• Home
• Articles
• Essays
• Add site

Buddhism

Buddhism


TOPIC 1: Historical and Textual Background of Buddhism, and the Buddhist Scriptures

QUESTION: What is the Sramana movement?

Let's briefly overlook Sramana movement. Sramana movement based mainly on members of Aryan society, since their sacrament actions generated the forces that sustained and moved the universe. But other groups in Aryan civilization were considering the identical fundamental religious questions as the brahmins. Their conclusions were very dissimilar from those of the religious class. These other thinkers, who appear to have lived between c. 900 and 600 B.C.E., were known in a group as the Sramanas


Instead of viewing the sacrifice as actual sacrament action, the Sramanic thinkers considered that the sacrifice was a symbolic and figurative demonstration of internal change. Thus each element of the sacrifice corresponded to some inner mind-set or action on the part of the person. Initially, Sramanic philosophy was fairly material in nature. For example, the motivating belief that sustained life, prana, was seen as being equal with the breathing and, by extension, with the wind. But Sramana thinking rapidly progressed beyond these rather simple beginnings and gave rise to several concepts which have been central to Indic religious thinking ever since


Primary amongst these ideas is the idea of atman and Brahman. In their theory about religion, the Sramanic thinkers explored various approaches, as we can see from their philosophical books, the Upanishads. The atman was untainted spirit, unchanging and eternal. In turn, the atman was a part of Brahman, the holy force that created and sustained the cosmos. Since atman was eternal, the Sramanic philosophers wondered what happened to it at death when the physical body ceased to exist. The early Aryans had believed in a sort of heaven, but the Sramanic philosophers rejected this idea in favor of the concept of reincarnation.


TOPIC 2: Feeling & Meditation States, & Mindfulness & Insight

QUESTION: What are the differences between the practice of mindflness (concentration) and insight (wisdom) meditations in early Buddhism?

In early Buddhism there were two meditations practices: mindfulness (vipassana) and insight (samatha). The explanation of vipassana mentions the considering, deeping and discriminating of activities (sa.khara). The term of 'activities' here embeds the three features – transience, distress, not-self – of experience, conditioned in accordance with reliant initiation. The thoughtful perspicacity of the basis of conditioned reality is the core sense of vipassana. When this meaning is perhaps too constricted for some situations, anyway vipassana is generally mentioned in this description in the Suttas and in the our days. Samatha is meant from the points of the damping, stabilizing, and uniting of the mentality in samadhi.

Respectively, the idea of samatha is to lessen hunger for desire, which here involves almost all affecting or emotional violations, while vipassana battles unawareness, that is, intelligence violations


While there is an obvious theoretical distinction, mindful and insight meditations were not separated into two independent groups. The early books never categorize the different meditation techniques into either samatha or vipassana. They are not two special types of meditation approaches; rather, they are states of the consciousness that must be built. Generally speaking, samatha falls to the emotional parts of a person's consciousness, the deepest premade qualities such as peace, sympathy, passion, happiness. Vipassana basically exists within the mind qualities such as apprehension, intolerance, perspicacity. Samatha pacifies the affecting violations such as gluttony and irritation, while vipassana deals with perception of the darkness of vision.


TOPIC 3: Mahayana Buddhism

QUESTION: What circumstances in early Buddhism provided the occasion for the rise of Mahayana?
REFERENCE/READING: A Concise History of Buddhism (by Andrew Skilton), Part 1 Buddhism in India, Sections 11-17, pp. 93-142.

Buddhism is an orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy. What is significant is harmony of deeds, not harmony of doctrines. The role played by doctrinal disagreements in Christian history does not apply in the case of Buddhism. Of course, where there is a genuine schism related to the monastic rule there could also take place subsequently doctrinal variation. But doctrinal difference as such cannot be a matter for schism. Thus since Mah�y�na is, as a matter of vision and motivation which does not (or need not) in itself entail behaviour confrontational to the monastic rule, it could not have resulted from schism. It is not that sort of thing. Identity in Buddhism is supplied by adherence to the monastic code, the Vinaya. (Prebish, 112-113) Identity is a monastic matter. As time passed, after the death of the Buddha, there were indeed schisms, and there remain a number of Vinayas. For Buddhists 'schism' is nothing to do with doctrinal disagreements as such, but is the result of divergence in monastic rule. This makes sense. The whole purpose of Buddhist monasticism is for groups of people to live together a simple life with optimum facilities for inner development. What produces major disagreement in such contexts —
and can lead to schism, 'splitting the Sangha' (saṃghabheda) — are what for non-monastics would appear to be fairly minor matters of behavioural disagreement.


TOPIC 4: Chinese Buddhism

QUESTION: How did Buddhism in China grow from a purely Indian import to a distinctly Chinese enterprise?
REFERENCE/READING: A Concise History of Buddhism (by Andrew Skilton), Part 2 Buddhism Beyond India, Section 22 Buddhism in China, pp. 165-173


Initially, Buddhism was introduced to China through trade sometime approximately in the beginning of the Common Era. It has commonly been held that the first incursion of the new belief into the already established civilizations of the east was through the information routed of traders from Central Asia, a region which had been strongly impacted by Buddhism since the time of Asoka. Buddhism did not make a strong initial impression on the Chinese. The Chinese were fairly contented with their own local belief systems, such as Taoism and Confucianism, and were even rather repulsed by the importance Buddhism placed on repudiation and celibacy. These were concepts which ran in contradiction to established Chinese understandings. All of this changed when the established political and social structure of China began to fall apart in the second century C.E. In 148 C.E., a Buddhist messenger called An Shihkao is credited with translating Buddhist books into Chinese for the first time. These translations were not of principally high class, since they necessitated the development of Buddhist terms in Chinese and at first Taoist terms were used to express Buddhist ideas. This was to guide to some mixture of Taoist and Buddhist beliefs in the Chinese consciousness.


TOPIC 5: Japanese Buddhism

QUESTION: Why have Shinto and Buddhism been able to successfully coexist in Japan?
REFERENCE/READING: A Concise History of 
Buddhism (by Andrew Skilton), Part 2 Buddhism Beyond India, Section 24 Buddhism in Japan, pp. 177-182


The coexisting of Shinto and Buddhism is very essential in the point of Buddhism as a missionary religion, and in the point that Buddhism has become Japanese religion. Shinto was a state religion when first Buddhist monks reach the islands and comparatively fast these two religions became equally important.

Such unification had a deep influence on Japan, and even though the Shinto-Buddhist religion went through striking changes over the years, it still functions today. Nevertheless, if not for Buddhism's innate capability to harmonize with current beliefs, it could never have appeared in Japan. It is said :"Buddhism was established for its readiness to combine with Shinto" (Sansom, 542-543)
 Shinto was a belief basing on the initial beauty of Japanese land, and the Japanese's effort at understanding the beginnings and the origins of their home. It claims that everything of control had a god, or kami, just as a living aura. They worshiped these kami, and looked for new kami inside everything showed to them, including rulers and correspondently Buddhism.


TOPIC 6: Buddhism in Tibet

QUESTION: What is the Dalai Lama (by Andrew Skilton, Part 2 Buddhism Beyond India, Section 25 Buddhism in Tibet, pp. 183-192.

Dalai Lama is a spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism and at the same time unrecognized ruler of Tibet. "Dalai Lama" comes from Mongolian "Dalai", which means "ocean" or "sea" and "Lama", which can be translated from Tibetan as "guru". Inheretence of "Dalai Lama" position does through the process of reincarnation.

The principle sign of reincarnation is knowledge of the previous Dalai Lama life. The process of reincarnation typically lasts during 3 or five years. After reincarnation future Dalai Lama goes to Lhasa where he is trained by other Lamas. The Dalai Lama is the chief exemplar; the method by which the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama is discovered; ritual dances, miscalled 'Devil Dances'; oracles; and ascetics. Less is heard about the considerable number of quiet devout priests who spent their lives in study, meditation, and teaching, and of the no less devout monastic men of affairs who administered the discipline and the property of the numerous monasteries. In lay life, too, much sincere and unspectacular piety existed in the daily religious observances and the not infrequent retreats for meditation which formed a great part of the life of every family.






WORKS CITED
Ikeda, D., Watson, B. "The Flower of Chinese Buddhism." Weatherhill, 1986, pp 28-33
Keown, D. "Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction." Oxford University Press, 1996, pp.58
Morgan W., K. "The Path of the Buddha: Buddhism Interpreted by Buddhists." Ronald Press, 1956. pp. 313-315
Prebish S., C. "Buddhism: A Modern Perspective." Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994, pp. 112-113
Sansom, G. B. "Japan: A Short Cultural History." Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1962. pp. 542-543
Skilton, A. “A Concise History of Buddhism�. Barnes & Noble: 2003.
5614

Posted by: Natalie Saturday

Best Custom Writing Sites

Sites that provide custom writing services are better alternative to downloading pre-written paper samples, especially if you temporarily can't handle writing your own paper for some reason, and can not afford risking your course and reputation for plagiarism detection failure. The prices for custom written essays are affordable, but if you need 15-pages long master level report overnight, you better prepare to spend a noticeable sum.