♥ Buddhism in the Modern World

Estimates of the number of Buddhists vary between 230 and 500 million, with 350 million as the most commonly cited figure.

In northern Asia, Mahayana remains the most common form of Buddhism in China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam and Singapore. Theravada predominates in most of Southeast Asia, including Burma, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand, as well as Sri Lanka. Vajrayana is predominant in Tibet, Mongolia, and portions of India, especially those areas bordering Tibet.

While in the West Buddhism is often seen as exotic and progressive, in the East Buddhism is regarded as familiar and part of the establishment. Buddhist organizations in Asia frequently are well-funded and enjoy support from the wealthy and influential. In some cases, this has led critics to charge that certain monks and organizations are too closely associated with the powerful and are neglecting their duties to the poor.

In the latter half of the 19th century, Buddhism (along with many other of the world's religions and philosophies) came to the attention of Western intellectuals. These included the pessimistic German philosopher Schopenhauer and the American philosopher Henry David Thoreau, who translated a Buddhist sutra from French into English.

Spiritual enthusiasts enjoyed what they saw as the exotic and mystical tone of the Asian traditions. At first Western Buddhology was hampered by poor translations (often translations of translations), but soon Western scholars began to learn Asian languages and translate Asian texts.

In 1880 J.R. de Silva and Henry S. Olcott designed the International Buddhist flag to celebrate the revival of Buddhism in Sri Lanka. Its stripes symbolise universal compassion, the middle path, blessings, purity and liberation, wisdom, and the conglomeration of these.

The flag was accepted as the International Buddhist Flag by the 1952 World Buddhist Congress. A hallway in California's Hsi Lai TempleIn 1899 Gordon Douglas became the first Westerner to be ordained as a Buddhist monk.

The first Buddhists to arrive in the United States were Chinese. Hired as cheap labor for the railroads and other expanding industries, they established temples in their settlements along the rail lines.

The Buddhist Society, London was founded by Christmas Humphreys in 1924. The cultural re-evaluations of the hippie generation in the late 1960s and early 1970s included a renewed interest in Buddhism, proclaimed by some of them as a natural path to awareness, and enlightenment.

Many people, including celebrities, traveled to Asia in pursuit of gurus and ancient wisdom. Buddhism had become the fastest-growing religion in Australia and many other Western nations by the 1990s, in contrast to the steady decline of traditional western beliefs (see Christianity).

A distinctive feature of Buddhism in the West has been the emergence of groups that, while drawing on traditional Buddhism, attempt to create a new form of Buddhist practice. Examples include the Shambala movement, founded by Chyam Trungpa, and the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order, founded by Sangharakshita.

♥ The Three Main Branches of Buddhism

Buddhism has evolved into myriad schools that can be roughly grouped into three types:
Nikaya, Mahayana, and Vajrayana. Of the Nikaya schools, only the Theravada survives. Each branch sees itself as representing the true, original teachings of the Buddha, although some schools believe that the dialectic nature of Buddhism allows its format, terminology, and techniques to adapt over time in response to changing circumstances.

The Theravada school, whose name means "Doctrine of the Elders", bases its practice and doctrine exclusively on the Pali Canon. This is considered to be the oldest of the surviving Buddhist canons, and its sutras are accepted as authentic in every branch of Buddhism.

Theravada is the only surviving representative of the historical Nikaya branch. Nikaya Buddhism and consequently Theravada are sometimes referred to as Hinayana or "lesser vehicle", although this is generally considered to be impolite. Theravada is practiced today in Sri Lanka, Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and portions of Vietnam and Malaysia.

The Mahayana, or exoteric branch, literally means "Great Vehicle" and emphasizes universal compassion and the selfless ideal of the bodhisattva. In addition to the Nikaya scriptures, Mahayana schools recognize all or part of a genre of scriptures that were first put in writing around 1 CE.

These later scriptures were written in Sanskrit and are concerned with the purpose of achieving Buddhahood by following the path of the bodhisattva over the course of what is often described as countless eons of time.

Because of this immense timeframe, many Mahayana schools accept the idea of working towards rebirth in a Pure Land, which is not enlightenment in itself but which is a highly conducive environment for working toward enlightenment. Mahayana Buddhism is practiced today in China, Japan, Korea, and most of Vietnam.

The Vajrayana or "Diamond Vehicle" (also referred to as Mantrayana, Tantrayana, Tantric or esoteric Buddhism) shares many of the basic concepts of Mahayana, but also includes a vast array of spiritual techniques designed to enhance Buddhist practice.

One component of the Vajrayana is harnessing psycho-physical energy as a means of developing profoundly powerful states of concentration and awareness. These profound states are in turn to be used as an efficient path to Buddhahood. Using these techniques, it is claimed that a practitioner can achieve Buddhahood in one lifetime, or as little as three years.

In addition to the Theravada and Mahayana scriptures, Vajrayana Buddhists recognise a large body of texts that include the Buddhist Tantras. Vajrayana is practiced today mainly in Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, Mongolia, Kalmykia, areas of India, and, to a limited extent, in China and Japan.

♥ History of Buddhism

Here are some links to the history of Buddhism :

The Life of Buddha

http://buddhism.about.com/od/lifeofthebuddha/a/buddhalife.htm

Early Buddhist History: The First Five Centuries

http://buddhism.about.com/od/buddhisthistory/a/earlyhistory.htm

Buddhism after the Buddha

http://clk.about.com/?zi=1/XJ/Ya&sdn=buddhism&zu=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.important.ca%2Fbuddhism_after_buddha.html

How Buddhism Came to Tibet

http://buddhism.about.com/od/vajrayanabuddhism/a/tiberthist1.htm

The Lost World of Buddhist Gandhara

http://buddhism.about.com/od/buddhisthistory/a/gandhara.htm

♥ The Life of Siddhartha Gautama

Prince Siddharta Gautama was born some 2,500 years ago as a prince in what is now called Lumbini in Nepal. At his birth, many special signs appeared. His father asked a sage living in his kingdom for advice on his son. The sage predicted that Gautama would become either a great King or a great spiritual teacher.

The King wanted his son to be his successor and tried to keep him far away from all matters of life that could incline him to a spiritual life. Gautama usually spent his life in his father's palace, surrounded by all the possible luxuries of the time. He proved to be a special child, being quite intelligent as well as an excellent sportsman. He married to a beautiful woman he loved, and they had a son.

When Gautama was 29 years old, he discovered there was much suffering in the world around him. Traditionally it is explained that he suddenly recognised the problems of sickness, old age and death when visiting the city. Being shocked by the suffering of all living beings, he decided to search for way to end it. He left his wife and child, the palace and even his royal clothes, and started out on a spiritual quest.

Gautama studied under various teachers and followed their practices until he mastered them all. His first teacher was Alara Kalama who taught a form of meditation leading to an exalted form of absorption called "the state of no-thingness", a state without moral or cognitive dimension. Gautama saw this was not going to solve suffering, and continued his search.

The next teacher was Udraka Ramaputra who taught him meditative absorption leading to "the state of neither perception nor non-perception". Again, Gautama realised this was not the state he was looking for. (Both Alara and Udraka are by some scholars considered to be Jain followers.)

Next, he tried extreme ascetic practices at Uruvilva in North India, with five other ascetics who turned into his followers. In the end, Gautama nearly died of starvation. After about six years of searching, he realised that just wearing down his body did not generate new insights, but rather leads to weakness and self-destruction. When he decided to give up extreme asceticism, his five students left him.

He then sat down in a place now called Bodhgaya (North India) under a Bodhi-tree and decided not to get up anymore until he discovered the truth. Just a short time later, he became a fully enlightened Buddha. This means that he actualised all positive potentials of a sentient being and rid himself of all negative qualities. With this, he realised the true nature of existence and suffering (emptiness), and how suffering can be ended.

Seven weeks after enlightenment, the Buddha gave his first discourse in Sarnath, near Varanasi (see image below right). Here he taught the 4 Noble Truths. The Buddha continued to teach during his life, until passing away at the age of 81.

The Buddha once summarised his entire teachings in one sentence:

"I teach about suffering and the way to end it".