Buddhism & Hinduism

Quintessential Guru Purnima reflections on the essence of being a teacher via the geometry of the rose and its relationship to the moon. Inscribed on 1 foot X 1 ½ feet poster on July 12, 1995,

On Teachers Day, students at Rizvi College of Architecture in Mumbai used to offer roses to their professors. Teachers Day in India is traditionally celebrated on Guru Purnima which falls on the full moon day of Ashadha month, when disciples pay respect to their Guru, being the birth anniversary of Veda Vyasa the author of Mahabharata. Buddhists commemorate it as the day Buddha gave his first sermon at Sarnath, Uttar Pradesh, India.

My grandson Haydar Ahmad Muhyiddin Hasan Taj was born on Guru Purnima 24 July 2021

Cross Reference. See also

"Recollections of an Unconventional Pedagogy" in the Articles Section.
"Father Taught Me To Teach" in the Memoirs Section

https://www.einaudi.it/catalogo-libri/antropologia-e-religione/religione/karma-e-rinascita-nel-pensiero-indiano-wilhelm-halbfass-9788806249687/


Con questo libro, rivolto a un pubblico generale e non solo di specialisti, uno dei più illustri studiosi delle tradizioni culturali sudasiatiche offre una visione chiara e completa della storia e del significato delle diverse dimensioni filosofiche delle dottrine indiane sul karma e sulla rinascita: due concetti intimamente correlati e i cui ambiti coprono l’intero spettro del vissuto umano, passato, presente e futuro. Infatti, se la parola sanscrita karman indica l’agire, l’operare e il fare in senso lato, l’idea di «rinascita» – veicolata dal termine sanscrito saṃsāra – è sempre relativa ai diversi modi di intendere le conseguenze che derivano da tale agire. Non c’è azione che non risenta degli effetti dell’aver operato in passato, così come non c’è gesto presente estraneo ai timori e alle speranze circa ciò che andrà a produrre. In che modi il gesto venga reso azione e l’azione venga collegata a conseguenze necessarie è il tema che Wilhelm Halbfass affronta a partire dalla storia intellettuale del Sudasia, sollevando problemi e questioni che vanno ben oltre l’analisi di aspetti peculiari degli studi indologici.

The terms "Yogi" and "Yogini" are used in both Buddhism and in Hinduism to refer to male and female experts on yoga, respectively1. However, over time, under the beliefs of Tantricism and Shaktism, it is only the female definition that has changed. Namely, Yoginis came to be sorceresses, or women who had supernatural powers. There are normally 64-81 Yoginis, depending on the texts being referred to. The Yoginis were women who had achieved enormous power through the practice of yoga as well as a pursuit of knowledge and enlightenment; their powers included control over bodily functions such as heart rate, fertility, exposure to heat and cold, their metabolism, and might also have included the ability to fly2. The fact that is not concrete is whether or not the women being mentioned are human or divine, hence, in this paper, the term Yogini will focus more on the deified aspect of these 64 representations of women. The Yoginis are a large part of a Tantric-Shaktism cult. Shaktism, is one such sub-sect of Hinduism that places a large emphasis on the female-principle3. A large part of the cult is based on an abstract idea; the Gods and Goddesses are all simply shaktis (energy). It is the union of this energy that is key to achieving the ultimate knowledge. The Shakta philosophy holds that The Devi is the ultimate being tasked with the roles of the creator, the sustainer and the destroyer4. The Devi is seen in her manifestations of Parvati, and then further in the forms of Uma, Durga and Kali. The Yoginis, having been mentioned in the Vedas, are considered to be lower in status than the Devi herself5. However, their purpose and composition are topics of speculation as they vary depending on the religious scriptures being considered. Some of the texts refer to them as being manifestations of the Goddess Durga, while other texts believe they are simply the attendants of the Supreme Goddess. Due to the Yoginis being manifestations of The Devi, they represent all the various aspects ranging from motherhood, love, and fertility to violent, fierce and terrible aspects of The Devi. In correspondence with these various aspects, there are seven or eight principle Yoginis known as the Matrikas6.

The concept of afterlife had always subject of fascination, if we are wise and kind we get the heaven or when we sin, we deserve punishment in hell; A concept that is deeply imbued into our mind. Hell in its cruelty and displaying its endless terrible torture means a place for punishment of all our sins, that to varies according to the sin that one has committed. So this article is an attempt to go through the various types of descriptions regarding Inferno especially in Indian culture and western culture

Hinduism or Sanatana Dharma is considered to be the oldest religion in the world (Fowler 1997, p1). This religion originated in India. Similarly, India is also the birthplace of Buddhism. Apart from trade, religion was one of the means of inter-state communication and proximity in ancient times. It is through religion, ancient Indian civilization developed good relations and closeness with different parts of the world, one of which was Southeast Asia. Though Marx opined “Die Religion……ist das opium des volkes” or “religion…..is the opium of people”, but the positive role of religion cannot be denied in this case. Hinduism and Buddhism were the main driving force behind the Indianization or Sanskritization of Southeast Asian States. Buddhism and Hinduism are still among the most prevalent religions in this region, despite the subsequent large-scale conversion to Christianity and Islam. The influence of Indianness is evident in all the areas of this region, including ancient architect...

Dalam pembahasan makalah kali ini, akan menyampaikan pembahasan tentang Hindu Dharma (Agama Hindu). Agama ini merupakan bisa dikatakan Agama tertua didunia yang masih berkembang di zaman sekarang. Hindu berkembang sejak ribuan tahun yang lalu. Ada jutaan dewa-dewi dalam kepercayaan agama Hindu dan semua itu merupakan refleksi dari Brahman, roh paling tinggi. Dewa paling populer adalah Shiva, dewa perusak alam, dan Vishnu, dewa pemelihara alam. Ada ratusan kuil dipersembahkan untuk mereka. Semua orang Hindu memiliki tempat pemujaan dalam rumah masing-masing, tempat melakukan ibadat harian, dan bersama dengan perayaan lainnya. Kalau kita membahas tentang agama Hindu ini, otomatis kita juga akan tahu tentang Negara yang mayoritas penduduknya penganut agama Hindu, yaitu seperti India, Bangladesh, dll. Untuk membahas lebih lanjut lagi tentang agama Hindu, sejarah awalnya agama Hindu, bagaimana Tuhan mereka, akan lebih baiknya kita bahas dipembahasan. 2. Rumusan Masalah. a.) Kapan awal munculnya agama Hindu ? b.) Pengertian agama Hindu ? c.) Perkembangan agama Hindu di India ? 3. Tujuan Masalah. a.) Untuk mengetahui sejarah munculnya agama Hindu ini. b.) Agar semua yang membaca tahu, dan penulis juga tahu tentang bagaimana agama Hindu ini. c.) Untuk mengetahui seperti apa perkembangan agama ini pada zaman itu ketika di India.

This paper focuses on certain Hindu beliefs, traditions, and even gods and temples or shrines having their origin in the Adivasi beliefs with a focus on Sarna faith among the Santhal community. It has been argued that it might be possible that Hinduism in India has evolved from Adivasi beliefs or appropriated elements of Adivasi beliefs and a faith system of cultural and ritualistic patterns has emerged in the shared and contested lives of Adivasi and Hindu people.

Born in the 16th-century, a time of religious orthodoxy and extensive feudalism, Mirabai was a poet who transcended the limits of gender, caste, marriage, faith, and her time to achieve a union with her God, her consort, and her lover- Krishna.

Kerajaan Majapahit adalah sebuah kerajaan yang berpusat di Jawa Timur, Indonesia, yang pernah berdiri sekitar tahun 1293 hingga 1500 M. Kerajaan ini mencapai puncak kejayaannya menjadi kemaharajaan raya yang menguasai wilayah yang luas di Nusantara pada masa kekuasaan Hayam Wuruk, yang berkuasa dari tahun 1350 hingga 1389.

Sebagai salah satu kerajaan yang bersifat agraris, Majapahit berkembang tidak terlepas dari latar belakang agama Hindu-Buddha yang sangat dekat dengan kalangan istana. Konsep yang dianut oleh raja-raja pada masa jawa kuno ini yang menganggap atau melegitimasi dirinya sebagai titisan dewa atau keturuanan para dewa yang dinamakan dengan dewa-raja. Untuk memperlihatkan adanya konsep dewa-raja pada masa Kerajaan Majapahit marilah kita tengok sebagian besar raja-raja Majapahit yang dalam masa kekuasaannya memperlihatkan suatu legitimasi lewat penamaan gelar raja yang dihubungkan dengan satu atau lebih dewa yang menjadi titisan atau pun penjelmaannya.

In this paper I trace the use of the term haṭhayoga from its Buddhist origins as a term for the restraint of ejaculation in Vajrayāna sexual ritual to its use in non-Buddhist Indic texts to refer to physical yoga practice broadly conceived. The paper has been published as chapter 6 (pp.177–199) in Hindu Practice, ed. Gavin Flood, pub. OUP 2020.

This chapter will bring Smith’s insights on ritual to bear on scholarly discussions of the historical process in late ancient  South Asia known as “Brahmanization.” In particular, I will discuss scholarly claims about how the political and cultural phenomenon of “Brahmanization” affected the Indian Buddhist monastic institution at the turn of the Common Era. By Brahmanization, I am referring to the spread of those social forces associated with the Brahmanical class of ritual specialists at the turn of the Common Era, which, over many centuries, and in piecemeal fashion, have insinuated purity norms into a variety of religious and political contexts throughout South Asia. In this chapter, I will challenge the notion that the process of Brahmanization in South Asia at the turn of the Common Era was the pervasive socio-religious juggernaut that it is often depicted as in Indological scholarship. In particular, I will argue that there was substantial resistance within the Buddhist establishment to the new ritual systems of the late ancient period, which was designed in Brahmanical circles of power to govern the relationship to the dead.

Hinduism, Buddhism and Haṭha Yoga [A Review of the book "THE AMṚTASIDDHI AND THE AMṚTASIDDHIMŪLA — The Earliest Texts of the Haṭhayoga Tradition" by James Mallinson and Péter-Dániel Szántó].

This book is published (2022) by the "Institut Français de Pondichéry École Française d'extrême Orient" as part of the Haṭha Yoga Project, Collection Indologie-150, HaṭhaYoga Series-2, and is written mainly by (Sir) James Mallinson, a British Indologist noted for his particular study of the Haṭhayoga tradition in India.

Like most things having to with Indian culture or the Hindu heritage, this topic also has its important historical-political issues and implications which require to be examined thoroughly. The ongoing issues are, first, the geographical and historical origins and beginnings of Haṭhayoga, and, second, the place of Hinduism and Buddhism in relation to Haṭhayoga and each other.

Il libro prende in esame le correnti storiche della maggiori filosofie indiane: Indù, Buddista e Giainista attraverso i loro esponenti principali e le opere canoniche. Attraverso i i Veda, le Upanishad e il Bhagavad Gita -  e i relativi commenti filosofici si espongono i contenuti delle principali scuole della filosofia indù, dal materialismo al relativismo dogmatico. Il Buddhismo indiano è rappresentato attraverso il suo percorso nel piccolo e grande sentiero per arrivare alla grande ruota del Dharma.

The premodern Sanskrit textual universe and the history of Hinduism—two partially overlapping things—cannot be understood without knowledge of caste, a hereditary system of social hierarchy and oppression. I appreciate this now, but I did not always. I studied premodern Sanskrit texts for more than a decade before I seriously thought about caste. Moreover, I am not alone in this blind spot. Judging from their scholarship, many academics who study premodern South Asia rarely, if ever, critically consider caste, which is to the detriment of our collective quest to better understand Indian history, including Hindu traditions.

In what follows, I briefly reflect on the context of my own error and what this oversight—repeated by many—causes us to miss about the South Asian past and our present.

Published Journal of the American Academy of Religion, March 2018

Many textbooks for Introduction to Buddhism or World Religions courses treat Buddhism as a competitor of either “Hinduism” or “Brahmanism” by asserting that Buddhism teaches that there is no eternal self or soul and Hinduism teaches that there is. I ask whether these assumptions hold up for one of the earliest sources about Buddhism, the Pali canon. Using statistical analysis of 5,126 suttas or “discourses,” I argue that there is little evidence that the doctrine of soullessness was preached to “convert” representatives of the Brahmanical tradition to Buddhism. On the contrary, it would appear that Brahmin Buddhists had their own canon-within-a-canon that simply avoided the topic of soullessness. Rather than seeing the canon as “what the Buddha taught,” the argument here will present canonicity itself as one of the stakes in a nexus of power where different communities strove to assert their version of Buddhism to be “what the Buddha taught.”

Recent review:
Pratadpaditya Pal, 2016. A Mahabharata of a History of Ancient
India. Review of D.K. Chakrabarti and M. Lal eds. History of
Ancient India Vols I-IV, New Delhi, Vivekananda International Foundation / Aryan Books. Indian Historical Review 43(2):316-325. DOI: 10.1177/0376983616663412

In diesem Beitrag zum Themenbereich Ev. 10.3 "Buddhismus" im Ev. RU in Bayern werden Yoga und Zen als die beiden meistpraktizierten Meditationsformen behandelt. Yoga wird in dieses Themenfeld einbezogen, da er zum einen die Grundlage ist, aus der sich der Mahayana-Buddhistische Zen entwickelt hat, zum anderen, indem er, obgleich in das religionsphilosophische Feld des Hinduismus gehörend, diejenige Lehre "Fernöstlicher Meditation" ist, die Schülern weitaus häufiger lebensweltlich präsent sein dürfte. Dieser Beitrag gibt eine Einführung zu dieser Rezeptionsperspektive.

A widespread scholarly opinion has sanctioned the view that ‘Hinduism’ in Java and Bali was fundamentally syncretic in character, forming a blend of Śaiva and Bauddha elements. What has been generally termed the ‘religion of Śiva-Buddha’ or ‘Hindu-Buddhist religion’ (in Indonesian ‘Agama Siwa-Buda’ or ‘Agama Hindu-Buda’), and ascribed to the Hindu-Buddhist era (jaman Hindu-Buda) of Javanese history, has been characterized in terms of ‘identity’, ‘syncretism’, ‘parallelism’ or ‘coalition’. The basic idea that my chapter tries to convey is that the nature of the equation of the paramount principles of Śaivism and Buddhism as expressed by a number of Old Javanese sources from the Singhasari-Majapahit period has not always been correctly grasped, and that alleged instances of “Javanese syncretism” should now be challenged.

It is not easy to understand the nature of the guru and understanding the nature of the guru can be bewildering. There is often bewilderment about the guru. One source of the bewilderment is that people think that the guru is an individual person and for most people the understanding that the guru is not a person has been foreclosed. The guru is not a person. And when people see and believe the guru is a person, such a belief will create illusions about the person whom they think is the guru, and their own relationship with the person whom they see as the guru will fall into various forms of the psychology of transference. Moreover, the true and pervasive nature of the guru will be concealed and the power of the guru limited and anthropomorphized, and politicized. To use Heideggerian language the ontic dimension will become the focus and the ontological dimension becomes foreclosed. In fact, the guru is not an entity, the guru is not a thing, and the guru is not even a being. The guru is the field of Being. The guru is the field of Being's manifestation of understanding, manifestation of protection and manifestation of self-revelation. The guru is the radiance of primordial awareness. The contemporary master of Kashmir Shavism, Swami Muktananda would teach, using the language of theology, " the guru is the grace bestowing power of God. " He would also say " The guru is your own innermost awareness and you must get beyond your mind to experience the guru as your own awareness. " Vehicle-ness It is also equally true that a person can be vehicle of the guru. Even you and I can be a vehicle for the guru. The light of the guru can manifest and shine forth through you and me, and through everyone. The power of the guru does not manifest only through institutional religious teachers as some would like you to think, but most often this manifestation is through

मुझे यह सुझाव देने के लिए एक जुंगियन चर्चा से बाहर कर दिया गया और उसने मुझे अकादमिक-शिक्षा पर अवरुद्ध कर दिया। चर्चा में मैंने जो कुछ भी पोस्ट किया वह अधिकारियों और मनोवैज्ञानिकों के उद्धरण थे। वह कई साल पहले था - शायद 3 साल। मुझे इसे व्यक्तिगत रूप से नहीं लेना चाहिए। अचेतन पर सबसे स्थापित अधिकारियों में से एक जॉन बरघ ने कहा कि उन्हें भी यही समस्या है। वह लोगों को बताता है कि अचेतन में बहुत कुछ चल रहा है और बहुत सारी अचेतन उत्तेजनाएं उन्हें प्रभावित कर रही हैं - वह है बाहर की जागरूक जागरूकता - और लोग उसे कहते हैं "कोई रास्ता नहीं - मैं नहीं!"

प्रस्तावना - जब आप "मानदंडों" के विज्ञान को अकादमिक मानदंडों पर लागू करते हैं (जो कि मेरी जानकारी में पहले किसी ने नहीं किया है) - जैसा कि बरग जोर देते हैं, बेहोश हैं और आसानी से "आंतरिक" होने के लिए जाने जाते हैं (यानी, आत्मनिर्णय सिद्धांत, डेसी और रयान) यह एक उचित प्रस्ताव है कि अकादमिक मानदंड अकादमिक और अन्य बुद्धिजीवियों के अनुसंधान और सोच को प्रभावित करेंगे।

जैसा कि रेनक्विस्ट के फैसलों पर 104-पृष्ठ का लेख बताता है कि सुप्रीम कोर्ट के फैसलों में भी भ्रांतियां दिखाई देती हैं और अदालत की गवाही और भ्रम बहुत "प्रेरक" हो सकते हैं और "कुटिल सोच" पैदा कर सकते हैं। जब एक जुंगियन करुणा की आध्यात्मिकता को "मत की बात" के रूप में रखता है जो वैज्ञानिक जांच के लिए उपयुक्त नहीं है, तो यह प्रेरक प्रभाव और निश्चित भ्रम की कुटिल सोच का एक उत्कृष्ट उदाहरण है। आदेश की नियुक्ति के रूप में - एक घटना के लिए वास्तविक और वैज्ञानिक जांच के लिए उपयुक्त होने के लिए, ऑटिज़्म की तुलना में जिसमें जनसंख्या का 1.5% शामिल होने का अनुमान है, इसलिए यह इस कारण से खड़ा होगा कि "करुणा की आध्यात्मिकता" घटना में विश्वास भी होगा वास्तविक घटना माने जाने के लिए केवल 1.5% जनसंख्या की आवश्यकता होती है।

जंग की मंगल भविष्यवाणी और चरम पलायन

एक पत्रकार से कार्ल जंग से प्रश्न: क्या आपको लगता है कि, बीस वर्षों में, कोई व्यक्ति प्रतीकों की भावना की परवाह करेगा, पूरी तरह से ग्रहों के बीच यात्रा के युग में, स्पुतनिक, गगारिन और शेफर्ड के साथ? क्या मन पुराना नहीं लगने लगेगा? डा. जंग चतुराई से मुस्कुराते हैं और कहते हैं, "अतीत या बाद में आदमी को अपने आप में लौटना होगा, भले ही वह सितारों से आया हो। अब जो कुछ भी हो रहा है वह पलायन का एक चरम रूप है, क्योंकि मंगल पर पहुंचना स्वयं को खोजने [स्वयं को खोजने] या स्वयं से मिलने [स्वयं से मिलने] से आसान है। यदि मनुष्य न मिले या न मिले, तो उसके सामने सबसे बड़ा खतरा है: उसका अपना सर्वनाश। »

18 फरवरी, 2021 को, अंतरराष्ट्रीय समाचारों में एक मंगल लैंडिंग एक उच्च बिंदु था: "नासा का नया मंगल रोवर, दृढ़ता, 18 फरवरी, 2021 को लाल ग्रह पर उतरता है - और हम हर कदम का पालन करेंगे। नासा के साथ काम करने और उनके ग्रह अन्वेषण मिशनों को कवर करने के हमारे समृद्ध इतिहास को जोड़ते हुए, मंगल ग्रह पर दृढ़ता के काम और लैंडिंग का जश्न मनाने और उसका पालन करने वाले इन मुफ्त कार्यक्रमों के लिए ऑनलाइन शामिल हों। (https://www.exploratorium.edu/)

The sages of India conceived a comprehensive picture of the reality of all forms of creation which are also manifestations of the Supreme Consciousness. They also understood that the almighty consciousness gave birth in the process of creation to numerous gods and goddesses. Each god has a distinct purpose to fulfill. The tantra sastra similarly, teaches that apart from the material world in which we live, there exist other worlds and universe.
The Supreme Godhead controls these systems through the medium of a hierarchy of gods and goddesses (devatas). These entities exist in various planes on the rising tier of consciousness. These devatas help man in his uphill journey of liberation. The tantra developed this line with an eye on practical utility and this spiritual science is acclaimed as a great sadhana sastra or practical science. The concept of Sri Chakra Though the Supreme Consciousness is formless, nameless or timeless, in manifestation it has to limit itself to a form. The formless great radiance has to radiate rays of definite forms and channels them as the various gods thus creating out of ONE, MANY with specific and distinguishable forms ad features.
These lines of light create the form-patterns of the goods which are known as yantra or charkas. A yantra is an instrument, a machine or a storehouse of power. It contains rather, in itself in a controlled form, the uncontrollable power of the deity. Tantrics believe that by worshipping the charka of a deity, the worshipper realizes the same deity or in other words he merges with it. Mandala an important aspect of a yantra which is frequently drawn or made with powders of various colours. The mandala is used in the case of any deity whereas the charka is intended for a specific deity. In south India it is a practice in most of the homes to draw a mandala in front of the house every morning to bring in auspiciousness and to ward off evil. The Tamil word for mandala is kolam (guise), as it contains in disguise the divine power. The mandala employed in tantra is no decorative imagery for a ritual. It provides a potent Pages 289 - 291 material focus for the operation of subtler forces within and without. The Chakra like the mantra leads one to direct perception of the Divine form and that is the reason why so much emphasis is given to the Chakra in tantric worship. In the Chakra are caught the lines of beauty, harmony and symmetry on which the eternal geometrician fashions the universe.
And they are therefore, drawn with lines, triangles, circles and squares. All these are symbolic. The Symbolism The circle represents the principles with no beginning and no end. The triangle represents the triple principles of creation, the lower triple worlds as well as higher. It points out to the one that is threefold, the yoni, the origin of all matter. A triangle with apex turned up indicates a broad – based one – pointed aspiration rising from the depths to the heights. In tantric paralance it is called vahni kona, the cone of fire. This is the fire of aspiration which is ever burning in the heart of the worshipper and which carries (vah=to bear) on its crest his surrender to the Divine. The triangle with apex downwards in Sakti, the grace of the Divine Mother.
The well-known satkona formed by superimposition of a triangle with apex downwards over a triangle with apex upwards signifies a rising aspiration and a responding grace, the ascent of the being and the descent of the deity or in other words the dynamic Sakti superimposing on the heart of the static and supine Siva. The lotus flower signifies the gradual unfolding of the latent powers in the being. When the Chakra is conceived as the material manifestation of the Deity, all the emanations of the Deity are also conceived as stationed in the Chakra. The main deity (pradhan) takes abode in the centre of the Chakra while its emanations gather round the pradhana as the parivara devats. Worship is done to the parivars and then to the pradhana.
The Sri Chakra is a configuration of nine triangles, five triangles with apex downwards superimposed on four triangles with apex upwards. It consists of nine chakras. There are nine Chakreshwaris, nine classes of yoginis and nine mudras. Like the ninefold of Sri Chakra, the mantra is also nine fold as it contains only nine letters. The masters are nine in number. The human body has nine apertures. Therefore, an identity is sought to be established between Pages 289 - 291 the Chakra, Deity, Mantra, Guru and the sadhaka’s body. Sri Chakra is most auspicious and worshipped to get all the auspicious things in life, finally culminating in the attainment of liberation. It is also worshipped for the “six acts” viz., appeasement, attraction, stoppage, enemity, removal and death. The techniques for these specialized acts are described in various tantric texts. CONCLUSION The tantra deems it essential to inculcate the doctrine that no worship of the Deity is complete without the worship of the Deity’s body in a material image-an idol or a picture or some symbol in the physical world. Inner worship leads one on the path of yoga and knowledge.

Karl-Stéphan Bouthillette a consacré un mémoire de maîtrise à plusieurs livres de Lobsang Rampa (Le troisième œil, L’histoire de Rampa, etc.). Il situe brièvement ce qu’il appelle le mythe de Rampa dans le cadre des spiritualités contemporaines.

Theist religions argue for the pre-existence of self/Atman/ruh based on mentalistic idealism and/or interactive substance dualism frameworks; whereas Buddhism denies this; instead, this atheist religion (i) proposes Karmic theory (impression of karmas/

If, as John Locke stated, the uniqueness of Newar Buddhism ‘is related to the fact that it is embedded in a dominant Hindu society confined within a very small geographical area [as compared to India]’ and therefore is ‘very much a part of its (Hindu) surroundings’ (2005: 267), then it must be particularly telling to look at Newar Buddhism in Bhaktapur, the former seat of the Hindu Malla kings (1200-1768 CE). The town’s reputation as a Hindu city secured its place in scholarly literature at the latest with Robert Levy’s monumental and widely known work Mesocosm (1992), which portrayed Bhaktapur as a paradigmatic Hindu climax community. Although several scholars noticed the absence of information about the Buddhist community in the book, to date almost no research about this community exists. Much of the other published literature on Bhaktapur likewise reinforces a Hindu-centric perspective. An examination of the existing literature will therefore bring forward the question of how Bhaktapur has been represented and new findings will question older assumptions to show an alternative point of view. The article will identify some contours of the hitherto largely unknown Buddhist sphere of Bhaktapur and, whenever possible, bridge gaps in the current knowledge. To that end, the Buddhist deity Dīpaṅkara – of vital importance in the whole Valley of Kathmandu, but particularly in Bhaktapur – will serve as a crucial point of reference. Likewise, the role of Pañcadāna will be evaluated, as it is the city’s greatest Buddhist festival and involves a dramatic procession of five iconic Dīpaṅkara images.

Ethnic activists in Nepal after the 1990 political change have used two types of mobilization strategy regarding culture and religion. The first set of strategy is related to the specific demands on the state. The Nepali state has partly responded to them in recent years by recognizing and offering public holidays on ethnic festivals and, most notably, by declaring Nepal a secular state in 2006. The second set of strategy, which is the focus of this paper, involves inward activism. This activism has aimed at transforming ethnic cultural practices and worldviews from within. Under this scheme, ethnic organizations and activists have called for an ethnic cultural revival as well as the purification of ethnic cultures from what they have termed "Hindu" or Hindu-inflected cultural practices. A non-Hindu imagination and an emphasis on the distinctiveness of ethnic cultures from "Hindu culture" have been one of the major characteristic features of Nepal's Janajàti movement (Gellner, Pfaff-

Muktinath falls in the Himalayan region of Nepal. The religious point of view of Lord Shri Vishnu's place of pilgrimage seems very important. Buddhists worship as lokeshwor and Hindus as Bishnu. There is some discussion about theTemple in Tibet and Nepal. But the extent of when and how is still mistry.

The word Emptiness has many various meanings. The experience of awareness becoming aware of its own self opens the experience of emptiness in a most direct manner. Experientially emptiness has many faces. Sometimes the face of emptiness is a void or abyss like experience. This abyss can open the unhappy experience of falling and falling and falling. This void experience can at times open the experience of disappearing and dissolving into a terrifying nothingness. And sometimes emptiness is experienced as no thingness. Sometimes emptiness is experience like endless and infinite space. Sometimes emptiness is experienced as unbound openness. Sometimes emptiness is experienced as deep unmoving stillness, stillness of movement and stillness of sound. Sometimes emptiness is experienced as bliss, vast bliss. All these variations of experience unfold over time as one becomes aware of their own awareness. Sometimes emptiness is experienced as freedom of pure potentiality. Often the word sunyata implies the experience and nature of emptiness. The personal experience of emptiness is a vast range experience often beyond words and language. The human range of experiencing emptiness is vast and ineffable. The experience of emptiness can range from nihilistic experience that can not be thought to the positive experience that is unbound bliss as gnosis. This wide range of meaning of emptiness is not only personally experiential but there is vast range of the historical cultural unfolding of the appearance of emptiness and articulation of emptiness by the various spiritual traditions. Over time the phenomena of emptiness has been articulated in various ways, and at times in ways that are in opposition to each other.