Sukhavati

Published on 25th July, 2021, in Mid-day. Chinese scholars realised the Buddhism they were receiving was in diluted or corrupted form. So, many monks travelled to India by land and sea routes to get the original documents. They translated them into the local languages. This happened between the fifth and the eighth century, over a period of 300-400 years, for certain. We have accounts of three monks that tell us the period when Indian society transitioned gradually from Buddhism towards Hinduism. They were Faxian in the Gupta period, Hiuen Tsang or Xuanzang during the reign of Harshavardhan of Kannauj (who was a contemporary of Prophet ..

Published on 16th September, 2018, in Mid-day. A dramatic shift happened in Buddhism roughly 500 years after the historical Buddha. This dramatic shift is the rise of what is called Mahayana Buddhism or the Great Vehicle of Buddhism. This thought perhaps emerged in Kashmir and Afghanistan and spread to China, where it was patronised by the local kings, especially the Tang dynasty in the 7th century, and eventually spread to Japan. The fundamental difference between Mahayana Buddhism and the older school of Buddhism is that it had a far more optimistic view of life. The older school, or the 'Theravada' school or the 'Abhidhamma' school, ..