Canadian Journal of Buddhist Studies (CJBS)
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Words
No full textBuddhist teachers have always had to depend on words to explain experience, which latter is what the teaching is about. But experience is of particular, unique, events. Words are generalizations, abstractions. Therefore words cannot match experience, but only hint vaguely at it. They are as it were translations from particulars to universals
Shifts in Diasporic and Buddhist Identities Among Second Generation Cambodians in Ontario
No full textSecond generation Cambodians born and/or raised within Canada have experienced an incredible range of family and social disruption, influenced as much by their parent’s survival of the Khmer Rouge genocide as their extensive difficulties in resettlement. In comparison to other North American Asian communities, adaptive strategies for long-term integration were hindered by the absence of Buddhist temples, ritual/monastic specialists, and community leadership. More than twenty-five years later, as the second generation youth increasingly access postsecondary education (initiating patterns of upward mobility) and Cambodian communities across Ontario begin to establish Buddhist temples with full-time monastics, clear disparities exist within and between the generations in understanding the role of Buddhism and Buddhist monks, the meaning of traditional rituals, and the identification of Buddhism as an integral part of personal or cultural identity. This paper details some of these disparities among Cambodian youth in Ontario, and highlights how new cultural symbols of belonging are increasingly utilized to validate innovate ways in being Khmer. For many second generation Cambodians, a positive diasporic Buddhist identity arises within the context of their first visit to Cambodia as young adults and their subsequent experiences of meeting extended family members, visiting sacred sites (archaeological and genocide memorials), and participating in special rituals that call them back to the roots of Khmer identity. Analysis of the extent to which religious identities and understandings transform through migration and generational change contributes to this research on Buddhism and diaspora in North America
The Verses on an Auspicious Night, Explained by Mahakaccana - A Study and Translation of the Chinese Version
No full textThe present paper offers a study and an annotated translation of the Madhyama-āgama parallel to the Mahākaccānabhaddekaratta-sutta. The first part of the article examines two differences found between the Pali and the Chinese versions, differences that appear to be due to the influences of notions held by the reciters on the transmission of the discourse. This is followed by a translation of the Madhyama-āgama version. The final part of the article evaluates the significance of the verses on an auspicious night which for the main theme of the Mahākaccānabhaddekaratta-sutta and its Chinese counterpar
Seeing Into the Nature of Mind: The Confluence of Zen and Dzogchen
No full textFrom beneath the Pipal tree in central India where Shakyamuni Buddha is said to have attained the goal of all of his lifetimes, the Buddha Dharma has spread to numerous countries and cultures throughout the world. The passage of time and the cultural proclivities of many peoples have resulted in various manifestations of Buddhism—the Buddhisms of India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Burma, China, Tibet, Japan, and, most recently, Europe and North America. Throughout time and across cultures, however, the following characteristics unite every one of the varying traditions and ground each of them in the awakening experience of the Buddha: the understanding of suffering as a universal experience, the practice of meditation to train the mind, and the realization of freedom from all extremes, fixations, and obsessions
Aśokan Phonology and the Language of the Earliest Buddhist Tradition
No full textThe extant Middle Indic Buddhist scriptures in Pāli, BHS and Gāndhārī, are translation remnants from a lost oral transmission dialect called Buddhist Middle Indic (BMI). BMI was a kind of Buddhist lingua franca, a phonologically simplified portmanteau language, free of the most conspicuous differences between the different dialects spoken at that time, and characterized by loss of conjunct consonants, disappearance or lenition of intervocalic consonants, including replacement of stops by glides, change of aspirate stops to aspirates only, and other features facilitating cross-dialect communication. At the same time, because of the phonological simplifications, many homonyms resulted which caused potential confusion when the teachings were written down. Most of the linguistic features in BMI are also found in the Aśokan rock inscriptions, especially those from Shāhbāzgaṛhī (Sh.) in the northwest, a correspondence that may be due to Buddhism’s rapid spread on existing trade routes to the northwest, the early development of writing in that area and the prestige of the northwestern form of speech. A study of the phonological development of the dialects in the Sh. and other Aśokan edicts are a useful template for the corresponding phonological evolution of the surviving witnesses of BMI (Pāli and the other Prakrits), helping to isolate and disambiguate some of the confusions that have resulted through the oral transmission process
