Buddhism
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Buddhism and Interfaith Dialogue in Brazil: An Interview with Patricia Palazzo Tsai
As part of interfaith week, we are interviewing a number of people connected with Practical Theology Hub about their work on interfaith dialogue. In this interview we ask our Topic Editor for Buddhism, Patricia Palazzo Tsai, about interfaith dialogue and Buddhist traditions in Brazil. Tell us about yourself. My name is Patricia Palazzo Tsai – a Brazilian Mahāyāna Geluk Buddhist practitioner. I am serving as Topic Editor for Buddhism of Practical Theology Hub, Legal Director of Associação Buddha-Dharma in Brazil, Legal Director of Sakyadhita São Paulo, and I also teach at the undergraduate program of Buddhist Theology at Instituto Pramāṇa. Besides all this I am conducting my PhD research at…
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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 –…
