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Buddhism, religion and philosophy founded in India c.525 B.C. By Siddhartha Gautama, called the Buddha. There are over 300 million Buddhists worldwide. One of the great world religions, it is divided into two main schools: the Theravada or Hinayana in Sri Lanka and SE Asia, and the Mahayana in China, Mongolia, Korea, and Japan. A third school, the Vajrayana, has a long tradition in Tibet and Japan. Buddhism has largely disappeared from its country of origin, India, except for the presence there of many refugees from the Tibet region of China and a small number of converts from the lower castes of Hinduism ("Buddhism").
Buddhism is a blend of philosophy, religious belief and educational principles that focuses on personal spiritual development. Although the distinction may be somewhat blurred, strictly speaking, Buddhists do not worship gods or deities, and the Golden Buddha's people pray to are supposed to be merely aids to understanding and contemplation. Because it is not a religion in the conventional sense, people are encouraged to question its teachings and to seek insight for themselves. It is an education, one leading to insight into the true nature of life. The aim of Buddhist practices is to become free of suffering and to develop the qualities of awareness, kindness and wisdom. Originating in India, Buddhism gradually spread throughout Asia to Central Asia, Tibet, Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia, as well as the East Asian countries of China, Mongolia, Korea and Japan ("BUDDHISM").
Buddhism has faced a double challenge in each culture it has entered: to remain true to the core of its teachings and to express these in a way that responds to the needs of the new situation. Just as Tibetan Buddhism has a different flavor from that of China and of Japan, so any emergent Western form of Buddhism must inevitably change as it engages with the Western world. Western science is one of the major new influences with which Buddhist beliefs must contend and converse, and the Western emphasis on the individual brings in another new dimension. An important third influence is, surely, feminism. A recent plethora of books addressing a feminine approach to Buddhism would seem to support this. Yet...
To listen to this voice may help one move towards the happiness that is, as the Dalai Lama continually remind one, what all humanity seeks (Watson).
The basic doctrines of early Buddhism, which remain common to all Buddhism, include the "four noble truths": existence is suffering (dukhka); suffering has a cause, namely craving and attachment (trishna); there is a cessation of suffering, which is nirvana; and there is a path to the cessation of suffering, the "eightfold path" of right views, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. Buddhism characteristically describes reality in terms of process and relation rather than entity or substance. Experience is analyzed into five aggregates (skandhas). The first, form (rupa), refers to material existence; the following four, sensations (vedana), perceptions (samjna), psychic constructs (samskara), and consciousness (vijnana), refer to psychological processes. The central Buddhist teaching of non-self (anatman) asserts that in the five aggregates no independently existent, immutable self, or soul, can be found. All phenomena arise in interrelation and in dependence on causes and conditions, and thus are subject to inevitable decay and cessation. The casual conditions are defined in a 12-membered chain called dependent origination (pratityasamutpada) whose links are: ignorance, predisposition, consciousness, name-form, the senses, contact, craving, grasping, becoming, birth, old age, and death, whence again ignorance ("Buddhism").
Buddhist meditation (dhyana, or bhavana) is divided into two different categories: samatha and vipassana. Samatha means "tranquility," and involves focusing or concentrating on a single object or thought. With practice, the person meditating develops a sharp ability to concentrate on one object for a long period of time. This stills the mind and brings a sense of peace and tranquility. Vipassana,…
Works Cited
"Buddhism." Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition (2009): 1. MasterFILE Premier. EBSCO. Web. 18 Sept. 2010.
"BUDDHISM." The Essentials of Philosophy and Ethics. Abingdon: Hodder Education, 2006. Credo Reference. Web. 17 Sept. 2010.
Jacobson, Doranne. "Buddhism and meditation." Calliope 5.4 (1995): 40. MasterFILE Premier. EBSCO. Web. 18 Sept. 2010.
Van Biema, David, Jeanne McDowell, and Richard N. Ostling. "Buddhism in America. (cover story)." Time International (South Pacific Edition) 49 (1997): 50. MasterFILE Premier. EBSCO. Web. 17 Sept. 2010.
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy founded in India around 525 B.C. By Siddhartha Gautama, called the Buddha (Buddhism pp). There are two main schools of Buddhism, Theravada or Hinayana, which is found in Stri Lanka, Southeast Asian, and the Mahayana, which is found in China, Mongolia, Korea, and Japan (Buddhism pp). A third school, called Vajrayana, is traditional in Tibet and Japan (Buddhism pp). The basic doctrines of Buddhism include
According to Bass, "Hinduism is the only major religion lacking an adequate explanation as to its origin," as no definitive Hindu text exist that that date before 1000 B.C. Indeed, because Hinduism is one of the religions that views time as cyclical rather than linear, what information is available about Hinduism does not give a very accurate picture of its history (Bass 5). What can be gleaned from this
The Japanese myth partly resembles that of Adam and Eve present in the Bible and in the Quran. However, the first beings in Japan are considered to hold much more power than their equivalents in the west. Another resemblance between the Japanese legends and those in the west is the fact that the kami are considered to live in the high planes of Takamagahara, somewhat resembling mount Olympus, from Greek
Buddhism I have admittedly led a pretty sheltered life in terms of interactions with people from other cultures. I am not a Buddhist and so I do not have any first-hand experiences with the religious practices associated with Buddhism. Before this course, and before my experience, I knew some things about Buddhism, but only as much as most people know. For example, I knew that Buddhism is primarily associated with Asian
In fact, Hindus consider their religion not as a form of religion per se, but spirituality in general. Selvanayagam (2005) discussed the Hindu concept of spirituality, which takes into account all possible ways or manner in which enlightenment can be achieved. In India, wherein the Hindu religion is the dominant and an integral part of people's lives, Hinduism is considered more than a religion -- it is also a political
It is through the process of death and rebirth that the knowledge is gained which will finally liberate the individual being from the central cause of all suffering itself - the cycle of death and birth. Essentially, it is only through knowledge that this can be achieved in most Buddhist schools of thought. The rationale behind the importance of reincarnation as a process that is required to escape the centrality