History of Buddhism

As an aid to those unfamiliar with the topics presented here, some background information and a few technical terms and dates have been filled in to the summaries of some of the papers. Introduction to the Bhikshuni Vows The Importance of Having Bhikshunis The...

There is a long history of Muslims being regarded by the Christian West as the forces of the devil. This began at the end of the eleventh century CE with the Crusades to take the Holy Lands from the Muslims. It continued with the fall of ­­the center of Eastern Orth­odox...

Origin of the Text According to Tradition This weekend we are talking about the great Mahayana text by Maitreya, Mahayana-uttaratantra Shastra (Theg-pa chen-po rgyud bla-ma’i bstan-bcos), about Buddha-nature. It’s An Indicative Composition on a Vast Vehicle of the Mind, the...

The Creation of Inner Mongolia Inner Mongolia was created as a separate entity from the rest of Mongolia by the Manchus, because the Mongols in this region submitted to the Manchus in the mid-seventeenth century, about 60 years before Khalkha, or what later became known as...

The Founding of the Qarakhanid Empire When the Orkhon Uighur Turks were driven from Mongolia by the Kyrgyz takeover in 840 CE, they lost possession of the sacred earth-goddess mountain Otuken near their former capital, Ordubaliq. According to the pre-Buddhist and...

Introduction to Buryatia In the year 2010, there were 286 000 Buryats in the Republic of Buryatia, in Russia, who constituted 30% of the population of the republic. In Chita district, Buryats make up just 5–6% of the population, and Buryats living in the Aginskoye subdistrict...

Introducing the Three Different Types of Dharma In general, the Dharma teachings can be divided into the Hinayana and the Mahayana teachings. The word “dharma” means “something that holds its own self-nature.” To think of dharmas as being anything that takes or holds anything...

Day One: Opening Addresses Welcoming Speeches by the Host Institution Prof. Dr. Ing. Habil. Monika Auweter-Kurtz, President of the University of Hamburg Prof. Dr. Ludwig Paul, Dean of the Asia-Africa Institute, University of Hamburg Rinchen Khandro Chogyal,...

Long before the Arabs brought Islam to Central Asia in the mid-seventh century CE, Buddhism had flourished there for hundreds of years. It was particularly prominent along the Silk Route, which carried trade between India and Han China, and led from both to Byzantium and to...

First Contacts with Buddhism After the fall of the Han Dynasty in 220 CE, Buddhism became strong in northern China, which was fragmented and ruled by a succession of non-Han Chinese people and states. The greatest patron of Buddhism among them was the Toba Northern Wei Dynasty...