Buddhism is one of the six major religions of the world with more
than 376 million adherents. The tradition originated in
India, but is today practiced primarily beyond the country’s
borders throughout much of Asia, including Nepal, Tibet,
Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, as well
as Mongolia, China, Korea, and Japan. Partially fuelled
by the arrival of Asian immigrants to Europe, North America,
and Australia, Buddhism has also more recently been adopted
in the West.
Buddhism builds on many of the same beliefs as Hinduism,
including the notions of samsara (cycles of rebirth), karma and the underlying oneness of all things that Buddhists,
describe as emptiness (shunyata).
The principal figure in Buddhism is
an individual named Siddharta, who during the sixth century
BCE was born a prince of a small kingdom in northeast
India. Growing tired of his materialistic, princely life,
Siddharta left the palace in search of true happiness.
After six years of wandering as a mendicant, he finally
understood that eternal happiness comes with overcoming
ego, realising the oneness of all things as emptiness,
and subsequently escaping the cycles of rebirth. This knowledge
is known in Sanskrit as bodhi and referred to in English
as ‘enlightenment’ or ‘awakening.’ Once
Siddharta achieved this knowledge, he came to be known as ‘Buddha--the
awakened one.’ For the remainder of his life until
he passed on into nirvana in his seventies, he shared his
knowledge with others and his teachings became the fundamental
tenets of the religion.
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With
time, the Buddha’s teachings came to be interpreted
variously, giving rise to three major schools of Buddhism:
1) Theravada, 2) Mahayana, and 3) Vajrayana (also known
as Tantric Buddhism), an off-shoot of the Mahayana division.
The basic differences between these schools are who each
considers eligible for Buddhahood and the methods by which
each aspires to reach the goal. For example, Theravadins
believe that there will be only a limited number of Buddhas,
whereas the Mahayana and Vajrayana schools adopt a more
universalistic approach and maintain that every living
creature can become a Buddha. The major difference between
Mahayana and Vajrayana is that while the former embraces
the idea that achieving Buddhahood may take several thousand
lifetimes, the latter claims that the goal can be attained
rapidly, within the span of a single life.
The Mahayana and Vajrayana schools
employ a large, vibrant pantheon to convey core religious
ideologies. Within Mahayana, male bodhisattvas and female
equivalents known as dharanis, compassionately assist
devotees and guide them towards self-betterment. A
variety of male and female Buddhas unite harmoniously
to articulate ideas of non-duality and undifferentiated
truth that are fundamental to the Vajrayana quest. In
these pairings, the male Buddha represents compassion
and the female represents wisdom, which are, according
to the tradition, the two main ingredients of awakening. |
