White Lotus Sutra
The ''Lotus Sūtra'' ( zh, 妙法蓮華經; sa, सद्धर्मपुण्डरीकसूत्रम्, translit=Saddharma Puṇḍarīka Sūtram, lit=Sūtra on the White Lotus of the True Dharma, italic=) is one of the most influential and venerated Buddhist Mahāyāna sūtras. It is the main scripture on which the Tiantai, Tendai, Cheontae, and Nichiren schools of Buddhism were established. It is also influential for other East Asian Buddhist schools, such as Zen. According to the British Buddhologist Paul Williams, "For many Buddhists in East Asia since early times, the ''Lotus Sūtra'' contains the final teaching of Shakyamuni Buddha—complete and sufficient for salvation." The American Buddhologist Donald S. Lopez Jr. writes that the ''Lotus Sūtra'' "is arguably the most famous of all Buddhist texts," presenting "a radical re-vision of both the Buddhist path and of the person of the Buddha." Two central teachings of the ''Lotus Sūtra'' have been very influ ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sugawara Mitsushige Lotus Sutra, 01crop
Sugawara (written: 菅原 lit. "sedge field"), also read as Sugahara, is a Japanese surname. Notable people with the surname include: *Sugawara no Kiyotomo (770–842), Japanese courtier and bureaucrat of the early Heian period *Sugawara no Michizane (845–903), Japanese scholar, poet, and politician of the Heian period *Sugawara no Koreyoshi (812–880), Japanese noble and scholar of the early Heian period *Bunta Sugawara (1933–2014), Japanese actor *Chieko Sugawara (born 1976), Japanese fencer *Hiroshi Sugawara (born 1955), Japanese film director, film producer, and screenwriter *Hirotaka Sugawara (born 1938), Japanese physicist *Isshu Sugawara (born 1962), Japanese politician *Julia Sugawara (born 1982), Canadian rugby union player *Kazuhiko Sugawara (born 1927), Japanese former speed skater *, Japanese bobsledder *Kota Sugawara (born 1985), Japanese football player *, Japanese footballer *Sadatoshi Sugawara (born 1939), Japanese former volleyball player *Shinobu Sugawara (born ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Buddhist Paths To Liberation
The Buddhist path (''marga'') to liberation, also referred to as awakening, is described in a wide variety of ways. The classical one is the Noble Eightfold Path, which is only one of several summaries presented in the Sutta Pitaka. A number of other paths to liberation exist within various Buddhist traditions and theology. Early Buddhism There are various expositions of the path to liberation in the Early Buddhist texts, the following examples are drawn from the Pali Nikayas. The Noble Eightfold Path The Noble Eightfold Path is widely known as ''the'' description of the Buddhist path. In the Sutta Pitaka it is summed up as follows: Alternate sequences in the Pali Nikayas Alternate, and possibly older, sequences of the stages on the Buddhist path to liberation, can be found throughout the Pali Canon. Tevijja Sutta A standard sequence of developments can be found in the Nikayas, which may predate the more stylised four noble truths. For example the Tevijja Sutta verse 40 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tangut Language
Tangut (Tangut: ; ) is an extinct language in the Sino-Tibetan language family. Tangut was one of the official languages of the Western Xia dynasty, founded by the Tangut people in northwestern China. The Western Xia was annihilated by the Mongol Empire in 1227. The Tangut language has its own script, the Tangut script. The latest known text written in the Tangut language, the Tangut dharani pillars, dates to 1502, suggesting that the language was still in use nearly three hundred years after the collapse of Western Xia. Classification Since the 2010s, more Tangutologists have classified Tangut as a Qiangic and/or Gyalrongic language. On the basis of both morphological and lexical evidence, Lai et al. (2020) classify Tangut as a West Gyalrongic language. Rediscovery Modern research into the Tangut languages began in the late 19th century and early 20th century when S. W. Bushell, Gabriel Devéria, and Georges Morisse separately published decipherments of a number of Tangu ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dharmarakṣa
(, J. Jiku Hōgo; K. Ch’uk Pǒphom c. 233-310) was one of the most important early translators of Mahayana sutras into Chinese. Several of his translations had profound effects on East Asian Buddhism. He is described in scriptural catalogues as Yuezhi in origin. Life His family lived at Dunhuang, where he was born around 233 CE. At the age of eight, he became a novice and took the Indian monk named Zhu Gaozuo () as his teacher. As a young boy, Dhamaraksa was said to be extremely intelligent, and journeyed with his teacher to many countries in the Western Regions, where he learned Central Asian languages and scripts. He then traveled back to China with a quantity of Buddhist texts and translated them with the aid of numerous assistants and associates, both Chinese and foreign, from Parthians to Khotanese. One of his more prominent assistants was a Chinese upāsaka, Nie Chengyuan (), who served as a scribe and editor. Dharmaraksa first began his translation career in Chang'an ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Kumārajīva
Kumārajīva (Sanskrit: कुमारजीव; , 344–413 CE) was a Buddhist monk, scholar, missionary and translator from the Kingdom of Kucha (present-day Aksu Prefecture, Xinjiang, China). Kumārajīva is seen as one of the greatest translators of Chinese Buddhism. According to Lu Cheng, Kumarajiva's translations are "unparalleled either in terms of translation technique or degree of fidelity". Kumārajīva first studied teachings of the Sarvastivadin schools, later studied under Buddhasvāmin, and finally became an adherent of Mahayana Buddhism, studying the Mādhyamaka doctrine of Nāgārjuna. After mastering the Chinese language, Kumārajīva settled as a translator and scholar in Chang'an (c. 401 CE). He was the head of a team of translators which included his amanuensis Sengrui. This team was responsible for the translation of many Sanskrit Buddhist texts into Chinese. Kumārajīva also introduced the Madhyamaka school of Buddhist philosophy into China which ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Languages Of Asia
A wide variety of languages are spoken throughout Asia, comprising different language families and some unrelated isolates. The major language families include Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Caucasian, Dravidian, Indo-European, Afroasiatic, Turkic, Sino-Tibetan and Kra–Dai. Most, but not all, have a long history as a written language. Language groups The major families in terms of numbers are Indo-European and Indo-Aryan languages and Dravidian languages in South Asia and Sino-Tibetan in East Asia. Several other families are regionally dominant. Sino-Tibetan Sino-Tibetan includes Chinese, Tibetan, Burmese, Karen, Boro and numerous languages of the Tibetan Plateau, southern China, Burma, and North east India. Indo-European The Indo-European languages are primarily represented by the Indo-Iranian branch. The family includes both Indic languages (Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Odia, Assamese, Punjabi, Sindhi, Kashmiri, Marathi, Gujarati, Sinhala and other languages spoken prim ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Padma (attribute)
The lotus, ''Nelumbo nucifera'', is an aquatic plant that plays a central role in the art of Indian religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. In Asian art a lotus throne is a stylized lotus flower used as the seat or base for a figure. It is the normal pedestal for divine figures in Buddhist art and Hindu art, and often seen in Jain art. Originating in Indian art, it followed Indian religions to East Asia in particular. Hinduism Hindus revere it with the divinities Vishnu and Lakshmi often portrayed on a pink lotus in iconography; historically, many deities, namely Brahma, Saraswati, Lakshmi, Kubera, usually sit on a stylized lotus throne. In the representation of Vishnu as Padmanabha (Lotus navel), a lotus issues from his navel with Brahma on it. The goddess Saraswati is portrayed on a pale pink lotus. The lotus is the symbol of what is divine or immortal in humanity, and also symbolizes divine perfection. The lotus is the attribute of sun and fire gods. I ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late Bronze Age. Sanskrit is the sacred language of Hinduism, the language of classical Hindu philosophy, and of historical texts of Buddhism and Jainism. It was a link language in ancient and medieval South Asia, and upon transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia, East Asia and Central Asia in the early medieval era, it became a language of religion and high culture, and of the political elites in some of these regions. As a result, Sanskrit had a lasting impact on the languages of South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, especially in their formal and learned vocabularies. Sanskrit generally connotes several Old Indo-Aryan language varieties. The most archaic of these is the Vedic Sanskrit found in the Rig Veda, a colle ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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A Sanskrit Manuscript Of Lotus Sutra In South Turkestan Brahmi Script
A, or a, is the first letter and the first vowel of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''a'' (pronounced ), plural ''aes''. It is similar in shape to the Ancient Greek letter alpha, from which it derives. The uppercase version consists of the two slanting sides of a triangle, crossed in the middle by a horizontal bar. The lowercase version can be written in two forms: the double-storey a and single-storey ɑ. The latter is commonly used in handwriting and fonts based on it, especially fonts intended to be read by children, and is also found in italic type. In English grammar, " a", and its variant " an", are indefinite articles. History The earliest certain ancestor of "A" is aleph (also written 'aleph), the first letter of the Phoenician alphabet, which consisted entirely of consonants (for that reason, it is also called an abjad to distinguish it fro ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dharma
Dharma (; sa, धर्म, dharma, ; pi, dhamma, italic=yes) is a key concept with multiple meanings in Indian religions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism and others. Although there is no direct single-word translation for ''dharma'' in European languages, it is commonly translated as "righteousness", "merit" or "religious and moral duties" governing individual conduct.Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. (9 April 2019)Dharma. ''Encyclopedia Britannica''. Accessed 14 September 2021. In Hinduism, dharma is one of the four components of the ''Puruṣārtha'', the aims of life, and signifies behaviours that are considered to be in accord with '' Ṛta'', the order that makes life and universe possible. It includes duties, rights, laws, conduct, virtues and "right way of living".see: *"Dharma", ''The Columbia Encyclopedia'', 6th Ed. (2013), Columbia University Press, Gale, ; *Steven Rosen (2006), Essential Hinduism, Praeger, , Chapter 3. It had a transtempor ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Parinirvana
In Buddhism, ''parinirvana'' (Sanskrit: '; Pali: ') is commonly used to refer to nirvana-after-death, which occurs upon the death of someone who has attained ''nirvana'' during their lifetime. It implies a release from '' '', karma and rebirth as well as the dissolution of the ''skandhas''. In some Mahāyāna scriptures, notably the ''Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra'', ''parinirvāṇa'' is described as the realm of the eternal true Self of the Buddha. In the Buddha in art, the event is represented by a reclining Buddha figure, often surrounded by disciples. Nirvana after death In the Buddhist view, when ordinary people die, each person's unresolved karma passes on to a new birth instantaneously; and thus the karmic inheritance is reborn in one of the six realms of '' samsara''. However, when a person attains nirvana, they are liberated from karmic rebirth. When such a person dies, it is the end of the cycle of rebirth, the Samsara and the Karma. Contemporary scholar Ru ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |