Sacred Site

Nalanda

The great university of the dharma. Ten thousand monks, eight centuries, the philosophical heart of Buddhism.

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Knowledge

The brick ruins of Nalanda, the great Mahayana monastic university of ancient India

HistoryMahayana

Nalanda University

For seven hundred years Nalanda was the largest monastic university in the world — ten thousand students, two thousand teachers, a library of millions of folios, and the institutional heart of Indian Mahayana philosophy until its destruction by Bakhtiyar Khilji in 1193.

FiguresMahayana

Nagarjuna

South Indian philosopher of the second century CE who articulated the doctrine of emptiness (sunyata) as the middle way between existence and non-existence. The Mulamadhyamakakarika is the founding text of the Madhyamaka school. The Mahayana traditions of East Asia and Tibet count him as the second Buddha; his analysis stands at the center of every later Mahayana school.

TraditionsMahayana

Mahayana

The Great Vehicle — the movement that reframed the Buddhist goal from individual liberation as an arahant to the universal awakening of all beings as a bodhisattva, and reframed the metaphysical ground from analysis of dharmas to the emptiness (sunyata) of all phenomena.

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Nalanda

The Great Monastic University.

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