Envisioning Paradise

The majority of the murals at Dunhuang that depict Maitreya are dominated by his three assemblies, thereby emphasizing the salvific power of the future Buddha after he has descended to earth. This article examines scenes from the Maitreya murals, highlighting details appearing across the murals that allow us to understand how adherents imagined life in an earthly paradise. Most scenes in the murals accentuate the magnificence of life in Maitreya's terrestrial Buddhaland, characterized by manageable yet rewarding labor and a long life that never ends suddenly, all in a clean urban environment. Hence, in this realm some labor is still required and social hierarchies are maintained. Unlike the celestial realm of Amitābha Buddha, Maitreya's land is ruled by an ideal leader, the Wheel-Turning King Saṅkha. The article concludes by examining the tension between the power of the religious leader and the political ruler, evident even though the paintings do not include representations of Saṅkha himself. Rather, they depict his regalia, his gift, and his family in prominent positions, near Maitreya, thus suggesting that the future Buddha absorbed Saṅkha's political power, which parallels contemporaneous political and religious developments.

Mathematical models of wheel turning processes road construction vehicles

The construction of highways is a complex, multi-stage process. Most of the construction works are carried out according to the projects of structures and quite high requirements are imposed on the quality of execution. The fulfillment of these requirements is associated with great difficulties in view of the limited accuracy of the road construction machine itself, the lack of on-board control systems and the limited capabilities of the human operator, who is unable to determine the required exact parameters of the structure being built «by eye». To meet the requirements, three-dimensional control systems are used, which allow determining 3 coordinates of the working order of the machine – the vertical coordinate and the location of the machine on the construction site. At the same time, the digital project of the constructed structure should be the setter in such a system. The system determines the current position and compares it with the project. On the basis of this information, a control effect on the operating organ of the machine is formed. The course of movement and the speed of the machine when using such systems are determined by the machine operator. Further development of these systems should be four-dimensional systems – in which all control actions are assigned to the control system, starting from calculating the trajectory of the machine, choosing the speed, determining the required number of passes and ending with controlling the position of the working body of the machine at each moment of time. For the functioning of these systems, adequate mathematical models of the turning processes of road construction machines with different steering options are necessary.

Buddhist Statecraft

In the modern day, the connection between Buddhism and statecraft is readily seen in the Theravada monarchies of Southeast Asia; however, in premodern times, Buddhist kings and Buddhist methods of statecraft were commonplace across South, Central, and East Asia as well. This link between Buddhism and political leadership is rooted in two powerful legends that came out of the early tradition and which have been invoked across all of Asia. The first is that of the birth and life story of the historical Buddha, Śākyamuni, who was himself a prince of a small kingdom and destined to be either a “Wheel-Turning King” (cakravartin) and universal monarch or an “Enlightened One” (buddha). Though his father preferred that he extend his birthright by becoming a universal monarch, he went on to renounce palace life, go in search of awakening, and become a buddha. Nonetheless, the mythic connection between the Buddha (otherworldly power) and the Wheel-Turning King (worldly power) remains an essential aspect of a buddha’s identity. The second legend is that of Mauryan Emperor Aśoka (r. 262–238 bce); uniting the Indian subcontinent through violent means, Aśoka is believed by the tradition to have converted to Buddhism and then become the religion’s most generous and powerful benefactor who ruled according to Buddhist law, or dharma. Across the entirety of Asia, connections between Buddhism and statecraft have taken on regionally specific forms. There is a long history of rulers in South and Southeast Asia who have sponsored Theravada Buddhism as the state religion and have sanctified their rules and their reigns through close relations with the monastic community. In the Tibetan context of the practice of Vajrayāna Buddhism, rulers themselves became identified as bodhisattvas in a system reminiscent of the divine right of kings in Europe. In East Asia, there was a Chinese-style bureaucratic governance that looked to the Buddha as an otherworldly figurehead while translating long-standing Chinese imperial systems into something that we might call “Confucian with a Buddhist inflection.” As Chinese modalities of statecraft were adopted and adapted by other polities in the East Asian cultural sphere—notably, Korea and Japan, but also Vietnam—this Chinese form of imperial Buddhism became a mainstay of East Asian life throughout the entire premodern period. Therefore, we can see various different manifestations of Buddhist statecraft in theory and practice across Asia and throughout history up until the present.

Simulation of the Effect of Turning Steering Wheel Intensity on the Vehicle Stability

In this article, a mathematical model has been developed to show the effect of the drivers’ steering wheel turning intensity on the vehicle’s stability. The developed mathematical model was compared with the results of experiment and its adequacy was evaluated. 3 conditional drivers turn the steering wheel of the vehicle at different speeds. When the conditional drivers were analyzed in the “J-turn” maneuver, it was determined that the indicators of 1,2,3 - conditional drivers are close to the standard. The conditional 2-driver recorded an indicator close to the standard. As for the “Single Lane Change” maneuver, the value of the smallest quadratic deviation from the trajectory of conditional 1-driver was recorded, the correlation index was equal to 0.102, respectively, 0.88