The Game of Go
Can a board game teach the principles of impermanence, interdependence, compassion, and no-self?
Emptiness
Emptiness in Buddhism, or sunyata in Sanskrit (sunnata in Pali), is the Buddhist principle that everything—including ourselves—is empty of inherent existence and arises interdependently. In the Pali canon, the earliest Buddhist scriptures, the Buddha uses the term to describe how we don't have a fixed, permanent self. In Mahayana Buddhism, the concept became central and extended to all phenomena. The Heart Sutra, an especially famous Mahayana teaching about emptiness, is chanted daily by many practitioners and is also popular among Western Buddhists.
MeditationMagazine | Dharma Talk
A Glob of Tar
Even though we practice, we continue to fall for pleasant feelings. Feelings are illusory on many levels. We don’t realize that they’re changeable and unreliable. Instead of offering pleasure, they offer us nothing but stress—yet we’re…
IdeasMagazine | Special Section
Who Are You?
A dialogue on no-self
TeachingsMagazine | Special Section
If There Is No Self, Who Is Born, Who Dies, Who Meditates?
One of the most puzzling aspects of the Buddha’s teachings is the idea of no self. If there’s no self, who gets angry, who falls in love, who makes effort, who has memories or gets reborn?…
TeachingsMagazine | Special Section
What Do Buddhists Mean When They Talk About Emptiness?
Emptiness is a mode of perception, a way of looking at experience. It adds nothing to, and takes nothing away from, the raw data of physical and mental events. You look at events in the mind…
TeachingsMagazine | Dharma Talk
A Single Handful
To call something “a fundamental principle of Buddhism” is correct only if, first, it is a principle that aims at the quenching of dukkha (suffering) and, second, it has a logic that one can see for…
Personal ReflectionsMagazine | Feature
Into Emptiness
A mother's death
TeachingsMagazine | Dharma Talk
The Heart Sutra
Translations and commentary by Buddhist teachers
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