The Rev. Fumiaki Usuki is the temple minister of the West Los Angeles Buddhist Temple, which has a Facebook page.

The Dalai Lama’s aides clarified his statements on Osama bin Laden’s death and said the Buddhist leader believes bin Laden deserves “compassion.”

On May 3, 2011, the Dalai Lama, leader of Tibetan Buddhism, said that while Buddhism, like most Western religions, calls for forgiveness, “Forgiveness doesn’t mean forget what happened. … If something is serious and it is necessary to take countermeasures, you have to take countermeasures.”

Read a Pew Forum analysis (updated in February 2011) titled “Faith on the Hill: The Religious Composition of the 112th Congress.” It finds that Mormons are better-represented in Congress than they are in the U.S. population.

Joe Eldridge is university chaplain at American University in Washington, D.C. The University’s Kay Spiritual Life Center is an interfaith house of worship, and its chaplains have written that “we are Baha’i, Buddhist, Catholic, Jewish, Hindu, Latter-day Saints, Muslim, various strands of Protestant and Unitarian,” representing some of the religious diversity of the school. His focus is […]

Rabbi Shefa Gold is director of the Center for Devotional Energy and Ecstatic Prayer in Jemez Springs, N.M. She teaches workshops and retreats on chanting, devotional healing, spiritual community building and meditation. Shefa combines her grounding in Judaism with a background in Buddhist, Christian, Islamic, and Native American spiritual traditions and says she returned to Judaism because […]

The Tibetan Book of the Dead, or Bardo Thodol, records the stages of death and rebirth. It is intended to guide one through the bardo, or the conscious interval between death and rebirth.

The Sutras are held sacred by Mahayana Buddhists. They are a loose collection of texts designed to unify contradictions among the various teachings and thus very difficult to describe succinctly.

The Tripitaka (Pali Canon), which means “three baskets,” is the earliest collection of Buddha’s teachings and the only text revered by Theravada Buddhists. It includes the Vinaya Pitaka (“Discipline Basket”), the Sutta Pitaka (Sutra/ Sayings Basket), and the Abhidhamma Pitaka. The Vinaya Pitaka deals with rules for Theravada monks and nuns and explains etiquette and […]