While our senses may have become dulled by city life, two masters, Tam Po Shek and Wing Chi Ip, teach us that we can find
According to the Ekottara Agama Sutra (增一阿含經), the first Buddha image was made of wood. It is said that when the Buddha was teaching his deceased mother in
Whenever I teach Japanese Buddhism, whether in the Americas, Europe, or East Asia, I frequently run into the same assumption among students that Buddhists, for
Pristine Pure Land teacher Master Jingzong (b. 1966) once wrote about why he would not want to be born anywhere else except in China: “For all
The turning of the year is a natural time to pause and reflect on our lives, be it for the lunar or the Gregorian calendar.
Why Pure Land is an ideal school of Buddhism to be…
According to the Washington, DC-based Pew Research Center, 18.2 per cent of China’s population—that is 224 million people—are Buddhists, accounting for about half of the
Miya Ando’s painting Yugen Gold Blue is a Zen koan of sorts. The nocturnal seascape, lit by the hazy glow of a rising moon, is at once a portrait
To many practitioners of the Mahayana schools of Buddhism of East Asia and the esoteric traditions of the Himalayas and Japan, bodhisattvas, or “enlightenment beings,”
My first meditation retreat was in 2004, in Ladakh, northern India, at the far western end of the Himalayas. Our meditation hall was an army
One of the most widely practiced of all Japanese art forms is ikebana, or flower arrangement. The word “ikebana” literally means “living flowers,” suggesting that while
Qianfo’an (千佛庵), the Temple of One Thousand Buddhas, better known as Xiaoxitian (小西天) or the Little Western Paradise, is located in present-day Xi County, Linfen
