Innholdsfortegnelse for Spring 2023 i Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly

JAN WESTERHOFF is Professor of Buddhist Philosophy at the University of Oxford. His research concen-trates on Buddhist philosophy (primarily on Madhyamaka) and on contemporary analytic philosophy (mainly on meta-physics). His publications include Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka and The Golden Age of Indian Buddhist Philosophy. GAYLON FERGUSON, PhD, was core faculty in Religious and Inter-disciplinary Studies for fifteen years at Naropa University. He has led mindfulness retreats since 1976 and is the author of Natural Wakefulness (on the four foundations of mindfulness) and Natural Bravery (on fear and fearlessness). His commentary on the Zen oxherding images, Welcoming Our True Nature, is forthcoming from Shambhala Publications in 2024. ADRIENNE CHANG is a student in the tradition of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. She has co-led Buddhist study and meditation retreats in Europe, North America, and…

ACCORDING TO LEGEND, Shantideva’s great eighth-century text, the Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, (the Bodhisattvacharyavatara, which can be shortened to the Bodhicharyavatara), is said to have been spontaneously spoken by Shantideva, in rhymed Sanskrit verse, as he slowly floated up into the air above Nalanda University. Even when he was entirely out of sight, people could still hear his booming voice. The text he spoke is as amazing as the story of its composition. It compels not only for its cleverness and outrageousness, but also because it strikes a familiar and inspiring chord in the human imagination. Humans have always imagined that life is more than it appears to be: that the tangible, difficult world we live in is not all there is, and that we ourselves are…

NALANDA MONASTERY—the most influential of all Buddhist monasteries—overflowed with brilliant scholars, profound contemplatives, and vast libraries of books. It was also a destination for pilgrims, scholars, and practitioners from China, Korea, Tibet, Myanmar, Japan, and elsewhere. Just as important, however, is Nalanda’s inspirational legacy as a Buddhist vision—originally articulated in brick and mortar, books and bodies, and minds and spirits on the soil of ancient Magadha in northeastern India—that subsequently resonated in distant corners of Asia, and resonates even now around the globe, as memory, model, and tradition centuries after its material destruction. Texts and traditions conceived and transmitted in Nalanda—later translated as written, oral, and embodied teachings into the languages and bodies of Buddhists in other Asian regions—have been extraordinarily influential over many centuries into the living present. The…

AROUND THE TIME I was sixteen, I started exploring lots of different philosophical systems and practices: Samkhya, Advaita Vedanta, Kriya, Hatha, and Bhakti yoga, Sufism, Jainism, Christian mysticism, Kabbalah, you name it. Prior to that time, any exploration of reality or truth had come in the form of indoctrination. I was told what to believe. No Questions Asked. When I finally landed on Buddhism, therefore, I was concerned I’d be required to become a doctrinal true believer (and I have indeed become that at various points in my so-called Buddhist career, causing me to eventually reach for the air sickness bag each time). Early on, though, I had the good fortune to hear about the magnificent Nalanda University—purportedly the oldest institution of higher learning on Earth, a vast complex in…

THE GREAT MAHASIDDHA Naropa, Guardian of the Northern Gate of Nalanda University, lived during the tenth and eleventh centuries in northern India. The approximate dates he lived, and many details of his life story, can be found in legends and miracle tales, exalted descriptions of this great scholar–practitioner, whose life exemplifies a significant movement in Buddhist development around the turn of the millennium, as the practices of the Mahayana led to the emergence of the Vajrayana ethos and the spiritual techniques for full liberation associated with it. Naropa’s life story serves as a metaphor for this movement in Buddhist history. His example reveals that full liberation requires not only a complete understanding and absorption of the view of emptiness and compassion, but also the realization through direct experience of the…

BUDDHISM’S FUNDAMENTAL CONCERN is freeing beings from the delusions that are the causes of suffering. One method that is often used to do this is distinguishing two truths, or two realities: the relative truth of how things appear conventionally, and the ultimate truth of how things really are, beyond the bounds of conceptual and linguistic conventions. In The Two Truths in Indian Buddhism: Reality, Knowledge, and Freedom (Wisdom)—a volume that will be relished by the philosophically minded—Sonam Thakchoe systematically surveys the various ways these realities are presented by preeminent Indian philosophers of the first millennium. From Vasubandhu to Dharmakirti, from Nagarjuna to Candrakirti, Thakchoe deftly elucidates the diversity, nuance, and innovations of their philosophical stances on what, if anything, exists and how it can be known to exist. Thakchoe concludes…

OF THE MANY renowned Nalanda masters, there’s a special place reserved for Buddhist monk, scholar, and poet Shantideva. His Bodhicaryavatara remains one of the most beloved texts in the Buddhist canon, distinctive for its poetic, practical, yet deeply personal articulation of the Mahayana path. Since its composition in the early eighth centuryce, the Bodhicaryavatara has served as a complete guide to the view, meditation, and ethical practice of a bodhisattva, showing us how to develop awakened mind, enter the Mahayana path, receive the bodhisattva precepts, and train in the six transcendent perfections of generosity, discipline, patience, diligence, meditation, and wisdom. Contemporary readers may be challenged when they first encounter this text. Despite its lauded place in Buddhist literature, Shantideva’s guide, brimming with urgency, may seem moralistic, exuding a passion—both in…

I WILL BEGIN WITH A WARNING: these words are lies. As it says in the Guhyasamaja Tantra, one of the earliest Buddhist tantras, you have to lie to talk about the dharma. Anything you say is a lie, because the dharma cannot be expressed in words. You can’t even think about it, let alone formulate the words and concepts in your mind. You have to trust that there is something beyond that. And the more experience you have of practice, and particularly, the more you practice formless meditation, the more you will learn to have confidence in the truth, which can’t be put into words. Of course, the Buddha himself was faced with this quandary after his enlightenment. He wasn’t going to teach at all. It is said the representatives…