Happy Holidays from the Open Buddhist University! We’re happy to offer you two new sections of our free library this month on Animals and the Human Body as well as a significant upgrade to our previous selections on the Khuddakanikāya.
Buddhism sees animals as fellow living beings to be treated with sympathy and compassion for their unfortunate circumstance. We see ourselves in animals both because they, like us, are composed of the four great elements and the five aggregates but also because we Buddhists believe that we have been animals too in countless previous lives.
Our new bibliography on Buddhism and Animals explores these themes and the many ethical, philosophical, and practical questions that arrise when we take animals seriously as “future Buddhas” in their own right.
The Jātaka Tales, of course, are the starting point for that discourse, as they tell of the many past lives of the Buddha in which he was an animal.
Together with the Avadānas about the Buddha’s disciples and the Petavatthu about rebirth in the ghost realms, ancient Buddhist tales offer a rich tapestry of stories about Saṃsāra and our strange lives within it, as Bhante Sujato explains in his excellent, short lecture series on Buddhist Mythology.
In addition to the mythical, the Pāli Khuddakanikāya also contains several poetry collections:
On the above, new pages you’ll find high-quality translations of each collection along with some scholarly analysis and lectures as well. I hope you enjoy them!
Lastly, we’re proud to announce today the addition of a collection of resources on the human body. You might start with this article on what every meditator should know about the physiology of breathing, but the whole bibliography is full of valuable information for anyone with a body.
I hope you’ll have time this holiday season to check these (or our previous offerings) out and, of course, to relax and deepen your practice as well.
Wishing you all the best in the New Year,
The Librarian,
Khemarato Bhikkhu
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