk named Radha in the Samyutta Nikaya: Suppose, Radha, some little boys or girls are playing with sand castles. So long as they are not devoid of lust, desire, affection, thirst, passion, and craving for those sand castles, they cherish them, play with them, treasure them, and treat them possessively. More »
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  The Need of the Hour

  By Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

  It’s hardly a secret that human recklessness is reaching a critical mass, threatening not only our collective sanity but even our long-term survival. Ever more powerful and impersonal weaponry, endless warfare, super-quick changes in technology, a volatile global economy, the widening gap between the ultrarich and everyone else, climate disasters, species extinction, and ecological devastation: these crises are escalating out of control, and even what was once the most idyllic South Pacific island offers no escape. We’ve got to find ways to put our house in order, and we’ve got to do so fast; otherwise the rapid descent of our civilization towards collapse seems unavoidable. More »
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  True Dharma Eye

  By Zenshin Michael Haederle

  According to the calendar spring is just 10 days away, but winter still has its icy grip on Montreal, Canada. Wearing an oversized parka and a borrowed pair of boots, Kazuaki Tanahashi carefully picks his way down a slush-encrusted sidewalk while I hover protectively, worried that he will lose his footing. “I’m all right,” he insists, but I’ll have some explaining to do if something happens to a national treasure on my watch. More »
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  Skill in Questions

  By Thanissaro Bhikkhu

  When we read the account of the Buddha’s last night, it’s easy to sense the importance of his final teaching before entering total nibbana: “Now, then, monks, I exhort you: All fabrications are subject to decay. Bring about completion by being heedful.” These words call attention to themselves because they were the last he ever said. That may be why it’s so easy to overlook the importance of what the Buddha did right before saying them. In a gesture extremely gracious—given that he had been walking all day, had fallen severely ill along the way, and now was about to die—he offered one last opportunity for his followers to question him. More »
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  Buddhism and Religious Diversity

  By Rita M. Gross

  It is a fact that we live in a religiously diverse world. Religious diversity can and often does result in grave misunderstanding, hostility, and, as we know all too well, conflict, with unacceptable costs to human life and well-being. For this reason, among others, it is incumbent on responsible people to know how to think clearly and compassionately about religious diversity. For Buddhists, it is important in thinking about such issues to use Buddhist tools and views, lest our attitudes and actions simply reflect the biases and reactions we have absorbed from the surrounding culture. More »
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  A Right to the Dharma

  This article is part of an online special section about Nichiren Buddhism. We hope that by gathering these articles in one place and making them freely available, our Buddhist conversation will be broadened and that we can, all of us, more fully know ourselves in knowing one another. Read the other articles here. More »