Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya (transl. "doctrines and disciplines"), is an Indian religion and philosophy based on teachings attributed to the Buddha, a śramaṇa (wandering ascetic) and religious teacher who lived in the 6th or 5th century BCE. It is the world's fourth-largest religion,"Buddhism". (2009). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 26 November 2009, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online Library Edition. with an estimated 320 million to 540 million followers, representing approximately 4.1%–6.7% of the global population. It originated in the eastern Gangetic plain as a śramaṇa movement in the 5th century BCE, and gradually spread throughout much of Asia via the Silk Road. Buddhism has since played a significant role in Asian culture and spirituality, eventually spreading to the West in the 19th century.
According to tradition, the Buddha taught a path of cultivation that leads to awakening and liberation from dukkha (often translated as 'suffering'; 'unsatisfactoriness') by attaining nirvana, the 'blowing out' (extinguishing) of the passions. He regarded this path as a Middle Way between extreme asceticism and sensory indulgence, and also between the extremes of eternalism and nihilism. Teaching that dukkha arises alongside attachment or clinging, the Buddha advised meditation practices and ethical precepts rooted in non-harming. Widely observed teachings include the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, and the doctrines of dependent origination, karma, and the three marks of existence. Other commonly observed elements include the Triple Gem, the taking of monastic vows, and the cultivation of perfections ().
The Buddhist canon is vast, with philosophical traditions and textual collections in different languages (such as Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, and Chinese).<ref>[https://www.bl.uk/sacred-texts/articles/the-buddhist-canon British Library The development of the Buddhist 'canon'''] at bl.uk. Retriebved 10 February 2023.</ref> Buddhist schools vary in their interpretation of the paths to liberation (, "path") as well as the relative importance assigned to various Buddhist texts, and their specific teachings and practices. Two major extant branches of Buddhism are generally recognised by scholars: Theravāda () and Mahāyāna (). The Theravada tradition emphasises the attainment of () as a means of transcending the individual self and ending the cycle of death and rebirth (), while the Mahayana tradition emphasises the Bodhisattva ideal, in which one works for the liberation of all sentient beings. Additionally, Vajrayāna (), a body of teachings incorporating esoteric tantric techniques, may be viewed as a separate branch or as a tradition within Mahāyāna.
The Mahāyāna branch, which includes the traditions of Tiantai, Chan, Pure Land, Zen, Nichiren and Tendai, is the largest branch of Buddhism, being predominantly practised in Nepal, Bhutan, China, Malaysia, Vietnam, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan. The second-largest branch, Theravada, is followed mainly in Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Sri Lanka. Tibetan Buddhism, a form of , is practised in the Himalayan states as well as in Mongolia and Russian Kalmykia and Tuva."Candles in the Dark: A New Spirit for a Plural World" by Barbara Sundberg Baudot, p. 305 Japanese Shingon also preserves the Vajrayana tradition as transmitted to China. Historically, until the early 2nd millennium, Buddhism was widely practised in the Indian subcontinent before declining there; it also had a foothold to some extent elsewhere in Asia, namely Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan.Richard Foltz, "Buddhism in the Iranian World," The Muslim World. 100/2-3, 2010, pp. 204–214
Etymology The terms Buddhadharma and Bauddhadharma come from Sanskrit: and respectively ("doctrine of the Enlightened One" and "doctrine of Buddhists"). The term Dharmavinaya comes from Sanskrit: , literally meaning "doctrines [and] disciplines".
The Buddha ("the Awakened One") was a Śramaṇa who lived in South Asia c. 6th or 5th century BCE. Followers of Buddhism, called Buddhists in English, referred to themselves as Sakyan-s or Sakyabhiksu in ancient India.Beyond Enlightenment: Buddhism, Religion, Modernity by Richard Cohen. Routledge 1999. . p. 33. "Donors adopted Sakyamuni Buddha's family name to assert their legitimacy as his heirs, both institutionally and ideologically. To take the name of Sakya was to define oneself by one's affiliation with the buddha, somewhat like calling oneself a Buddhist today.Sakya or Buddhist Origins by Caroline Rhys Davids (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1931) p. 1. "Put away the word "Buddhism" and think of your subject as "Sakya." This will at once place you for your perspective at a true point. You are now concerned to learn less about 'Buddha' and 'Buddhism,' and more about him whom India has ever known as Sakya-muni, and about his men who, as their records admit, were spoken of as the Sakya-sons, or men of the Sakyas." Buddhist scholar Donald S. Lopez asserts they also used the term Bauddha,Lopez, Donald S. (1995). Curators of the Buddha, University of Chicago Press. p. 7 although the scholar Richard Cohen asserts that that term was used only by outsiders to describe Buddhists.Beyond Enlightenment: Buddhism, Religion, Modernity by Richard Cohen. Routledge 1999. . p. 33. Bauddha is "a secondary derivative of buddha, in which the vowel's lengthening indicates connection or relation. Things that are bauddha pertain to the buddha, just as things Saiva related to Siva and things Vaisnava belong to Visnu. ... baudda can be both adjectival and nominal; it can be used for doctrines spoken by the buddha, objects enjoyed by him, texts attributed to him, as well as individuals, communities, and societies that offer him reverence or accept ideologies certified through his name. Strictly speaking, Sakya is preferable to bauddha since the latter is not attested at Ajanta. In fact, as a collective noun, bauddha is an outsider's term. The bauddha did not call themselves this in India, though they did sometimes use the word adjectivally (e.g., as a possessive, the buddha's)."
The Buddha
Details of the Buddha's life are mentioned in many Early Buddhist Texts, but these accounts are inconsistent. His social background and life details are difficult to substantiate, and the precise dates are uncertain, although the 5th century BCE seems to be the best estimate.
Early texts have the Buddha's family name as "Gautama" (Pali: Gotama), while some texts present Siddhartha as his surname. He was born in Lumbini, (present-day Nepal) and grew up in Kapilavastu, a town in the Ganges Plain, near the modern Nepal–India border, and he spent his life in what is now modern Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Some hagiographic legends state that his father was a king named Suddhodana and his mother was Queen Maya. Scholars such as Richard Gombrich consider this claim dubious because a combination of evidence suggests he was born in the Shakya community, which was governed by a small oligarchy or republic-like council where there were no ranks but where seniority mattered instead. Some stories about the Buddha, his life, his teachings, and claims about the society he grew up in may have been invented and interpolated at a later time into the Buddhist texts.
Various aspects of the Buddha's background are contested in modern scholarship. For instance, Buddhist texts assert that the Buddha described himself as a kshatriya (warrior class), but Gombrich writes that little is known about his father and there is no proof that his father even knew the term kshatriya. (Mahavira, whose teachings helped establish Jainism, is also claimed by his early followers to have been a kshatriya.)
According to early texts such as the Pali Ariyapariyesanā-sutta ("The discourse on the noble quest", MN 26) and its Chinese parallel at MĀ 204, Gautama was moved by the suffering (dukkha) of life and death, and its endless repetition due to rebirth.Analayo (2011). A Comparative Study of the Majjhima-nikāya Volume 1 (Introduction, Studies of Discourses 1 to 90), p. 170. He therefore set out on a quest to find liberation from suffering (also known as "nirvana"). Early texts and biographies state that Gautama first studied under two meditation teachers, Āḷāra Kālāma (Sanskrit: Arada Kalama) and Uddaka Ramaputta (Sanskrit: Udraka Ramaputra), learning meditation and philosophy, particularly the meditative attainment of "the sphere of nothingness" from the former and "the sphere of neither perception nor non-perception" from the latter.
Finding these teachings insufficient to attain his goal, he turned to the practice of severe asceticism, which included a strict fasting regime and various forms of breath control.Analayo (2011). "A Comparative Study of the Majjhima-nikāya Volume 1 (Introduction, Studies of Discourses 1 to 90)", p. 236. This too did not lead to his goal, and he then turned to the meditative practice of dhyana. He sat in meditation under a Ficus religiosa tree now called the Bodhi Tree – in the town of Bodh Gaya and attained "Awakening" (Bodhi).
According to various early texts, such as the Mahāsaccaka-sutta, and the Samaññaphala Sutta, upon awakening the Buddha gained insight into the workings of karma and his former lives, as well as achieving the ending of the mental defilements (asavas), the ending of suffering, and the end of rebirth in saṃsāra. This event also confirmed for him the Middle Way as the correct path of spiritual practice to end suffering. As an awakened Buddha, he attracted followers and founded a Sangha (monastic order). He spent the rest of his life teaching the Dharma he had discovered, and then died, achieving "final nirvana", at the age of 80 in Kushinagar, India.
The Buddha's teachings were propagated by his followers. In the last centuries of the 1st millennium BCE, these teachings developed into various Buddhist schools of thought, each with its own collection of texts containing different interpretations and of the Buddha's authentic teachings. Over time, these evolved into many traditions, of which the more well-known and widespread in the modern era are Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism.
Worldview
The term "Buddhism" is an occidental neologism, commonly (and "rather roughly" according to Donald S. Lopez Jr.) used as a translation for the Dharma of the Buddha, fójiào in Chinese, bukkyō in Japanese, nang pa sangs rgyas pa'i chos in Tibetan, buddhadharma in Sanskrit, buddhaśāsana in Pali.
Four Noble Truths – dukkha and its ending
The Four Noble Truths, or the truths of the Noble Ones, express the basic orientation of Buddhism: everything is impermanent, yet we crave and cling to impermanent states and things, which is dukkha, "incapable of satisfying" and painful. This keeps us caught in saṃsāra, metaphysically interpreted as the endless cycle of repeated rebirth, dukkha and dying again, also interpreted as a psychological cycle of repetitious rebirth of the ego.Payutto, Dependent Origination: the Buddhist Law of Causality
But there is a way to liberation from this endless cycle to the state of nirvana, namely following the Noble Eightfold Path.