Dharma World Buddhist magazine

Published quarterly, Dharma World is a magazine that presents Buddhism as a practical living religion and promotes interreligious dialogue for world peace. It espouses views that emphasize the dignity of life, seeks to rediscover our inner nature and bring our lives more in account with it, and investigates causes of human suffering. It tries to show how religious principles help solve problems in daily life and how the least application of such principles has wholesome effects on the world around us. It seeks to demonstrate truths that are fundamental to all religions, truths on which all people can act.

Dharma World magazine July-September 2013 Where Does the Buddha Live Now?

IN THIS ISSUE

Where Does the Buddha Live Now?

Some 2,500 years ago in India, Siddhartha Gotama attained supreme awakening to the Dharma and preached it for forty-five years, helping countless people find spiritual liberation, until his death at the age of eighty.

The Lotus Sutra, however, reveals that Shakyamuni is not really dead, but that he entered nirvana and is the Eternal Buddha, who is everywhere. His entry into nirvana is a skillful means that encourages us to follow in his footsteps. He is like the benevolent fathers depicted in the sutra's parables and is always with us, wishing all of us to attain the supreme awakening he did.

However, in our turbulent times, it is especially hard to sense the existence of the Eternal Buddha. Some people, overwhelmed by skepticism, have no belief in any divine reality. This issue considers how to seek the Buddha in the contemporary world.