The Lantern Festival (元宵節, 元宵节, Yuánxiāo jié), or Shangyuan Festival (上元節, 上元节, Shàngyuán jié) concludes the Chinese New Year celebrations. The Lantern Festival is celebrated… Read More »Riddle of the New Year’s Full Moon Festival
The classical path (marga or magga) to reach liberation (or vimutti) is the Noble Eightfold Path. The Sutta Pitaka gives the Noble Eight-fold Path like… Read More »Abraham’s Simple Marga to Achieve Liberation
Why do you clothe yourself? Not with just anything that fits, but you want fashionable clothing that expresses who you are. What causes you to… Read More »Apparel: Why More Than Just Clothing?
The serpent or Naga has deeply entrenched itself in Asian folklore, art and mythology. It rivals the dragon which shares many similarities with the serpent… Read More »Confronting the Great Naga-Dragon: History’s Beginning, but Looking To Its End
The most renowned Buddhist insight, or prajna, concerns what is often called The Noble Eightfold Path (Pali: ariya aṭṭhaṅgika magga; Sanskrit: āryāṣṭāṅgamārga). This comes from… Read More »Sin… Missing the Noble Path
We saw how the Bible portrays ourselves and others – that the Creator God originally made us in His Image. But the Hebrew Scriptures record… Read More »Now Corrupted… Like Orcs of Middle-Earth
We saw that ancient Hebrew scriptures record how cravings (Tanha) and wrong thoughts (Kleshas) arose at the beginning of history. But what about the suffering,… Read More »Mankind’s Duhkha Curse
The Three Poisons (Sanskrit: triviṣa; Tibetan: dug gsum) or the three unwholesome roots (Sanskrit: akuśala-mūla; Pāli: akusala-mūla), refer to the three root mental states that… Read More »Origin of the Three Poisons and First Kleshas
From ancient times, stupas (Sanskrit: स्तूप, = ’heap’) have played a prominent role in Buddhist ritual and devotional practice. Stupas, which are rounded earthen hemispheres or… Read More »The Adversary in the Cosmic Stupa
One of Buddha’s fundamental insights was that of Pratītyasamutpāda (Sanskrit: प्रतीत्यसमुत्पाद, Pāli: paṭiccasamuppāda). This states that all phenomena arise from other previous phenomena. All that… Read More »In the Image of God