Dharma Wheel

Would be curious if anyone with more knowledge would be able to answer another question. I was reading a text on Rinzai Zen and it mentioned that a major focus in the Rinzai school is keeping mindfulness throughout daily activities and using these activities as an object of meditation. (I am greatl...

This is the morning liturgy in Vietnamese Thien traditions. It begins with the Surangama Mantra, the Great Compassion Mantra, then ten other short mantras, the Heart Sutra, a couple of devotional liturgies, and the refuge recitation. https://vietbuddhism.com/PDFKinh/BacTong/KinhTung/CongPhuKhuya_Tie...

TNH's mindfulness teachings come from the Vipassana Theravada Reform movements of the late 19th century. When Vietnamese Theravada was absorbed into the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam, Vietnamese Mahayana also absorbed the Vipassana Reform. It is however colored by certain sravakayana teachings ...

Google Translate from Chinese to English thinks Manjushri is King Kong Hahhaa, Vietnamese to English will translate a lot of dharma terms to the names of countries, because they're teh same word. Like 'Dharma' in Vietnamese sometimes gets translated to "France." As a consequence to this, "Buddha dh...

I highly recommend Charles Jones's Chinese Pure Land Buddhism: A Tradition of Practice for an in-depth look at this. He does a great job of showing the position and diversity of Pure Land practices in the rest of East Asia, and also showing a gradual move closer to the Japanese interpretations in th...

I practice in a family lineage of martial arts called Vo Binh Dinh, passed down from my father. It is considered to be a Buddhist martial art, with swordsmanship and staff work as the primary weapons. Both of these play into Vietnamese Thien, as much of our qigong lineages derive from sword and staf...

菩薩有我亦非行無我亦非行 T1564.24b29 It's from a commentary to Ch 18 of the MMK. I've heard the root statement from the Wisdom-Perfection Sutra before though, I'm just having quite a time finding it. It's most likely AFAIK to be from the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikāprajñāpāramitāsūtra. I suppose it could actually be ...

In Vietnamese and Chinese, heart and mind are the same word.

Not just the Jain texts, but the handful of fragments we have of Carvaka texts also mention the followers of Gautama. The records of the Second Buddhist Council are also corroborated through independent sources, so we can be relatively certain that this happened, and so we have reasonable evidence t...

What’s the difference between jataka and avadana ? A jataka is a past life story of a / the Buddha. An avadana is a past life story of anyone else; it can also be a current-life biography or episode of one of the other disciples (Mahaprajapati's parinirvana is in an avadana collection, for instance...

As it currently stands in mainland East Asia, there is basically one big doctrinal 'school' with tons of individual practice lineages to pick and choose from, and they are generally seen as not mutually exclusive. Some have said that my descriptions of the Vietnamese tradition sound like what Tendai...

I've gotten in trouble before for saying this is true of all zen lineages, but in at least the Vietnamese traditions, we could arguably say that they are aligned wholly with the Yogacara school. The Yogacarabhumisastra is a significant part of the post-samanera monastic curriculum. Nagarjuna is stud...

How would one argue that the subtle consciousness referred to in Vajrayana, the one experiencing the bardo state and taking rebirth, how would one argue that this isn’t just another way of asserting some concept of a soul or atman, some kind of permanent self? . . . We call it a citta-santana to es...

David Drewes has a very compelling argument I have not found such an argument in that text. Could you please provide a quote or page number? In the mean time, here is James B. Apple's essay The Phrase Dharmaparyayo Hastagato in Mahayana Buddhist Literature: Rethinking the Cult of the Book in Middle...

That is true ofcourse, and for example in the White Lotus sutra , in the Devadatta chapter , there is the story of Shakyamuni in one of his previous births when he is serving an ascetic for many years who posses the teaching of the Lotus sutra. Here you definitely get the impression that the Sutra ...

It's been mentioned, but sort of buried in a more in-depth discussion post, so to state it clearly: The oldest known Mahayana sutra that has been reliably dated is the Astasahasrika Prajnaparamita Sutra, which has been dated to around 47 CE and is believed to have been authored sometime in the 1st c...

Paul Williams' recently released an excellent book, Setting Out on the Great Way: Essays on Early Mahayana Buddhism , that delves into this in-depth with new knowledge and texts. The various authors take quite a variety of positions on possible origins, showing just how complex it all is. It's a re...

The Agamas are required study material for Vietnamese novice monastics, and many of the texts are taught to laity today. When the Nikayas are taught, it's very clear that it's a pretty recent development. Certain Agama texts have been taught for centuries, but it's only a small handful, often from A...

I do wish people would say which vinaya, which is very interesting to people like me. Do you think it would be fair to guess they are going by the Mūlasarvāstivāda monastic code? The Theravadin and Dharmaguptaka Vinayas are astonishingly similar. Ajahn Sujato has made the claim that prior to the Ma...

Paul Williams' recently released an excellent book, Setting Out on the Great Way: Essays on Early Mahayana Buddhism , that delves into this in-depth with new knowledge and texts. The various authors take quite a variety of positions on possible origins, showing just how complex it all is. It's a rea...