The Shaolin Temple , renowned worldwide as the home of Kung Fu, is a place of rigorous training and spiritual devotion for the 400 monks who reside there. Of these, 100 are warrior monks, students...
One of Sri Lanka’s most well-preserved gems is the Dambulla Cave Temple, a renowned Buddhist temple complex from the 1st century BC. Sometimes referred to as the Golden Temple of Dambulla, the...
When we think of Buddhism today, we think of pacifism, being at one with the world, love for one’s neighbor and nature, and other aspects of peaceful living. Modern Buddhist monks are devoted to...
Archaeologists have recently uncovered the remains of a man in iron chains from the Khirbat el-Masani archaeological site in northern Jerusalem. The remains are 1500-year-old and are those of a...
Eilmer of Malmesbury was a Benedictine monk who lived in the 10th and 11th centuries AD. Eilmer is remembered today for his flight from the top of a tower. Due to this feat, the monk is considered as...
The Immovable Ladder is an ordinary wooden ladder with an extraordinary history. It was placed under a window on the exterior of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City of Jerusalem and, due...
When most people think about what it means to be a saint, the image that comes to mind is of a benevolent, gracious figure that exudes holiness in every cell of their being, and that every word and...
Jasło is a town in south-eastern Poland that is located in the heartland of the Doły (Pits). It was here that builders uncovered bones in 2013, and again during renovation work last year. A team of...
The island of Rhodes which now forms part of Greece, has a long and dramatic history dating back 12,000 years to the Neolithic era. In the medieval period it was the headquarters of The Order of...
Life in a medieval village was surely no fairytale. Hard work, poverty, uncertainty of life and its comforts, the iron fist of the feudal lord - the disadvantages were numerous, and benefits few and...
Although Central Asia is no longer inundated by tourists, in the past it was a dynamic and diverse area, largely thanks to the Silk Road . One of the many remarkable sites in this region is the...
The Huashan Trail is considered by some to be one of the most dangerous hiking trails in the world. This trail is located on Huashan (or Mount Hua), a mountain situated near the city of Huayin in the...
Bhutan is a Himalayan kingdom with a rich history and a distinctive Buddhist culture . It has barely been impacted by modernity and globalization, and has managed to largely preserve its ancient...
A collection of highly-controversial stone figures discovered in Puerto Rico are believed by some to have been created by members of the lost Ten Tribes of Israel and by others as hoaxes, but these...
In our contemporary world, noise pollution has reached dangerous levels. But even in what many reminisce as “quieter times” in the “more peaceful” past people were still searching out silence and...
Handwriting is one of those things most people don’t really give a second thought to today – we live in a world where we are surrounded by text and the vast majority of the time it is printed rather...
Archaeologists in the Channel Islands (part of the United Kingdom) made a baffling discovery recently. They discovered the handless skeleton of a man on one of the rocky islets located in the English...
A study on a Chinese Buddha statue carried out in the Netherlands revealed a startling discovery - the statue contains the mummified remains of a Buddhist monk. Irish Archaeology reports that the...
In January 2015 it was announced that the remains of a Buddhist monk in a meditative position, estimated to be around 200 years old, were discovered in Mongolia. The monk was found to be in a seated...
Kim Haines-Eitzen / The Conversation In today’s world, loneliness seems to have reached epidemic proportions. Countless studies have highlighted the serious and negative impact that loneliness has on...
Arguably the world’s most famous medieval manuscript, the wonderfully illustrated Book of Kells , was “created in 2 parts over 50 years,” Dr Bernard Meehan of Trinity College, Dublin, told reporters...
Ninjas or shinobi ("to sneak”) have become kings of popular culture and their acrobatic trained-killer antics have been featured in hundreds of movies and television series. These deadly mercenary...
St. Daniel was completely devoted in his quest to contemplate spiritual and religious issues through a life of solitary contemplation. He really did not want to be disturbed in this endeavour and...
Saint Brendan (also referred to by his various epithets ‘the Navigator’, ‘the Voyager’, ‘the Anchorite’, and ‘the Bold’) was an Irish saint who lived between the 5th and 6th centuries AD known for...