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Dhyāna Sutras
The Dhyāna sutras ( ''chan jing'') (Japanese 禅経 ''zen-gyo'') or "meditation summaries" () or also known as The Zen Sutras are a group of early Buddhist meditation texts which are mostly based on the Yogacara meditation teachings of the Sarvāstivāda school of Kashmir circa 1st-4th centuries CE.Deleanu, Florin (1992)Mindfulness of Breathing in the Dhyāna Sūtras Transactions of the International Conference of Orientalists in Japan (TICOJ) 37, 42-57. Most of the texts only survive in Chinese and were key works in the development of the Buddhist meditation practices of Chinese Buddhism. Overview The Dhyāna sutras focus on the concrete details of the meditative practice of the Yogacarins of northern Gandhara and Kashmir, who were known as masters of Buddhist meditation. Kashmir probably became a center of dhyāna practice due to the efforts of Madhyāntika (Majjhantika), a disciple of Ānanda, who traveled north to practice and teach meditation. The five main types of medit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japanese Language
is spoken natively by about 128 million people, primarily by Japanese people and primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language. Japanese belongs to the Japonic or Japanese- Ryukyuan language family. There have been many attempts to group the Japonic languages with other families such as the Ainu, Austroasiatic, Koreanic, and the now-discredited Altaic, but none of these proposals has gained widespread acceptance. Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. From the Heian period (794–1185), there was a massive influx of Sino-Japanese vocabulary into the language, affecting the phonology of Early Middle Japanese. Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) saw extensive grammatical changes and the first appearance of European loanwords. The basis of the standard dialect moved f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tiantai Buddhism
Tiantai or T'ien-t'ai () is an East Asian Buddhist school of Mahāyāna Buddhism that developed in 6th-century China. The school emphasizes the ''Lotus Sutra's'' doctrine of the "One Vehicle" (''Ekayāna'') as well as Mādhyamaka philosophy, particularly as articulated in the works of the fourth patriarch Zhiyi (538–597 CE). Brook Ziporyn states that Tiantai is "the earliest attempt at a thoroughgoing Sinitic reworking of the Indian Buddhist tradition." According to Paul Swanson, Tiantai Buddhism grew to become "one of the most influential Buddhist traditions in China and Japan." The name of the school is derived from the fact that Zhiyi lived on Tiantai Mountain (Tiantai means "platform of the sky"), which then became a major center for the tradition. Zhiyi is also regarded as the first major figure to form an indigenous Chinese Buddhist system. Tiantai is sometimes also called "The Lotus School", after the central role of the ''Lotus Sutra'' in its teachings. During the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
JSTOR
JSTOR (; short for ''Journal Storage'') is a digital library founded in 1995 in New York City. Originally containing digitized back issues of academic journals, it now encompasses books and other primary sources as well as current issues of journals in the humanities and social sciences. It provides full-text searches of almost 2,000 journals. , more than 8,000 institutions in more than 160 countries had access to JSTOR. Most access is by subscription but some of the site is public domain, and open access content is available free of charge. JSTOR's revenue was $86 million in 2015. History William G. Bowen, president of Princeton University from 1972 to 1988, founded JSTOR in 1994. JSTOR was originally conceived as a solution to one of the problems faced by libraries, especially research and university libraries, due to the increasing number of academic journals in existence. Most libraries found it prohibitively expensive in terms of cost and space to maintain a comprehen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eastern Han
The Han dynasty (, ; ) was an imperial dynasty of China (202 BC – 9 AD, 25–220 AD), established by Liu Bang (Emperor Gao) and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–207 BC) and a warring interregnum known as the ChuHan contention (206–202 BC), and it was succeeded by the Three Kingdoms period (220–280 AD). The dynasty was briefly interrupted by the Xin dynasty (9–23 AD) established by usurping regent Wang Mang, and is thus separated into two periods—the Western Han (202 BC – 9 AD) and the Eastern Han (25–220 AD). Spanning over four centuries, the Han dynasty is considered a golden age in Chinese history, and it has influenced the identity of the Chinese civilization ever since. Modern China's majority ethnic group refers to themselves as the " Han people", the Sinitic language is known as "Han language", and the written Chinese is referred to as " Han characters". The emperor was at the pinnacle o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
An Shigao
An Shigao (, Korean: An Sego, Japanese: An Seikō, Vietnamese: An Thế Cao) (fl. c. 148-180 CE) was an early Buddhist missionary to China, and the earliest known translator of Indian Buddhist texts into Chinese. According to legend, he was a prince of Parthia, nicknamed the "Parthian Marquess", who renounced his claim to the royal throne of Parthia in order to serve as a Buddhist missionary monk in China. Origins The prefix ''An'' in An Shigao's name has raised many questions and hypotheses as to his origin and story. Some believe that it is an abbreviation of ''Anxi'', the Chinese name given to the regions ruled by the Parthian Empire. Most visitors from that country who took a Chinese name received the ''An'' prefix to indicate their origin in ''Anxi''.It is still unknown whether he was a monk or layperson or whether he should be considered a follower of the Sarvāstivāda or Mahāyāna, though affiliation with these two groups need not be viewed as mutually exclusive. The u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parthia
Parthia ( peo, 𐎱𐎼𐎰𐎺 ''Parθava''; xpr, 𐭐𐭓𐭕𐭅 ''Parθaw''; pal, 𐭯𐭫𐭮𐭥𐭡𐭥 ''Pahlaw'') is a historical region located in northeastern Greater Iran. It was conquered and subjugated by the empire of the Medes during the 7th century BC, was incorporated into the subsequent Achaemenid Empire under Cyrus the Great in the 6th century BC, and formed part of the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire following the 4th-century-BC conquests of Alexander the Great. The region later served as the political and cultural base of the Eastern Iranian Parni people and Arsacid dynasty, rulers of the Parthian Empire (247 BC – 224 AD). The Sasanian Empire, the last state of pre-Islamic Iran, also held the region and maintained the seven Parthian clans as part of their feudal aristocracy. Name The name "Parthia" is a continuation from Latin ', from Old Persian ', which was the Parthian language self-designator signifying "of the Parthians" who were an Iranian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
śūnyatā
''Śūnyatā'' ( sa, शून्यता, śūnyatā; pi, suññatā; ), translated most often as ''emptiness'', ''vacuity'', and sometimes ''voidness'', is an Indian philosophical concept. Within Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and other philosophical strands, the concept has multiple meanings depending on its doctrinal context. It is either an ontological feature of reality, a meditative state, or a phenomenological analysis of experience. In Theravāda Buddhism, ''Suññatā'' often refers to the non-self (Pāli: ''anattā'', Sanskrit: ''anātman'') nature of the five aggregates of experience and the six sense spheres. ''Suññatā'' is also often used to refer to a meditative state or experience. In Mahāyāna Buddhism, ''śūnyatā'' refers to the tenet that "all things are empty of intrinsic existence and nature (''svabhava'')", but may also refer to the Buddha-nature teachings and primordial or empty awareness, as in Dzogchen, Shentong, or Chan. Etymology "'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nikāya
''Nikāya'' () is a Pāli word meaning "volume". It is often used like the Sanskrit word '' āgama'' () to mean "collection", "assemblage", "class" or "group" in both Pāḷi and Sanskrit. It is most commonly used in reference to the Pali Buddhist texts of the Tripitaka namely those found in the Sutta Piṭaka. It is also used to refer to monastic lineages, where it is sometimes translated as a 'monastic fraternity'. The term ''Nikāya'' Buddhism is sometimes used in contemporary scholarship to refer to the Buddhism of the early Buddhist schools. Text collections In the Pāli Canon, particularly, the "Discourse Basket" or ''Sutta Piṭaka'', the meaning of ''nikāya'' is roughly equivalent to the English ''collection'' and is used to describe groupings of discourses according to theme, length, or other categories. For example, the ''Sutta Piṭaka'' is broken up into five nikāyas: * the Dīgha Nikāya, the collection of long (Pāḷi: ''dīgha'') discourses * the Majjhima Nik ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buddhist Texts
Buddhist texts are those religious texts which belong to the Buddhist tradition. The earliest Buddhist texts were not committed to writing until some centuries after the death of Gautama Buddha. The oldest surviving Buddhist manuscripts are the Gandhāran Buddhist texts, found in Afghanistan and written in Gāndhārī, they date from the first century BCE to the third century CE. The first Buddhist texts were initially passed on orally by Buddhist monastics, but were later written down and composed as manuscripts in various Indo-Aryan languages (such as Pāli, Gāndhārī, and Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit) and collected into various Buddhist Canons. These were then translated into other languages such as Buddhist Chinese (''fójiào hànyǔ'' 佛教漢語) and Classical Tibetan as Buddhism spread outside of India. Buddhist texts can be categorized in a number of ways. The Western terms "scripture" and "canonical" are applied to Buddhism in inconsistent ways by West ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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