Buddhism

One of the three world religions. (The other two are Christianity and Islam.) Buddhism originated in ancient India in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. and in the course of its development split into several religious-philosophic schools. The Indian prince Siddhartha Gautama, later called the Buddha, which means “the awakened one” or “the enlightened one,” is regarded as the founder of Buddhism.
Buddhism appeared at a time when India, then a conglomerate of minor despotic monarchic states and tribal federations, was in the process of forming a united state, a process completed by the establishment of the empire of the Mauryas in the fourth century B.C. It was a time of destruction of the established foundations of life and a sharpening of the contradictions between social groups and castes; an additional complication lay in the mixed ethnic composition of the population. This critical situation evoked among the people a desire to escape, if only into the sphere of the unreal. Buddhism was the answer to this wish. It was a reaction against the Brahman religion, and it opposed the caste system sanctioned by Brahmanism, proclaiming equality for everybody regardless of caste and estate. At the time of its origin Buddhism attained wide popularity owing to the universality of the path to “salvation” that it offered. At the same time, it was acceptable to the rulers of the society as well, because of its social passivity and its aloofness from the concrete historical situation.
As early as the first centuries of its existence, Buddhism split into 18 sects. The ideological differences among them led to the convocation of councils: at Rajagaha around 477 B.C., at Vesali around 367 B.C., at Pataliputra in the third century B.C., and at Kashmir in the second century A.D. The most important event in the history of Buddhism was the formation of the sect of the Mahasanghikas, or “Members of the Great Order,” during the meeting of the Second Council. This marked the beginning of the Buddhist schism which occurred at the beginning of the Christian era and divided Buddhism into its two largest branches: the Hinayana, or “lesser vehicle” or “narrow path”; and the Mahayana, or “greater vehicle” or “wide path.” Between the first and fifth centuries the main religious-philosophic schools of Buddhism were developed in their final form: within Hinayana the Vaibhashika and Sautrantika; and within Mahayana the Yogacara, or Vijnyanavada, and the Madhyamika. The followers of Hinayana call their movement Theravada Buddhism, which means “teaching of the elders.”
The flowering of Buddhism in India took place from the middle of the first millennium B.C. to the beginning of the first millennium A.D. The end of this period coincided with the development of Hinduism and was marked by a definite disintegration of the specific character of Buddhism and a tendency to move toward Hinduism. However, although it submerged itself into Hinduism in India toward the beginning of the 12th century, Buddhism did not disappear. It had been preached by missionary monks, especially the emissaries of the emperor Ashoka, a zealous follower of Buddhism in the third century B.C., and had spread over all of Southeast and Central Asia, taking hold in parts of Middle Asia and Siberia as well. Between the third century B.C. and the middle of the first millennium A.D., Buddhism had been established in Ceylon, Indonesia, and Indochina. In the first centuries A.D. it had begun to penetrate into China and Tibet; in the fourth to sixth centuries into Korea and Japan; in the 16th and 17th centuries into Mongolia; and in the 18th century into Buriatia. Hinayana prevailed in the southeastern countries, acquiring the name of Southern Buddhism. In the northern countries Mahayana took hold and became known as Northern Buddhism.
In India, Mahayana was considerably influenced by Brahmanism and Hinduism (the Vedantas and yoga). Encountering the conditions and cults of the northern countries, Mahayana developed different tendencies, combining with Taoism in China, Shintoism in Japan, and naturalistic beliefs in Tibet. Northern Buddhism split into several sects, one of which is the Zen sect, which originated in China in the fifth century (in Chinese, Ch’an); this sect is now mainly found in Japan. In the fifth century a special trend parallel to Hindu Tantrism appeared in Buddhism. This was called Vajrayana, and under its influence the new school of Lamaism arose. Although extremely susceptible to the influences of various ideologies, Buddhism preserved unchangeably its central principle, assimilating the borrowed elements to its own fundamental doctrine, cult, and mythology.
The religious-philosophic literature of Buddhism is vast and includes works in Pali, Sanskrit, mixed Sanskrit, Sinhalese, Tibetan, Burmese, Khmer, Chinese, Japanese, and other languages. A large part of Hinayana literature is contained in the so-called Pali canon, Tipitaka, which means “the three baskets.” Among the noncanonic works of the Hinayana school are the Milindapanha and the Abhidharma-kosa by Vasubandhu. A large part of the Hinayana canon belongs to the Mahayana literature, which includes Sanskrit translations. Mahayana literature also includes the so-called basic Mahayana sutras and other source books such as the Mahavastu, the Divyavadana (or Collection of Divine Avadanas), and the Lalita Vistara, as well as the writings of Asvaghosa (of which the most important is the Buddhacarita), Aryasura (who wrote the Jataka-mala, or Garland of Birth-Tales), Santideva, and others. The speculative philosophy of Mahayana is represented by numerous works, the most important of which are the works of Nagarjuna (who wrote the Madhyamikakarika) and Asanga. All of the Mahayana writings and most of the Hinayana canon have been translated from Sanskrit and sometimes directly from Pali into Chinese and later into Tibetan. In Tibet these translations, along with many original texts, form two collections of many volumes known as the Kanjur and the Tanjur.
One characteristic of Buddhist dogma is its pragmatic direction. From its very beginning Buddhism turned away not only from an overemphasis of external forms of religious life, especially ritualism, but also from the abstract speculation characteristic of Brahmanism, and made the existence of the individual its central focus. The basic content of the Buddhist books is the practical doctrine of “salvation” or “deliverance.” It is explained in the doctrine of the “four noble truths”: the existence of suffering, the cause of suffering, the state of deliverance from suffering, and the path leading to this deliverance—in short, the existence of suffering and deliverance. On one hand, suffering and deliverance from it represent exclusively subjective states, and on the other hand—especially in the systems of developed schools of Buddhism—they represent a certain “reality” that has an objective cosmic foundation.
Stressing as its foundation the thesis that all life is suffering, Buddhism defines suffering not as primarily an experience of some concrete condition but rather as the expectation of that condition, the expectation of actual suffering, and even more, the expectation of the effects of that expectation—feelings of fear, insecurity, and so forth. According to Buddhism this suffering means a condition of endless anxiety, general uneasiness, tension, and dissatisfaction. In this sense, suffering is the equivalent of desire, which Buddhism considers the psychological cause of suffering. The Buddhist concept of life as suffering is deepened by the fact that Buddhism accepts the doctrine of endless rebirth (samsara). According to Buddhism, death is thus not a punishment, or a tragedy, or deliverance, but a transition to a new life and new suffering.
The interpretation of suffering as a cosmic reality is based on the idea of the connection of the individual’s life activity, especially the psychophysic elements of this life activity, called dharmas, with the external world. The dharmas flare up, are extinguished, and flare up again; they are in permanent agitation, producing by their impermanency the feeling of suffering. In the Buddhist literature this eternal flaring up and extinguishing is frequently compared with the burning flame of a lamp; this metaphor is characteristically Buddhist in its emphasis on becoming instead of being—on process instead of substance. A consequence of the belief in dharmas is the denial of the soul as an unchangeable spiritual substance and the identification of the human self with the totality of the functions of five classes of dharmas, the so-called skandhas: the sensual life of the organism as a whole, the emotions, the ideas, the karmic will impulses, and the consciousness.
Buddhism is founded on the idea that the goal is inseparable from the means of its realization. Therefore, deliverance in Buddhism is expressed primarily in the categories of the path to deliverance, which consists of the “right conduct” and the “right knowledge.” There is no rigid code of conduct in Buddhism and the significance of any external form of conduct is essentially denied. This principle is especially stressed in early Buddhism, for example in Zen. In terms of morality it means recognition of the diversity and relativity of ethical norms, the equal valuation of ethically contradictory actions, and the absence of the concepts of responsibility and guilt as absolutes. The main traits of Buddhist ethics in its external expression are patience and “fluidity.” It is a morality equally helpful to everyone and at the same time aloof from everyone. At the basis of the Buddhist concept of conduct lies a sense of inner aloofness of the subject from everything around him. Buddhism regards pleasure and goodness as equally necessary and unnecessary; this idea is partially expressed in the doctrine of the so-called middle way, which equally rejects immersion in pleasure and mortification of the flesh. Its ideal is a person who is intensely occupied with changing his inner psychological state but also is not estranged from his customary everyday pursuits. The Buddhist ideal of conduct is organically connected with the concept of true knowledge, whose main trait is the absence of direction toward the external world (although it is responsive to everything), and contemplation of the inner being. One of the main ways of shaping the psychology and psychophysiology of the personality on its way to self-immersion is to practice Buddhist yoga, or dhyana. The state of complete detachment from the outside world and self-immersion is deliverance, or nirvana.
In the texts of developed Buddhism this state marks the cessation of the life activity of the individual and the agitation of the dharmas and the transition of the dharmas from a state of manifestation to a state of nonmanifestation, or true being. By asserting that nirvana is a definite psychic condition of the individual, Buddhism denies the supernaturalness of deliverance from “this world,” unlike many other Indian religions and philosophic systems. Nirvana appears along with a kind of absolute; thus, this absolute is in its philosophical aspect described as sunyata (which means “the void”) and in its religious aspect as dharmakaya, or the organic unity of everything existing, understood as the cosmic body of the Buddha.
Essentially Buddhism affirms only the existence of a psychological process. Since the world appears to be incorporated in the self (there is no opposition between the self and the world), there does not exist for Buddhism an opposition of subject and object, of mind and matter, in the strict sense. A voluntary act by the self, understood as a spiritual-corporeal entity, represents the creative principle, the fundamental cause of existence. (Even Vajrayana is based on the general principle of Buddhism—the assumption of special potential forces hidden in the wholeness of the spiritual-corporeal existence of man. Vajrayana, however, is rather distant from the basic position of Buddhism and represents a particular system of the yoga practice of meditation, the most important part of which is an esoteric ritual that serves as a means of concentration of the “spiritual forces.”) The philosophical position of Buddhism may be characterized as subjective-idealistic; however, it considers the external world to be contained in the subject, not only as a fact of consciousness but also as something really existing, although unseparated from the subject.
From the nonabsolute quality (according to Buddhism) of everything that exists without relation to a subject follows the concept of a nonabsolute deity. For Buddhism there is no necessity for a god who is the creator, savior, and so forth—that is, the absolute supreme being. On the contrary, there is the possibility of recognizing “nonsupreme” deities. There is no dualism of the divine and the nondivine, of god and creation, or of god and the world. God as a superior being is immanent and dwells within the person who has attained deliverance, which is essentially the identity of man and god.
The various movements and schools of Buddhism each emphasize one of its different tendencies. In Hinayana the doctrine of personal salvation takes the form of preaching individual perfection and the ideal of the arhat, the person who has attained deliverance. Mahayana rejects the isolated tendency of individual deliverance. Instead of the ideal of the arhat it looks to the ideal of the Bodhisattva (literally, “he whose essence is enlightenment”) as a being who renounces transition to nirvana so that he may save all other beings.
In the course of its development Buddhism arrived at a recognition of the necessity of external forms of religious life. Gradually there developed a complex cult of worshipping the Buddha and the various bodhisattvas, the direct helpers to salvation. The pantheon of Buddhist godheads grew because of the introduction of gods of primordial Indian origin and those borrowed from the religions of peoples who had accepted Buddhism. The buddhas Gautama, Amitabha, and Vairochana are regarded as the principal deities. They are viewed as reincarnations of a supposedly unique primordial Buddha. Yet none of the Buddhist gods, including the Buddha himself, became supreme gods. The cult quickly embraced all aspects of the believer’s life, beginning with everyday family events and ending with community holidays, which occupied a prominent place in social life. Ceremonial processions around the stupas (memorial and sepulchral dome-shaped structures), prostrations before the statues of the Buddha and other deities and before sacred trees and so forth, offerings on the altars of the temples and burning of aromatic candles, and other rituals gained great importance. Pilgrimages to sacred places, which are connected mostly with relics and vestiges of the Buddha and his disciples but also with legends of their exploits, became common. The cult acquired especially complicated forms with some branches of Mahayana, particularly Lamaism. At the same time the doctrine of religious retribution, including notions of hell and paradise, evolved in Mahayana.
Shortly after the birth of Buddhism, the sanghas appeared. These were monastic communities that ordered and specifically regimented the anarchic way of life of the first followers of Buddhism. A specific religious organization gradually developed from the sanghas. Its role grew in importance with the appearance of monasteries as permanent residences of the monks. The monk became a religious teacher; in the eyes of believers, he was actually on the way to salvation and for that reason alone was surrounded by an aura of superiority; thus his role became extremely important. In the countries where Hinayana exists, monasticism plays an enormous role in social life even today. Advice from a monk is law to believers. The monasteries became big landowners and important political centers, often possessing more authority over the population than government institutions, especially in the villages. However, entrance into and withdrawal from a monastic community are voluntary. The monk, even in his role as a religious functionary and teacher, has no power to forgive or punish a person for his actions.
Buddhism had an essential influence on all aspects of life and civilization in the countries that accepted it. The diffusion of Buddhism gave rise to those syncretistic cultural forms which make up the so-called Buddhist civilization in architecture, sculpture, painting, literature, science, and scholastic education; these reached their greatest importance in the early Middle Ages. The monasteries played a major role in the development of Buddhist civilization in the Middle Ages. Monks were frequently artists, writers, and physicians.
The social role of Buddhism is determined by the basic principles of its dogmatics. Whatever forms it may have taken in its development, its central principle is the religious idea of the need for deliverance from the way of profane “earthly” existence. Every bond, including social bonds, is viewed by Buddhism as evil. Its detachment from all surroundings and its individualism also determine its profound asocial character. This explains the withdrawal of Buddhists from the struggle for social and political reforms and from the class war. Yet in many Asian countries a certain sector of the Buddhists and the Buddhist clergy participates in social and political life. Thus, for example, in South Vietnam the Buddhists join the national liberation struggle. At the same time, there are countries where the Buddhists are opposed to the national liberation movement and social reforms.
The structure, administration, and degree of centralization of the Buddhist community differ from country to country. In Burma and Ceylon there is neither strict centralization nor direct dependence of the community on the national authority. In Thailand, Buddhism is the state religion and the king is the head of the Buddhist community. In Laos, too, the king is regarded as the head of the Buddhist community.
The followers of Hinayana Buddhism represented in the 1960’s about 90 percent of the population in Burma, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand and about 60 percent in Ceylon; Mahayana has followers in China (about 17 percent of the population), Japan (about 50 percent), Korea, Nepal, and other countries. There are a number of Buddhists in Pakistan and India (not more than 1 percent of the population) and also among Chinese and Japanese immigrants in North America (about 170,000) and South America (about 140,000). In addition, there are small numbers of new converts to Buddhism in the USA (about 16,000) and Europe (about 8,000). The Lamaist variety of Mahayana has a number of adherents in the Mongolian People’s Republic and also on the territory of the USSR, in the Buriat, Kalmyk, and Tuva ASSR’s, and in the Ust’-Orda Buriat and the Aga-Buriat national okrugs of the Irkutsk and Chita oblasts. The Buddhist community of the USSR is headed by the Theological Administration of the Buddhists of the USSR, which is elected by an ecclesiastic council. The president of the administration has the ecclesiastical title of Bandido-Khambolama and resides in the datsan (monastery) of Ivolginsk, 40 km south of Ulan-Ude.
There are several international organizations of modern Buddhism: the most influential is the World Fellowship of Buddhists, founded in 1950 by the International Congress of Buddhists in Colombo, Ceylon. The Theological Administration of Buddhists in the USSR is a member of the World Fellowship of Buddhists.
V. P. LUCHINA
Buddhism and art. A wide range of various artistic monuments connected with the Buddhist cult developed in the course of ancient and medieval times. Buddhist iconographic images and subjects were influenced by the traditions of local civilizations everywhere. In India, the homeland of Buddhism, the oldest monuments of Buddhist art originated; there the iconographiec traditions and a number of symbolic ideas and images evolved. The principal types of Buddhist buildings—the cave temples, where a characteristic synthesis of architecture, sculpture, and painting developed, and the stupas, erected in honor of legendary events in the life of the Buddha and as repositories of sacred relics—also evolved in India. Cave temples and monuments resembling the stupas (pagodas, dagobas, subragas, chortens, and thats) are widely found in other countries. In China, Japan, and Korea various types of wooden temples were constructed, and easel painting developed, as well as monumental painting on Buddhist subjects. Magnificent stone shrines and temple quarters are found in Indonesia, Cambodia, and other countries; monastery complexes in India, Burma, and Nepal; and the structures of Lamaist monasteries in Tibet, Mongolia, and Buriatia.
In early Buddhism many symbols were used instead of the likeness of the Buddha himself—the wheel, the deer, the lion, and the sacred tree, which are all connected with ancient Indian cosmology. Representations of the Buddha as a man appeared only at the beginning of the Common Era in the art of Gandhara and Mathura in India and later underwent various kinds of transformations in the sculpture and painting of many countries. With the spread of Mahayana, Buddhist pictorial arts were enriched by representations of local pre-Buddhist deities.
N. A. VINOGRADOVA
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Category:Religion
Category:Buddhism