Table of Contents
Origins of Buddhism
Buddhism is counted among the world religions with broad geographical spread (around 6% of the global population identify as Buddhists). Its followers live predominantly in China, the countries of the Southeast Asian peninsula, and the island regions of South Asia. It originated in India more than 2,000 years ago.
The Founder of Buddhism
Siddhartha Gautama, who later came to be known by the honorific 'Buddha' (Sanskrit for "the Enlightened One"), is the founding figure of Buddhism. He was born around 560 BCE in what is today Nepal, as the son of a prince, and grew up with wealth at the foothills of the Himalayas.
At the age of 29, encountering suffering (old age, sickness, death) he entered into a profound inner crisis regarding the meaning of his life, then renounced his wealth and social position. He spent about six years practicing rigorous asceticism with various masters but found that extreme denial of the body did not bring him enlightenment.
Eventually he turned to deep meditation and contemplation, and under what is now known as the Bodhi tree (the "Tree of Enlightenment"), he attained awakening (bodhi), finally becoming the Buddha. He preached his first sermon at Varanasi (Kasi) near the Ganges river, one of Buddhism's most sacred sites. From that point he set "the Wheel of the Dharma" in motion for over 45 years.
The Core Teachings
The essence of his awakened insight is formulated in the “Four Noble Truths”:
- Life in its normal flow is marked by suffering (dukkha): birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; separation from what is loved, association with what is disliked—these are suffering.
- The origin of suffering is craving (tanha), the thirst for sensory pleasure, for becoming, for being reborn, which is rooted in ignorance.
- The cessation of suffering is possible: when craving and ignorance are relinquished, suffering is ended.
- There is a path to the cessation of suffering, often called the Eightfold Path: right understanding, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.
The ultimate goal of this teaching is liberation (nirvana)—the dissolution of all dualities (good/evil, being/non-being), the ending of life-illusions.
Spread and Branches
After the Buddha's lifetime, his teaching split broadly into two major schools: the Hinayana ("smaller vehicle") and the Mahayana ("greater vehicle"). Hinayana gained ground in Sri Lanka, Burma (Myanmar), Thailand, Laos, Cambodia; Mahayana spread to Vietnam, China, Korea, Japan and later to Tibet (as Vajrayana). On the Indian subcontinent, Buddhism gradually lost ground and was largely superseded by Hindu traditions over the last two millennia.