Soul
The soul, in many religious and mythological traditions, is the incorporeal essence of a living being. Soul or psyche are the mental abilities of a living being: reason, feeling, memory, thinking, etc. Depending on the philosophical system, a soul can either be immortal. In Judeo-Christianity, only human beings have immortal souls. For example, the Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas attributed "soul" to all organisms but argued that only human souls are immortal. Other religions hold that all living things from the smallest bacterium to the largest of mammals are the souls themselves and have their physical representative in the world; the actual self is the soul, while the body is only a mechanism to experience the karma of that life. Thus if we see a tiger there is a self-conscious identity residing in it, a physical representative in the world; some teach that non-biological entities possess souls. This belief is called animism. Greek philosophers, such as Socrates and Aristotle, understood that the soul must have a logical faculty, the exercise of, the most divine of human actions.
At his defense trial, Socrates summarized his teaching as nothing other than an exhortation for his fellow Athenians to excel in matters of the psyche since all bodily goods are dependent on such excellence. The current consensus of modern science is that there is no evidence to support the existence of the soul when traditionally defined as the spiritual breath of the body. In metaphysics, the concept of "Soul" may be equated with that of "Mind" in order to refer to the consciousness and intellect of the individual; the Modern English word "soul", derived from Old English sáwol, sáwel, was first attested in the 8th century poem Beowulf v. 2820 and in the Vespasian Psalter 77.50. It is cognate with other German and Baltic terms for the same idea, including Gothic saiwala, Old High German sêula, sêla, Old Saxon sêola, Old Low Franconian sêla, sîla, Old Norse sála and Lithuanian siela. Deeper etymology of the Germanic word is unclear; the original concept behind the Germanic root is thought to mean “coming from or belonging to the sea ”, because of the Germanic and pre-Celtic belief in souls emerging from and returning to sacred lakes, Old Saxon sêola compared to Old Saxon sêo.
The Koine Greek Septuagint uses ψυχή to translate Hebrew נפש, meaning "life, vital breath", refers to a mortal, physical life, but in English it is variously translated as "soul, life, person, mind, living being, emotion, passion". Vulgate – Creavitque Deus cete grandia, et omnem animam viventem atque motabilem. Authorized King James Version – "And God created great whales, every living creature that moveth."The Koine Greek word ψυχή, "life, consciousness", is derived from a verb meaning "to cool, to blow", hence refers to the breath, as opposed to σῶμα, meaning "body". Psychē occurs juxtaposed to σῶμα, as seen in Matthew 10:28: Greek – καὶ μὴ φοβεῖσθε ἀπὸ τῶν ἀποκτεννόντων τὸ σῶμα, τὴν δὲ ψυχὴν μὴ δυναμένων ἀποκτεῖναι· φοβεῖσθε δὲ μᾶλλον τὸν δυνάμενον καὶ ψυχὴν καὶ σῶμα ἀπολέσαι ἐν γεέννῃ. Vulgate – et nolite timere eos qui occidunt corpus animam autem non possunt occidere sed potius eum timete qui potest et animam et corpus perdere in gehennam. Authorized King James Version – "And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him, able to destroy both soul and body in hell."Paul the Apostle used ψυχή and πνεῦμα to distinguish between the Jewish notions of נפש and רוח ruah.
In the ancient Egyptian religion, an individual was believed to be made up of various elements, some physical and some spiritual. Similar ideas are found in ancient Babylonian religion. Kuttamuwa, an 8th-century BCE royal official from Sam'al, ordered an inscribed stele erected upon his death; the inscription requested that his mourners commemorate his life and his afterlife with feasts "for my soul, in this stele". It is one of the earliest references to a soul as a separate entity from the body; the 800-pound basalt stele is 2 ft wide. It was uncovered in the third season of excavations by the Neubauer Expedition of the Oriental Institute in Chicago, Illinois; the Bahá'í Faith affirms that "the soul is a sign of God, a heavenly gem whose reality the most learned of men hath failed to grasp, whose mystery no mind, however acute, can hope to unravel". Bahá'u'lláh stated that the soul not only continues to live after the physical death of the human body, but is, in fact, immortal. Heaven can be seen as the soul's state of nearness to God.
Each state follows as a natural consequence of individual efforts, or the lack thereof, to develop spiritually. Bahá'u'lláh taught that individuals have no existence prior to their life here on earth and the soul's evolution is always towards God and away from the material world. Buddhism teaches that all things are in a constant
Juno (mythology)
Juno was an ancient Roman goddess, the protector and special counselor of the state. A daughter of Saturn, she is the wife of Jupiter and the mother of Mars, Vulcan and Juventas, she is the Roman equivalent of queen of the gods in Greek mythology. Her Etruscan counterpart was Uni, she was said to watch over the women of Rome; as the patron goddess of Rome and the Roman Empire, Juno was called Regina and was a member of the Capitoline Triad, centered on the Capitoline Hill in Rome. Juno's own warlike aspect among the Romans is apparent in her attire, she is shown armed and wearing a goatskin cloak. The traditional depiction of this warlike aspect was assimilated from the Greek goddess Athena, who bore a goatskin, or a goatskin shield, called the'aegis'; the name Juno was once thought to be connected to Iove as Diuno and Diove from *Diovona. At the beginning of the 20th century, a derivation was proposed from iuven-, through a syncopated form iūn-; this etymology became accepted after it was endorsed by Georg Wissowa.
Iuuen- is related to Latin aevum and Greek aion through a common Indo-European root referring to a concept of vital energy or "fertile time". The iuvenis is he. In some inscriptions Jupiter himself is called Iuuntus, one of the epithets of Jupiter is Ioviste, a superlative form of iuuen- meaning "the youngest". Iuventas, "Youth", was one of two deities who "refused" to leave the Capitol when the building of the new Temple of Capitoline Jove required the exauguration of deities who occupied the site. Juno is the equivalent to the Greek goddess for love and marriage. Juno is the Roman goddess of marriage. Ancient etymologies associated Juno's name with iuvare, "to aid, benefit", iuvenescere, "rejuvenate", sometimes connecting it to the renewal of the new and waxing moon implying the idea of a moon goddess. Juno's theology is one of the most complex and disputed issues in Roman religion. More than other major Roman deities, Juno held a large number of significant and diverse epithets and titles representing various aspects and roles of the goddess.
In accordance with her central role as a goddess of marriage, these included Cinxia. However, other epithets of Juno are less thematically linked. While her connection with the idea of vital force, fullness of vital energy, eternal youthfulness is now acknowledged, the multiplicity and complexity of her personality have given rise to various and sometimes irreconcilable interpretations among modern scholars. Juno is the divine protectress of the community, who shows both a sovereign and a fertility character associated with a military one, she was present in many towns of ancient Italy: at Lanuvium as Sespeis Mater Regina, Tibur, Veii as Regina, at Tibur and Falerii as Regina and Curitis and Norba as Lucina. She is attested at Praeneste, Ardea, Gabii. In five Latin towns a month was named after Juno. Outside Latium in Campania at Teanum she was Populona, in Umbria at Pisaurum Lucina, at Terventum in Samnium Regina, at Pisarum Regina Matrona, at Aesernia in Samnium Regina Populona. In Rome she was since the most ancient times named Lucina and Regina.
It is debated whether she was known as Curitis before the evocatio of the Juno of Falerii: this though seems probable. Other epithets of hers that were in use at Rome include Moneta and Caprotina, Fluonia or Fluviona, the last ones associated with the rites of purification and fertility of February, her various epithets thus show a complex of mutually interrelated functions that in the view of Georges Dumézil and Vsevolod Basanoff can be traced back to the Indoeuropean trifunctional ideology: as Regina and Moneta she is a sovereign deity, as Sespeis and Moneta she is an armed protectress, as Mater and Curitis she is a goddess of the fertility and wealth of the community in her association with the curiae. The epithet Lucina is revealing since it reflects two interrelated aspects of the function of Juno: cyclical renewal of time in the waning and waxing of the moon and protection of delivery and birth; the ancient called her Covella in her function of helper in the labours of the new moon. The view that she was a Moon goddess though is no longer accepted by scholars, as such a role belongs to Diana Lucifera: through her association with the moon she governed the feminine physiological functions, menstrual cycle and pregnancy: as a rule all lunar deities are deities of childbirth.
These aspects of Juno mark the worldly sides of her function. She is thus associated to all beginnings and hers are the kalendae of every month: at Laurentum she was known as Kalendaris Iuno. At Rome on the Kalends of every month the pontifex minor invoked her, under the epithet Covella, when from the curia Calabra announced the date of the nonae. On the same day the regina sacrorum sacrificed to Juno a white lamb in the Regia, she is associated with Janus, the god of passages and beginnings who after her is named Iunonius. Some scholars view this concentration of multiple functions
Supernatural
The concept of the supernatural encompasses anything, inexplicable by scientific understanding of the laws of nature but argued by believers to exist. Examples include immaterial beings such as angels and spirits, claimed human abilities like magic and extrasensory perception. Supernatural entities have been invoked to explain phenomena as diverse as lightning and the human senses. Naturalists maintain that nothing beyond the physical world exists and hence maintain skeptical attitudes towards supernatural concepts; the supernatural is featured in paranormal and religious contexts, but can feature as an explanation in more secular contexts. Occurring as both an adjective and a noun, descendants of the modern English compound supernatural enters the language from two sources: via Middle French and directly from the Middle French's term's ancestor, post-Classical Latin. Post-classical Latin supernaturalis first occurs in the 6th century, composed of the Latin prefix super- and nātūrālis; the earliest known appearance of the word in the English language occurs in a Middle English translation of Catherine of Siena's Dialogue.
The semantic value of the term has shifted over the history of its use. The term referred to Christian understandings of the world. For example, as an adjective, the term can mean'belonging to a realm or system that transcends nature, as that of divine, magical, or ghostly beings. Obsolete uses include'of, relating to, or dealing with metaphysics'; as a noun, the term can mean'a supernatural being', with a strong history of employment in relation to entities from the mythologies of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. The metaphysical considerations of the existence of the supernatural can be difficult to approach as an exercise in philosophy or theology because any dependencies on its antithesis, the natural, will have to be inverted or rejected. One complicating factor is that there is disagreement about the definition of "natural" and the limits of naturalism. Concepts in the supernatural domain are related to concepts in religious spirituality and occultism or spiritualism. For sometimes we use the word nature for that Author of nature whom the schoolmen, harshly enough, call natura naturans, as when it is said that nature hath made man corporeal and immaterial.
Sometimes we mean by the nature of a thing the essence, or that which the schoolmen scruple not to call the quiddity of a thing, the attribute or attributes on whose score it is what it is, whether the thing be corporeal or not, as when we attempt to define the nature of an angle, or of a triangle, or of a fluid body, as such. Sometimes we take nature for an internal principle of motion, as when we say that a stone let fall in the air is by nature carried towards the centre of the earth, and, on the contrary, that fire or flame does move upwards toward firmament. Sometimes we understand by nature the established course of things, as when we say that nature makes the night succeed the day, nature hath made respiration necessary to the life of men. Sometimes we take nature for an aggregate of powers belonging to a body a living one, as when physicians say that nature is strong or weak or spent, or that in such or such diseases nature left to herself will do the cure. Sometimes we take nature for the universe, or system of the corporeal works of God, as when it is said of a phoenix, or a chimera, that there is no such thing in nature, i.e. in the world.
And sometimes too, that most we would express by nature a semi-deity or other strange kind of being, such as this discourse examines the notion of. And besides these more absolute acceptions, if I may so call them, of the word nature, it has divers others, as nature is wont to be set or in opposition or contradistinction to other things, as when we say of a stone when it falls downwards that it does it by a natural motion, but that if it be thrown upwards its motion that way is violent. So chemists distinguish vitriol into natural and fictitious, or made by art, i.e. by the intervention of human power or skill. We say that wicked men are still in the state of nature, but the regenerate in a state of grace; the term "supernatural" is used interchangeably with paranormal or preternatural — the latter limited to an adjective for describing abilities which appear to exceed what is possible within the boundaries of the laws of physics. Epistemologically, the relationship between the supernatural and the natural is indistinct in terms of natural phenomena that, ex hypothesi, violate the laws of nature, in so far as such laws are realistically accountable.
Parapsychologists use the term psi to refer to an assumed unitary force underlying the phenomena they study. Psi is defined in the Journal of Parapsychology as "personal factors or processes in nature which transcend accepted laws" and "which are non-physical in nature", it is used to cover both extrasensory perception, an "awareness of or response to an external event or influence not apprehended by sens
Daeva
Daeva is an Avestan language term for a particular sort of supernatural entity with disagreeable characteristics. In the Gathas, the oldest texts of the Zoroastrian canon, the daevas are "gods that are rejected"; this meaning is – subject to interpretation – also evident in the Old Persian "daiva inscription" of the 5th century BCE. In the Younger Avesta, the daevas are divinities that promote disorder. In tradition and folklore, the dēws are personifications of every imaginable evil. Daeva, the Iranian language term, should not be confused with the devas of Indian religions. While the word for the Vedic spirits and the word for the Zoroastrian entities are etymologically related, their function and thematic development is altogether different; the once-widespread notion that the radically different functions of Iranian daeva and Indic deva represented a prehistoric inversion of roles is no longer followed in 21st century academic discourse. Equivalents for Avestan daeva in Iranian languages include Pashto, Kurdish dêw, Persian dīv/deev, all of which apply to demons and other villainous creatures.
The Iranian word was borrowed into Old Armenian as dew, Georgian as devi, Urdu as deo, with the same negative associations in those languages. In English, the word appears as daeva, deev, in the 18th century fantasy novels of William Thomas Beckford as dive, it has been speculated that the concept of the daevas as a malevolent force may have been inspired from the Scythian gods. Old Avestan daēuua or daēva derives from Old Iranian *daiva, which in turn derives from Indo-Iranian *daivá- "god", reflecting Proto-Indo-European *deywós with the same meaning. For other Indo-European derivatives, see Dyeus; the Vedic Sanskrit cognate of Avestan daēuua is devá-, continuing in Indo-Aryan languages as dev. Because all cognates of Iranian *daiva have a positive connotation, but "no known Iranian dialect attests and the survival of a positive sense for *daiva-", in the 19th- and 20th-century a great deal of academic discussion revolved around questions of how Iranian daeva might have gained its derogatory meaning.
This "fundamental fact of Iranian linguistics" is "impossible" to reconcile with the testimony of the Gathas, where the daevas, though rejected, were still evidently gods that continued to have a following. The same is true of the daiva inscription, where the daiva are the gods of rebels, but still evidently gods that continued to have a following; the issue is related to the question of how Zoroaster's own contribution to Iranian religion might be defined. In the older early/mid 20th-century view, in which Zoroaster was perceived to be a revolutionary reformer, it was assumed that the daevas must have been the "national" gods of pre-Zoroaster-ian Iran, which Zoroaster had rejected; this attribution to Zoroaster is found in the 9th/10th-century books of Zoroastrian tradition, Gershevitch and others following Lommel consider the progression from "national" gods to demons to be attributable to the "genius of Zoroaster". Subsequent scholarship has a more differentiated view of Zoroaster, does not follow the unprovable assumption that prehistoric Iranian religion had "national" gods, nor does it involve hypothetical conjecture of whose gods the daevas might/might not have been.
While the progressive hypothesis gives Zoroaster credit for giving Iranian religion a moral and ethical dimension, it does not give Zoroaster credit for the development of the daevas into demons. It assumes that the development was gradual, that a general distrust of the daevas existed by the time the Gathas were composed. Although with some points of comparison such as shared etymology, Indic devá- is thematically different from Avestan daēva. In the Rigveda, the devas are the "younger gods", in conflict with the asuras, the "older gods". There is no such division evident in the Zoroastrian texts. And, while in the post-Rigvedic Indic texts the conflict between the two groups of devas and asuras is a primary theme, this is not a theme in either the Rigveda nor in the Iranian texts, therefore cannot have been a feature of a common heritage; the use of asura in the Rigveda is unsystematic and inconsistent and "it can hardly be said to confirm the existence of a category of gods opposed to the devas".
Indeed, RigVedic deva is variously applied including many of the asuras. At the oldest layer, Zoroastrianism's daevas are also gods, it is only in the younger texts that the word evolved to refer to evil creatures, and the Zoroastrian ahuras are only vaguely defined, only three in number. Moreover, the daemonization of the asuras in India and the daemonization of the daevas in Iran both took place "so late that the associated terms cannot be considered a feature of Indo-Iranian religious dialectology"; the view popularized by Nyberg, Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin, Widengren of a prehistorical opposition of *asura/daiva involves "interminable and conjectural discussions" on the status of various Indo-Iranian entities that in one culture are asuras/ahuras and in the other are devas/daevas. In the Gathas, the oldest texts of Zoroastrianism and credited to Zoroaster himself, the daevas are not yet the demons that they would become in Zoroastrianism.
Venus (mythology)
Venus is a Roman goddess, whose functions encompassed love, desire, fertility and victory. In Roman mythology, she was the ancestor of the Roman people through her son, who survived the fall of Troy and fled to Italy. Julius Caesar claimed her as his ancestor. Venus was central to many religious festivals, was revered in Roman religion under numerous cult titles; the Romans adapted the myths and iconography of her Greek counterpart Aphrodite for Roman art and Latin literature. In the classical tradition of the West, Venus became one of the most referenced deities of Greco-Roman mythology as the embodiment of love and sexuality. Venus embodies sex, beauty, enticement and persuasive female charm among the community of immortal gods, it has connections to venerari and venia through a possible common root in an Indo-European *wenes- or *u̯enis. Their common Proto-Indo-European root is assumed as *wen- or *u̯en- "to strive for, wish for, love"). Venus has been described as "the most original creation of the Roman pantheon", "an ill-defined and assimilative" native goddess, combined "with a strange and exotic Aphrodite".
Her cults may represent the religiously legitimate charm and seduction of the divine by mortals, in contrast to the formal, contractual relations between most members of Rome's official pantheon and the state, the unofficial, illicit manipulation of divine forces through magic. The ambivalence of her persuasive functions has been perceived in the relationship of the root *venes- with Latin venenum, in the sense of "a charm, magic philtre". In myth, Venus-Aphrodite was born of sea-foam. Roman theology presents Venus as the yielding, watery female principle, essential to the generation and balance of life, her male counterparts in the Roman pantheon and Mars, are active and fiery. Venus absorbs and tempers the male essence, uniting the opposites of male and female in mutual affection, she is assimilative and benign, embraces several otherwise quite disparate functions. She can give sexual success, good fortune and prosperity. In one context, she is a goddess of prostitutes. Images of Venus have been found in domestic murals and household shrines.
Petronius, in his Satyricon, places an image of Venus among the Lares of the freedman Trimalchio's lararium. Prospective brides offered Venus a gift "before the wedding"; some Roman sources say. In dice-games, a popular pastime among Romans of all classes, the luckiest, best possible roll was known as "Venus". Venus' signs were for the most part the same as Aphrodite's, they include roses, which were offered in Venus' Porta Collina rites, above all, cultivated for its white, sweetly scented flowers, evergreen leaves and its various medical-magical properties. Venus' statues, her worshipers, wore myrtle crowns at her festivals. Before its adoption into Venus' cults, myrtle was used in the purification rites of Cloacina, the Etruscan-Roman goddess of Rome's main sewer. Roman folk-etymology transformed the ancient, obscure goddess Murcia into "Venus of the Myrtles, whom we now call Murcia". Myrtle was thought a potent aphrodisiac; the female pudendum the clitoris, was known as murtos. As goddess of love and sex, Venus played an essential role at Roman prenuptial rites and wedding nights, so myrtle and roses were used in bridal bouquets.
Marriage itself was not a seduction but a lawful condition, under Juno's authority. Venus was a patron of the ordinary, everyday wine drunk by most Roman men and women. In the rites to Bona Dea, a goddess of female chastity, Venus and anything male were not only excluded, but unmentionable; the rites allowed women to drink the strongest, sacrificial wine, otherwise reserved for the Roman gods and Roman men. Under these special circumstances, they could get virtuously, religiously drunk on strong wine, safe from Venus' temptations. Outside of this context, ordinary wine tinctured with myrtle oil was thought suitable for women. Roman generals given an ovation, a lesser form of Roman triumph, wore a myrtle crown to purify themselves and their armies of blood-guilt; the ovation ceremony was assimilated to Venus Victrix, held to have granted and purified its "easy" victory. The first known temple to Venus was vowed to Venus Obsequens by Q. Fabius Gurges in the heat of a battle against the Samnites, it was dedicated in 295 BC, at a site near the Aventine Hill, was funded by fines imposed on Roman women for sexual misdemeanours.
Its rites and character were influenced by or based on Greek Aphrodite's cults, which were diffused in various forms throughout Italian Magna Graeca. Its dedication date connects Venus Obsequens to the Vinalia rustica festival. In 217 BC, in the early stages of the Second Punic War with Carthage, Rome suffered a disastrous defeat at the battle of Lake Trasimene; the Sibyllin
Religious text
Religious texts are texts which religious traditions consider to be central to their practice or beliefs. Religious texts may be used to provide meaning and purpose, evoke a deeper connection with the divine, convey religious truths, promote religious experience, foster communal identity, guide individual and communal religious practice. Religious texts communicate the practices or values of a religious traditions and can be looked to as a set of guiding principles which dictate physical, spiritual, or historical elements considered important to a specific religion; the terms'sacred' text and'religious' text are not interchangeable in that some religious texts are believed to be sacred because of their nature as divinely or supernaturally revealed or inspired, whereas some religious texts are narratives pertaining to the general themes, practices, or important figures of the specific religion, not considered sacred by itself. A core function of a religious text making it sacred is its ceremonial and liturgical role in relation to sacred time, the liturgical year, the divine efficacy and subsequent holy service.
It is not possible to create an exhaustive list of religious texts, because there is no single definition of which texts are recognized as religious. One of the oldest known religious texts is the Kesh Temple Hymn of Ancient Sumer, a set of inscribed clay tablets which scholars date around 2600 BCE; the Epic of Gilgamesh from Sumer, although only considered by some scholars as a religious text, has origins as early as 2150-2000 BCE, stands as one of the earliest literary works that includes various mythological figures and themes of interaction with the divine. The Rig Veda of ancient Hinduism is estimated to have been composed between 1700–1100 BCE, which not only denotes it as one of the oldest known religious texts, but one of the oldest written religious text, still used in religious practice to this day, though no actual evidence of this text exists prior to the 13th century AD. There are many possible dates given to the first writings which can be connected to Talmudic and Biblical traditions, the earliest of, found in scribal documentation of the 8th century BCE, followed by administrative documentation from temples of the 5th and 6th centuries BCE, with another common date being the 2nd century BCE.
Although a significant text in the history of religious text because of its widespread use among religious denominations and its continued use throughout history, the texts of the Abrahamic traditions are a good example of the lack of certainty surrounding dates and definitions of religious texts. High rates of mass production and distribution of religious texts did not begin until the invention of the printing press in 1440, before which all religious texts were hand written copies, of which there were limited quantities in circulation. A religious canon refers to the accepted and unchanging collection of texts which a religious denomination considers comprehensive in terms of their specific application of texts. For example, the content of a Protestant Bible may differ from the content of a Catholic Bible - insofar as the Protestant Old Testament does not include the Deuterocanonical books while the Roman Catholic canon does. Protestants and Catholics use the same 27 book NT canon, as well as the same 39 book OT protocanon shared by Jews.
The word "canon" comes from the Sumerian word meaning "standard". The terms "scripture" and variations such as "Holy Writ", "Holy Scripture" or "Sacred Scripture" are defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as terms which apply to Biblical text and the Christian tradition. Hierographology is the study of sacred texts; the following is an in-exhaustive list of links to specific religious texts which may be used for further, more in-depth study. A Course in Miracles The writings of Franklin Albert Jones a.k.a. Adi Da Love-Ananda Samraj Aletheon The Companions of the True Dawn Horse The Dawn Horse Testament Gnosticon The Heart of the Adi Dam Revelation Not-Two IS Peace Pneumaton Transcendental Realism The Nine Freedoms Havamal Eddur Great Hymn to the Aten The Akilathirattu Ammanai The Arul Nool The Borgia Group codices Books by Bahá'u'lláh The Four Valleys The Seven Valleys The Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh The Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh Gems of Divine Mysteries The Book of Certitude Summons of the Lord of Hosts Tabernacle of Unity Kitáb-i-Aqdas Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh Revealed After the Kitáb-i-Aqdas Epistle to the Son of the Wolf Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh Bon Kangyur and Tengyur Theravada BuddhismThe Tipitaka or Pāli Canon Vinaya Pitaka Sutta Pitaka Digha Nikaya, the "long" discourses.
Majjhima Nikaya, the "middle-length" discourses. Samyutta Nikaya, the "connected" discourses. Anguttara Nikaya, the "numerical" discourses. Khuddaka Nikaya, the "minor collection". Abhidhamma PitakaEast Asian Mahayana The Chinese Buddhist Mahayana sutras, including Diamond Sutra and the Heart Sutra Shurangama Sutra and its Shurangama Mantra Great Compassion Mantra Pure Land Buddhism Infinite Life Sutra Amitabha Sutra Contemplation Sutra other Pure Land Sutras Tiantai and Nichiren Lotus Sutra Shingon Mahavairocana Sutra Vajrasekhara SutraTibeta
