ABC
Religious texts
Religious schools and traditions
Heavenly beings and deities
Legendary and historical figures
Legendary and real places
Symbols and art
Doctrines and rituals
- Awakening
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- Compassion
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- Happiness
- Heavens and hells
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- Non-self
- Om (mani padme hum)
- Parinirvana
- Pilgrimage sites
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- Renunciation
- Ritual
- Self
- Suffering
- Tales of rebirth
- Three Jewels
- Three-body doctrine
- Universal ruler
- Vesak
- Ye-dhamma formula
- Yoga
Compassion
Doctrines and rituals
Compassion (Skt. karuna) is an important concept in Mahayana Buddhism. Compassion and wisdom are regarded as constitutive elements of a bodhisattva. It is out of compassion for all sentient beings locked in the eternal cycle of rebirth that a bodhisattva pledges not to enter nirvana before all beings have attained the ultimate truth.
«May all beings be free from hostility, free from oppression, free from fearfulness, may they live happily thereafter.»1
Sutrapitaka
1 Mettakatha: Patisambidhamagga II, 130, quoted after Alois Payer, Materialien zur buddhistischen Ethik, Lehrveranstaltung Ethik des Buddhismus, Univ. Tübingen, Ch. 6, Die vier unbegrenzten Haltungen, http://www.payer.de/buddhethik/ethbud08.htm, last accessed 24. 09. 2018, translation by NS.
Voices
Jens Schlieter
Marcel Geisser
Buudai Enkhbat
Yuka Nakamura
Bhante Tikino
Margrit Horlacher
Heiri Schenkel
Kayenne Ha
Phrajit Ziegler
Thich Duc Tinh