by Chade-Meng Tan | Jun 13, 2024 | Buddhism for All
In May 1998, in New York City, there was a historic dialog between two highly revered masters from two different sects of Buddhism. One was the Dalai Lama, the leader of Tibetan Buddhism, the other was the Chinese Zen Master Sheng Yen. They were sharing a...
by Chade-Meng Tan | Jun 13, 2024 | Buddhism.net Blog
Friends, Imagine a religion with a strict power hierarchy where orthodoxy is tightly regulated from the top. Now let’s do a thought experiment, and imagine a religion that takes an almost exact opposite approach towards orthodoxy. What would it look...
by Chade-Meng Tan | Jun 9, 2024 | Buddhism for All
“Yes, there is a lot of Buddhist texts to read, but don’t worry, I’ve downloaded all of it for you.” (Context: The Early Buddhist Canon.) As a skeptic, the very first question I’d ask is: how do I know if the Nikāyas are an authentic...
by Chade-Meng Tan | Jun 6, 2024 | Buddhism for All
(Context: The Early Buddhist Canon.) Even though the Nikāyas were formulated at the First Buddhist Council only months after the Buddha passed, the Pali Canon was actually written down much later, like 300 years later[1]. Why did it take so long? For a...
by Chade-Meng Tan | Jun 4, 2024 | Buddhism for All
Compilation of discourses With Ānanda and Upāli giving testimony, and the gathering of 500 arahants verifying the correctness of their testimonies, the early Buddhist canon was thus established. The compilation offered up by Ānanda was so large it was divided...
