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I. Religion

Buddhism is one of the world's great religions. There are six major religious systems in the world. Each has many subdivisions and methods of practice. They are:

Judeo-Christian-Islamic complex
Hinduism (practiced by 800,000,000 people in India)
1. Shaivism
2. Vaishnavism
3. Shakta
Taoism (practiced in China)
Confucianism (practiced in China)
Shamanism (practiced around the Pacific Basin from Burma and Thailand, north to Siberia, all through Alaska and the northwest of Canada and the U.S. into Mexico and on to Central and South America.)
Buddhism (which originated in India and was, and in many cases still is, practiced in most of the countries in Asia.)

B. Characteristics that identify a major religion

A religion is concerned with certain specific topics
1. a theory of existence (ontology)
2. a theory of the end of the being/world/universe (eschatology)
3. a theory of personal salvation (soteriology)
a) faith
b) practice
c) ethical/moral behavior/well being
Founder
Teachings (dogma and doctrine)
1. As taught by the founder
2. As explained by the teachers who followed the founder
The community of followers

C. The idea of God versus god versus "non-theistic"

Those systems that believe in a single all powerful God (monotheistic). These are:
1. The Abrahamic comples of Judiasm, Christianity and Islam.
Hinduism (there appear to be many gods in Hinduism but each of the major forms of Hinduism believe that the many gods emerge from and are simply aspects of a single god.)
Those that do not believe in a God (non-theistic). These are:
1. Buddhism (believes in the dharma or the laws of order). The Buddha is always and only a teacher Never a God or a god.
2. Taoism (believes in the dao or way of nature) A Daoist practitioner is an "Adept," one who is skilled at the practices.
3. Confucianism (believes in the li or rites of conduct)
Some believe in many Gods (polytheistic). The one major one is:
1. Shamanism which is a from of animism

II. Buddhism

A. What are the major components of Buddhism?

Every religion has a set of ideas that serve as the basis for the teachings that it offers. These are called presuppositions. These are concepts about the nature of existence that are the basis for the teachings of the religion. For example, the major Judeo-Christian-Islamic presupposition is that there is a universal creator God who can affect our day to day existence. The Buddhist presuppositions originated in early philosophical and religious speculation that took place in India between 4500 and 2500 years ago. They are as follows:

1. The Buddhist theory of existence (ontology)
*All physical existence is in a cycle much like the "big Bang" theory of modern astro-physics where all matter come together in a big ball and then explodes. It expands for billions of years and then collapses back into a ball for billions of years until it and explodes again. This the Buddhist system this cycle is called a kalpa and these cycles will repeat infinitely. The physical form of the world is a Vast mountain in the center of the universe, with all of the continents around it. In a traditional drawing, it looks like this:

At the top are 28 heaven worlds, next, below them there are the five realms of Mount Meru itself, after that there are alternating rings of mountains and seas and after that there is a great sea with the continents in it. Various heavenly beings live in the heaven worlds, humans animals and ghosts live on the continents, and beings who have been reborn in the hells live in six realms that are under the continents. They are not shown in this drawing.

All life emerges from disturbances in the dharma. Life is also eternal and any individual may be reborn an infinite number of times. He or she can be reborn as anything from a bacteria to a heavenly being in the highest heaven. The cycle of lives of an individual continues so often and in so many ways that some Buddhists have developed a saying. "Every being now alive has been your mother at some time in the past," and they really do mean to count all of the insects, and even earthworms.

The Buddhist theory of the end of the being/world/universe (eschatology) states that the universe will go on for all infinite time. World cycles, or kalpas, will repeat over and over and the life cycle of individual beings will repeat over and over- infinitely!

The Buddhist view of personal salvation (soteriology) is that the individual may escape the endless cycle of rebirths by attaining enlightenment. Enlightenment is essentially knowledge of how the system works and how the individual is literally identical with the totality of the universe. This knowledge is called enlightenment. It may be attained through:

1) faith
2) practice
3) ethical/moral behavior/well being

--All of these beliefs were in existence before the lifetime of the person we call the Buddha.

Its founder was Gotama Siddhartha who became known as the Buddha or "Enlightened One." He lived about 2500 years ago in a small kingdom in the Indian-Nepalese border region. There are four main events in his life.

1) The first was his birth which was accompanied by many good omens and events. After his birth, he grew up as a well educated prince of his kingdom and married a young woman who gave birth to their son. However, he tired of the princely life and, feeling dissatisfied, soon left home to become a wandering ascetic, a beggar. He joined a band of such beggars and wandered about from place to place seeking teaching from great masters. What he sought from these teachers was a special kind of knowledge that would allow him to understand the nature of the universe. For six years the young prince lived a beggar's life. During this time he nearly starved to death through deliberately depriving himself of food.

2) The second great event is his enlightenment in which he attained that special knowledge. There is a very long story of this event. Essentially it is as follows. Prince Gotama, having nearly starved to death from his ascetic practices, resolved to eat again and to then meditate (essentially sitting quietly and thinking about it) until he attained the knowledge that he was seeking. To gain this knowledge, he sat down under a big tree and begin to meditate. At one point in his meditations, an evil being, named Mara attacked the prince with an army of evil warriors representing hate, lust and greed. A great battle followed in which the weapons of the evil army turned into flowers and Mara, the evil being, was defeated. At the defeat of Mara, Prince Gotama had won the right to the knowledge he sought. That knowledge is called enlightenment or bodhi. Once he attained that knowledge, Gotama became known as the Buddha which means the "enlightened one." The name is actually the word bodhi combined with the verb ta, "to be," combined into one word, i.e. bodhi+ta = Buddha. So when we say Gotama the Buddha we are actually saying "Gotama the Enlightened One."

3) The third great event is the first sermon. After he had attained his special knowledge, Gotama the Buddha decided to teach his special way of attaining this knowledge to others. He went to a place known as the deer park where the ascetics who had been his former companions were living. They quickly realized that Gotama the Buddha had attained the special knowledge and asked him to teach them how to attain it. What he taught them will be talked about later. The act of teaching it to his former fellow ascetics is called the first sermon. From this first teaching arose all future teachings by Gotama the Buddha and his followers. He would teach for over forty years.

4) The fourth event is his last death, which is called the parinirvana. The word parinirvana means something quite different than just death. The Buddhists believe that an individual life force would live forever. It does this by being born and dying over and over again. If one has been good, he or she will be reborn in the higher levels of birth such as in the human realms or in the worlds of the heavenly beings. However, if one has been bad, he or she will be reborn in the lower levels of birth, as an animal, a ghost or even in one of many hells. To die to be reborn is ordinary death to the Buddhists. However the Buddha was not to be reborn again. Thus his death was like the flame of a candle going out. It was the cessation of all rebirths. Gotama the Buddha had attained his final release. What would happen to his individual being? He would reunite with the totality of the universe- like a drop of water falling into the ocean.

The founder's teachings

Based on the presuppositions we have just learned, Gotama Buddha taught that others could also attain the special knowledge and thereby attain release from the cycle of rebirth by fully realizing the following.

The four noble truths:
1) All life is unsatisfactory
2) Unsatisfactoriness is caused by desire
3) The solution is to stop having desire
4) The way to stop desire is to follow the eight-fold path

The eight fold path:
1) Right views
2) Right intentions
3) Right speech
4) Right conduct
5) Right livelihood
6) Right effort
7) Right mindfulness
8) Right concentration

The whole of Buddhist literature is aimed at defining what is meant by "right." and the whole of Buddhist practice is aimed placing that understanding into operation. In a very simple sense, the practitioner will gain "merit" towards a better rebirth or even towards attaining his or her own Buddhahood by doing the following:

1) Having complete, unselfish compas-sion for others and acting on that compassion.
2) Seeking through concentration and mindfulness the various types of knowledge that led to the Buddhist attainment
3) Making continuous effort to seek advancement and to aid others
4) Becoming a beggar or an ascetic in order to detach oneself from all desires.

The teachings of the Buddha as explained by the teachers who followed him is a truly vast subject. This covers thousands of volumes of literature and more than a hundred different approaches or sects of Buddhism. There are three divisions of major approaches and each of those major sub-schools is divided into many sub-schools. One can spend a lifetime learning about them.
Some believe that there will be very few Buddhas while others believe that there can be many Buddhas; others believe that to attain Buddhahood takes many thousands of lifetimes while others believe that one can attain Buddhahood in this lifetime; some believe in detailed and secret rituals while others believe in totally unstructured individual approaches. Yet others believe in rebirth in a kind of Buddhist paradise while some believe that the final attainment is to be made right here and now in this very life time. By Buddhist definition all these approaches are valid and each is free to follow the teachings of his or her own choosing.

In addition, as Buddhism was spread into countries near India and throughout the rest of Asia, adaptations to local concerns were made in the teachings. Thus a Thai Buddhist may believe one thing, a Tibetan Buddhist another and a Chinese yet another. All of this adaptation was done by the teachers who followed the original teachings of Gotama Buddha.

The community of followers is divided into four categories:
1) the male beggars or, as they are usually called, "monks."
2) the female beggars, or nuns
3) the male lay followers
4) the female lay followers

*Each order has its own rules, essentially defining right, views, intentions, speech, conduct and livelihood.

*The lay community is, as with all lay populations, deeply concerned with the problems of daily life and they have many rituals and ceremonies concerned with:
1) good health
2) prosperity
3) well being
4) death

III. Closing

This system of individual salvation had great appeal in India and soon became a state relition under the Emperor Ashoka of the Mauryan dynasty. At Ashoka's urging and whth his patronabe the Buddhist monks began to spread the Buddhist religion across India and then to countries beyond the Indic realms. During the first five centuries of the Christian era Buddhism continued its spread throughout the northern and eastern parts of Asia and became one of the major religions of the world. To the benefit of the religion, Buddhism's teachings are not exclusive, you may belong to another religion while you are a Buddhist. Thus, while many people in Asia became buddhists they did not give up their native religions. Even today, many people are essentially part time Buddhists in the sense that one or another aspect of their lives is strongly affected by Buddhist beliefs. In this way Buddhism directly affects some one third to two fifths of the world's population.