The life story of Dolma Choetsu

Nine hundred years ago, the Korean peninsula was under siege. From their northern homelands, barbarian tribes known as the Khitans raided cities and towns, laying waste to countless Korean lives. The Korean military successfully repulsed the…

An interview with Taitetsu Unno

Christmas Humphreys, a noted early English Buddhist scholar and proponent of Zen, once declared Shin “a form of Buddhism which on the face of it discards three-quarters of Buddhism. Compared with the teaching of the Pali…

Chaos theory, karma, and other fluctuations

Abortion practices in Japan and what they can teach the West

Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh was born in central Vietnam in October 1926 and became a monk at the age of sixteen.

An essay by Donal S. Lopez, Jr.

Emptiness was both subject and source for the Abstract Expressionists. Within the boundaries defined by an empty white canvas, they found an arena for action and awareness, and they explored it with varying degrees of clarity.…

On March 3 a Vietnamese Buddhist monk was stabbed to death by a homeless man whom he had taken into his temple in Philadelphia. Thich Hanh Man, 43, had served only three months as resident monk…

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…

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…

The Sanskrit word mantra combines the root man (“to think”) with the suffix tra (“instrument” or “tool”). Therefore, mantra means literally “tool for thinking.” Since earliest Buddhist times, the repetition of sacred phrases has been used…

An interview with Paula Newby-Fraser

Let it go and be spontaneous, Experience no going or staying. Accord with your nature, unite with the Way, Wander at ease, without vexation. The most important thing in practice is to be natural and spontaneous.…

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…

This tale, retold by Zen monk-poet Ryokan (c. 1758–1831), draws on an old Chinese legend of a rabbit who lives in the moon. It is one of many Jataka tales, stories of Shakyamuni Buddha’s previous lives…

Craig and Devra Morton Builder and Psychotherapist Austin, Texas When we go to sitting meditation our son, who’s five-and-a-half, goes and sits there and either reads a book or eats something, and he also puts Goldfish…

Paul Carus and the "Gospel of Buddha"

Down By Law Regarding the ten-million-dollar lawsuit against Sogyal Rinpoche for sexual abuse [Spring 1995 In the News]: While Sogyal Rinpoche remains innocent until or unless proven guilty, whether or not he is within the ignoble…

“Buddha!” she called. “Come here! Buddha!” Her command had yet to work, and the young woman anxiously fingered the visor of her baseball cap. “Buddha!” “You call your dog Buddha?” I asked in disbelief as a…

Twenty-one questions on the nature of self