Buddhist

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About Buddhist

Buddhism, a religion and philosophy from ancient India, is based on the teachings of the Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama, of the Shakyas. His lifetime is traditionally given as 566 to 483 BCE; it spread throughout the Indian subcontinent in the five centuries following his death. Missionaries would carry Buddhism throughout Central Asia, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Phillipines, Indonesia, Singapore, Laos, Burma etc..., Sri Lanka, Tibet, as well as East Asian countries such as China, Korea, and Japan in the following two millenia.

With approximately 708 million followers, Buddhism is a major world religion. Its adherents are called Buddhists. Buddhism is usually divided into two main branches: Theravada Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism. The followers of Theravada Buddhism take the scriptures known as the "Pali suttas, vinaya and abhidhamma" (the Tipitaka/ Tripitaka) as normative and authoritative; the followers of Mahayana Buddhism base themselves chiefly on the "Mahayana sutras" (sutra/ sutta is generally a scripture in which the Buddha himself gives instruction), as well as on various versions of the vinaya. Whereas the Theravadins (followers of Theravada Buddhism) adhere solely to the Pali suttas and their commentaries, the adherents of Mahayana accept both the suttas and the Mahayana sutras as authentic and valid teachings of the Buddha, aimed at different types of person and different levels of spiritual penetration. For the Theravadins, the Mahayana sutras are deviant works of poetic fiction, not issuing from the Buddha himself; for the Mahayanists, the Pali suttas (or "agamas", as such scriptures are also known) do indeed contain basic, foundational (or provisional) teachings of the Buddha, while for those same Mahayanists the Mahayana sutras articulate the Buddha's higher, advanced and deeper doctrines, reserved for the more aspirational Bodhisattvas. Hence the name Mahayana, lit, the Greater Vehicle, which has room for both the general masses of sentient beings and those more developed. Some Mahayanists irreverently refer to Theravada as Hinayana, lit, the Lesser Vehicle. This term is now widely seen as either inaccurate or derogatory, although it does actually appear in the famous Mahayana scripture, the Lotus Sutra (amongst others).

An alternative categorisation of Buddhism follows the major languages of the Buddhist canon, which exists in Pali, Tibetan, and Chinese collections. This would serve to divide East Asian Mahayana Buddhism from the Vajrayana form of Mahayana found in Tibet, Mongolia, and the Himalayas. In older works Zen is sometimes set out as a distinct category; this is rather contentious and ahistorical (analogous perhaps to a sometimes-encountered Quaker self-description as a third major wave of Christianity, after Catholicism and Protestantism).

The aim of Buddhist practice is to end the cycle of rebirth called samsara (Pāli, Sanskrit), by awakening the practitioner to the realization of true reality, the achievement of liberation (nirvana). To achieve this, one should purify and train the mind and act according to the laws of karma, of cause and effect: perform positive actions, and positive results will follow. Accordingly negative deeds have negative consequences. Eventually, however (from the Mahayana viewpoint), the conditioned realm of karma needs to be transcended altogether in the attainment of the ineffably blissful and utterly liberated state of Nirvana and Awakening.

Buddhist morality is underpinned by the principles of harmlessness and moderation. Mental training focuses on moral discipline (sila), meditative concentration (samadhi), and wisdom (prajñā).

While Buddhism does not deny the existence of supernatural beings (indeed, many are discussed in Buddhist scripture), it does not ascribe power for creation, salvation or judgment to them. Like humans, they are regarded as having the power to affect worldly events, and so some Buddhist schools associate with them via ritual.