According to the introduction to the Jātaka, after the Buddha’s awakening he spent seven weeks at Uruvelā, the modern Bodh Gaya, and during the second week he sat gazing at the Bodhi Tree without blinking. In time, a shrine called … Read the rest
What makes someone English, Malaysian, French, Chinese or, for the purposes of this article, Indian or Nepalese? Is it their birth certificate, their citizenship documents, the ethnicity of their parents and ancestors, their cultural particularities? Since the 1950s the Nepalese … Read the rest
As is well-known, Lumbini is the first of the four major holy places of Buddhism, it being where the person who was to become the Buddha was born. Almost every account of the Buddha’s life, traditional or contemporary, recounts the … Read the rest
What was the Buddha like as a human being? How did he relate to others? With great care and an eye for detail, Venerable Dhammika pieces together the life events we can ‘read’ from very early texts. The result is … Read the rest
Fourteen writers here describe how they came to be Buddhists. Men and women of different nationalities: each tells the story of his or her encounter with Buddhism and of how they became a Buddhist. Together they form an interesting and … Read the rest
Much has been written about what the Buddha taught which is only right given its clarity, consistency and the fact that 2500 years later millions still accept and live by its principles. However, beyond what the Buddha said, perhaps almost … Read the rest
Sometime in 2003 a website from Thailand appeared on the internet with an article making an extraordinary claim – that in the 5th century BC the Buddha prophesized the coming of Jesus Christ, and that this prophesy can be found … Read the rest
Most of this short book was written between 1990 and 1991 with the intention of publishing it for Rahul Sankrityayan’s birth centenary in 1993. However, I misplaced the manuscript and only rediscovered it amongst my late mother’s papers in April … Read the rest
We are used to thinking of the world in black and white terms, of things being either right or wrong, up or down, one thing or another. A good example of this would be the popular but mistaken understanding of … Read the rest
What is it about water that has captured our fascination from the time our earliest ancestors first dipped their hands is a flowing stream or felt drops of cooling rain on their skin? Our familiarity with water has made us … Read the rest
