Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion indigenous to the Indian subcontinent that encompasses a variety of traditions, beliefs, and practices largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, who is commonly known as the Buddha (meaning "the awakened one" in Sanskrit and Pāli). The Buddha lived and taught in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE. He is recognized by Buddhists as an awakened or enlightened teacher who shared his insights to help sentient beings end suffering (dukkha) through eliminating ignorance (avidyā) by way of understanding and seeing dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda) and eliminating craving (taṇhā), and thus attain the highest happiness, nirvāņa (nirvana).
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Some articles on Buddhism:
... The decline of Buddhism in India, the land of its birth, occurred for a variety of reasons, and happened even as it continued to flourish beyond the frontiers of India ... Buddhism was established in the area of ancient Magadha and Kosala by Gautama Buddha in the 6th century BCE, in what is now modern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar ... Over the next 1500 years Buddhism became one of the region's influential sects, spreading across the Indian sub-continent (see History of Buddhism) ...
... some writers to have competed in political and spiritual realm with Buddhism in the gangetic plains while Buddhism flourished in the realms of the Bactrian kings ...
... are differences of opinion on the question of whether or not Buddhism should be considered a religion ... While many sources commonly refer to Buddhism as a religion, other sources note that the answer to this question depends upon how religion is defined ... For example, Lama Surya Das states...Buddhism is less a theology or religion than a promise that certain meditative practices and mind trainings can ...
... mosques By the time of the Muslim conquests in India, there were only glimpses of Buddhism nor any evidence of a provincial government in control of the Buddhists. 13th centuries when Islam arrived it replaced Buddhism as the great cosmopolitan trading religion in many places accompanied by a consolidation of the communal peasant religions of Hinduism ... at Nalanda, such that many monks fled abroad" thereby bringing about a sudden demise of Buddhism with their destruction of the Viharas ...
... Bodhidharma, a patriarch of Zen Buddhism was of the original Kshatriya caste ... Nagarjuna, a philosopher important to Mahayana Buddhism, was a Brahmin from southern India ... revival of Saivite and Vaishnavite Hinduism in the region led to a sharp decline of Buddhism ...
More definitions of "Buddhism":
- (noun): A religion represented by the many groups (especially in Asia) that profess various forms of the Buddhist doctrine and that venerate Buddha.
Famous quotes containing the word buddhism:
“A religion so cheerless, a philosophy so sorrowful, could never have succeeded with the masses of mankind if presented only as a system of metaphysics. Buddhism owed its success to its catholic spirit and its beautiful morality.”
—W. Winwood Reade (1838–1875)