How many Buddhists are there here?

I'm reading about buddhism at the minute...I love the philosophies...its about so much more than just blindly following though...I'm on a spiitual journey and I'm enjoying it...xx

This has to be the craziest forum I've been on yet - I come to talk about buddism and hear about people walking into trees! :wink:

You mentioned 'the precepts' earlier. What are they?

"Precepts" is indeed a pretty ambiguous term. It refers to the fundamentals of the religion, and the particular school or sect. The Four Nobel Truths, and the Eight-Fold Path given in the Deer Park Sermon are probably the most commonly held portions of our religion. Study those and you will be on sure ground as regard to the "precepts".

Buddhist texts vary in content and language. As in other religions with ancient written traditions, there is some problems with translation. The original language was a form of Pali, and the first writings began to appear within a hundred years after the Buddha's death. The Pali Canon is somewhat smaller than the Sanskrit sutras. These sutras (from the sanskrit word sutra, means to stitch/sew), report most authoritatively the teachings of Siddhartha as they are closest in time to the historical figure. Pali is, like sanskrit, mostly a dead language and the forms are archaic. Theravada is today mostly found in Ceylon and in isolated Southeastern Asian communities. Those most ancient Pali texts are fundamental to the Theravada Buddhists.

Even before the Great Decease, followers of the Buddha were struggling to understand exactly what was being taught them. What does it mean to follow a "right occupation"? Many of the Buddha's sermons, and he gave a lot of them, were answers to that sort of question. As might be expected the answers given gave rise to a host of new questions, and not everyone agreed what exactly was intended. Not all "students/disciples" interpreted things alike, nor did they all put the same emphasis on what they were taught. Even the earliest texts show that people were analysing the Buddha's message from the beginning. As time went on the community of Buddhists developed elaborate analysis of the core teachings from around 550 BCE, and they increasingly wrote those thoughts down in Sanskrit.

Buddhist texts in Sanskrit make up the largest body of Buddhist Sutras, and gave rise to what has become known as Mahayana Buddhism. "Mahayana" (Maha=Great and Yana=vessel/teaching) means the Great Teaching. This later school called their forerunners the Hineyana, or Lesser Teaching. Don't use that term when dealing with followers of the Theravada tradition, very bad mojo.

Mahayana Buddhism introduced some important concepts. None more important that the idea of the Bodhisatva, or Buddha who delays his own full departure from the mundane, and illusory world of suffering to be a compassionate defender of the suffering. Thats not exactly right, but without devoting a full lecture to the subject, it will have to do. Anyway, Mahayona became the dominant form of Buddhism and spread far outside India. Mahayana, which first introduced religious statues and icons, went west and bumped into Hellenistic culture around Gandara. Buddhist iconography was influenced by Greek sculptural ideas.

Perhaps the earliest expansion was into Nepal and Tibet where Buddhism came to an "accomodation" with the native shamanistic religion of "Bo"or "Bonpa". Tantric beliefs are complex and filled with ceremony and picturesque ritual. Tibetan sutras are very large, written in the Tibetan language, and reflect Tibetan folk religion and culture. The result was the Tantric School, of which the Dali Lama is the leading authority.

Buddhism reached China along the Silk Road and across the Talamakan Desert. There it encounter Taoism, and was confused by the Chinese as being merely an advanced version of Lao Tze's teachings. This northern Buddhism became extremely popular and melded easily into Chinese culture, and religion (Confucism and the three Taoist schools). Eventually this "stream" of Buddhim developed into the Pure Lands Sects popular with lay-people, and became very wide-spread both in China and those places where Chinese Buddhism have been adopted. The accommodation with Chinese religion and culture added many more religious texts to the already staggering number in Pali, Sanskrit, and Tibetan.

A third route into China came with the arrival of Bhodidarma into southern China. This group gave rise to a number of sects, but the most important was Chan, or Zen in the Japanese language. You guessed it, more sutras and religious analysis and commentary was written in both Chinese and Japanese.

Each of these Schools and Sects have their own peculiarities, and they each have their own notion of what the "Precepts" are, apart from the Deer Park Sermon. As Buddhism spread from India the older texts came to be translated into the local religion. So we have Sanskrit texts translated into Tibetan, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese, before we even begin to consider translation into English and modern European languages (which began back in the 19th century). Some texts are the products of translations of translations or translations. A pretty problem, but because of Buddhist emphasis on individual experience, not nearly so problematical as Abrahamic texts.

Sorry for the length here, but normally this would take a full semester to give students just the gloss of the subject.

And what of zen?
Zen does not know words. Words bring us further from the truth.

And what's your opinion on meditation? Does it transcend thought? If it does, is there any need for analyzing buddhism as a religion or to accept any of the doctrines? Must we not doubt everything? Is there even a point to asking these questions? Must we not accept everything with compassion and wish well to all feeling creatures?

"There is no solution, because there is no problem."
-Marcel Duchamp.

Signed ReX,
Aikido practioner and taster of the the Path that does not exist.

Thanks, Asherman, you are a fountain.

Rex. thanks for the Duchamp quote. The best thing I've seen from him.And regarding Zen--the only version of Buddhism that interests me--meditation is all that matters. Doctrine merely clouds the mind even when it tells you not to cloud the mind with doctrine. We meditate to realize the non-problem (after passing through the gateless gate and ending up in the same room--no problem from the beginning. But the room is not the same; ugh! it is and it isn't).

that's pretty much what I feel too. Although I will still in online surveys check box "spiritous, but not religious". If they would come to my door with gun and forced me to choose religion it would be Buddhism (or Church of Holy Diego Armando Maradona ), but so far this "spiritous, but not religious" is slightly closer to my beliefs then Buddhism. But, Buddhism is pretty close as well, while other religions are...well, I respect them all, completely, but light years away from my beliefs.

Meditation is a tool, not an end in itself. The point is to prepare a fertile state where enlightenment can happen naturally. Meditation is the disciplined focus of "mind". Our everyday, undisciplined, mind is a constant barrage of stimuli, thoughts and emotions. The "noise" is so great that it drowns out and adulterates our ability to experience Oneness. meditation dampens those distractions, and suddenly without warning, we awaken.

The sudden loss of ego, of our sense of being within a spatial and temporal structure, can be very frightening to the unprepared. At the very least, the unprepared step anxiously back from the experience, thus terminating the experience before it can burst into full bloom. Some may be so frightened of the abyss that they become mentally unbalanced. Meditation, especially under the guidance of a knowledgable Master, is an antidote to these risks.

Meditation itself is dynamic. At first, the practitioner has difficulty even sitting motionless for short periods and the mind is hyperactive. In time sitting meditation can last for many hours, and the great danger is to fall asleep. Ideally, the practitioner eventually comes to the point where everything, all waking thought, words and action are themselves a form of meditation ... but we still are prone to go to sleep.

Finally, meditation without the earnest practice of the Eight-Fold Path is like a man trying to run without legs. We must not only be mindful, but compassionate. Meditation in a monastery is somewhat easier, but suffering goes on outside the Zendo. We need to never forget the purpose of the Buddha was to conquer suffering. First, we try to heal ourselves so that we can then heal others.