The Middle Way of Nagarjuna, one of Mahayana Buddhism’s greatest philosophers By Filip Holm When people think of Buddhism, they tend to picture meditative practices. But what many tend to forget is that Buddhism has a tremendously rigorous philosophical tradition, and its thinkers have contributed immensely to philosophy across history. Of these Buddhist philosophers, few—perhaps none—have been as influential as the 3rd-century logician Nagarjuna. Sometimes considered the “Second Buddha,” Nagarjuna presented a novel approach to the core Buddhist doctrine of emptiness, or shunyata, that would become central to the development of Mahayana Buddhism. In fact, his most famous work, the Mulamadhyamakakarika (“Root Verses on the … Continue reading Emptiness Explained

A meditation for new beginnings By Wes Nisker Since the Buddha’s time, many different ways of meditating on death have been devised in Buddhist communities. In their religious rituals, Tibetan Buddhist monks blow ceremonial horns made of human bones, and they sometimes eat their meals out of bowls made from human skulls. In the temples and monasteries of Thailand, one will often find pictures of skeletons hanging on the wall. They might depict, for example, a middle-class family—father, mother, and child—with half of each body clothed and face smiling, while the other half is a bare-boned skeleton. In some sense, the act of … Continue reading Making Friends with Death