The conventional definitions of “love” and “compassion” are quite limited, says Buddhist scholar Mu Soeng. He explains that real love is marked by a deep and transformative feeling of care and sadness. A phrase in one of the Korean liturgical chants has always seemed to me to be a gateway to a deeper understanding of compassion in the Buddhist tradition. The chant is [...]
An excerpt from Mu Soeng’s new book, “The Heart of the Universe: Exploring the Heart Sutra”
In this exclusive excerpt from his book, The Heart of the Universe, Mu Soeng sheds light on the Buddhist view of the self. As reviewed in our March 2010 issue, Mu Soeng's new book "helps us understand the seminal Heart Sutra and its intuitive view of the nature of ultimate reality, and has an ultramodern twist, focusing on the place where quantum physics and Mahayana Buddhism [...]
What is Devaduta?
Devaduta as defined by Mu Soeng, a scholar and previously a monk trained in Korean Zen Buddhism. Devaduta is a Pali term that means “divine messenger” (deva is “divine”; duta is “messenger”). Depending on the context, deva can also be translated as the shining one, a celestial being, or heavenly one. The ontology and mythology of this term in the Hindu tradition and [...]
