Buddha Weekly's Latest Features
HAPPY LOSAR: TASHI DELEK! 2020 is the Year of the Iron Mouse: May All Beings be Happy.
We could all use a little good fortune and happiness, and I don’t think anyone would disagree that we universally hope the Year of the Iron Mouse, beginning today February 24, 2020, will bring peace and happiness to all beings. Your friends at Buddha Weekly wish you a Happy Losar. Tashi Delek!...
15 Miracles and 15 Days: Chotrul Duchen, the Day Buddha’s Great Miracles: Buddha, reluctant to use miraculous powers, displayed 15 miracles to help correct the errors of six prideful teachers
Miracles of Buddha, Part 2 The first moon of the New Year (Lunar) is Chotrul Cuchen (Chunga Choepa), the Day celebrating Buddha's Miracles — often celebrated with a butter lamp festival. The festival of Buddha's fifteen miracles actually begins on Losar (New Year), this year on February 24 (2020.) For 15 consecutive...
Miracles of Buddha: With the approach of Buddha’s 15 Days of Miracles, we celebrate 15 separate miracles of Buddha, starting with Ratana Sutta: Buddha purifies pestilence.
Buddha often told his followers to ignore miraculous powers, to avoid attachments and ego issues, yet each year we celebrate Chotrul Duchen (Chunga Choepa), the 15 Days of Buddha's Miracles. For the first 15 days of the New Lunar Year, we commemorate the miraculous — the 15-day display of miracles by the...
“Is there any consciousness that is constant, lasting, eternal… that will stay just as it is as long as eternity”… Nakhasikha Sutta The Tip of the Fingernail
"No, monk, there is no form... no feeling... no perception... there are no fabrications... there is no consciousness that is constant, lasting, eternal, not subject to change, that will stay just as it is as long as eternity." — the Buddha Nakhasikha Sutta The Tip of the Fingernail Translated from the Pali...
Video: Healing Teacher-Guided Meditation & Mantras Black Manjushri: H.E. Zasep Rinpoche — especially recommended for Caronavirus and Cancers
In a new Buddha Weekly teacher-guided video, H.E. Zasep Rinpoche recommends Black Manjushri to students for healing and protection, especially from Novel Coronavirus and other diseases, including cancer. Rinpoche guides us through the practice, visualization and mantras for this special healing practice treasured by TIbetan Buddhists — offering advice and commentary for...
Empowering mantras to shift your mindset and improve your life: taking meditation to the next level — with chanted video mantras
If you’re looking to take your meditation practice to the next level, mantras can definitely help. But don’t get the wrong idea. This isn’t about speaking. It’s not even so much about what you say, although it helps if you feel a spiritual connection with your mantra. ...
Healing meditation, prayer and mantras? Do they work — according to research? With new viruses arising can we turn to mantras for help?
Do you feel silly when you turn to “mantras” for healing? Do you think meditation is healthy but not necessarily healing? Does it seem impossible to expect results from meditating on the Medicine Buddha? To chant or not to chant? — that is the question. To Pray or not to pray? To...
Mahayana Sutra Of The Three Superior Heaps — now, is always the right time to confess downfalls and purify them
Venerable Thubten Chodren explains the importance of the Sutra of the Three Heaps, and why it should be part of everyone's practice: "There are a variety of purification practices, The Bodhisattva’s Confession of Ethical Downfalls being one of the most popular. We all have done actions that we now feel badly about...
Don’t have faith in Buddha — Buddha taught the logic of karma, method and wisdom — not a religious belief-system
Buddha did not teach faith. Period. That doesn’t mean we can’t have faith in Buddhism — or Dharma — only that the faith is earned through logic, practice and practical methods. This is clearly stated in the discourses and Suttas. Most Buddhists classify Buddhism as “philosophy” rather than "religion" — and this...
Awakening to success — following in the Buddha’s footsteps — the ultimate “self-help” path
Around 563 BCE, Siddhartha Gautama sat under a massively branching Bodhi tree for days — until he achieved the "awakened" intellect of a Buddha. Bodhi literally means "awakened," and today, an "ancestor" of the great tree in Bodh Gaya — where Buddha became the "Enlightened One" — is called the "Maha-Bodhi" tree...
Dastan-e-Irfan-e-Budh – The Buddha story as a dastangoi — a performance of an epic
Dastangoi is probably an unfamiliar vehicle to transmit the Buddha's life and teachings - and the Buddha’s teachings have witnessed several kinds of “vehicles” for their dissemination. Dastangoi is a compound of two Persian words ‘Dastan’ (story, narrative) and ‘goi’ (‘telling’), which together mean to tell a Dastan. “Dastans were epics, often...
Tsog (Tsok) dates in 2020: quick reference with dates — the blissful feast
“The very highest meaning of tsog is to join method and wisdom. The real meaning of experiencing tsog is the transcendental wisdom, non dual great bliss – the wisdom of emptiness, the non-duality of that, and uniting these two. That is the very essence of tsog. It is the offering of that...