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The Jayarava Rave
http://jayarava.blogspot.com
Reflections, commentary and opinions, from a more or less Buddhist point of view, by a non-sectarian Western Buddhist.
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Which Mahāyāna texts?
It is frequently observed that the proportion of Mahāyāna texts which have been translated into English even once is only small compared to the number in the Chinese Canon. Certain texts have received much greater attention than others, even amongs...
Dhāraṇī - origins, meaning, and usage.
The word dhāraṇī is a characteristically Buddhist term at times synonymous with mantra, and at others seeming to have it's own special significance. In this short essay I want to examine the word, and the main ways it is used.The word dhāraṇī...
Non-lexical utterances, stobhas, and mantra
In researching the background to Buddhist mantra I inevitably began to read about Vedic mantra. There is a lot more research on Vedic mantra and on the whole it is more interesting than research on Buddhist mantra, so far. Reading up on the Vedic tra...
Mantra, Magic, and Interconnectedness.
At the heart of the practice of mantra is the idea that everything is interconnected. Although the idea is not apparent in early Buddhist teachings it is strongly associated with the Mahāyāna Avataṃsaka Sūtra, and with the Buddhism that centres...
Persian Influences on Indian Buddhism
Some people will be aware that when Buddhism flowed out of India it went West as well as East. The huge Buddha statues at Bamiyan in Afghanistan are a result of this, as are, apparently the Arabian Nights stories which are based to some extent on the...
