lay-life
14 articles in tag.
Layman Zhuang Chunjiang: Basic Understanding of Learning Buddhism — Chapter 7: Mahayana Bodhisattva Practice, Section 2: The Great Bodhisattva Practice
Based on when the relevant scriptures and methods emerged, the Mahayana bodhisattva path likely began to take shape three or four centuries after the Buddha's passing. What's more, certain Mahayana ideas and teachings don't appear in the...
ReadLay Buddhist Zhuang Chunjiang: A Basic Understanding of Buddhism, Chapter 6: The Stream of Noble Ones
In Buddhist practice, there's a milestone that matters more than most: "non-retreat" (avaivartika). What does it mean? It means you've entered a stage of practice so stable and so settled that from this point on, your progress can only c...
ReadLay Buddhist Zhuang Chunjiang: A Basic Understanding of Buddhism — Chapter 4: Understanding the Self, Section 2: The Development of Our Cognition
We often say that affliction and suffering arise from the body and mind’s reactions to what we encounter. More precisely, they emerge as our physical and mental responses develop in the moment we meet and make sense of a situation. The s...
ReadLay Buddhist Zhuang Chunjiang: Basic Understanding of Buddhist Practice, Chapter 5: Buddhism in Everyday Life, Section 2: Counteracting and Taming
As the six sense bases engage with their corresponding objects, we ordinary beings can't even stay in the state of "lucid contact" — letting contact remain just contact, without spiraling into defilement. Even stopping at the stage of "f...
ReadFocus and Awareness: Dharma in Daily Life from *Fundamentals of Buddhist Practice*
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ReadLay Practitioner Zhuang Chunjiang: A Basic Understanding of Buddhism, Chapter 8 — Taking Refuge and Receiving Precepts
During the Buddha's time, lay followers would often hear the teachings directly from the Buddha or from enlightened Arhats. Profoundly awakening to the Dharma, their doubts would dissolve, giving rise to a firm, unshakable resolve. They ...
ReadZhuang Chunjiang, Lay Buddhist: A Study of the Tathāgatagarbha, Chapter 1: Introduction
- Interpreting the Tathāgatagarbha through the "emptiness of suchness" and the "emptiness of dependent origination." - Interpreting the Tathāgatagarbha "self" through the Buddha’s unhindered freedom. - Understanding the Tathāgatagarbha a...
ReadLay Buddhist Practitioner Zhuang Chunjiang: A Study of the Tathāgatagarbha — Chapter 4: The Conception and Completion of the Tathāgatagarbha Doctrine
The Avataṃsaka Sūtra contains three key passages that express Tathāgatagarbha teachings, even though it never explicitly uses the term "Tathāgatagarbha": The Huayan (Avataṃsaka) teaching of the buddha-realm matrix is infinitely layered, ...
ReadZhuang Chunjiang (Lay Buddhist Devotee): A Study of the Tathāgatagarbha, Chapter 5: Early Buddhist Canonical Scriptures on the Tathāgatagarbha Doctrine
The Aṅgulimālīya Sūtra, Śrīmālādevī Siṃhanāda Sūtra, and Non-Increase Non-Decrease Sūtra all teach that the mind is intrinsically pure. The latter two sutras have concise, well-structured doctrine, approaching the style of treatises, and...
ReadLay Buddhist Zhuang Chunjiang: A Study of the Tathāgatagarbha, Chapter 6: The Mainstream of Tathāgatagarbha Doctrine
These three dimensions of the Tathāgatagarbha—“the Buddha’s Dharmakāya,” “undifferentiated true suchness,” and the “definitive, fixed Buddha-seed nature”—are simply different ways of describing the same fundamental reality: spoken of fro...
ReadLayperson Zhuang Chunjiang: Fundamentals of Buddhist Practice — Chapter 5: The Dharma in Daily Life — Section 1: Discipline of the Six Sense Faculties
The most precious gift of the Dharma is its ability to fully resolve the suffering and distress we live with. And that suffering and distress arise right in the midst of our everyday lives. So if our Dharma practice can’t weave itself in...
ReadLay Buddhist Zhuang Chunjiang: *A Study of the Tathāgatagarbha*, Chapter 8: Discerning the Tathāgatagarbha Buddha-Nature
A Study of the Tathāgatagarbha
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