The Open Buddhist University

The Open Buddhist University

@buddhistuniversity.net

https://buddhistuniversity.net A place to chill and learn. Free educational content, every day. 🤖

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The Open Buddhist University
@buddhistuniversity.net

📰 Its Antiquity and Evolution (A free, 24-page article from 1993) Tags: #Buddhist #India #SriLanka

buddhistuniversity.netThe Cult of the Bodhi Tree: Its Antiquity and Evolution> By recognising the *bodhimaṇḍa* as the navel of the earth, which extends up to the cupola of the Brahma world forming an impregnable vacuum like the hollow of a drum, the Buddhists have made the Upaniṣadic counterpart of a Cosmic Tree of life, the axis uniting heaven and earth.
The Open Buddhist University
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🗣️ Why Putin and Xi Can't Escape Geography (A ✨NEW✨, free, 62-minute talk) Tags: #Asia #World #InternationalRelations

buddhistuniversity.netWhy Putin and Xi Can't Escape GeographyIn this fast-paced and wide-ranging lecture, Sarah Paine outlines her theory that continental empires must pursue security by conquering or disrupting their neighbors while maritime powers are free to pursue prosperity through trade. And because conquest is value-destroying, empires built on trade are richer and stronger in the long run than empires built on conquest.
The Open Buddhist University
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📰 verses 15.73–84 of the Book of Zambasta rediscovered? (A free, 19-page article from 2022) Tags: #Mahayana #Manuscripts

buddhistuniversity.netThe Khotanese fragmentary folio IOL Khot 7/7: verses 15.73–84 of the Book of Zambasta rediscovered?> The article contains an edition and translation with metrical analysis, commentary, and glossary of the Old Khotanese fragmentary folio IOL Khot 7/7 (Kha.0012a), which deals with the selflessness of phenomena
The Open Buddhist University
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📰 Vasubandhu (A free, 39-page article from 2011) Tags: #Philosophy #Mahayana

buddhistuniversity.netVasubandhu> His master work of Abhidharma thought, the *Abhidharmakośabhāṣya*, is to this day the primary resource for knowledge of non-Mahāyāna philosophy among Tibetan and East Asian Buddhist schools. His concise works on Yogācāra philosophy set a new standard for that school [...] This article will sketch his contested biography and works, and provide summary analyses of his most prominent arguments.
The Open Buddhist University
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📰 The Contemporary Vegetarian Movement in Pastoral Areas of Tibet (China) (A free, 15-page article from 2016) Tags: #MaterialCulture #Animals #Food #Tibet

buddhistuniversity.netTibetan Identity and Tibetan Buddhism in Trans-Regional Connection: The Contemporary Vegetarian Movement in Pastoral Areas of Tibet (China)With many Chinese Buddhists criticizing Tibetan Buddhists for their consumption of meat, more and more Tibetans are becoming vegetarian. Some Tibetans feel that this is losing an aspect of their culture while others feel like it is making them better Buddhists and thus preserving their identity, highlighting the complex relationship between religious and ethnic identity in Tibet.
The Open Buddhist University
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📰 The Suspended Crossing (*śaṅkupatha*) in the Gorges of the Indus River as Described by Chinese Pilgrims Faxian, Dharmodgata and Xuanzang (A free, 20-page article from 2020) Tags: #Travel #Mahayana

buddhistuniversity.netThe Suspended Crossing (śaṅkupatha) in the Gorges of the Indus River as Described by Chinese Pilgrims Faxian, Dharmodgata and Xuanzang> The cliff faces rose vertically around them and there was nowhere for their feet to find solid purchase. The stone wall’s surface was covered with holes for pegs arranged by former (travelers) in a systematic way. Each man was equipped with four pegs. First, he retrieved the lower peg, then grasping the peg above him with his hand, lifted himself along the wall, repeating this over and over. It took a whole day to cross this section when our feet finally returned to flat ground and we waited for the others to arrive so as to count our numbers: twelve of our group had perished.
The Open Buddhist University
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📰 A Rhetorical Technique in Early Mahāyāna Sūtras (A free, 22-page article from 2019) Tags: #Rhetoric #Mahayana #Philosophy

buddhistuniversity.netThe Semantic Elucidation (nirukta) of Bodhisattva Spiritual Attainment: A Rhetorical Technique in Early Mahāyāna Sūtras> The ‘[etymological] method’ (*nairukta-vidhānena*), through processes of transvaluation and substitution, hollowed out mainstream Buddhist understandings of spiritual attainment and reformulated them in terms of the bodhisattva way found among nascent Mahāyāna communities.
The Open Buddhist University
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📰 Can the Legal System Bring Justice to Survivors of Sexual Abuse in Spiritual Communities? (A ✨NEW✨, free, 5-page article) Tags: #SecularDharma #Sangha

buddhistuniversity.netThe Good, The Bad and the Ugly: Can the Legal System Bring Justice to Survivors of Sexual Abuse in Spiritual Communities?> Having a team of lawyers who believe you and fight for you can aid in recovery. So can holding perpetrators and their enabling institutions accountable. So can recovering compensation.
The Open Buddhist University
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📰 Indic-Vernacular Bitexts from Thailand (A free, 25-page article from 2020) Tags: #PaliGrammar #Theravada

buddhistuniversity.netIndic-Vernacular Bitexts from Thailand> The spread of Pali-vernacular bitexts in Southeast Asia allowed for the literary elevation of the vernacular without renouncing the cosmopolitan idiom of Pali. > To support these arguments, this article draws on some of the earliest examples of bitexts in Central (Siam) and Northern (Lanna) Thailand. > These include a hitherto undeciphered form of manuscript annotation in seventeenth- to nineteenth-century Siam; two of the oldest palm-leaf documents surviving in any Tai language, from sixteenth-century Lanna; and the oldest known Pali-Siamese literary work, thought to be composed in 1482.
The Open Buddhist University
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📰 The *Buddhabhūmisūtra* and the *Trikāya* Doctrine (A free, 7-page article from 1987) Tags: #Pureland #Mahayana

buddhistuniversity.netPure Land Systematics in India: The Buddhabhūmisūtra and the Trikāya Doctrine> the *Buddhabhūmisūtra* is indeed early and is the source for the parallel passages in both the * Mahāyānasūtrālamkāra*. as indicated by Asvabhāva and Sthiramati, and for the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra, but that it was not originally a Yogācāra composition. This would account for the failure of the early Yogācāra masters to mention it. Rather it is an attempt by a person cognizant of the burgeoning Pure Land cults with their many Buddhas and Bodhisattvas to systematize and interpret the meaning of those Pure Land cults and practices within an overall Mahayana understanding.
The Open Buddhist University
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📰 Mindful Attention Reduces Linguistic Intergroup Bias (A free, 12-page article from 2015) Tags: #Relationships #SocialIntelligence #Meditation

buddhistuniversity.netMindful Attention Reduces Linguistic Intergroup Bias> Mindful attention groups, however, exhibited a markedly tempered linguistic intergroup bias (LIB), suggesting that even a brief mindfulness-related instruction can implicitly reduce the propensity to perpetuate stereotypical thinking
The Open Buddhist University
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📰 Teachers and Transmission in Buddhist Story Literature (A free, 37-page article from 1992) Tags: #India #RebirthStories #Sangha

buddhistuniversity.netSeeking the Perfect Words: Teachers and Transmission in Buddhist Story Literature> In Buddhist and non-Buddhist stories transmission is a ritualized contest between a master and a disciple, usually involving the humiliation of the disciple and, with the exception noted in the *Śaṅkaradigvijaya*, virtually never involving the actual transmission of a recognized body of knowledge.
The Open Buddhist University
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📰 Economic Decision-Making Compared With an Equivalent Motor Task (A free, 6-page article from 2009) Tags: #Intelligence

buddhistuniversity.netEconomic Decision-Making Compared With an Equivalent Motor Task> Those for the classical task showed a typical tendency to overweight small probabilities and underweight large probabilities, and those for the motor task showed the opposite pattern of probability distortion. > This outcome also accounts for the increased riskiness observed in the motor tasks of experiment 1.
The Open Buddhist University
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📰 An Empirical Examination (A free, 6-page article from 2021) Tags: #USA #Enculturation

buddhistuniversity.netConfederate Monuments and the History of Lynching in the American South: An Empirical Examination> We find that the number of lynching victims in a county is a positive and significant predictor of the number of Confederate memorializations in that county, even after controlling for relevant covariates. > This finding provides concrete, quantitative, and historically and geographically situated evidence consistent with the position that Confederate memorializations reflect a racist history, one marred by intentions to terrorize and intimidate Black Americans in response to Black progress.
The Open Buddhist University
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📰 Plastic Neural Changes and Reading Improvement Caused by Audiovisual Training in Reading-Impaired Children (A free, 6-page article from 2001) Tags: #Education #Neuroscience #Hearing #Music #Reading

buddhistuniversity.netPlastic Neural Changes and Reading Improvement Caused by Audiovisual Training in Reading-Impaired Children> This study aimed at determining whether audiovisual training without linguistic material has a remediating effect on reading skills and central auditory processing in dyslexic children. > It was found that this training resulted in plastic changes in the auditory cortex, indexed by enhanced electrophysiological mismatch negativity and faster reaction times to sound changes. > Importantly, these changes were accompanied by improvement in reading skills.
The Open Buddhist University
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📰 Monumental Stone Sūtra Carvings in China and Indian Pilgrim Sites (A free, 39-page article from 2016) Tags: #ZenHistory #Travel #Medieval

buddhistuniversity.netMonumental Stone Sūtra Carvings in China and Indian Pilgrim Sites> But was it really the novel which inspired the literati to create the name of “Rock for Sunning the Sūtra”? Or had this name already been transmitted for a long time, and, vice versa, it was the site of Mount Tai that inspired the author of the *Journey to the West*?
The Open Buddhist University
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📑 Quest for and Liberation through the Thing-In-Itself (A free, 36-page paper from 2013) Tags: #Mahayana #Yogacara #Truth

buddhistuniversity.netMeditative Practices in the Bodhisattvabhūmi: Quest for and Liberation through the Thing-In-Itself> As far as ordinary people (*pṛthagjana*) are concerned, the world which they see and reflect in their language is inaccurate and ultimately illusory. In this sense, one could say that in the case of ordinary man, the only thing which actually exists is his mind. Though the *Bodhisattvabhūmi* authors do not use such terms or descriptions, it seems that an incipient idea of 'mind-only' was, so to speak, almost on the tip of their tongues.
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📰 Madhyamaka (A free, 20-page article from 2010) Tags: #Mahayana #Madhyamaka #Philosophy

buddhistuniversity.netMadhyamaka> This doctrine of universal emptiness of inherent natures (*svabhāva-śūnyatā*) is the hallmark of the school, which places the school solidly in the tradition associated with the Perfection of Wisdom (*prajñāpāramitā*) literature of Mahāyāna Buddhism. [...] This article will deal only with the Madhyamaka school in India from the fifth through the eighth centuries, during which time the school underwent most of its evolution.
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📰 Rational Integration of Noisy Evidence and Prior Semantic Expectations in Sentence Interpretation (A free, 6-page article from 2013) Tags: #Communication #Intelligence

buddhistuniversity.netRational Integration of Noisy Evidence and Prior Semantic Expectations in Sentence Interpretation> (i) semantic cues should pull sentence interpretation towards plausible meanings, especially if the wording of the more plausible meaning is close to the observed utterance in terms of the number of edits; (ii) this process should asymmetrically treat insertions and deletions due to the Bayesian "size principle"; such nonliteral interpretation of sentences should (iii) increase with the perceived noise rate of the communicative situation and (iv) decrease if semantically anomalous meanings are more likely to be communicated. > These predictions are borne out, strongly suggesting that human language relies on rational statistical inference over a noisy channel.
The Open Buddhist University
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📕 Literary History of Sanskrit Buddhism (A free, 380-page book from 1919) Tags: #BuddhistStudies #FridayReads #Mahayana

buddhistuniversity.netLiterary History of Sanskrit Buddhism> Far from being a literary work of art, the *Mahāvastu* is rather a labyrinth in which we can only with an effort discover the thread of a coherent account of the life of the Buddha. This account is constantly interrupted by other material, specially by the numerous Jātakas and Avadānas and also by dogmatic Sūtras. We find no order.
The Open Buddhist University
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📰 The Violence Matrix as a Tool for Advancing More Just Policies (A free, 13-page article from 2021) Tags: #Gender #Caste #Society #Violence

buddhistuniversity.netThe Effects of Violence on Communities: The Violence Matrix as a Tool for Advancing More Just Policies> Complex community dynamics, ineffective institutional responses, and broader societal forces of systemic violence intersect to further the impact of individual victimization.
The Open Buddhist University
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📰 Innovation and the Role of Intertextuality in the Pañcaskandhaka and Related Yogācāra Works (A free, 72-page article from 2015) Tags: #Mahayana #India #Abhidharma #Hermeneutics

buddhistuniversity.netInnovation and the Role of Intertextuality in the Pañcaskandhaka and Related Yogācāra Works> By providing examples for various forms of borrowings and additions this study aims at exploring the amount of innovation and the role of intertextuality in [supposedly commentarial] texts, thereby contributing to our understanding of the functions of Indian commentaries as well as of the motives and compositional techniques of their authors.
The Open Buddhist University
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📰 A Culinary Aesthetics of Food and Healing in Tibet (A free, 22-page article from 2010) Tags: #TibetanMedicine #Food

buddhistuniversity.netShaping the Illness of Hunger: A Culinary Aesthetics of Food and Healing in Tibet> The essay proposes continuity along a range of "culinary" practices, focusing in particular on "ritual cake" (*gtor ma*) offerings and "nectar" (*bdud rtsi*) recipes involving creation of pills and healing foods. > The essay posits a "culinary aesthetics" of healing and personal enhancement and introduces speculation about Tibetan understandings of food as medicine
The Open Buddhist University
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📑 Varieties of Early Buddha Nature Teaching in India (A free, 30-page paper from 2022) Tags: #Tathagatagarbha #Mahayana #BuddhaNature

buddhistuniversity.netVarieties of Early Buddha Nature Teaching in India> What is particularly striking is that texts of the Mahāparinirvāṇa-group do not merely imply that *tathāgatagarbha* refers to something like an account of the self, but they declare that the Buddha unambiguously explains it to be the self!
The Open Buddhist University
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📰 Fragments of a Gāndhārī Manuscript of the *Pratyutpanna-buddha-saṃmukhāvasthita-samādhi-sūtra* (A free, 27-page article from 2018) Tags: #Archeology #Mahayana #Manuscripts

buddhistuniversity.netFragments of a Gāndhārī Manuscript of the Pratyutpanna-buddha-saṃmukhāvasthita-samādhi-sūtra> … buddha-fields completely filled with all treasures; and whatever gentleman or lady … would trust, believe, accept, and be devoted to [it]; and having trusted, believed … might teach to others in full, reveal, and cultivate [it], thereby, householder, this gentleman or lady …
The Open Buddhist University
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📰 How Speakers of Different Languages Represent Events Nonverbally (A free, 6-page article from 2008) Tags: #Linguistics

buddhistuniversity.netThe Natural Order of Events: How Speakers of Different Languages Represent Events Nonverbally> We found that the word orders speakers used in their everyday speech did not influence their nonverbal behavior. > Surprisingly, speakers of all four languages used the same order and on both nonverbal tasks. > This order, actor-patient-act, is analogous to the subject-object-verb pattern found in many languages of the world and, importantly, in newly developing gestural languages.