Buddhist Websites
1 rating since posting on Tuesday, March 6, 2007
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in Everywhere
(submitted by
Larry
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There are lots of "flavors" of Buddhism now being practiced in the West. Two Major divisions are the Theravadin (way of the elders) and the Mahayana (Great Vehicle). As Buddhism was dispersed from its origin in the Gangetic Plain of India, the Theravadin path went South, through what is now Sri Lanka into S.E. Asia (where it still exists in Burma and Thailand). The scriptures there are in the Pali language, and an excellent website to explore those is John Bullitt's at: www.accesstoinsight.org Travelling North through the Khyber Pass into the ancient Silk Road the scriptural language becomes Sanskrit, and the breakaway Mahayanna path shifts the emphasis from simply becoming fully "awake" to remaining in the relative world (supposedly life after life) to assist others in the task of riding themselves of greed, hatred, and delusions (which cause so much self-inflicted woe). China, Korea, and Japan thus all became heavily influenced by Buddhism over the years. Ron Epstein's site, Resources for the Study of Buddhsim, is still a portal to much of the Chinese material. See: online.sfsu.edu/~rone/Budd...uddhism.htm Also, part of this "Northern Buddhism" is the special case of Tibet, with many important scriptures preserved in Tibetan. A good place to start for this variety might be the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition website at: www.fpmt.org/ For a more general portal to Buddhist Studies, try the World Wide Web Virtual Library web page at: www.ciolek.com/WWWVL-Buddhism.html and Venerable Pannyavaro's Buddha Net website at: www.buddhanet.net/ Still, regardless of which path you find most helpful, your best source of information is your own mind (in meditation). Buddha's admonition, after all, was not to come and "believe" but to come and see for yourself. If you don't have a teacher handy, you can at least start with something simple in concept (though not-so-simple in practice), like insight meditation. An excellent resource for that is Henepola Gunaratana's classic book, Mindfulness in Plain English, which is available (for free) on the web in quite a few places, including on Kusala Bhikshu's excellent LA website, Urban Dharma, at: www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html where it can either be read online or downloaded as a 637 kb PDF file. - Larry , posted 03/06/07 |
Buddhist Websites was recommended for:
- Tribe: Non-secular Buddhism