extreme practices of the ascetics did not generate new insights, but rather lead to weakness and self-destruction. When he decided to give up extreme asceticism, his students left him.
He then sat down in a place now called Bodh Gaya in Northern India under a Bodhi tree and determined not to get up again until he discovered the truth. Just a short time later, he became a fully enlightened Buddha.
Buddhism is now more than 2,500 years old and has about 300 million followers worldwide. Until a little more than a century ago, Buddhism was mainly practiced in Asia, but it began to spread in Europe, Australia and America around the middle of the 20th Century. Buddhism has expanded more in recent decades, largely due to the works of prominent Buddhist leaders and thinkers like Thich Nhat Hahn and the Dalai Lama.
The Buddha left us a path outlined in volumes of compiled teachings, which together are the dhamma-vinaya, the doctrine-and-discipline, or, in brief, the Dharma. The core teachings of the Buddhism can be found in the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path.
Two qualities that are highly regarded and cultivated by Buddhists are compassion and loving kindness. Compassion means recognition of the suffering of others and wishing for that suffering to be alleviated.
After he was enlightened the Buddha decided to share his teachings with the world, hoping to help others escape the cycle of suffering. Like the Buddha, we seek enlightenment for the benefit of other beings, and we practice to extend loving kindness to all beings, without exception.
The name Buddhism comes from the word "budhi" which means "to wake up". It originated in the experience of Siddhartha Gautama.
In the year 563 BC, Siddhartha was born into the royal Shakya family in Northern India. He grew up in wealth and luxury, but was deeply moved by the suffering he saw all around and resolved to find the key to human happiness. At age 29, he left the comfort of the palace to become an ascetic.
After about six years of searching, he realized that the
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Approximately 350 million people -- 6% of the world's population -- are Buddhists. This makes Buddhism the world's fourth largest religion, in terms of number of adherents. There are three major branches of Buddhism: Mahayana, Theravada, and Vajrayana. Within Mahayana, there are quite a few different schools. There are eight major Chinese schools and six major Japanese schools, and there are big differences in their points of view. |
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