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Cats don’t have names: Does Neil Gaiman’s black cat teach emptiness?
‘Please. What’s your name?’ Coraline asked the cat. ‘Look, I’m Coraline. OK?’ The cat yawned slowly, carefully, revealing a mouth and a tongue of astounding pinkness. ‘Cats don’t have names,’ it said. ‘No?’ said Coraline. ‘No,’ said the cat. ‘Now, you people have names. That’s because you don’t know who you are. We know who we are, so we don’t need names.’ Neil Gaiman, Coraline (2002), p. 42. Neil Gaiman’s brilliant book entitled Coraline. The reader trying to make sense of this article may ask why the character Coraline is talking to a cat, they may be in awe trying to understand how a cat can engage in conversation, or…
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Exchanging self for others: the ongoing process of hospitality in Mahāyāna Buddhism
Before we begin, I would like to propose a brief exercise. Please consider this as an invitation to experience something different, but feel free to not engage in it if you do not feel comfortable with it. Let us imagine ourselves, with all the conditions we currently have at our disposal: food, drink, a roof over our heads, education, access to health system, a community we are part of, and also our abilities to benefit other beings. Even though we have all that, our minds are focused on the problems we have in our daily lives – papers to write, our jobs to keep, taxes and debts, conflicts with family…
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Putting oneself in someone else’s shoes: Engaging inter-religious dialogues from within
The expression “putting oneself in someone else’s shoes” is used in situations in which we should try to understand what another person is feeling or the hardships they are going through. But sometimes we have to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes to understand that person’s worldviews, mindsets, and even emotions. Empathy, solidarity, and compassion arise from this mental and bodily action. In Mahāyāna Buddhist traditions compassion (Skt. karuṇā; Tib. སྙིང་རྗེ་), loving-kindness (Skt. maitrī; Tib. བྱམས་པ་), joy (Skt. muditā; Tib. དགའ་བ་), and equanimity (Skt. upekṣā; Tib. བཏང་སྙོམས་) arise from the developing process of the altruistic resolution to become a Buddha (Skt. bodhicitta; Tib. བྱང་ཆུབ་སེམས་), beginning with the first step of…
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What is generosity from a Buddhist perspective?
What is generosity? We commonly think of generosity as an action – we give food to someone who asks, we give money to someone on the streets – but generosity can involve many aspects that can be taken for granted. In Mahāyāna Buddhism, generosity (Skt. dāna-pāramitā, Tib. སྦྱིན་པའི་ཕ་རོལ་ཏུ་ཕྱིན་པ་) is one of the pāramitās (a word that is commonly translated as “perfection,” but actually means something closer to “something that goes beyond”), and the practice of this perfection is important for the accumulation of merit (Skt. puṇya, Tib. བསོད་ནམས་). But what is merit? In some popular understandings, merit can be explained using the analogy of money in a bank account –…
