57 Facts About Buddhism

Buddhism encompasses a variety of traditions, beliefs, and spiritual practices that are largely based on the Buddha's teachings and their resulting interpreted philosophies.

Buddhism is an Indian religion or philosophy founded on the teachings of Gautama Buddha, a Sramana called Shakyamuni, or "the Buddha" ("the Awakened One"), who lived c 5th to 4th century BCE.

Buddhism thus set out on a quest to find liberation from suffering.

Buddhism famously sat in meditation under a Ficus religiosa tree — now called the Bodhi Tree — in the town of Bodh Gaya and attained "Awakening".

Buddhism 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.

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Four Truths express the basic orientation of Buddhism: we crave and cling to impermanent states and things, which is dukkha, "incapable of satisfying" and painful.

In Buddhism, dukkha is one of the three marks of existence, along with impermanence and anatta.

Samsara in Buddhism is considered to be dukkha, unsatisfactory and painful, perpetuated by desire and avidya, and the resulting karma.

Buddhism developed a complex cosmology to explain the various realms or planes of rebirth.

In East Asian and Tibetan Buddhism, rebirth is not instantaneous, and there is an intermediate state between one life and the next.

Buddhism asserts that there is nothing independent, except the state of nirvana.

In Buddhism, dependent arising refers to conditions created by a plurality of causes that necessarily co-originate a phenomenon within and across lifetimes, such as karma in one life creating conditions that lead to rebirth in one of the realms of existence for another lifetime.

Buddhism applies the theory of dependent arising to explain origination of endless cycles of dukkha and rebirth, through Twelve Nidanas or "twelve links".

In early Buddhism, it was commonly stated that all five aggregates are void, hollow (tucchaka), coreless (asaraka), for example as in the Phenapindupama Sutta (SN 22:95).

Mahayana Buddhism meanwhile, has a vastly expanded cosmology, with various Buddhas and other holy beings residing in different realms.

Mahayana Buddhism holds that these other Buddhas in other realms can be contacted and are able to benefit beings in this world.

All forms of Buddhism generally reveres these aryas who are spiritually attained beings.

Mahayana Buddhism generally sees the attainment of the arhat as an inferior one, since it is seen as being done only for the sake of individual liberation.

Theravada Buddhism is a diverse tradition and thus includes different explanations of the path to awakening.

Mahayana Buddhism is based principally upon the path of a Bodhisattva.

East Asian Buddhism in influenced by both the classic Indian Buddhist presentations of the path such as the eighth-fold path as well as classic Indian Mahayana presentations such as that found in the Da zhidu lun.

Monastic life in Buddhism has additional precepts as part of patimokkha, and unlike lay people, transgressions by monks do invite sanctions.

In Tibetan Buddhism, there are practices and methods which are sometimes seen as being outside of the two tantric stages, mainly Mahamudra and Dzogchen.

The many different schools of Mahayana Buddhism have a large repertoire of meditation techniques to cultivate these qualities.

Insight in Mahayana Buddhism includes gaining a direct understanding of certain Mahayana philosophical views, such as the emptiness view and the consciousness-only view.

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Buddhism thus condemned the animal sacrifice of the Brahmins as well hunting, and killing animals for food.

The modern study of early Buddhism often relies on comparative scholarship using these various early Buddhist sources to identify parallel texts and common doctrinal content.

Buddhism was one among several Indian religions that did so.

One method to obtain information on the oldest core of Buddhism is to compare the oldest extant versions of the Theravadin Pali Canon and other texts.

Richard Salomon, in his study of the Gandharan texts, has confirmed that their teachings are "consistent with non-Mahayana Buddhism, which survives today in the Theravada school of Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, but which in ancient times was represented by eighteen separate schools.

Likewise, there is scholarly disagreement on whether insight was seen as liberating in early Buddhism or whether it was a later addition to the practice of the four jhanas.

Kushan support helped Buddhism to expand into a world religion through their trade routes.

Buddhism spread to Khotan, the Tarim Basin, and China, eventually to other parts of the far east.

Origins of Mahayana Buddhism are not well understood and there are various competing theories about how and where this movement arose.

However, during the fifth and sixth centuries CE, there seems to have been a rapid growth of Mahayana Buddhism, which is shown by a large increase in epigraphic and manuscript evidence in this period.

Buddhism argues that Buddhist texts even directly copied various Shaiva tantras, especially the Bhairava Vidyapitha tantras.

Already during this later era, Buddhism was losing state support in other regions of India, including the lands of the Karkotas, the Pratiharas, the Rashtrakutas, the Pandyas and the Pallavas.

From China, Buddhism was introduced into its neighbours Korea, Japan (6th–7th centuries), and Vietnam (c.

Pure Land Buddhism became popular during this period and was often practised together with Chan.

Theravada Buddhism was the dominant religion in Burma during the Mon Hanthawaddy Kingdom.

Theravada tradition bases itself on the Pali Canon, considers itself to be the more orthodox form of Buddhism and tends to be more conservative in doctrine and monastic discipline.

Mahayana refers to all forms of Buddhism which consider the Mahayana Sutras as authoritative scriptures and accurate rendering of Buddha's words.

These traditions have been the more liberal form of Buddhism allowing different and new interpretations that emerged over time.

The Buddhism practised in Tibet, the Himalayan regions, and Mongolia is a form of Mahayana, but is different in many ways due to its adoption of tantric practices and is discussed below under the heading of "Vajrayana".

Tantric Buddhism is largely concerned with ritual and meditative practices.

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Buddhism has faced various challenges and changes during the colonisation of Buddhist states by Christian countries and its persecution under modern states.

East Asian Buddhism meanwhile suffered under various wars which ravaged China during the modern era, such as the Taiping rebellion and World War II.

Japanese Buddhism went through a period of modernisation during the Meiji period.

Influential figures on post-war Western Buddhism include Shunryu Suzuki, Jack Kerouac, Alan Watts, Thich Nhat Hanh, and the 14th Dalai Lama.

Buddhism has spread across the world, and Buddhist texts are increasingly translated into local languages.

These new forms of Buddhism are diverse and significantly depart from traditional beliefs and practices.

Ambedkar's Buddhism rejects the foundational doctrines and historic practices of traditional Theravada and Mahayana traditions, such as monk lifestyle after renunciation, karma, rebirth, samsara, meditation, nirvana, Four Noble Truths and others.

Ambedkar's Navayana Buddhism considers these as superstitions and re-interprets the original Buddha as someone who taught about class struggle and social equality.

Buddhism has had a profound influence on various cultures, especially in Asia.

However, Buddhism requires acceptance of Buddha as the greatest being in the cosmos, and local shamanic traditions were bestowed an inferior status.

Buddhism is the dominant religion in Bhutan, Myanmar, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Japan, Tibet, Laos, Macau, Mongolia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam.

Buddhism has spread to the Nordic countries; for example, the Burmese Buddhists founded in the city of Kuopio in North Savonia the first Buddhist monastery of Finland, named the Buddha Dhamma Ramsi monastery.