WikiProject Buddhism is a group of people dedicated to improving Buddhism-related contents in Wikipedia. This page contains only suggestions: things to give you focus and to get you going and you should not feel obligated in the least to follow them. If you don't know what to write or where to begin, following the guidelines below may be helpful. Mainly, we just want you to write articles!
This WikiProject aims primarily to promote better coordination, content distribution, and cross-referencing between pages dealing with Buddhism and its sects, texts, terms, philosophies, etc.
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Buddhism and Christianity could use a fair bit of work if anyone's interested. referred by Writtenonsand (talk) 17:18, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
David Kalupahana User:Kester ratcliff has started an article on Buddhist writer. Needs work, if anybody's interested. Referred by User:Writtenonsand (talk) 04:19, 28 May 2008
Kester ratcliff (talk) - ex-monk of six years and now lay academic, specialising in early Buddhism, critiquing later developments especially Theravada tradition, Vinaya studies, and history of the early sectarian period
Members with no edits in the past 3 months. If your name has been put here by mistake - or you're back from a Wikibreak - please feel free to move your name back onto the main list:
User:Emishi I am most concerned with mantras, meditiation, bodhisattvas and tibetan deities. I am also helping to clean up and add to the Portal:Buddhism
Charlene Not Buddhist, but I meditate, have adapted the Four Truths and Eighfold Path, and live the Middle Way.
Buddhosavaka Theravadian, Kammathana Practisioner. I am most concern with accuracy of info on Dhamma: Awakening to the Dhamma over perception based knowledge.
...plus 30 odd more for a total of 40 subcategories and 87 loose pages in the "Buddhism" category... anybody fancy having a go at tidying up our subcategories? Dakinijones (talk) 15:08, 27 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Authorship, if known. If the supposed authorship of a text is not established by scholarship, list it as an attribution: "The text is attributed to such-and-such."
Date
Place of origin (if known)
A rough overview of the contents of the text
Separate sections for particularly important ideas in the text. Alternatively, short descriptions and links to articles on said ideas.
Whatever caveats regarding disputes over readings of the text, etc.
Associated sect(s) (Indicate, where appropriate, whether the text originated within the sect or was adopted by it after the fact.)
A table of translations, like this one:
Mulamadhyakakarika
Author
Title
Publisher
Date
Notes
Garfield, Jay L.
The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way
Oxford University Press
1995
A translation of the Tibetan version together with commentary.
Inada, Kenneth K.
Nagarjuna: A Translation of his Mulamadhyamakakarika With an Introductory Essay
The Hokuseido Press
1970
Romanized text and translation.
Kalupahana, David J.
Nagarjuna: The Philosophy of the Middle Way
State University of New York Press
1986
Romanized text, translation, and commentary.
McCagney, N.
Nagarjuna and the Philosophy of Openness
Rowman & Littlefield
1997
Romanized text, translation and philosophical analysis.
Sprung, M.
Lucid Exposition of the Middle Way
RKP
1979
Partial translation of the verses together with Chandrakirti's commentary.
Streng, Frederick
Emptiness: A Study in Religious Meaning
Abdingdon Press
1967
Translation and considerable analysis.
Thurman, Robert
Wisdom: The Fundamental Stanzas on the Middle Way
draft
A "See also" section for internal links.
An "External links" section for articles about the text, electronic versions of the text. (Separate sections for this?)
I recently created and edited some articles about Thai Forest TraditionTheravadin Buddhist monastics. And User:Nat_Krause was kind enough to clean up behind me a bit (redundant cats and redir Ayya Tataaloka Bhikkhuni=> Tataaloka after rm a title). I didn't realize that honorific titles are not used when naming an article about a monastic until I looked up Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles)#Clerical names. I had followed the naming of the many other articles on Theravadin monastics... which were mis-named. To prevent future confusion and re-work, I'd like to propose that we:
Create and post article naming conventions for Buddhist monastics (I see that Tibetan titles have been discussed)
Post the conventions on the Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles) page.
Naming WITH Titles for Now: Following a discussion amongst several editors, the Thai Forest Tradition articles were named WITH the titles (e.g.: Bhikkhu Bodhi and Ayya Tathaaloka). It was decided that not using titles was simply insulting and culturally inpappropriate. For now, that is the convention our small group will use. I would like that to be consistent with other editors. Anyone interested in helping us shape a convention, perhaps for specific traditions (to remain culturally appropriate)? --Deebki21:53, 23 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I note that Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles)#Clerical names seems to be based on Western Clergy. I'm trying to work out how to deal with the names of Tulkus. It could be seen as POV to give each incarnation a separate article - but a separate article and a succession box seems to be the sanest way of doing it. No-one knows them by their birth names - I think only the clerical name with a number will work. Secretlondon22:43, 14 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
About titles: I would recommend using 'bhikkhu/bhiksu', 'bhikkhuni/ bhiksuni', samanera/i /sramanera/i' as these are the basic, original classifications of monastics, and are not 'honorific' titles. If anyone wants to use Chinese and Tibetan equivalents with these terms in brackets, that would also be fine. I assume the discussion is just about whether to include titles in the names of articles, not whether to include them in the body of an article, since in that case it seems obviously reasonable to use whatever title(s) they're conventionally known by in their own tradition? I used to be a monk too, and then I'd just use 'Bhikkhu Santi' as my name in general, because I wouldn't include 'Ven' or 'Bhante' when speaking with other monks, and since I couldn't vary my user name on inet forums etc I prefered to leave out the 'bhante'. And although this isn't NPOV, I think any monks or nuns who themselves get offended about having their title missed out are just bad monks and nuns!
Kester ratcliff (talk) 07:38, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
For concepts, special terms, and doctrines (e.g., "nirvāṇa"):
Ideally, the name of the article should correspond to the primary version of the term (i.e., anatta for anātman]]), with redirects sending commonly used alternatives the page.
The first paragraph should name the term, provide variants in different languages, identify in what sect or sects it has currency, and briefly describe it.
But: What should the format for specifying languages be?
Anatta (Pāli; Sanskrit: anātman) is a doctrine yadda yadda...
But one could also use abbreviations: "Anatta (Pāl. (or whatever the real abbreviation for Pāli is; Skt: anātman) is a doctrine yadda yadda..."
or even link off-page to a glossary (most likely Buddhist terms and concepts) that stores the language information.
Also, once the various terms have been defined, is it still necessary to use whatever the canonical term, or can they be regarded as interchangeable?
Following sections should include information like:
A fuller description of the idea
Its relation to previous ideas in and out of Buddhism. (e.g., "The doctrine of anātman is a rejection of the concept of the ātman, 'self,' or 'soul,' that is vital in several mainstream Indian philosophies. It also has implications that challenge the concept of Braḥman or Paramātman (as Braḥman), which are essential to Indian monism.")
Disputes or schisms involving the idea
Connections to common user practices
Discussions of important texts for understanding the idea
Transliterated terms from Sanskrit and Pāli should take advantage of Unicode diacritics; for example, "Nirvāṇa". These may be input either directly into the edit menu, as Unicode text, or as HTML character references such as ā. A list of relevant characters is currently available at IAST. Several template-based shortcuts also exist for transliterations, but these are strongly deprecated.
This works well for one-off mentions... but with terms that are beginning to enter the English language and thus appear frequently in some articles it is making the text very difficult for the viewer to read (and it has the feel of an academic textbook rather than an encyclopedia). Also, since many editors find using diacritics problematic this is leading to very uneven usuage throughout an article. In Vajrayana for example the diacritics appeared heavily in the intro but rarely in the sub-sections. It would make more sense to me to have a policy of only using diacritics on the first mention of a term if it is frequently repeated. Dakinijones (talk) 12:16, 21 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Transliterations from Chinese should be in Pinyin, not Wade-Giles.
Of related concern: how to express terms in origin language. (I.e., is it "Skt" or "Sanskrit", etc.)? Priority of languages? (See Talk:Buddhism)
We aim to build up a coherent and inclusive list of Buddhist terms at Buddhist terms and concepts, but that may be a while yet. In the mean time, there are certain tricky words or clusters of words about which we may need some degree of standardization. For example
Buddhism is a (blank)
Some concern has been raised that Buddhism should not be called "a faith"; this seems reasonable. But Buddhism is probably not a "philosophy" either. "Religion" seems the safest term...right?
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Attention Wikiproject Buddhism participants: to nominate, or vote upon the nomination of another participant of this project who you feel has contributed in an extraordinary way to the improvement of Wikipedia's Buddhism articles, click here.
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I gave creating this template a shot (it's my first!) Template:Infobox Buddhist teacher - see what you think, and to see it in action, check out Thich Nhat Hanhs article. Please let me know if changes should be made. Nightngle02:48, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Zen has an internal glossary. Should this feature be spread to other articles, or should there be a central glossary, or both?
Nagarjuna and Prajnaparamita feature tables comparing translations of texts. Does this feature seem sufficently valuable for us to make a standard of it?
the Pali Dictionary of Proper Names is in the Public Domain (can be copied into Wikipedia) and has a lot of usefull material on the people and places that were around at the time of Buddha (according to Pali tradition).
・Dhatu (Buddhism) - It's mentioned by the Buddha in the Aṅgulimālīya Sūtra with no clear definition. Skandha has an section mentioning the Dhatus but not in the Buddha's context from the Aṅgulimālīya Sūtra.