Buddhism

Overview

According to tradition, Siddhartha Gautama was a prince who gave up a life of luxury to find an answer to human suffering, and attained awakening. His teaching is summed up in the Four Noble Truths:

1. Life involves suffering (dukkha).
2. Suffering has a cause: craving and clinging.
3. It can be ended.
4. The way to end it is the Eightfold Path: right understanding, right speech, right action, meditation and more.

Buddhism has no creator god. The Buddha is regarded as a teacher, not a god.

Origins and History

The Buddha taught in the Ganges valley for about 45 years. He founded a community of monks and nuns, the sangha. After his death his teachings were collected at councils and passed down orally, and later in writing. In the 3rd century BCE the Mauryan emperor Ashoka embraced Buddhism after a bloody war in Kalinga. He sent envoys to Sri Lanka and elsewhere, a turning point in the religion's spread.

Development and Branches

• Theravada, "the way of the elders", kept the Pali Canon and is found in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia.
• Mahayana, "the great vehicle", stressed the ideal of the bodhisattva, who postpones his own nirvana to help all beings. Zen, Pure Land and other schools grew from it.
• Vajrayana developed in Tibet and the Himalayas. Its best-known figure is the Dalai Lama, the most influential leader of the Gelug school (its formal head is the Ganden Tripa).

Buddhism almost disappeared from India, its birthplace, by the 13th century. It revived there in the 20th century, partly through the mass conversion of Dalits led by Dr. Ambedkar.

How It Spread and Grew

🗺️ Maps of how the five largest religions spread →

• Ashoka: royal patronage and envoys.
• The Silk Road: Buddhism spread along trade routes to Central Asia and China, and from there to Korea and Japan.
• Adaptation: it adapted to local cultures, for example blending with Taoism in China and with Shinto in Japan.
• The West: in the 20th century it spread in the West through teachers, Tibetan refugees and interest in meditation and mindfulness.
• Decline: today the number of Buddhists worldwide is falling slightly, because of ageing populations in East Asia and people leaving the religion.

Influence on the World

Art and architecture (stupas, temples, Buddha statues), philosophy of mind, and meditation traditions now also used in psychology and medicine, such as mindfulness. Buddhism also shaped the cultures of China, Japan, Tibet and Southeast Asia.

What Draws Believers (Strengths)

• A practical way to cope with suffering and stress, without requiring belief in a god.
• Emphasis on compassion, nonviolence and self-discipline.
• An inquiring approach that invites practitioners to "see for themselves".
• Fits modern life and sits well with science.

Criticism and Challenges

• Women's status: critics point to status gaps between monks and nuns; in some places there is no full ordination for nuns at all.
• Commercialisation: some argue that "mindfulness" has become a product in the West, cut off from its ethical context.
• Tibetan Buddhism: critics note that in the past it was tied to a feudal regime.
• Scandals: there have been cases of exploitation in communities around charismatic teachers.

Human Life, War and Peace – What It Teaches

• The first of the five precepts: refrain from taking the life of any living being.
• Classical Buddhism has no doctrine of "just war". Hatred is counted among the three "poisons" of the mind.
• In practice, Buddhist states waged wars, and some interpretations justified them, for example the Sri Lankan chronicle "Mahavamsa".
• Compassion (karuna) towards all beings is a central value.
• Compared with other religions: Sanctity of Life Across Religions

Religion, Power and Violence

Violence in the name of religion: despite its emphasis on nonviolence, there have been cases of violence in the name of Buddhism:

• Warrior monks in medieval Japan.
• Support from Zen institutions for Japanese militarism in World War II.
• Buddhist nationalism in Sri Lanka, which contributed to tensions in the civil war with the Tamils.
• Myanmar: in the 2010s nationalist monks (the 969 movement) incited against Rohingya Muslims. In the same period the army committed acts against them that the UN described as showing "genocidal intent".

When Buddhists were victims:

• In China, during the Cultural Revolution, many temples and monasteries were destroyed, including in Tibet.
• In Cambodia, under the Khmer Rouge (1975–1979), monks were persecuted and temples destroyed.
• In 2001 the Taliban in Afghanistan blew up the ancient Buddha statues of Bamiyan.

The other side:

• Buddhism almost always spread without military conquest.
• The Dalai Lama, and likewise the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh (who died in 2022), are seen as global symbols of peace.