Buddhist philosophy is a profound system of thought that provides a unique approach to the nature of existence, suffering, and the path to liberation. This article explores the core concepts of Buddhist philosophy, including the Four Noble Truths, Impermanence, Selflessness, and the Noble Eightfold Path. Through the analysis of these aspects, the article sheds light on how Buddhist philosophy addresses fundamental questions about the meaning of life, the nature of consciousness, and the relationship between humans and the universe. With an approach that does not rely on specific quotations, this study emphasizes the presentation of a comprehensive perspective, reflecting the fundamental principles of Buddhism and their significance in the modern context of the world and Vietnam. The article concludes that Buddhist philosophy is not only a system of religious thought but also a practical approach, providing value in facing the challenges of contemporary life
We analyze the Google matrix of directed networks of Wikipedia articles related to eight recent Wikipedia language editions representing different cultures (English, Arabic, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, Chinese). Using the reduced Google matrix algorithm, we determine relations and interactions of 23 society concepts and 17 religions represented by their respective articles for each of the eight editions. The effective Markov transitions are found to be more intense inside the two blocks of society concepts and religions while transitions between the blocks are significantly reduced. We establish five poles of influence for society concepts (Law, Society, Communism, Liberalism, Capitalism) as well as five poles for religions (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Chinese folk religion) and determine how they affect other entries. We compute inter-edition correlations for different key quantities providing a quantitative analysis of the differences or the proximity of views of the eight cultures with respect to the selected society concepts and religions.
Introduction. The sacral map of ethnic spatial development is a complicated mosaic of multifunctional zones that includes places of residence, territories for economic activity, and sacral areas proper. Ethnic Buryatia’s sacral map comprises a variety of spatial elements, such as border markers of settlements, places for economic pursuits, burial grounds, and those of hierophanies. ‘Healing’ localities, including healing springs, are somewhat distinguished in this sacral space. Goals. The study attempts a review of images of healing springs, their functions and significance for society — through the prism of spatial, social ‘narratives’ of culture. Materials and methods. The Buryat development space is a compound information environment comprising elements that remain relevant to date. Healing springs are considered from the perspective of the information theory of culture, which makes it possible to identify a few layers of somewhat contradictory messages articulated by representatives of different generations. Results. The paper traces certain chains of changes in statuses of such springs: from ‘water of immortality’ once granted by deities — to symbols of holiness of Buddhist hierarchs whose efforts gave birth to a number of such arshans. Special attention is given to images of supernatural patrons of springs, their healing properties and prescribed practices, beautification endeavors across adjacent territories. Conclusions. The insight into the arshan cult and water-related practices reveals some most socially relevant details inherent thereto. Information layers characterizing the image of a spring reflect certain changes in perceptions of its significance — from clan-level status to public one. Furthermore, Buddhism has yielded significant transformations both in ritual arrangements, patterns of healing practices, and design of such treatment places.
History (General), Oriental languages and literatures
The entire landscape of Northern Indian religious practices underwent a sea change in the 15th and 16th centuries with Nirgun Saint poets like Kabir, and Guru Nanak. Nanak invariably became one of the leading voices of his times whose modernist vision can be visualized through his poetics. His egalitarian worldview has made him popular amongst all sections of society. Choosing a linguistic idiom of the masses he refuted the consecrated value rendered to scriptures, invalidated many prevalent notions of Karma Kand (Vedic rituals) and its hegemonic approach and showed a revolutionary path to devotion. His Japji sahib is a cultural model of co-existential plurality resistive to rigid authoritarianism and entails a democratized mysticism. It’s a unique philosophy that dismantles the regressive upholders of repressive ideologies. His Shabads and Gurbani in the Guru Granth Sahib are poetics of plurality offering an alternative model of openness and multidimensionality. Reminiscent of the style of English Romantics, in Nanak, the mundane and commonplace gets elevated to larger significance in his poetry. The rationality, equality and liberal ideology preached and rendered in his poetics stands in stark opposition to the irrationality, inequality and orthodoxy prevalent. The important rationale of Nanak’s philosophy is the psychological freedom it accords to those despised and dispossessed because of caste, class, and gender. It moves beyond the boundaries of community, religion, language, culture and nation. The consequential philosophy of holistic liberation becomes more relevant in a multilingual, multicultural, multireligious Indian ethos today. This paper therefore, shall explore the radical, emancipatory potential in the poetics of Guru Nanak, its contemporary relevance in an age of religious polarizations, bigotry and divisiveness; Further, it explores how the pluralistic paradigms of Guru Nanak’s vision and poetics become a panacea to the ongoing invasions on secular democratic beliefs.
Heesoon Bai, Mel A. V. Voulgaris, Heather Williams
In the face of current turbulent times including climate emergencies, species extinction, the erosion of democracy and the rise of authoritarianism—in short, a suffering world—the authors of this paper propose that education needs to be centrally an activist effort dedicated to healing and repairing the increasingly wounded and damaged world. To this end, this paper explores Buddhism as an educational program that centralizes a healing curriculum based on the understanding that healing comes from waking up from the delusion of possessive individualism (ego-selves) that gives rise to neoliberal capitalist societies. This delusion is the existential home of suffering. Waking up requires the disciplined effort of seeing through and past individualism to the workings of mutual causality within a universe of interconnection (Interbeing), such as ours. The mindfulness (<i>sati</i>) practice that the historical Buddha taught is such a form of mental discipline. Through the agentic cultivation of <i>sati</i> and subsequent remembrance of our inherent Interbeing, we can rediscover and rekindle the inherently enlightened mind of <i>bodhicitta</i>. This paper explores various psychological, sociocultural, ideological, and relational conditionings that act as barriers to seriously practicing mindfulness, including the currently popular conceptions of mindfulness in North America. While acknowledging that successful practice takes setting up the right conditions, our paper also delves into helpful and supportive conditions for mindfulness practice for activists, namely, ethical motivation and contemplative/healing emotions such as the Four Immeasurables.
We consider the peculiarity of unique events, such as those of a natural, evolutionary, and social nature. In particular, we consider unique social events that have had either the claim or the vocation of being salvific for humanity, such as the introduction over time of the Torah, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. We question how the claimed, general salvific vocation contrasts, or is inconsistent with, the non-retroactive temporality and locality of such events, which could not have happened otherwise. This undeclared and philosophically unsolved inconsistency then reappears in subsequent cultural contradictions and inadequacies, political and social allowances such as, for instance, homo-centrism and a pathological relation with Nature. In the case of Christianity, this inconsistency is represented by the painting reproduced in the article, a work in which the excluded humans and other living beings are represented as astonished by the occurrence in this moment, and in such an unnatural context. Furthermore, we consider the original understanding as related to concepts of classical physics, or of such concepts naively adopted within the texts considered sacred. However, in some religions, such as Christianity, the inconsistency is theologically solved. We stress the need to update the ancient original elementary, naïve, pre-classic philosophical and conceptual frameworks used so that these alleged inconsistencies and contradictions may be not only theologically solved, but also conceptually solved in more complex understandings of the world, for example, considering relativistic time, long-range interdependence, quantum entanglement, and theories of the universe. Without this update, the unique saving events can affect only religiously, that is, optionally, on the scientific and philosophical conceptions used. Without this adjustment, homo-centrist illusion and egoism prevail as the natural, linear consequential attitude without raising these questions. It rather assumes that the intervention is for involved human beings, and moreover for those who have had and are lucky enough to receive and practice it, ignoring the enormous inconsistency within the message itself, and its presumed general and available salvific nature. This requires theological, philosophical, and scientific interdisciplinarity. The theme concerns inconsistencies within and superficiality of the narratives and their treatment of the unique, salvific events, without any reference to possible general and retroactive effects of how these events are represented in the painting. We conclude that the subject should be debated by taking into account contemporary understandings, such as relativistic space and time, quantum physics, and of the universe, with new philosophical and anthropological approaches. This should be a matter of responsible philosophical and theological interdisciplinary debate involving science, suitable to establish new understandings.
It is an issue of already longstanding significance in philosophy of religion after John Hick, that is of differing models of religious consciousness, in the frame of interreligious relations which is tackled in the paper but it is done on the basis of the texts of a concrete philosopher and the narratives around his figure. One of the most eminent Naiyayikas, Udayana (11th C.A.D.), is singled out, as the author of the very renown composition in verse Nyāyakusumaňjali offering arguments for the existence of God (Īśvara) in the framework of polemics with the anti-theistic schools and the anti-Buddhist fundamental compendium Ātmatattvaviveka, along with the stories about his very resolute and victorious struggle against Buddhism in the epoch of the latter’s final extirpation from India. The author comes to conclusion that the features of exclusivism, inclusivism and gradualism are detected in his texts and traditions around him and, therefore, any univocal authentication of his attitude to otherwise-minded and those of other faiths is impossible. While participating in the supplantation of Buddhism from India, Udayana displays very resolute exclusivism. When he addresses the educated audience sermonizing his philosophical theism, he uses purely inclusivistic strategy of uncovering implicit knowledge of Īśvara even with those very far removed from the truth. And when he attempts to locate Nyāya on the map of philosophical world-views he uses gradualism (along with implicit inclusivism) as “philosophy of ascent” of the truth from lower to higher levels. As is impossible as well to mark out of his attitudes the so-called pluralism (the conception of equivalency of religions) considered by Hick as fundamental advantage of Eastern religions over the Western ones. Comparativistic parallels along with differences (Calvin’s conception of “the seed of religion”, Rahner’s conception of anonyme Christians and Hegel’s gradualism are taken into account) and some specification of the main categories of interreligious relations are also offered in the paper.
The article deals with the phenomenon of synthesis of East and West cultures in the religious philosophy of B.D. Dandaron - one of the most famous representatives of Russian Buddhism in the XX century. The beginning of the spread of Buddhist teachings in Russian society is also connected with his extraordinary personality. Dandaron was engaged in active yoga, tantric practice, and also gave instructions to those who were interested in Buddhism. As a result, a small circle of people began to form around him who tried to study and practice Buddhism. Dandaron was also engaged in Buddhist activities, studied Tibetan history and historiography, and described the Tibetan collection of manuscripts. It is indicated that Dandaron not only made an attempt to consider Buddhism from the perspective of Western philosophy, but also created his own teaching, which was called neobuddism. As a result, he was able to conduct a creative synthesis of Buddhist philosophy with the Western philosophical tradition. In fact, he developed a philosophical system that claims to be universal and synthesized Buddhist and Western spiritual achievements. Trying to synthesize the Eastern and Western traditions of philosophical thought, Dandaron turned to the well-known comparative works of the Indian thinker S. Radhakrishnan and the Russian buddhologist F.I. Shcherbatsky. The author also notes the influence on the philosophy of neobuddism of the ideas of V.E. Sesemann, a neo-Kantian philosopher with whom Dandaron was personally acquainted. The idea of non-Buddhism had not only a philosophical and theoretical, but also a practical aspect, since the consideration of Buddhism from the perspective of Western philosophy helped to attract people of Western culture to this religion. In General, Dandarons desire to create a universal synthetic philosophical system was in line with the philosophical and spiritual search of Russian philosophy, and was partly related to the traditional problem of East-West, which has always been relevant for Russia.
The Objective of this Study is to a reflective evaluation of Indonesian national character in the education of Buddhism in elementary schools, which can produce a picture that poures national values character (nationalism) in the context of learning that is administered. The reflective evaluation is carried out with the CIPP evaluation model, which includes five constructs and five reflective Buddhism educational instruments wich consits of context dimensions, the teacher’s interest, the teaching materials, the learning process and the product. All instruments are valid and reliable. The result of the development of the reflective evaluation instrument of Buddhist education that has been built consists of five aspects / dimensions of evaluation with the name Context, Teachers’ Knowledge / Interest (Input), Materials (Input), Process and Product (Product). The content of the nation’s character in Buddhism is explicit in the components of History, Faith (Saddha), Behavior or Morality (Sila), Buddhist holly Books (Tipitaka), Meditation (Samadhi), and Wisdom (Panna), accumulated in context, input, process, and output, through the evaluation of the Buddha’s education refelective in the development of the nation’s character.
The eminent scholar-nun Chŏng Suok (1902−1966) traveled from colonial Korea to Imperial Japan from 1937 to 1939 and wrote a travelogue that provides an important first-hand account from a woman’s perspective on the state of Japanese and Korean Buddhism during the early 20th century. Bemoaning the destitute state of Korean Buddhist nuns who had no schools, lecture halls, or even meditation rooms, she notes the stark contrast with the Japanese nuns who had access to proper education and enjoyed respect from society. After returning from Japan, she became not only a dharma instructor and abbess but something much more. As a prominent leader of the Buddhist purification movement in the 1960s she became one of the most influential nuns in Korea, promoting education, practice, social engagement, and feminist consciousness until her death in 1966. Her long struggle exemplifies a transnational crossing that helped to deepen the Buddhist tradition in both Korea and Japan.
Yi-Ping Tseng, Lian-Hua Huang, Tzu-Hsin Huang
et al.
Background: Do-not-resuscitate (DNR) in nursing homes is an emerging advance directive in Taiwan, but little research has been conducted. The purpose was to determine the factors associated with signing a DNR directive in the largest hospital affiliated nursing home in Taiwan.
Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted using a convenience sample from a nursing home in northern Taiwan between January 2011 and January 2012. The demographic characteristics of elderly residents were collected. 213 family surrogates of elderly residents were interviewed using a self-developed structured questionnaire related to DNR issues. The data were analyzed via descriptive statistics and logistic regression analysis.
Results: Only 24/213 (11.3%) of elderly residents had the DNR directives. Of these, 20/24 (83%) were made by family surrogates. The factors significantly associated with the DNR decision included the elderly residents had severe brain injury (OR: 8.83, p = 0.023), pulmonary disease (OR: 7.24, p = 0.004), cancer (OR: 5.20, p = 0.045); the family surrogates believe in Buddhism (OR: 8.02, p = 0.030), and ever having discussed DNR with the resident (OR: 19.23, p < 0.001). This model explained 49.4% of the variance in whether or not a resident had a DNR directive.
Conclusions: The findings indicated the DNR decision was associated with residents' conditions and surrogates' factors. These information are helpful to medical personnel in nursing homes to better understand and to assist the DNR decision-making process.
This research described how life tolerance of religion in Nusa Jaya Village Belitang District III Regency OKU East Sumatera Selatan, besides to know the factors that cause success tolerance of religion in Nusa Jaya Village Belitang District III Regency of OKU East of South Sumatera. Tolerance is a problem that often arises throughout the time, especially tolerance among religious people. Historically, the religious nature of tolerance does not just appear. This research aims to determine the factors that lead to the success of religious, between Islam, Catholicism, Protestant Christianity, and Buddhism in the Nusa Jaya village, District III of East Belitang, District of OKU, South Sumatra. The method used in this study is the historical method, obtained through in-depth interviews, documentation and literature study. The results showed that normatively the basic values that form the basis of the establishment of tolerance among religious people is the value of religion and cultural Javanese descendants. While empirically composed of human values, nationalism, historical, exemplary public religious leaders and the value of patience.
This article deals with one of the most well-known prayers in the practice of Mongolian Buddhism. The text was composed by Luwsandambīǰalcan (T. blo-bzang dam-pa’i rgyal-mtshan), the main figure of Mongolian Buddhism, also known as Öndör gegēn Janabajar, the first bogdo or bogdo gegēn or ǰewcündamba xutagt (1635–1723). In addition to his works of art and his role in creating the special characteristics of Mongolian Buddhism, including unique lama robes, special ways of recitation and melodies, as well as ceremonial texts written by Mongolian lamas and a special ceremonial system, he had composed many important texts, several of which are still used during the ceremonies today. Of these, the prayer published here in translation is chanted every day, while other texts are used during certain annual ceremonies in all Mongolian monasteries. The present article describes the ceremonial texts composed by Öndör gegēn, but concentrates on the main
prayer composed by him, its background, and its use in the Mongolian ceremonial system, also providing a Hungarian translation. The text is entitled Jˇinlaw cogzol (T. byin-rlabs mchog-stsol), i.e. ‘(Giving) the greatest blessing’, which is the Tibetan title of the beginning of the text in distorted Mongolian pronunciation. In Mongolian it is abbreviated as Adistid, ‘Blessing’, being the Mongolian translation of the beginning of the text; or, in its original Tibetan title in distorted Mongolian pronunciation, Düitünǰi soldew (T. dus-bstun-gyi gsol-’debs), ‘Prayer in accordance with the time’. The purpose of chanting it is harmonious life, to clear away obstacles, as well as to put an end to or to calm down any kinds of crisis, disorder, conflict, or fighting, and to reach harmony and peace. This is clear from the text itself, and also obvious from the historical background described in the article. The ‘bad times’ or crisis (T. dus ngan, in Mongolian translations cöwīn cag, ‘time of decadence / decline’, mū cag, ‘bad times’, or munxag cag, ‘dark times / times of ignorance’) mentioned in the text refers to the time when the prayer was composed, as well as to our time, meaning a dark era when the Buddhist teachings are present only to a limited extent or not present at all. Therefore, due to ignorance the sins and transgressions of the beings multiply, leading to more and more suffering. The prayer was written during the time of the wars between the western and eastern Mongols (Oyrad and Khalkha), involving much victims and sufferings. The aim of the composition was to show the way out of the difficult wartimes, to stop it by means of the Buddhist teachings and the power of prayer, to unite the fighting Mongols, and to help them achieve peace in this way. The translation is from the Tibetan origin, using four modern Mongolian translations. Two translations into classical Mongolian are known, but they have rather literary value as they are not used in the ceremonial life – nor are they used Mongolian translations during the ceremonies in general, since Tibetan remained the ceremonial language of Mongolian Buddhism. The modern Mongolian translations are either from the classical Mongolian translations or from the original Tibetan. The significance of the prayer is born out by the fact that it also has three commentaries (T. ’grel-ba) in Tibetan.
The article investigates the notion of the self in Pudgalavāda — one of the least studied schools of Buddhism. The Pudgalavāda is an “unorthodox” trend of early Buddhism, which holds the doctrine of the existence of the self, or person — pudgala. The author examines the history of the formation of the Pudgalavāda, makes an overview of available literature on the topic and analyzes the concept of the self in the key texts of this philosophical trend, analyzes in detail the philosophical arguments of debating parties — classical Buddhism and Pudgalavāda Buddhism. The author comes to the conclusion that the apparent contradictions in the interpretation of pudgala can be explained by the consistent and logical evolution in the understanding of the concept of pudgala in the school of Pudgalavāda. The article will be of interest to researchers in the fields of history of philosophy, philosophy of mind, cognitive psychology and to scholars investigating the problem of the self.
I provide a précis of The Bodhisattva's Brain: Buddhism Naturalized (), and then respond to three critics, Christian Coseru, Charles Goodman, and Bronwyn Finnigan.
Nel gennaio del 2000 la femminista afroamericana bell hooks pubblica, su Shumbhala Sun, un’intervista al monaco buddhista zen vietnamita Thich Nath Hanh, citata in “Praticare con le emozioni” (Sati gennaio-aprile 2010), da Corrado Pensa, fondatore e insegnante guida dell’A.Me.Co. – Associazione per la Meditazione di Consapevolezza - insieme a Neva Papachristou.[2] bell hooks era sempre stata per me l’autrice di Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (1981) e di libri particolarmente combattivi sulle questioni razziali e di genere. La scoperta del suo interesse per l’universo buddhista mi ha invogliato ad approfondire il tema dei rapporti tra afroamericani e buddhismo, a buttare giù questi primi appunti sul tema e ad avviare un lavoro di ricerca.