Buddhism

Hultzsch, E.  “Inscriptions of Asoka.”  Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum 1.  Oxford: Clarendon Press.  New edition.  1925.  The standard critical edition of Ashoka's inscriptions, giving each text, its variants and an English translation, with an introduction that dates the edicts by the king's regnal years.  The article uses its texts and translations of the three inscriptions that name the Buddha and of the edict naming five Greek kings.

1. 1a.

   Page 164:  “(A) When king Devanampriya Priyadarśin had been anointed twenty years, he came himself and worshipped (this spot), because the Buddha Śakyamuni was born here.”  “(B) (He) both caused to be made a stone bearing a horse (?) and caused a stone pillar to be set up, (in order to show) that the Blessed one was born here.”  Page 165:  Section C records that he made the village of Lummini free of taxes.  The Prakrit of line 2 reads hida Budhe jate Sakyamuni ti. ↩ ↩

2. 1b.

   Page 165:  “When king Devanampriya Priyadarśin had been anointed fourteen years, he enlarged the Stupa of the Buddha Konakamana to the double (of its original size).”  Hultzsch's note on the name begins.  “This mythical Buddha is called Konagamana by the Southern Buddhists”. ↩

3. 1c.

   Pages 173–174:  The Calcutta-Bairat (Bhabra) rock edict.  “(B) It is known to you, Sirs, how great is my reverence and faith in the Buddha, the Dharma (and) the Samgha. (C) Whatsoever, Sirs, has been spoken by the blessed Buddha, all that is quite well spoken.”  “(E) The following expositions of the Dharma, Sirs, (viz.) (1) the Vinaya-samukasa, (2) the Aliya-vasas, (3) the Anagata-bhayas, (4) the Muni-gathas, (5) the Moneya-suta, (6) the Upatisa-pasina, and (7) the Laghulovada which was spoken by the blessed Buddha concerning falsehood”. ↩

Bodhi, Bhikkhu.  The Connected Discourses of the Buddha:  A Translation of the Saṃyutta Nikāya.  Wisdom Publications.  2000.  The standard scholarly English translation of the Saṃyutta Nikāya, one of the four main collections of the Buddha's discourses, by an American Theravāda monk.  Locators give the discourse number and the Pali Text Society volume and page (S III 66).

1. 2a.

   Section SN 22.82 (S III 103–104):  “So it seems that form is nonself, feeling is nonself, perception is nonself, volitional formations are nonself, consciousness is nonself. What self, then, will deeds done by what is nonself affect?”  “It is possible, bhikkhus, that some senseless man here, obtuse and ignorant, with his mind dominated by craving, might think that he can outstrip the Teacher’s Teaching thus”.  The Buddha then returns the monk to the questions whether each aggregate is permanent, and gives no further account of how deeds reach their result. ↩ ↩

2. 2b.

   Section SN 22.59 (S III 66–68):  “Bhikkhus, form is nonself. For if, bhikkhus, form were self, this form would not lead to affliction, and it would be possible to have it of form: ‘Let my form be thus; let my form not be thus.’”  “Is what is impermanent, suffering, and subject to change fit to be regarded thus: ‘This is mine, this I am, this is my self’?”  “all form should be seen as it really is with correct wisdom thus: ‘This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.’” ↩

3. 2c.

   Section SN 44.10 (S IV 400–401):  “How is it now, Master Gotama, is there a self?”  “When this was said, the Blessed One was silent.”  “this would have been siding with those ascetics and brahmins who are eternalists”.  “this would have been siding with those ascetics and brahmins who are annihilationists”.  “would this have been consistent on my part with the arising of the knowledge that ‘all phenomena are nonself’?”  “the wanderer Vacchagotta, already confused, would have fallen into even greater confusion, thinking, ‘It seems that the self I formerly had does not exist now.’” ↩

4. 2d.

   Section SN 12.46 (S II 75–76):  “How is it, Master Gotama: is the one who acts the same as the one who experiences the result?”  “‘The one who acts is the same as the one who experiences the result’: this, brahmin, is one extreme.”  “‘The one who acts is one, and the one who experiences the result is another’: this, brahmin, is the second extreme. Without veering towards either of these extremes, the Tathagata teaches the Dhamma by the middle”. ↩

Dalai Lama XIV (Tenzin Gyatso).  The Universe in a Single Atom:  The Convergence of Science and Spirituality.  Morgan Road Books, New York.  2005.  The Dalai Lama's account of his lifelong interest in science and of the Mind and Life dialogues, written for general readers.  It contains his commitment that Buddhism must abandon claims science disproves, his limit on what counts as disproof, his rejection of the Abhidharma cosmology, and his request that scientists study meditators at death.

1. 3a.

   Page 2:  “She told me that history attests to the fact that science is the "killer" of religion”.  Pages 2–3:  “My confidence in venturing into science lies in my basic belief that as in science so in Buddhism, understanding the nature of reality is pursued by means of critical investigation: if scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.” ↩

2. 3b.

   Page 24:  “But both share a strong empirical basis: if science shows something to exist or to be non-existent (which is not the same as not finding it), then we must acknowledge that as a fact.” ↩

3. 3c.

   Page 80:  “These sizes, distances, and so forth are flatly contradicted by the empirical evidence of modern astronomy. There is a dictum in Buddhist philosophy that to uphold a tenet that contradicts reason is to undermine one's credibility; to contradict empirical evidence is a still greater fallacy. So it is hard to take the Abhidharma cosmology literally. … My own view is that Buddhism must abandon many aspects of the Abhidharma cosmology.” ↩

4. 3d.

   Page 36:  “Likewise, just because science has not proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that beings take rebirth doesn't mean reincarnation isn't possible.” ↩

Keil, H. H. Jürgen, and Jim B. Tucker.  “Children Who Claim to Remember Previous Lives: Cases with Written Records Made before the Previous Personality Was Identified.”  Journal of Scientific Exploration 19(1):91–101.  2005.  A report of a Turkish boy, called KA, whose statements Keil wrote down in 1997 before anyone identified the man he seemed to describe, with a review of three earlier cases of the same kind.  It gives the Division's own count of such cases in its files.

1. 4a.

   Page 97:  “Over 2500 cases of young children with past life claims are now registered in the files of the Division of Personality Studies at the University of Virginia, but only 33 of them involve cases where a previous personality was identified after written records were made of the child’s statements”. ↩ ↩

Pew Research Center.  How the Global Religious Landscape Changed From 2010 to 2020.  Jun 9, 2025.  A demographic report that estimates the religious makeup of 201 countries and territories in 2010 and 2020 from more than 2,700 censuses and surveys.  Used here for how many Buddhists there are and where they live.  Its own caveat is that the count misses many East Asians who follow Buddhist practices without calling themselves Buddhists.

1. 5a.

   Page 71:  “Buddhists are the only group in this report whose number declined worldwide between 2010 and 2020.”  “Most of the world’s Buddhists (98%) reside in the Asia-Pacific region, the birthplace of Buddhism.”  Page 72:  “The number of Buddhists around the world declined 5%, from 343 million in 2010 to 324 million in 2020.”  The table on p. 72 gives 342,750,000 Buddhists in 2010 and 324,190,000 in 2020, 4.9% and 4.1% of the world. ↩

2. 5b.

   Page 71:  “in places like China and Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam, Buddhism tends to be deeply embedded with local folk religions”.  “our Buddhist estimates do not reflect the full influence of Buddhism, as they exclude people who do not formally consider themselves Buddhist, even though they may engage in Buddhist beliefs or practices.” ↩

Gethin, Rupert.  The Foundations of Buddhism.  Oxford University Press.  1998.  A widely used university introduction to Buddhist thought and practice by a Pāli scholar at the University of Bristol, built on the early discourses and the teaching the living traditions share.  Used here for the outline of the Buddha's life, the four truths, the three living traditions, the state of the debate over the Buddha's dates, and the meaning of nirvana.

1. 6a.

   Page 1:  “Living Buddhism divides into three broad traditions”.  “generally closer in doctrine and practice to ancient Buddhism as it existed in the early centuries bce in India.”  “Great Vehicle”.  “Lesser Vehicle”.  Page 2:  “Vehicle of the Diamond Thunderbolt”.  “also known as Tantric Buddhism.”  “All three of these traditions look back to ancient Buddhism and the land of India, where Buddhism was born but whence it virtually disappeared over five centuries ago.”  The three are the Theravāda of Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, with scriptures in Pāli;  the East Asian tradition of China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam, with scriptures in Chinese and a Mahāyāna outlook;  and the Tibetan tradition, also Mahāyāna, with scriptures in Tibetan. ↩ ↩

2. 6b.

   Page 8:  “the word buddha is not a name but a title; its meaning is 'one who has woken up'.” ↩

3. 6c.

   Page 9:  “The oldest Buddhist sources, which provide us with a number of details concerning the person and life of the Buddha, date from the fourth or third century bce. Unfortunately when we turn to the non-Buddhist sources of a similar date, namely the earliest texts of the Jain and brahmanical traditions, there is no explicit mention of the Buddha at all.”  Gethin goes on to argue that these texts still corroborate the early Buddhist picture of the Buddha as a wandering ascetic, a type of religious seeker they also describe. ↩

4. 6d.

   Page 14:  “While there is no scholarly consensus on the precise dates of the Buddha, a detailed examination of all the available data and arguments by scholars in recent years has resulted in a general tendency to bring the date of the Buddha considerably forward and place his death much nearer 400 bce than 500 bce.” ↩

5. 6e.

   Page 15:  “a member of a locally important aristocratic family”.  “he became troubled by a sense of the suffering that, in the form of sickness, old age, and death, sooner or later awaited him and everyone else.”  “calls it bodhi or 'awakening'”.  “by the time of his death at about the age of 80 he had established a well-organized mendicant community”.  Gethin gives this as the bare outline of the life that a historian can accept.  He places the awakening beneath a tree on a river bank in what is now the Indian state of Bihar. ↩

6. 6f.

   Page 16:  “Of course, as the Buddhist tradition tells it, the story of the life of the Buddha is not history nor meant to be. The whole story takes on a mythic and legendary character.” ↩

7. 6g.

   Page 59:  “Its classic formulation is by way of 'four noble truths': the truth of the nature of suffering, the truth of the nature of its cause, the truth of the nature of its cessation, and the truth of the nature of the path leading to its cessation.”  Page 60:  “The temptation to understand these four 'truths' as functioning as a kind of Buddhist creed should be resisted; they do not represent 'truth claims' that one must intellectually assent to on becoming a Buddhist.”  “four 'true things' or 'realities' whose nature, we are told, the Buddha finally understood on the night of his awakening.” ↩

8. 6h.

   Page 77:  “one cannot say that the arhat after death exists, does not exist, both exists and does not exist, neither exists nor does not exist. The ontological status of nirvana thus defies neat categorization and is 'undetermined'”. ↩

Sujato, Bhikkhu.  “Linked Discourses (Saṃyutta Nikāya).”  SuttaCentral.  2018.  A public-domain English translation of the Saṃyutta Nikāya, the collection of discourses grouped by subject, by the Australian monk Bhikkhu Sujato.  Used here for the first sermon, an early definition of nirvana, and the formula for the end of rebirth.

1. 7a.

   Section SN 56.11, segments sn56.11:2.3, 3.2–3.3, 4.1–4.10 and 13.2:  “Indulgence in sensual pleasures, which is low, crude, ordinary, ignoble, and pointless. And indulgence in self-mortification, which is painful, ignoble, and pointless.”  “Now this is the noble truth of suffering.”  “Rebirth is suffering; old age is suffering; illness is suffering; death is suffering;”.  “It’s the craving that leads to future lives”.  “It is simply this noble eightfold path, that is:”.  “right view, right purpose, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right immersion.”  “And this ten-thousandfold galaxy shook and rocked and trembled.”  The Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, "Rolling Forth the Wheel of Dhamma," which the tradition holds to be the Buddha's first teaching, given near Varanasi. ↩ ↩

2. 7b.

   Section SN 38.1, segments sn38.1:2.1–2.4:  “What is extinguishment?”  “Reverend, the ending of greed, hate, and delusion”.  “is called extinguishment.” ↩

3. 7c.

   Section SN 22.59, segment sn22.59:11.3:  “They understand: ‘Rebirth is ended, the spiritual journey has been completed, what had to be done has been done, there is nothing further for this place.’” ↩

Anālayo, Bhikkhu.  Dīrgha-āgama Studies.  Taipei: Dharma Drum.  2017.  Collected studies of the Chinese Dīrgha-āgama and its Pāli parallels by the leading comparative scholar of the early discourses.  Its first chapter reprints his answer to sceptics, The Historical Value of the Pāli Discourses (Indo-Iranian Journal 55, 2012), and other chapters study oral transmission and miracle stories.

1. 8a.

   Page 49:  Indo-Iranian Journal 55 (2012), p. 246.  “In sum, it seems to me reasonable to consider the Pāli discourses as fairly closed, in doctrinal terms, by the time of the first century B.C.E.”  “In terms of geographical awareness and in terms of doctrinal development, they seem to go back even further into the past, allowing us to catch a glimpse of Buddhist thought predominantly from the pre-Asokan period.” ↩

2. 8b.

   Page 98:  “whereas for the Vedic reciters correct wording was of crucial importance, for their early Buddhist counterparts the content of the text to be transmitted was central.”  Page 99:  “This makes it only natural that the early Buddhist oral transmission could not arrive at a level of precision comparable to the Vedic reciters.”  “This oral transmission is best understood as the result of an attempt at precise memorization that due to the vicissitudes of memory, combined with lack of training comparable to the Vedic tradition, inevitably resulted in a gradual change of the transmitted material.” ↩

3. 8c.

   Page 250:  “the Saṅgārava-sutta and its Sanskrit fragment parallel report a discussion during which the Buddha asserts the existence of devas.” ↩

4. 8d.

   Page 279:  “The selected examples of fire miracles performed by the Buddha surveyed in this chapter seem to be for the most part identifiable as later developments, probably the result of literal interpretations of metaphorical usages of the fire motif attested in text and art. At the same time, examining these instances clearly testifies to other type of supernormal abilities as integral to the early Buddhist world. Celestial travels by the Buddha and his disciples, a topic to which I return in the next chapter, or devas lighting up a place on arrival form a common heritage among the early discourses”. ↩

Sujato, Bhikkhu, and Bhikkhu Brahmali.  “The Authenticity of the Early Buddhist Texts.”  Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, supplement to volume 5.  2014.  A book-length defence of the early discourses' authenticity by two Australian-based Theravāda monks, reviewed before publication by Gombrich, Anālayo and Wynne.  It argues from political geography, comparison of the surviving versions, language and internal coherence, and states openly that it goes further than most academic scholars.

1. 9a.

   Page 4:  “This work articulates and defends a single thesis: that the Early Buddhist Texts originated in the lifetime of the Buddha or a little later, because they were, in the main, spoken by the Buddha and his contemporary disciples.”  “Most academic scholars of Early Buddhism cautiously affirm that it is possible that the EBTs contain some authentic sayings of the Buddha. We contend that this drastically understates the evidence. A sympathetic assessment of relevant evidence shows that it is very likely that the bulk of the sayings in the EBTs that are attributed to the Buddha were actually spoken by him.” ↩

2. 9b.

   Page 10:  “That the EBTs were edited and arranged over a few centuries following the Buddha's demise. The texts as we have them now are not a verbatim record of the Buddha's utterances, but the changes are in almost all cases details of editing and arrangement, not of doctrine or substance.” ↩

Wynne, Alexander.  “Did the Buddha exist?”  Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies 16:98–148.  2019.  A defence of the Buddha's historicity and of the early texts by an Oxford-trained Indologist, written against the sceptical views of Gregory Schopen and David Drewes.  It gathers the inscriptions that confirm details in the texts and argues that the discourses reflect a world before the Mauryan empire.

1. 10a.

   Page 108:  Wynne quotes Drewes (2017, p. 19):  “nothing about him has ever been established as fact, and the standard position in scholarship has long been that he is a figure about whom we know nothing. My only real suggestion is that we make the small shift from speaking of an unknown, contentless Buddha to accepting that we do not have grounds for speaking of a historical Buddha at all. Of course, it is possible that there was some single, actual person behind the nebulous “śramaṇa Gautama” of the early texts”. ↩

Cousins, L. S.  “The Dating of the Historical Buddha: A Review Article.”  Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, third series 6(1):57–63.  1996.  A review, by an Oxford-trained Pāli scholar, of the first two volumes of papers from the 1988 Göttingen symposium on the Buddha's date.  It sorts the contributors' proposals and argues for a death about 400 BC.  Mirror:  Archive.org

1. 11a.

   Section 4, The conclusion of these volumes on the date of the Buddha:  “Hajime Nakamura, K.R. Norman, and Richard Gombrich all propose dates within the range suggested by André Bareau: around 400 B.C. with a margin of twenty years on either side.”  Section 6, In conclusion:  “From the point of view of reasonable probability the evidence seems to favour some kind of median chronology and we should no doubt speak of a date for the Buddha's Mahaparinibbana of c.400 B.C”. ↩

This site's recalibration of the two posthole radiocarbon ages printed in Coningham and colleagues' Table 1 (SUERC-42856, 2540 ± 30 BP;  SUERC-42857, 2548 ± 30 BP) against the IntCal20 curve,⁵⁸ with a uniform prior and highest-density ranges.  It reproduces the paper's own calibrated ranges to within five years.  Results at 95.4%:  794–738, 692–663 and 646–546 BC for the first sample;  798–744, 689–664 and 644–548 BC for the second.  The probability that the first sample is later than 563 BC, the long chronology's birth date, is 0.046, and later than 483 BC, its death date, 0.001;  for the second, 0.035 and less than 0.001.  The early cultural layer, 2505 ± 30 BP, gives 0.012 for later than 483 BC.  Charcoal in a fill can be older than the fill but not younger, so these are maximum ages for the posts.⁵⁹  The luminescence date of 545 ± 235 BC spans 780 to 310 BC at one standard deviation, which contains every proposed death date. ↩

Schopen, Gregory.  “Two Problems in the History of Indian Buddhism: The Layman/Monk Distinction and the Doctrines of the Transference of Merit.”  Bones, Stones, and Buddhist Monks, 23–55.  Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.  1997.  An essay first published in 1985 by the American scholar who has done most to bring inscriptions and archaeology into the study of Indian Buddhism.  It lists what is actually known about the dates of Buddhist texts and argues that agreement between schools may reflect late harmonization.  It is the strongest scholarly scepticism about the early texts.

1. 13a.

   Pages 23–24:  “We know, and have known for some time, that the Pali canon as we have it — and it is generally conceded to be our oldest source — cannot be taken back further than the last quarter of the first century B.C.E., the date of the Alu-vihara redaction, the earliest redaction that we can have some knowledge of”.  “In fact, it is not until the time of the commentaries of Buddhaghosa, Dhammapala, and others — that is to say, the fifth to sixth centuries C.E. — that we can know anything definite about the actual contents of this canon.” ↩

Salomon, Richard.  The Buddhist Literature of Ancient Gandhāra: An Introduction with Selected Translations.  Boston: Wisdom Publications.  2018.  An introduction to the Gāndhārī Buddhist manuscripts found since the 1990s, by the University of Washington epigraphist who has led their publication.  It dates the collections and describes how their contents relate to the Pāli and Chinese canons.

1. 14a.

   Page 33:  “The earliest Buddhist texts in Gandhari can now be securely dated to the first century BCE, or possibly even earlier, while most of the others date from the first and second centuries CE. These dates are deduced from a combination of techniques, including radiocarbon tests (when available, which is unfortunately not always the case), analysis of accompanying inscriptions, as in the case of the Senior scrolls, and estimates on paleographic and linguistic criteria.” ↩

Brown, Raymond E.  An Introduction to the New Testament.  New York: Doubleday.  1997.  The standard mainstream introduction to the New Testament by a Catholic scholar of Union Theological Seminary.  Each chapter opens with a summary giving Brown's date for the book;  the article uses these as the mainstream dates.

1. 15a.

   Page 457:  “Date: The oldest preserved Christian document: 50 or 51 in the Traditional Chronology”.  Brown gives 41–43 on the alternative chronology. ↩

2. 15b.

   Page 127:  “Date: 60-75, most likely between 68 and 73.” ↩

3. 15c.

   Page 512:  “Date: Late 56 or very early 57 from Ephesus (or 54/55 in the Revisionist Chronology).” ↩

Josephus.  Antiquities of the Jews.  Translated by William Whiston.  c. 93.  The Jewish historian's history of his people, finished in the thirteenth year of Domitian.  It mentions Jesus at 18.63–64, in a passage later altered by Christian copyists, and again at 20.200 as the brother of James.  It is cited here for its date. ↩

Tacitus.  Annals.  Translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb.  c. 116 (edition of 1876).  The Roman historian's account of the empire under the Julio-Claudians.  Its report of Nero's persecution after the fire of AD 64 names Christus as executed by Pontius Pilate under Tiberius.  It is cited here for its date. ↩

Clement of Alexandria.  “The Stromata, or Miscellanies.”  Ante-Nicene Fathers 2.  Translated by William Wilson.  c. 200 (edition of 1885).  A work of Christian philosophy written at Alexandria about AD 200.  Its survey of foreign wisdom contains the first mention of the Buddha by name in Western literature.

1. 18a.

   Book 1, chapter 15, page 316:  “Some, too, of the Indians obey the precepts of Buddha; whom, on account of his extraordinary sanctity, they have raised to divine honours.” ↩

Adams, Edward.  The Earliest Christian Meeting Places: Almost Exclusively Houses?  London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark.  2013.  A study, by a New Testament scholar at King's College London, of the archaeological and literary evidence for where Christians met before Constantine.  Its review of the Megiddo prayer hall sets out the excavator's date and the doubts about it.

1. 19a.

   Page 98:  “Numismatic and ceramic evidence leads Tepper to conclude that the building, including the Christian meeting room, was erected about 230 CE”.  “Vassilios Tzaferis argues for a date in the second half of the third century, during a period of peace that continued until the Great Persecution of Diocletian (which began in 303).”  Pages 98–99:  “is certainly anomalous and awaits a convincing explanation.”  Page 111:  “The ‘prayer hall’ at Megiddo may be a Christian chapel within a functioning (army) residential complex, dating to the third century, but the site needs further investigation for the excavator's interpretation and dating to be established securely.” ↩

Habermas, Gary R., and Benjamin C. F. Shaw.  “The Historical Uniqueness of Jesus Christ Among the Founders of the World's Major Religions.”  Christian Research Journal 41(4).  2018.  An article by a leading evangelical scholar of the resurrection and a colleague comparing the historical sources for Jesus with those for the founders of other religions.

1. 20a.

   Section Buddhism:  “Many of Buddha's major writings date from 600 to 900 years after his death, with oral teachings being the norm for the first 500 years.”  “Conze concedes that that is why Buddhists cannot compete with Christians regarding the reliability of their traditions.” ↩ ↩

Sujato, Bhikkhu.  “Incredible and Amazing (Acchariyabbhuta Sutta, Majjhima Nikāya 123).”  SuttaCentral.  Translated by Bhikkhu Sujato.  2018.  A modern English translation of the Pāli discourse in which Ānanda lists the wonders of the Buddha's conception and birth.

1. 21a.

   Section 20.2:  “As soon as he's born, the being intent on awakening stands firm with his own feet on the ground. Facing north, he takes seven strides with a white parasol held above him, surveys all quarters, and makes this dramatic proclamation: “I am the foremost in the world! I am the eldest in the world! I am the first in the world! This is my last rebirth; now there’ll be no more future lives.””  Section 21.5:  “And this ten-thousandfold galaxy shakes and rocks and trembles.” ↩

Anālayo, Bhikkhu.  A Comparative Study of the Majjhima-nikāya.  Volume 2.  Taipei: Dharma Drum.  2011.  A discourse-by-discourse comparison of all 152 Pāli middle-length discourses with their Chinese, Sanskrit and Tibetan parallels, by the German-born monk who is the leading comparative scholar of these texts.

1. 22a.

   Page 703, table 13.2:  The table sets the wonders of the Bodhisattva's birth in the Pāli Acchariyabbhuta Sutta beside those of its Chinese Madhyama-āgama parallel.  Both list a great light and an earthquake and the newborn's seven steps;  each lists wonders the other lacks.  Page 704:  “such notions appear to be part of a shared heritage”. ↩

Ñāṇamoli, Bhikkhu, and Bhikkhu Bodhi.  The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha:  A Translation of the Majjhima Nikāya.  Wisdom Publications.  2009.  The standard scholarly English translation of the Majjhima Nikāya, the middle-length discourses, begun by a British monk and revised by Bhikkhu Bodhi.  Locators give the Pali Text Society page (M I 258).

1. 23a.

   Section MN 38 (M I 256–258):  “As I understand the Dhamma taught by the Blessed One, it is this same consciousness that runs and wanders through the round of rebirths, not another.”  “Venerable sir, it is that which speaks and feels and experiences here and there the result of good and bad actions.”  “Misguided man, to whom have you ever known me to teach the Dhamma in that way? Misguided man, have I not stated in many ways consciousness to be dependently arisen, since without a condition there is no origination of consciousness?” ↩

2. 23b.

   Section MN 22 (M I 140):  “I have been baselessly, vainly, falsely, and wrongly misrepresented by some recluses and brahmins thus: ‘The recluse Gotama is one who leads astray; he teaches the annihilation, the destruction, the extermination of an existing being.’”  “Bhikkhus, both formerly and now what I teach is suffering and the cessation of suffering.” ↩

Rhys Davids, T. W.  “The Questions of King Milinda, Part I.”  Sacred Books of the East 35.  Clarendon Press.  1890.  The first full English translation of the Milindapañha, a dialogue between the Greek king Menander and the monk Nāgasena, by the founder of the Pali Text Society.  This volume holds the older core of the work.

1. 24a.

   Pages 63–64:  “He who is born … does he remain the same or become another”.  “Neither the same nor another.”  “The light comes from the same lamp all the night through.”  “Just so, O king, is the continuity of a person or thing maintained. One comes into being, another passes away; and the rebirth is, as it were, simultaneous. Thus neither as the same nor as another does a man go on to the last phase of his self-consciousness”. ↩

Hinüber, Oskar von.  A Handbook of Pāli Literature.  Walter de Gruyter.  1996.  The standard reference survey of Pali literature by a German Indologist, giving the date and make-up of each text.

1. 25a.

   Pages 83–85, section §§ 173–179:  “contains only Mil I, which should have been composed between 100 BC and 200 AD.”  "Mil I," the original core, runs from Mil 2 to 89 in the Pali edition and contains the chariot dialogue and "neither the same nor another."  The four later parts, which hold the "Nirvana exists" passages, are not in the Chinese version and were known to the fifth-century commentators. ↩

Lamotte, Étienne.  History of Indian Buddhism:  From the Origins to the Śaka Era.  Institut Orientaliste de Louvain.  Translated by Sara Webb-Boin.  1988.  The classic one-volume history of early Indian Buddhism by the Belgian scholar Étienne Lamotte, first published in French in 1958.

1. 26a.

   Pages 543–544:  “The most important one was unquestionably that of the Sammatiyas who alone totalled half the”.  “Samgha”.  “Of the 134,800 Hinayanist monks counted”.  “together totalled 2,521 monasteries and 119, 430 religious”.  Lamotte's summary of the census of monasteries and monks recorded by the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang in about AD 630. ↩

Three Texts on Consciousness Only.  Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research.  Translated by Francis H. Cook.  1999.  English translations of Vasubandhu's Thirty Verses and Xuanzang's great Chinese commentary on them, the classic statement of Yogācāra psychology.

1. 27a.

   Page 47:  “the alaya is also retribution and the holder of all seeds”.  “It always evolves like a flowing stream”.  “And is abandoned in the stage of arhatship”.  “sentient beings grasp it as an inner self”.  The verse lines are Vasubandhu's;  the last quotation is from Xuanzang's commentary on them. ↩

Parfit, Derek.  Reasons and Persons.  Clarendon Press.  1984.  The most discussed modern book on personal identity.  Parfit argues from thought experiments (teleportation, divided brains) that a person is nothing over and above a brain, a body and connected mental events, and that identity is not what matters in survival.  Appendix J sets Buddhist texts beside his view.

1. 28a.

   Page 273:  “I claim that, when we ask what persons are, and how they continue to exist, the fundamental question is a choice between two views.”  “As Appendix J shows, Buddha would have agreed.” ↩

2. 28b.

   Pages 227–228:  “If there was sufficient evidence of reincarnation, we might have reason to believe that there really are such entities.”  “We do not in fact have the kind of evidence described above.” ↩

Siderits, Mark.  Buddhism as Philosophy:  An Introduction.  Hackett.  2007.  An introductory textbook that treats Buddhist doctrines as philosophical claims to be argued for, not as articles of faith.

1. 29a.

   Page 67:  “the theory of two truths and the claim that persons are conventionally real may be used to show that rebirth and non-self are not incompatible. If Buddhists ought to stop believing in rebirth, it is not because that belief is inconsistent with their central tenet that there is no self.” ↩ ↩

Siderits, Mark.  Personal Identity and Buddhist Philosophy:  Empty Persons.  Ashgate.  2003.  A defence of the Buddhist "reductionist" view of persons in the terms of modern analytic philosophy, by an American philosopher sympathetic to it.

1. 30a.

   Page 73:  “While belief in rebirth is compatible with Reductionism, the karma-rebirth ideological complex as a whole requires a strong form of retributivism that is incompatible with Reductionism.”  From a note. ↩

Monden and colleagues find identical twinning at "about 4 per 1000 deliveries everywhere in the world."⁶⁰  The United Nations counts 132.1 million births in 2023.⁶¹  132.1 million × 4/1000 ≈ 530,000.  Deliveries are slightly fewer than births, since twins are two births in one delivery, so the figure is about half a million a year. ↩

Ānandajoti, Bhikkhu.  “Udāna:  Exalted Utterances.”  Ancient Buddhist Texts, version 2.2.  2008.  An English translation of the Udāna by a British Theravāda monk, which keeps the traditional rendering of the "unborn" passage.

1. 32a.

   Section Ud 8.3 (Ud 80):  “There is, monks, an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned. If, monks there were not that unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned, you could not know an escape here from the born, become, made, and conditioned.” ↩

Sujato, Bhikkhu.  “Middle Discourses (Majjhima Nikāya).”  SuttaCentral.  2018.  A plain-English translation of the Majjhima Nikāya by an Australian Theravāda monk, placed in the public domain.  Locators are SuttaCentral segment numbers.

1. 33a.

   Section MN 72, segments mn72:16.1–16.2 and 20.2–20.4:  “‘They’re reborn’ doesn’t apply, Vaccha.”  “A realized one is freed from reckoning in terms of form. They’re deep, immeasurable, and hard to fathom,”.  “like the ocean.”  “‘They’re reborn’, ‘they’re not reborn’, ‘they’re both reborn and not reborn’, ‘they’re neither reborn nor not reborn’—none of these apply.” ↩

2. 33b.

   Section MN 36, segment mn36:38.2:  “I recollected my many kinds of past lives, with features and details.” ↩

World English Bible.  2020.  A public-domain modern English translation of the Bible.

1. 34a.

   Book 1 Corinthians, chapter 15, verse 42–44:  “The body is sown perishable; it is raised imperishable.”  “It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.” ↩

2. 34b.

   Book 1 Corinthians, chapter 15, verse 17:  “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain; you are still in your sins.” ↩

An order-of-magnitude estimate, for scale only;  no Christian source claims an atom count.  A 70-kilogram adult holds 16,000 grams of carbon,⁶² or 16,000 ÷ 12.011 × 6.022 × 10^-4.[-4.[oms.  About 117 billion people have been born.⁶³  At an assumed average of 9 to 16 kilograms of carbon per body at death (the lower figure allows for the many who died as children), the human dead have left 1.05 to 1.87 billion tonnes of carbon.  If that carbon is mixed through the atmosphere, oceans and land biosphere (41,120 billion tonnes), the fraction of any carbon atom's history spent in a dead human body is 2.6 × 10^-4.[ 4.6 × 10^-4.[if only through the fast-mixing pools of air, surface ocean and land (3,390 billion tonnes), 3.1 × 10^-4.[ 5.5 × 10^-4.[falkowski-2000:pools]  Multiplying by 8.0 × 10^26 gives 2.0 × 10^22 to 4.4 × 10^23 shared atoms per body, 0.4 to 9 grams of its 16 kilograms of carbon.  Full mixing and the average carbon at death are the article's assumptions. ↩

Hick, John.  Death and Eternal Life.  Westminster/John Knox Press.  1976 (edition of 1994).  A Christian philosopher's survey of Western and Eastern beliefs about life after death, first published in 1976.  It proposes the "replica" theory of resurrection and compares Christian and Buddhist views of the self.

1. 36a.

   Page 340:  “is not a self-existent substance but is dependent for existence from moment to moment on the active will of the Creator. He is wholly immersed in time, wholly a process sustained from beyond himself. Thus both religions affirm the radically temporal and inherently transitory nature of the human person. But beyond this similarity there is a difference. For theravada Buddhism, the perfecting of the empirical ego, its attainment of arhatship, leads to its cessation. For Christianity, on the other hand, the perfecting of the empirical self takes it beyond mortality into an eternal life lived in relation to God.” ↩

Wallace, B. Alan.  Contemplative Science:  Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Converge.  Columbia University Press, New York.  2007.  A former Tibetan monk with a Stanford doctorate argues that trained attention is a scientific instrument and that contemplatives have observed a consciousness that continues between lives.  The strongest statement of the claim that meditation confirms doctrine.

1. 37a.

   Page 17:  “Memories are stored, in a manner of speaking, in the continuum of the substrate consciousness, which carries on from lifetime to lifetime. This conclusion is based on the experiences of highly trained contemplatives who have refined their attention in ways unknown to modern science.” ↩ ↩

Goyal, Madhav et al.  “Meditation Programs for Psychological Stress and Well-being:  A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.”  JAMA Internal Medicine 174(3):357–368.  2014.  A Johns Hopkins review for the US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality that admitted only randomised trials with an active control:  47 trials, 3,320 participants.  It found small to moderate benefits for anxiety, depression and pain against nonspecific controls and no advantage over drugs, exercise or other therapies.  Mirror:  PMC

1. 38a.

   Section Abstract:  “After reviewing 17,801 citations, we included 47 trials with 3,320 participants.”  “We found no evidence that meditation programs were better than any active treatment (drugs, exercise, other behavioral therapies).”  “Clinicians should be aware that meditation programs can result in small to moderate reductions in multiple negative dimensions of psychological stress.”  The Results section gives 18,753 unique citations screened;  the abstract's 17,801 appears nowhere else in the paper. ↩

Goldberg, Simon B. et al.  “Mindfulness-Based Interventions for Psychiatric Disorders:  A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.”  Clinical Psychology Review 59:52–60.  2018.  A meta-analysis of 142 randomised samples and 12,005 patients with psychiatric disorders, sorting comparisons by the strength of the control.  The most favourable review in this article;  Richard Davidson is a co-author.  Mirror:  PMC

1. 39a.

   Section Abstract:  “Mindfulness conditions did not differ from evidence-based treatments (d = −0.004).” ↩

Kuyken, Willem et al.  “Efficacy of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy in Prevention of Depressive Relapse:  An Individual Patient Data Meta-analysis from Randomized Trials.”  JAMA Psychiatry 73(6):565–574.  2016.  A pooled re-analysis of the raw data from nine randomised trials, 1,258 patients with recurrent depression in remission.  The strongest evidence for any clinical use of mindfulness.  Mirror:  PMC

1. 40a.

   Section Results:  “Of 596 participants who received MBCT, 229 (38%) had a depressive relapse within 60 weeks' follow-up, whereas 327 of 662 participants (49%) who did not receive MBCT had a depressive relapse within 60 weeks.”  Section Abstract:  “(hazard ratio, 0.69; 95% CI, 0.58-0.82)”. ↩

Kuyken, Willem et al.  “Effectiveness and Cost-Effectiveness of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy Compared with Maintenance Antidepressant Treatment in the Prevention of Depressive Relapse or Recurrence (PREVENT):  A Randomised Controlled Trial.”  The Lancet 386(9988):63–73.  2015.  A randomised trial in 95 British general practices:  424 patients on maintenance antidepressants either stayed on them or took MBCT with support to taper, followed for two years.  The largest head-to-head test of MBCT against medication.

1. 41a.

   Page 63:  “We found no evidence that MBCT-TS is superior to maintenance antidepressant treatment for the prevention of depressive relapse in individuals at risk for depressive relapse or recurrence.”  Pages 68–69:  “(hazard ratio [HR] 0·89, 95% CI 0·67–1·18, p=0·43), with 94 (44%) of 212 patients in the MBCT-TS group relapsing compared with 100 (47%) of 212 in the maintenance antidepressants group”. ↩

Kuyken, Willem et al.  “Effectiveness and Cost-Effectiveness of Universal School-Based Mindfulness Training Compared with Normal School Provision in Reducing Risk of Mental Health Problems and Promoting Well-Being in Adolescence:  The MYRIAD Cluster Randomised Controlled Trial.”  Evidence-Based Mental Health 25(3):99–109.  2022.  The largest trial of mindfulness in schools:  85 British secondary schools randomised, 8,376 pupils analysed at one year.  Run by the Oxford group that developed MBCT, so not a hostile test.

1. 42a.

   Page 99:  “Analysis of 84 schools (n=8376 participants) found no evidence that SBMT was superior to TAU at 1 year.”  “Findings do not support the superiority of SBMT over TAU in promoting mental health in adolescence.”  The standardised differences at one year were 0.005 for risk of depression, 0.02 for social-emotional-behavioural functioning and 0.02 for well-being. ↩

Kral, Tammi R. A. et al.  “Absence of Structural Brain Changes from Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction:  Two Combined Randomized Controlled Trials.”  Science Advances 8:eabk3316.  2022.  Two pooled randomised trials from Richard Davidson's laboratory:  218 meditation-naive adults scanned before and after eight weeks of MBSR, a matched health programme or a waiting list.  No structural difference anywhere, including the regions earlier studies reported.  Antoine Lutz and Richard Davidson are the senior authors.

1. 43a.

   Page 5:  “These null effects, in conjunction with our large sample size and rigorous matched comparison condition, allow us to conclude that MBSR does not differentially affect brain structure.” ↩

Lott, Dylan T. et al.  “No Detectable Electroencephalographic Activity After Clinical Declaration of Death Among Tibetan Buddhist Meditators in Apparent Tukdam, a Putative Postmortem Meditation State.”  Frontiers in Psychology 11:599190.  2021.  Field EEG recordings in India, 2013 to 2018, from 13 Tibetan practitioners judged by Tibetan physicians to be in tukdam and 14 living volunteers, by Davidson's Center for Healthy Minds with Tibetan doctors;  Antoine Lutz and Richard Davidson are the senior authors.  The first direct test of the state the Dalai Lama asked scientists to study.

1. 44a.

   Page 1:  “While living subjects displayed well-defined MMN and ABR responses, no recognizable EEG waveforms were discernable in any of the tukdam cases.” ↩ ↩

Farias, Miguel et al.  “Adverse Events in Meditation Practices and Meditation-Based Therapies:  A Systematic Review.”  Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica 142(5):374–393.  2020.  A systematic review of 83 studies with 6,703 meditators, pooling the share of participants with any adverse event.

1. 45a.

   Section Abstract:  “The total prevalence of adverse events was 8.3% (95% CI 0.05-0.12), though this varied considerably across types of studies - 3.7% (95% CI 0.02-0.05) for experimental and 33.2% (95% CI 0.25-0.41) for observational studies.”  “We found that the occurrence of AEs during or after meditation practices is not uncommon, and may occur in individuals with no previous history of mental health problems.” ↩

Wright, Robert.  Why Buddhism Is True:  The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment.  Simon & Schuster, New York.  2017.  A best-selling defence by a journalist and writer on evolutionary psychology.  He argues that Buddhism's diagnosis of the mind is borne out by evolutionary psychology and limits his claim to the naturalistic parts of Buddhism.

1. 46a.

   Page xi:  “I'm not talking about the "supernatural" or more exotically metaphysical parts of Buddhism—reincarnation, for example—but rather about the naturalistic parts: ideas that fall squarely within modern psychology and philosophy.”  From "A Note to Readers." ↩

Sujato, Bhikkhu.  “With the Kālāmas of Kesamutta (Aṅguttara Nikāya 3.65).”  SuttaCentral.  Translated by Bhikkhu Sujato.  2018.  A modern English translation of the Pāli discourse in which the Buddha tells the Kālāma people how to judge rival teachers.  Modern Buddhists often cite it as a charter for testing teachings by experience.

1. 47a.

   Section 4.2–4.3:  “But when you know for yourselves:”.  “'These things are unskillful, blameworthy, criticized by sensible people, and when you undertake them, they lead to harm and suffering', then you should give them up.” ↩

2. 47b.

   Section 43.3–44.1:  “'If it turns out there is another world, and good and bad deeds have a result”.  “'If it turns out there is no other world, and good and bad deeds don't have a result, then in this very life I'll keep myself free of enmity and ill will, untroubled and happy.'” ↩

Olcott, Henry S.  A Buddhist Catechism, According to the Canon of the Southern Church.  1st edition.  1881.  A question-and-answer primer for Sinhalese Buddhist schools by the American co-founder of the Theosophical Society, approved by the monk H. Sumangala.  Its first edition already claims that modern science supports karma.

1. 48a.

   Page 11:  “Is this Buddhistical doctrine supported or denied by the teachings of modern science?”  “True science entirely supports this doctrine of cause and effect. Science teaches that man is the result of a law of development, from an imperfect and lower, to a higher and perfect, condition.”  “What is this doctrine of science called?”  “Evolution.”  Questions 69 and 70.  The doctrine is karma and rebirth, from question 68. ↩

Lopez, Donald S. Jr.  Buddhism and Science:  A Guide for the Perplexed.  University of Chicago Press, Chicago.  2008.  A history of the claim that Buddhism agrees with science, from the 1873 Pānadura debate to the present, by a professor of Buddhist and Tibetan studies at Michigan.  Lopez shows that the claim is modern, arose in the colonial contest with Christian missions, and has attached itself to the science of each generation.

1. 49a.

   Page 3:  “The claim that an itinerant teacher of Iron Age India understood the theory of relativity, quantum physics, or the big bang theory (each of which has been asserted) would seem to be preposterous. Yet such claims have been made for more than a century, substituting whatever is regarded as the most advanced scientific knowledge of the day as a component of the Buddha's enlightenment.” ↩

2. 49b.

   Pages 41–42:  “It is said to be 80,000 yojanas high, 80,000 yojanas wide, and 80,000 yojanas long.”  “it was apparently considered to be equal to approximately 16 miles in Sri Lanka in the nineteenth century.” ↩

Sujato, Bhikkhu.  “The Seven Suns (Aṅguttara Nikāya 7.66).”  SuttaCentral.  Translated by Bhikkhu Sujato.  2018.  A modern English translation of the Pāli discourse in which the Buddha teaches impermanence by describing the world's end by seven suns.  It gives Mount Sineru's dimensions in the Buddha's own voice.

1. 50a.

   Section 3.1:  “Sineru, the king of mountains, is 84,000 leagues long and 84,000 leagues wide. It sinks 84,000 leagues below the ocean and rises 84,000 leagues above it.”  The Pāli reads caturāsītiyojanasahassāni, 84,000 yojanas, for each measure. ↩

This site's arithmetic on Vasubandhu's figures.⁶⁵  One yojana = 8 krośa × 500 bows × 4 cubits = 16,000 cubits.  A cubit, from elbow to fingertip, is taken as about 0.45 m, so a yojana is about 7.2 km;  Lopez reports about 16 miles, 25.7 km, as the nineteenth-century Sri Lankan value.⁴⁹  Meru above the water:  80,000 × 7.2 km = 576,000 km, which is 1.50 times the Moon's mean distance of 384,400 km (AN 7.66's 84,000 leagues gives 604,800 km, 1.57 times);  at 25.7 km a yojana, 2.06 million km, 5.4 times.  Meru's width equals its height, 576,000 km, or 45 times the Earth's diameter of 12,742 km.  Sun and moon at Yugandhara's height, 40,000 yojanas:  288,000 km, against the Sun's mean distance of 149.6 million km, a factor of 519, and the Moon's 384,400 km, a factor of 0.75.  Sun's disk 51 yojanas = 367 km against 1,392,700 km, a factor of 3,790.  Moon's disk 50 yojanas = 360 km against 3,474 km, a factor of 9.7. ↩

Li, Shanshan et al.  “Association of Religious Service Attendance with Mortality among Women.”  JAMA Internal Medicine 176(6):777–785.  2016.  A 16-year follow-up of 74,534 women in the Nurses' Health Study, with repeated measures of attendance and methods designed for time-varying confounding.  The best observational study linking church attendance to survival.

1. 52a.

   Section Abstract:  “Hazard Ratio [HR]=0.67, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.62–0.71”.  More than weekly attendance against never;  13,537 deaths from 1996 to 2012. ↩

Koenig, Harold G. et al.  “Religious vs. Conventional Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Major Depression in Persons with Chronic Medical Illness:  A Pilot Randomized Trial.”  Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 203(4):243–251.  2015.  A pilot trial of 132 depressed, chronically ill adults given ten sessions of conventional or religiously integrated cognitive behavioural therapy, mostly by telephone.

1. 53a.

   Section Abstract:  “The intention-to-treat analysis at 12 weeks indicated no significant difference in outcome between the two groups (B = 0.33; SE, 1.80; p = 0.86).”  “Overall religiosity interacted with treatment group (B = -0.10; SE, 0.05; p = 0.048), suggesting that RCBT was slightly more efficacious in the more religious participants.” ↩

Rohde, Julia S. et al.  “Centering and Flourishing:  An Online Intervention Study Assessing the Effects of a Christian Contemplative Practice on Stress-Reduction and Human Flourishing.”  BMC Psychology 12:373.  2024.  A pre-registered online trial of 702 Christians given 28 days of Centering Prayer with Christian framing, the same practice without it, or a passive control.  The nearest Christian counterpart to the mindfulness trials.

1. 54a.

   Page 1:  “We found no group differences between the conditions on our primary outcome measure of well-being at one-week post-intervention.” ↩

VanderWeele, Tyler J.  “Religious Communities and Human Flourishing.”  Current Directions in Psychological Science 26(5):476–481.  2017.  A short review by the leading researcher on religion and health, arguing that attendance probably causes part of its association with health and flourishing.

1. 55a.

   Page 479:  “Although many of the mechanisms relating religion to health—social support, smoking, meaning and purpose, optimism—are seemingly not distinctively religious and could be operative in other contexts as well, some of these are arguably quite central to religious practice.” ↩

Nongbri, Brent.  “The Use and Abuse of P52: Papyrological Pitfalls in the Dating of the Fourth Gospel.”  Harvard Theological Review 98(1):23–48.  2005.  A study of how the oldest fragment of John has been dated, by a historian of early Christian manuscripts.  It compares P52's handwriting with securely dated documents and concludes that its possible dates run later than the popular AD 125.

1. 56a.

   Page 46:  “What I have done is to show that any serious consideration of the window of possible dates for P52 must include dates in the later second and early third centuries.” ↩

Stevenson, Ian.  Children Who Remember Previous Lives: A Question of Reincarnation.  Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.  1987.  The summary book of the University of Virginia psychiatrist who collected thousands of cases of children claiming past-life memories.  Stevenson thought some cases suggested rebirth, which makes his finding that they show no retributive karma more weighty.

1. 57a.

   Page 258:  “The foregoing cases and a few others offer the only hints I have found for the working of a process such as retributive karma. Even these cases, however, provide no evidence for such a process.” ↩

Reimer, Paula J. et al.  “The IntCal20 Northern Hemisphere Radiocarbon Age Calibration Curve (0–55 cal kBP).”  Radiocarbon 62(4):725–757.  2020.  The international standard curve for converting radiocarbon ages to calendar dates, built from tree rings and other dated records.

1. 58a.

   The curve's data file, read year by year between 1500 and 4500 cal BP. ↩

Coningham, R. A. E. et al.  “The earliest Buddhist shrine: excavating the birthplace of the Buddha, Lumbini (Nepal).”  Antiquity 87(338):1104–1123.  2013.  The report of the 2011–2012 excavation under the Maya Devi temple at Lumbini by a Durham University team working with Nepal's Department of Archaeology.  It found postholes and a brick kerb beneath the Ashokan temple and dated them with radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence.  The authors propose a pre-Ashokan timber tree shrine and suggest it supports the long chronology;  other specialists dispute both points.

1. 59a.

   Page 1108:  “OSL measurements from early land surfaces, contexts 508 and 509, within Trench C5 yielded dates of 545 ± 235 BC, and 990 ± 290 BC respectively.”  Page 1109:  “Radiocarbon samples from two contemporary posthole fills (contexts 553 and 557) provided dates of 799–546 BC and 801–548 BC (Table 1), suggesting an extremely early delineation of sacred space within this locality, and pushing activity at Lumbini far before the reign of Asoka.”  Page 1112, table 1:  Conventional ages 2540 ± 30 BP (SUERC-42856, context 553) and 2548 ± 30 BP (SUERC-42857, context 557). ↩

Monden, Christiaan et al.  “Twin Peaks:  More Twinning in Humans than Ever Before.”  Human Reproduction 36(6):1666–1673.  2021.  A survey of twinning rates in 165 countries.  Most variation is in fraternal twins;  the identical-twin rate is nearly constant worldwide.  Mirror:  PMC

1. 60a.

   Section Discussion:  “monozygotic twinning rates are about 4 per 1000 deliveries everywhere in the world”. ↩

United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division.  World Population Prospects 2024, Demographic Indicators (Medium variant).  2024.  The United Nations' standard estimates of births, deaths and population.  For 2023 they give 132.1 million births worldwide. ↩

International Commission on Radiological Protection.  Report of the Task Group on Reference Man (ICRP Publication 23).  Pergamon Press.  1975.  The standard reference data on the anatomy and chemical composition of a typical adult, compiled for radiation protection.

1. 62a.

   Page 327, tables Table 110, Reference Man:  total body content for some elements:  Carbon:  16,000 grams in the 70-kilogram Reference Man. ↩

Kaneda, Toshiko, and Carl Haub.  “How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth?”  Population Reference Bureau.  Nov 15, 2022.  The Population Reference Bureau's standard estimate, built from assumed birth rates since 190,000 BC:  about 117 billion people born. ↩

Falkowski, P. et al.  “The Global Carbon Cycle:  A Test of Our Knowledge of Earth as a System.”  Science 290(5490):291–296.  2000.  A review of the carbon cycle by seventeen authors, with a table of the sizes of Earth's carbon reservoirs.

1. 64a.

   Page 293, table Table 1:  Atmosphere 720 gigatonnes of carbon;  oceans 38,400 (surface layer 670);  terrestrial biosphere 2,000.

Vasubandhu.  Abhidharmakośabhāṣyam, vol. 2.  Asian Humanities Press, Berkeley.  Translated by Louis de La Vallée Poussin and Leo M. Pruden.  1991.  The English translation, by way of the French, of the fourth- or fifth-century scholastic treatise whose third chapter, "The World," is the standard Buddhist cosmology of India, Tibet and East Asia.  It gives Meru's height, the sun's and moon's sizes and heights, and the length of the yojana.

1. 65a.

   Page 474:  “and eight krośas make what is called one yojana.”  Verse 3.85d–88a.  The chain is 24 finger-widths to a cubit, 4 cubits to a bow, 500 bows to a krośa, 8 krośas to a yojana. ↩