Buddha

The Relation between Objects of the Three Times We have seen that there is no common-locus of a “result, which is not yet happening,” a “result, which is presently happening,” and “a result, which is no longer happening.” Moreover, although a continuum can be validly imputed...

In order to help obtain a cohesive, complete picture of the Enlightening Body of a Buddha, let us combine the lists of the thirty-two excellent signs (mtshan bzang-po gsum-cu rtsa-gnyis, thirty-two major marks) and eighty exemplary features (dpe-byad brgyad-cu, eighty minor...

Bodhisattvas are the offspring or children of the Triumphant Buddhas (rgyal-sras, Skt. jinaputra) in the sense that they are born from the Buddhas’ teachings. Manjushri, for example, is praised as “the enlightening discriminating awareness (shes-rab, Skt. prajna), rolled into...

The life of the historical Buddha emerges in several layers from the classical Buddhist literature. The earliest version does not appear in any one text, but can only be pieced together from incidents recorded in the Pali sutta (Skt. sutra) and vinaya literature of the...

This article explains the various non-conflicting contextual presentations of the Buddha’s life, and teaches us how these can be practically applied to our spiritual path.

The omniscient mind (rnam-mkhyen) of a Buddha has no conceptual cognition (rtog-pa), thus it does not mentally label anything with categories, but it does have designation (ming btags-pa). For limited beings (sems-can, sentient beings), designation is always conceptual; it...

The Lack of an Impossible “Soul” The Hinayana schools, including Vaibhashika, Sautrantika and Theravada, assert the lack of an impossible “soul” – or selflessness – with respect only to persons, not all phenomena. Although they do not use the term voidness for this...

The Basis for Valid Cognition of Not-Yet-Happenings (continued) We have been talking about the basis of negation, the basis of imputation, and so on, in terms of the not-yet-happening of the result. And we can understand the difference here: The basis of negation is the...

Buddha-fields in the Pores of a Buddha Today we are going to speak about a Buddha’s extraphysical and extrasensory powers. We will analyze whether such things actually make any sense or are they just interesting stories. I would like to look at two aspects here. The first is...