RE: The Early Schools of Indian Buddhism Series
It's been sometime that I dropped by your blog and it looks like I have a missed a couple of posts in between. Sorry about that.
Reading this particular post, I felt that I need to go back to the previous couple of posts and read them first. Usually, I pick up stuff pretty quickly but in this one I had to repeat a few parts to get them through to my mind. Probably shoudn't have missed the last couple of posts. I'll go back to them once I read this again. Although the this tenth part was fairly independent but having read all the previous ones would have helped.
I remember something really interesting about the word Sangharama. I am from India and have studied Sanskrit in school for 4 years. I remember the school textbook (or maybe another book that I saw at the same time) depicting this picture of Gautama siting under a tree with his disciples. This picture was used to depict the word sangharama. I think it left a weird impression on my mind that the base of the tree where Buddha sat and the surrounding monks together were called sangharama. I am not sure, it was all at least fifteen years ago and I have forgotten a lot.
Still its really interesting to me to know that a picture and a word that I never use would stick to me for so long :-)
Our article "Buddhist schools at the time of the Fourth ‘Vasumitra’ ‘Kanishka’ Council at Jalandhar," was my favorite. We found an old story about how a nation was conquered by corrupting their youth and I realized while editing the story we found that humanity hasn't changed much regarding greed and will to power for thousands of years. The only difference I see between ancient cultures and our current global culture is technology. Humans haven't evolved along with their machines. Sangharama can mean many things depending on context. I don't know sanskirt as well as I know Pali, I studied Pali to help me understand my meditation and sutta teachings. Sangharma can mean temple, monastery, garden, tree grove for monastic communities, a class of devas and a Bodhisattva from East Asia, a famous warrior who died in battle and became a wandering ghost. Long story you can find here ==> https://kagyuoffice.org/karmapa-revives-the-tsurphu-protector-practice-of-sangharama/
Hey @reddust, sorry for the late reply. I had the link you gave me open in my browser for the last two days but almost forgot to read it. It is quite good actually, although a little abstract to me (mention of spiritual experiences and such) but I think I got the gist of it. Neverthelss I was only focusing on the references to Sangharma. Where it is mentioned in the context of Guan gong, was pretty interesting to read.
Even as I read the article, my easily swayed attention was still focused on what you said in the reply:
This is so true that it is a bit unnerving to analyze deeply. For all our sophistication and claims of Frontal cortex ruling our actions, the human kind is still slave to its deeper and reptilian part of the brain. Particularly when push comes to shove.