Bardo Thodol: The Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State, it is often referred to in the West by the more casual title, Tibetan Book of the Dead, a name which draws a parallel with the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, another funerary text.The Tibetan text describes, and is intended to guide one through, the experiences that the consciousness has after death, during the interval between death and the next rebirth. This interval is known in Tibetan as the bardo. The text also includes chapters on the signs of death, and rituals to undertake when death is closing in, or has taken place. It is the most internationally famous and widespread work of Tibetan Nyingma literature.According to Tibetan tradition, the Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State was composed in the 8th century by Padmasambhava, written down by his primary student, Yeshe Tsogyal, buried in the Gampo hills in central Tibet and subsequently discovered by a Tibetan terton, Karma Lingpa, in the 14th century.[7][8] There were variants of the book among different sects.[9] The Tibetan Book of the Dead was first published in 1927 by Oxford University Press. Dr. Walter Y. Evans-Wentz chose this title because of the parallels he found with the Egyptian Book of the Dead.[10]The Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State is recited by Tibetan Buddhist lamas over a dying or recently deceased person, or sometimes over an effigy of the deceased. The name means literally "liberation through hearing in the intermediate state".

The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch is a Buddhist scripture that was composed in China during the 8th to 13th century. The text centers around teachings and stories ascribed to the sixth Chan patriarch Huineng. It contains the well-known story of the contest for the succession of Hongren, and discourses and dialogues attributed to Huineng. The text attributes its recollection to Fa-hai, but was probably written within the so-called Oxhead School, which existed along with the East Mountain School and Shenhui's Southern School. The text attempts to reconcile the so-called Northern School with its alleged gradual enlightenment teachings, and the so-called Southern School with its alleged sudden enlightenment teachings. In effect, the text incorporates the "rhetorical purity" which originated with Shenhui's attack on Shenxiu, while effectively "writing him out of the story". The key topics of the discourse are the direct perception of one's true nature, and the unity in essence of śīla, dhyāna and prajñā.

The arahant ideal and the bodhisattva ideal are often considered the respective guiding ideals of Theravāda Buddhism and Mahāyāna Buddhism. This assumption is not entirely correct, for the Theravāda tradition has absorbed the bodhisattva ideal into its framework and thus recognizes the validity of both arahantship and Buddhahood as objects of aspiration.

This work presents facts and figures about the current condition of Buddhism in Thailand, historical background sketches of the establishment and growth of the Buddhist community in Thailand and information on Buddhist education in Thailand. (9-10 December, 2002)

This work on Vietnamese Buddhism from its beginnings through the 20th century provides much evidence requiring Western Buddhologists to radically revise their heretofore accepted time-table for the arrival and development of Buddhism in Vietnam. It provides previously unknown data, detailed in nomenclature, time, and place, scrupulously gathered from archeological finds and ancient archival records by Vietnamese research-teams. Providing much historical analysis and cultural interpretation along the way, this work carries its project forward through the various royal dynasties and the French colonial period.

As we practise more and more and begin to realize the profundity of the Buddhist Teachings, it becomes a real joy to take these refuges, and even just their recitation inspires the mind. After twenty-two years as a monk, I still like to chant ‘Buddham saranam gacchami’ — in fact I like it more than I did twenty-one years ago — because then it didn’t really mean anything to me, I just chanted it because I had to, because it was part of the tradition. Merely taking refuge verbally in the Buddha doesn’t mean you take refuge in anything: a parrot could be trained to say ‘Buddham saranam gacchami’, and it would probably be as meaningful to a parrot as it is to many Buddhists. These words are for reflection, looking at them and actually investigating what they mean: what ‘refuge’ means, what ‘Buddha’ means. When we say, ‘I take refuge in the Buddha,’ what do we mean by that? How can we use that so it is not just a repetition of nonsense syllables, but something that really helps to remind us, gives us direction and increases our devotion, our dedication to the path of the Buddha?

The essence of the Buddha's teaching can be summed up in two principles: the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path. The first covers the side of doctrine, and the primary response it elicits is understanding; the second covers the side of discipline, in the broadest sense of that word, and the primary response it calls for is practice. In the structure of the teaching these two principles lock together into an indivisible unity called the dhamma-vinaya, the doctrine-and-discipline, or, in brief, the Dhamma. The internal unity of the Dhamma is guaranteed by the fact that the last of the Four Noble Truths, the truth of the way, is the Noble Eightfold Path, while the first factor of the Noble Eightfold Path, right view, is the understanding of the Four Noble Truths. Thus the two principles penetrate and include one another, the formula of the Four Noble Truths containing the Eightfold Path and the Noble Eightfold Path containing the Four Truths.

Mindfulness as to respiration is also concentration-developing. But one can develop insight from it. Visuddhi-Magga, however, includes it in the concentration subjects and so we will call it as such here.