A Mahāyānist Movement in the Luohei Shan (Lahu Mountains) of Southwestern Yunnan

Inner Asia ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-333
Author(s):  
Anthony Walker
Keyword(s):  
Religious Architecture ◽  
High Gods ◽  
Village Communities ◽  
The Buddha ◽  
Ritual Architecture

AbstractSome village communities of the mountain-dwelling, Tibeto-Burman speaking Lahu peoples support temples and an associated priesthood, whose principal purpose is to honour their creator-divinity G'ui sha. Neither temples nor ritual devotion to a High God are commonly present among the Lahu people's upland neighbours. Relatively small spirit shrines are the principal form of ritual architecture and high gods are typically seen as being unconcerned with human affairs; consequently, it can serve no useful purpose to “worship” them. This paper seeks to demonstrate that these peculiarities of Lahu custom and belief derive from a Mahayanist movement that swept through the Lahu mountain homelands in southwestern Yunnan, probably beginning in the late seventeenth to mid eighteenth centuries CE. The result was (a) the establishment of temples as the principal form of religious architecture among many (not all) Lahu communities and an identification of their high-god G'ui sha with the Buddha Śākyamuni and consequently–following Mahāyānist ideology – with transcendental Buddhahood.

Stūpa Pagoda Caitya

Buddhism ◽  
2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrich Pagel
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Building Materials ◽  
Variant Form ◽  
National Unity ◽  
Regular Feature ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Religious Architecture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Stone Sculpture ◽  
The Buddha

The stūpa ranks among the most visible and enduring symbols of Buddhism. It first appeared in the shape of a hemispherical earthen mound sometime around 400 to 300 bce. In India, stūpas became a prominent and regular feature of Buddhist monastic complexes soon after that. Already during the 3rd and 2nd centuries bce, we meet with large-scale stūpa constructions at a number of key Buddhist sites, including Bhārhut, Sāñchī, and, perhaps a little later, Amarāvatī. As buddhist monks began to spread the buddha’s teachings to the other countries of Asia from the 2nd century bce onward, stūpas grew into one of the most readily identifiable symbols of their arrival. Even in those areas where Buddhism did not survive (including India), the stūpas were left behind to continue to testify to the (once-) widespread presence of Buddhist communities, including in Afghanistan, central Asia, Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia, and Laos, as well as in its variant form as a pagoda in China, Vietnam, Korea, and Japan. As Buddhism gained acceptance in these countries, it molded its prescriptions governing stūpa construction to accommodate local architectural traditions, discovering new building materials and changing shapes. From early on, stūpa structures were employed for multiple purposes. They served as central places of worship attracting monks and laymen, were adopted as mortuary containers to hold the ashes of local monks, were used to raise funds to improve living conditions in monasteries, became destinations of pilgrimage, and, more recently, have been turned into symbols of national unity, to name only a few. However, most importantly, they served to signal the presence of the buddha, not just in the abstract but also in a very physical living sense, commanding specific rights and privileges through the relics they enshrined. Furthermore, as a carrier of archaeological evidence, the stūpa continues to hold a prominent place in the study of the history of Buddhism, because its structures feature some of the earliest examples of religious architecture, stone sculpture, and inscriptions in South Asia.

scholarly journals KETERKAITAN AKTIVITAS PRADAKSINA PADA RAGAM TIPOLOGI BANGUNAN STUPA

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 247
Author(s):  
FERLINA SUGATA
Keyword(s):  
Space Dimension ◽  
The West ◽  
Religious Architecture ◽  
The World ◽  
Dimension Space ◽  
And Function ◽  
The Buddha ◽  
Walking Stick

Circumambulation as one of the Buddhist worship activity is a pathway around the shrines  clockwise, from East to the West. There are two kinds of  pradaksina activity refer  to schools in Buddhism, the Theravada as an honor symbol and the Mahayana as one type of meditation. Stupa as one of Buddhist worship architecture is a place to accommodate the activity itself and the worship symbol  as well.  Stupa is a conical monument erected over relics of  the Buddhas, Arhats, Kings or other great men. Stupa as a religious architecture nowadays became the image of The Buddha as known all around the world  which is also known as the symbol of the composition of robe, bowl, and walking stick from a monk. The interrelatedness  between the pradaksina as an activity and the stupa as the architecture cause some effects that related to space dimension, space quality, orientation of space, and function of the building. All the effects only influence the spatial matter but not influence the meaning of pradaksina and the stupa. Keyword: pradaksina; stupa’s typology, the interrelatedness

Rethinking the Buddha

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eviatar Shulman
Keyword(s):  
The Buddha

A Modified Chair Geometry for Whole Body Counting

1976 ◽  
Vol 15 (05) ◽  
pp. 246-247
Author(s):  
S. C. Jain ◽  
G. C. Bhola ◽  
A. Nagaratnam ◽  
M. M. Gupta
Keyword(s):  
Marked Improvement ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Whole Body ◽  
Spatial Response ◽  
Body Counting ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Whole Body Counting ◽  
The Buddha

SummaryIn the Marinelli chair, a geometry widely used in whole body counting, the lower part of the leg is seen quite inefficiently by the detector. The present paper describes an attempt to modify the standard chair geometry to minimise this limitation. The subject sits crossed-legged in the “Buddha Posture” in the standard chair. Studies with humanoid phantoms and a volunteer sitting in the Buddha posture show that this modification brings marked improvement over the Marinelli chair both from the point of view of sensitivity and uniformity of spatial response.

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