Buddhism

This is my attempt to summarise what Buddhists mean when they speak of karma. It is important in approaching this subject to recognise the difference between what most lay Buddhists at the popular level understand by karma and what is taught in Buddhist texts and by Buddhist scholars. Karma in Buddhism www.facetofaceintercultural.com.au

The Dalai Lama and his teaching have had a significant impact upon concepts of the meaning of life and happiness in the Western world. This article provides a summary of the Dalai Lama, his teaching and a Christian response to both. The article was published in the quarterly magazine of the Centre for Apologetic Scholarship [...]

Yesterday, a Buddhist nun addressed and interacted with the class I am teaching about Buddhism. She did a fine job of articulating basic Buddhist thought and on the whole fielded questions quite well. As I reflected on our time with her the following points come to mind: 1. Some students asked perceptive questions about how [...]

In Buddhist thought suffering in samsara is due to ignorance of three realities: dukkha (suffering, or better “unsatisfactoriness”), impermanence and especially non-self. There is no self, that is, as Siderits puts it, “we are empty persons, persons who are empty of selves.” To be more precise, a ‘person’ has no essence, the continued existence of [...]

Nichiren states: Be resolved to summon forth the great power of faith, and chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo [sc. the Lotus Sutra] with the prayer that your faith will be steadfast and correct at the moment of your death. Never seek any other way to inherit the ultimate Law of life and death, and manifest it in your [...]

Nichiren Daishonin, the Japanese Buddhist leader from whom Soka Gakkai traces its origins, stated: However great the good cause one may make, or even if one reads and copies the entirety of the Lotus Sutra a thousand or ten thousand times, or attains the way of perceiving three thousand realms in a single moment of [...]

In chapter VII of the Lotus Sutra Shakyamuni Buddha is portrayed as teaching a parable concerning a guide who is leading a vast number of people through an immense but dense forest to the \”Isle of Jewels.\” The journey is very long and extremely difficult. As a result the travelers become despondent. Indeed, they are [...]

In Chapter 5 of the Lotus Sutra Shakyamuni has just used the Parable of the Clay Pots to teach that there is ultimately only one vessel (common clay), but different clay pots made out of that same clay, some with a predisposition to seek nirvana via the attainment of Arhatship, others disposed to seek it [...]

Absorb the implications of this quote from the Lotus Sutra, a text highly venerated by many Mahayana Buddhists: There is no (real) Nirvana without all-knowingness; try to reach this (Chapter 5.74). If you can’t achieve omniscience then you can’t experience nirvana. To say this is a tough ask is an understatement of an understatement. We [...]

In Chapter 5 of the Lotus Sutra we find the following interchanged between a monk and Shakyamuni (“the Lord”):  When the Lord had thus spoken, the venerable Maha-Kasyapa said to him: Lord, if there are not three vehicles, for what reason then is the designation of disciples (Sravakas), Buddhas, and Bodhisattvas kept up in the present times? [...]