In the six century BCE and simultaneously with the formation of the Achaemenid Dynasty in Iran many Indians abandoned their homes and wandered as monks into deserts and jungles. Their purpose from such wandering life was to lead a religious life in order to get rid of all the pains that mortals are doomed to suffer. One of these monks was Gautama or Buddha whose real name was Sidarta. 

There are four places, Ananda, a pious person should visit, look upon with feelings and sentiments of reverence. What are the four (4)?

The Thais are a deeply religious people. For the Buddhist majority it underlies all activities and is the backbone of the Thai culture – a culture that has survived intact and independent for so long largely because of the principles of the Buddhist faith.

Tảo Sách Pagoda - the millennium-old sacred building, which is located at 386 Lạc Long Quân Street, Nhật Tân Precinct, Tây Hồ District, Hà Nội Capital, formally known as Tào Sách (original name) and then Linh Sơn (second name) in Nhật Tân Commune, Thượng communal group, Hoàng Long District, Hà Đông province (olden day), has long been recognized as a historical and cultural relic.

Myanmar, or Burma as the nation has been known throughout history, is one of the major countries following Theravada Buddhism. In recent years Myanmar has attained special eminence as the host for the Sixth Buddhist Council, held in Yangon (Rangoon) between 1954 and 1956, and as the source from which two of the major systems of Vipassana meditation have emanated out into the greater world: the tradition springing from the Venerable Mahasi Sayadaw of Thathana Yeiktha and that springing from Sayagyi U Ba Khin of the International Meditation Centre.

Several recent writers have claimed that some of Naagaarjuna's ideas are in agreement with those of the later Wittgenstein and that Naagaarjuna can be seen as taking up a Wittgensteinian position against his opponents. I believe that such views are mistaken and that it is, if anything, the Tractarian nature of his philosophy which explains "Naagaarjuna's paradox," namely, the fact that his effort to destroy all views had the opposite result of creating scholasticisms both ancient and modern which obscure the religious truth which was his principal concern.

Xuanzang: A Buddhist Pilgrim on the Silk Road. By Sally Hovey Wriggins. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996. Pp. xxiv, 263. $32.50.) Ancient and medieval China produced at least three great explorers who are comparable to Ibn Batuta and Marco Polo: Zhang Qian (second century B.C.), and the Buddhist monks Fa Man (fifth century A.D.) and Xuanzang (seventh century A.D.). Of the five, perhaps the greatest, and certainly the one with the deepest influence on his own and related civilizations, was Xuanzang.

In this great philosophical insight the ontology of interdependence of cause and effect is explained as a relationship of conjoint conditionality. The texts of Amritkanika equate life and death cycle with ignorance of conjoint conjunction. An animate being rotates in the cycle of birth and death on account of avidya, i.e. not knowing the true nature of existence of life. It is pertinent to mention that ancient wisdom always looked for essence and nature of human life.