Mahayana

In this second video on the Heart Sutra we'll look at its importance within the history of Buddhist dharma. What is its distinctive, polemical framing? What sorts of claims does it make, and how does it justify them? This all leads to the…

What is the Buddhist Heart Sutra and what does it tell us? We'll look at its history, peruse the text, then discuss some of its key insights through various early commentaries.

Is there a "Buddhist Bible"? We'll consider some key Buddhist texts, by analogy with the Old and New Testaments. What are they, and how do they relate to one another? NB: This is not intended to be an exhaustive list — I only barely…

What is Buddha nature or the "Tathāgatagarbha"? We'll begin by looking at the roots for these concepts in the early Buddhist texts. Then we'll turn to the origins of the mature concepts in later Mahāyāna texts. Finally we'll turn to some…

"Skillful means" is a key concept in Mahayana Buddhist dharma. Scholar Damien Keown has identified four phases in its development, taking us from early Buddhism towards more controversial claims about practice, including deception and…

What is "skillful means" in Buddhism, particularly in early Buddhism? We'll look at its usage in the early texts, in particular in one odd text where it seems the Buddha recommends a practice of sense desire, and then turn to its more…

One of the most well-known images of the Buddha shows him touching the earth at the time of his enlightenment. Yet no mention is made of such a gesture in the early texts. Where, when, and why did it arise?

I'll look at a recent paper by Bhikkhu Sujato, and its claim that the Buddhist doctrine of "two truths" deprecates the Buddha's own teachings. What is the doctrine, and why might he think so?

How do you become a Buddha? You work at perfecting several different virtues or "pāramīs". I'll give a brief history of the practice and then go through a list of ten of them from the Theravāda tradition. Then we'll look at some…

How did the ideal of the Bodhisattva develop in Buddhism? We'll sketch out the history using a couple of recent scholarly papers as guides. We'll see that "Bodhisattva" meant something quite different in early Buddhism than it eventually…

What is a Bodhisattva? We'll answer that question, looking at such things as the Bodhisattva Vows, the aim of the Bodhisattva path, and differing views on what one needs to do to become a Bodhisattva.

Was early Buddhism non-dualistic? We'll begin by looking at what non-dualism means, then turn to its origins in some pre-Buddhist ideas. Then we'll turn to look at early Buddhism in particular. Last we'll look briefly at some ways…

This is a short introduction to the development of the doctrine of two truths in Buddhism. We'll look briefly at the doctrine's origins that are treated in an earlier video, then we'll turn to the role of the abhidhamma/abhidharma in…

In this video we'll look at the origins of the Buddhist doctrine of "two truths" in the Upaniṣads and certain of the suttas of early Buddhism. While the Buddha never actually discussed a concept of "two truths" per se, he did elaborate a…

Interdependence is one of the hallmarks of Buddhist dharma. We will look at how ideas of interdependence changed, and how ideas about dependent origination changed to those more in line with the later metaphor of Indra's net. We will also…

Many contemporary discussions of Buddhist dharma blend aspects from varying traditions. We'll consider the extent to which that's a problem, and also the extent to which being too exclusivist can also present its own problems.

We'll take a quick overview of the history of Mahāyāna Buddhism, beginning with its earliest developments and how it separated from the rest of mainstream Buddhism. Then we'll look at a few of its later developments that came to define…

We will look at the three major schools of Buddhism, in the sort of contemporary context YouTubers would be likely to encounter them. We'll highlight some of the similarities and differences in their styles of belief and practice. This is…