Manjushri the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, normally holds a sword in one hand, to cut off all delusion, and a Prajnaparamita Wisdom text in the other. (more…)
Filed under: Art, Buddhism, Buddhist meditation, Ch'an / Seon / Zen, Encyclopedia, Mahayana, Tibetan | Tagged: Bodhisattva of Wisdom, Jamyang, Manjushri, Prajnaparamita, Wen Shu Shi Li | 3 Comments »
Statue of Xuanzang
The life and adventures of a Chinese monk who made a 17-year journey to bring Buddhist teachings from India to China. Xuanzang subsequently became a main character in the great Chinese epic Journey to the West. (more…)
Filed under: Biography, Buddhism, Encyclopedia, History, Mahayana | Tagged: Buddhist Scriptures, Dunhuang, Hsüan-tsang, Silk scroll, Táng-sānzàng, Xuan Tsang, Xuanzang, Xuánzàng Sānzàng | Leave a Comment »
The way out of life and death is not some special technique; the essential thing is to penetrate to the root of life and death. It is in the centre of everyone, and everything else is dependent on it. Zen is to pierce through to it.
Zen sitting is not some sort of operation to be performed. It is going into one’s true original nature before father or mother were born. The self seeks to grasp the self, but it is already the self, so why should it go to grasp the self? Look into it. Where was it then? Where is it now? When life ends, where does it go? When you feel you cannot look any more, look and see how that inability to look appears and disappears. As you look and see how the looking arises and goes, satori, realization, will arise of itself. (more…)
Filed under: Buddhist meditation, Ch'an / Seon / Zen, Trevor Leggett | Tagged: Old Zen Master, Trevor Leggett, Zen, Zen koan, Zen master Bukko | 3 Comments »
On this 51st anniversary (10th March 2010) of the Lhasa uprising in Tibet, I’d like to talk about one of the bravest people I’ve ever met, a Tibetan monk called Palden Gyatso.
In 1992 Palden Gyatso finished serving his sentence and escaped to India, smuggling with him several torture instruments used on him in prison. Photo: © Freetibet.org
Palden Gyatso was born in 1931 in a place called Panam, the Gyantse District of Tibet, and he was ordained at the age of ten. During the 1959 uprising he led a hundred-man force against the Chinese. It was made up of monks from Drepung monastery but they never fought. He was first arrested in 1959 and spent the next thirty-three years in prisons and labour camps, being severely tortured and brutally punished for refusing to denounce the Dalai Lama and for refusing to say that Tibet was really China. (more…)
Filed under: Biography, History, Metta, Tibetan | Tagged: Dalai Lama, Drepung monastery, Fire Under the Snow, Human rights, Lhasa uprising, Palden Gyatso, Tibet, Totnes, Ugyan Norbu | Leave a Comment »
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Header photo left to right: Jisu Sunim, DaeHungSa, Korean Son (Zen / Ch'an) Monk, Geshe Tashi Tsering, Jamyang Buddhist Centre, London, and Ajahn Sumedho, Amaravati Buddhist Monastery.
The photo was taken at a BPG Buddhist Summer School in Leicester, England, around 1998 by Gerda Chapuis.
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