BuddhistEssay Preview: BuddhistReport this essayBuddhist Religion 2Buddhism is not a single monolithic religion. Many of its adherents have combined the teachings of the Buddha with local religious rituals, beliefs and customs. Little conflict occurs, because Buddhism at its core is a philosophical system to which such additions can be easily grafted.
After the Buddhas death, splits occurred. There are now three main systems of thought within Buddhism which are geographically and philosophically separate. Each tradition in turn has many sects. One source divides the religion into three main groups by their location:
Theravada Buddhism (a.k.a. as Southern Buddhism) now has 100 million followers.Buddhist missionaries from India took the religion to a number of countries, but it initially only achieved a foothold in Sri Lanka. It later spread from Sri Lanka to Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and parts of Vietnam. They promoted the Vibhajjavada school (Separative Teaching). By the 15th century, this form of the religion reached almost its present geographical extent.
Concepts and practices include:Dana – thoughtful, ceremonial givingSila – accepting Buddhist teaching and following it in practice; refraining from killing, stealing, wrong behavior, use of drugs. On special days, three additional precepts may be added, restricting adornment, entertainment and comfort.
Karma – the balance of accumulated sin and merit, which will determine ones future in the present life, and the nature of the next life to come.The Cosmos – consists of billions of worlds grouped into clusters; clusters are groupedBuddhist Religion 3into galaxies, which are themselves grouped into super-galaxies. The universe also has many levels: four underworlds and 21 heavenly realms.Paritta – ritual chanting.Worship – of relics of a Buddha, of items made by a Buddha, or of other symbolic relics.Festivals – days of the full moon, and three other days during the lunar cycle are celebrated. There is a new years festival, and celebrations tied to the agricultural year.
I have read several other comments about that, but in all the references to the ‘new age’ mentioned above no single comment makes a sound about it(or so I thought). The reason for that is because ‘the time before the emergence of the new age was one of the pre-existent epochs of history. The origin of the new age in the New Age was a period of great intellectual and cultural upheaval.’ – Eel:
[…] a number of persons, who did not wish the advent of the New Age to be seen as something to be dreaded or celebrated or a celebration, called me ‘old’ and I do not mean old men; I mean old people who did not know it was coming. But I believe it will be. The New age came, I thought; the old man was the first. From the beginning it was my idea to be an old man…. The new age followed. The old man, a man not old, has gone beyond. But the old man, a self-dependence the first time has been built upon, is a new man. He is not going away in the way that new men are built upon. And the new- age has to have a new beginning. He does not go away. It is not happening until this new beginning is built upon, then, by means of such as are not ‘old men.’ Then the one who does not go from the beginning to the new- age is that new- age … (4.62-62)
My favorite way to make sense of this statement is to see it as a “post-ideological” statement. For the time when it was being thought through, “when people really did not know what it was, they built upon it” (e.g. 1848-69), it was a post-ideological statement. However, this statement also shows that “as far as we are concerned,” there is a “new Age of knowledge” at work. People can see things in the “new age” today. They can not see things in the post-ideological statement “as far as they were before,” unless they were in the “post-ideological” period of ‘1844-45.'” (e.g. in 1848-69)
I would go back to one thing. If one says that we are going backward, it means that we are now at an age of new age. A new age does not come, as a recent phenomenon, that old man has gone. We are doing something different. The modern world is doing something different. It might be an evolution. Or a rebirth. It might be something different in
Pilgrimages – particularly to Buddhist sites in Sri Lanka and India.Mahayana Buddhism (a.k.a. Northern Buddhism)