Talk:Burkhan Khaldun

meaning of the name
what's the source for saying the meaning is "god Khaldun" and not, say, "god-khaldun"? Wouldn't "god Khaldun" look more like "Khaldun Burkhan" instead the other way round? I admit that my Mongolian is not very good, but I don't think this is so obvious. Yaan (talk) 11:01, 5 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Burhan does not mean "god" at all. Burhan means Buddha while Buddha isn't a god. As my teacher taught us (if I were listening carefully and didn't misunderstand), double "d" in ancient Sanskrit was pronounced as 'r". So it sounded like Burha, and 'n' was added in the course of the evolution of the word.
 * IMHO, the word Buddha is related with the root of the Russian word budit' (будить) meaning "to awaken" (I didn't say Sanskrit comes from Russian, please don't misunderstand). Burhan or Buddha is an awakened person, enlightened person, who has discovered to himself the meaning of the existence. Such person enters nirvana after passing away. Or postpones this process to lead the other sentient beings to enlightenment and becomes a Bodhisattva. Nirvana is a state of liberation from samsara.
 * There are six realms in samsara and the highest is the realm of gods. They live very long that for humans their lives seem to be eternal. Very virtuous humans may go to the god realm after death. Gods are not free from nisvanis and samsara. They eventually use out all the virtue they collected in all past lives. When they die, they have no more virtue remained but sins and fall directly to the hell realm. In Mongolian, "god" is "tenger". It's different from "sky" -- "tengri". Some of the gods (Jehovah?, Krishna?) claim to have created the world. In fact, the world isn't created by any creature, it forms as a result of the collective karma of all sentient beings. Its future also depends on the karma of all of us.
 * All this was narrated to explain the difference between god (tenger) and Burhan.
 * The Mountain Otgon Tenger -- yes, that's "the Youngest God". Gantuya eng (talk) 14:55, 6 January 2009 (UTC)