Buddhism

Introductory profiles adapted from

On Common Ground: World
Religions in America

Pluralism Project, Harvard University

Religious Literacy Project, Harvard
Divinity School
March 26, 2015

Lay people, monks, and nuns participate in

a ceremony at the Tharlam Monastery of
Tibetan Buddhism in Kathmandu, Nepal.
Wonderlane (2007), Flickr Creative
Commons.

Buddhism 2015

Preface: How to Read These Profiles

In these religion profiles, our focus is on particular
religious traditions with an emphasis on 1) their
internal diversity, and 2) the ways that the traditions
are always evolving and changing. Though we hope
these profiles provide helpful introductions, this
format is a bit misleading in that it can reinforce the
idea that religions exist and develop in isolation from
other social and historical forces, including other
religions. While reading these profiles, please
remember that religions always impact and are
impacted by political, economic, social, and historical
factors. Please see the Methods article for fuller
explanation of these intersections and the Country
Profiles for a demonstration of how to understand
religious influences in particular social and historical
contexts.

The Path of Awakening

Contents
The Path of Awakening

Prince Siddhartha: Renouncing the World 2

The Dharma: The Teachings of the Buddha 3
The Sangha: The Buddhist Community

The Expansion of Buddhism

Mahayana: The Great Vehicle

The Three Treasures

Theravada: The Way of the Elders

Vajrayana: The Diamond Vehicle
Global Buddhisms

5
6
8
9

Religion profiles are adapted from On Common

Ground: World Religions in America, a resource
of the Pluralism Project
(www.pluralism.org/ocg).
The Pluralism Project at Harvard University
The Religious Literacy Project at Harvard
Divinity School
"Ladakh, Likir monastery" by Dietmar Temps
(2013) at Flickr Creative Commons.

In the sixth century BCE, a prince of India named

Siddhartha Gautama is said to have given up his
throne, left behind his family and his palace, and set
out into the forest to seek answers to the haunting
questions of suffering, disease, old age, and death.
Through this ardent search and his deep meditation,
he gained great insight. He became known as the
Buddha, an honorific title meaning the Enlightened
One or the Awakened One, and is considered by
many to be one of the archetypal spiritual pathfinders
of history.
Within his own lifetime, the Buddha attracted a
considerable following in India with his
understanding of the suffering of living beings and his
teachings about overcoming suffering through moral
living, meditation, and insight into reality. Some
followed him in the path of renunciation and became
monks and nuns. Others remained as laity, learning
from the Buddhas teachings, honoring the Buddha,
and supporting the monastic community. While
Buddhism has its roots in India, reverence for the
Buddha and adherence to his teachings spread
throughout Asia, and today the entire world.
Buddhism can thus be considered a world religion in

Adapted from On Common Ground (www.pluralism.org/buddhism)

that it is not specifically tied to a particular people or land.

Buddhism 2015

There are currently two major streams of the Buddhist tradition: the Theravada tradition of South and
Southeast Asia, including Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos; and the Mahayana tradition
of China, Vietnam, Korea, and Japan. The Vajrayana tradition of Tibet, a subset of Mahayana, is large
enough that it is sometimes recognized as a third major stream. While these streams are distinct, they
are not entirely separate and have continually interacted in Asia.

Prince Siddhartha: Renouncing the World

What we know about the life of the historical Buddha can be sketched
from legends. One of the most beautiful literary renderings of the story is
told by Ashvaghosha in the first century CE. Prince Siddhartha Gautama
is said to have been born in the royal Shakya family, some say in the year
563 BCE, in a place called Lumbini, which is located in present-day Nepal,
at the foothills of the Himalayas. At the time of his birth, seers foretold
that he would either become a great king or an enlightened teacher. If the
prince were to see the four passing sightsold age, sickness, death,
and a wandering ascetiche would renounce his royal life and seek
enlightenment.

An Indian Buddha at the Asian Art

Museum in San Francisco,
InSapphoWeTrust (2011), Flickr
Creative Commons.

His father, the king, was determined that his son become a great ruler
and tried to shield Prince Siddhartha from these four realities of life.
However, at age 29, Siddhartha, with his charioteer, went out of the
protected palace grounds and, for the first time, encountered suffering,
which he understood to be an inevitable part of life. He saw four sights: a
man bent with old age, a person afflicted with sickness, a corpse, and a
wandering ascetic. It was the fourth sight, that of a wandering ascetic,
that filled Siddhartha with a sense of urgency to find out what lay at the
root of human suffering.

Siddhartha left the luxury of the palace. He studied and lived an austere life in the forest with the
foremost teachers and ascetics of his time. Yet, he found that their teachings and severe bodily
austerities did not enable him to answer the question of suffering or provide insight into how to be
released from it. Having experienced the life of self-indulgence in the palace and then the life of selfdenial in the forest, he finally settled on a middle way, a balance between these two extremes.
Accepting food from a village girl, he recovered his bodily strength and began a journey inward
through the practice of meditation.

Becoming the Buddha: The Way of Meditation

According to tradition, Siddhartha seated himself at the foot of a tree, which has since been called the
Bodhi Tree, the tree of enlightenment. He vowed to sit beneath that tree until he had attained deep
insight into suffering. As he sat through the night, a profound stillness settled upon his mind, like that
of a lake on a windless day. This stillness enabled him to see ever more deeply and clearly into the
cycle of grasping, clinging, and egotism found at the root of suffering.
Adapted from On Common Ground (www.pluralism.org/buddhism)

The demon Mara rose to tempt him and to attack him with arrows of
passion. Desire, fear, pride, and thirst rose to challenge his clear
concentration of mind. But Siddhartha placed his hand on the earth,
calling earth itself to witness his firm resolve. When the morning star
appeared, Siddhartha Gautama became the Buddha, literally the
Awakened One. He had woken up to the nature of the changing
world and the causes of suffering. This state of awakening was also
called nirvana, literally the blowing out of the fires of ego-centered
attachment which are the source of suffering.

Siddhartha is called Shakyamuni Buddha, the Sage of the Shakya

clan to make clear that this awakening is not uniquely his. Over time,
there have been other individuals who have awakened to the truth
and gained enlightenment, thereby becoming Buddhas. Among the
most well-known and widely venerated are Amitabha (Amida)
Buddha, Vairochana Buddha, and Bhaishajya-guru (better known as
the Medicine Buddha). Indeed, sometimes Buddhas are depicted by
the thousands, for the Buddha nature is the true awakened nature
of all beings.

Buddhism 2015

A Thai woman meditates in Bangkok,

longtrekhome (2007), Flickr Creative
Commons.

It is said that, out of great compassion, the newly enlightened Shakyamuni Buddha set out to show
others the path he had followed so they might set foot on that path as well. After his awakening, the
Buddha taught in the cities and villages of North India for some forty-five years.

The Dharma: The Teachings of the Buddha

The Buddha's sermons and teachings pointed toward the true nature of
the universe, what is known within Buddhism as the Dharma. He gave
his first sermon on the outskirts of the city of Varanasi at a deer park
called Sarnath. This first sermon presents an overview of suffering and
the way out of suffering. It is called the Four Noble Truths. The Buddha
is often described as a physician who first diagnoses an illness and then
suggests a medicine to cure the illness. The Four Noble Truths follow
this pattern:
1. Life involves suffering, duhkha.

nd

rd

A 2 -3 century statue of the fasting

Siddhartha from the Swat Valley in
current day Pakistan, British Museum,
Wikimedia Commons.

The illness that the Buddha diagnosed as the human condition

is duhkha, a term often rendered in English as suffering or
unsatisfactoriness. The Buddha spoke of three types of duhkha. First,
there is the ordinary suffering of mental and physical pain. Second, there
is the suffering produced by change, the simple fact that all things
including happy feelings and blissful statesare impermanent, as is life
itself. Third, there is suffering produced by the failure to recognize that
no I stands alone, but everything and everyone, including what we call
our self, is conditioned and interdependent.
Adapted from On Common Ground (www.pluralism.org/buddhism)

2. Suffering is caused by desire and grasping.

Buddhism 2015

The Buddha saw that the impulse to crave, desire, or grasp something one doesnt have is the principal
cause of suffering. Because of the impermanence and continuous change of all that we call reality, the
attempt to hold on to it is as doomed to frustration as the attempt to stake out a piece of a flowing
river.
3. There is a way out of suffering.

This is the good news of the Dharma. It is possible to put an end to ego-centered desire, to put an end
to duhkha and thus attain freedom from the perpetual sense of unsatisfactoriness.
4. The way is the Noble Eightfold Path.

To develop this freedom one must practice habits of

ethical conduct, thought, and meditation that enable one
to move along the path. These habits include:

Right understanding. Really knowing, for example,

that unwholesome acts and thoughts have
consequences, as do wholesome acts and
thoughts.
Right intention. Recognizing that actions are
shaped by habits of anger and self-centeredness,
or by habits of compassion, understanding, and
love.
Right speech. Recognizing the moral implications
of speech. Truthfulness.
Right action. Observing the five precepts at the
foundation of all morality: not killing, not stealing, The wheel with eight spokes represents the Noble
not engaging in sexual misconduct, not lying, and Eightfold Path in Buddhist art; a sculpture in Kanark,
India (2012), saamiblog, Flickr Creative Commons.
not clouding the mind with intoxicants.
Right livelihood. Earning a living in ways that are
consonant with the basic precepts.
Right effort. Cultivating this way of living with the attention, the patience, and the perseverance
that it takes to cultivate a field.
Right mindfulness. Developing presence of mind through the moment-to-moment awareness
of meditation practice, including mindfulness of breathing, mindfulness of walking, and
mindfulness of bodily sensations.
Right concentration. Developing the ability to bring the dispersed and distracted mind and
heart to a center, a focus, and to see clearly through that focused mind and heart.

Adapted from On Common Ground (www.pluralism.org/buddhism)

Buddhism 2015

The Sangha: The Buddhist Community

Those who followed the Buddha came to be called

the Sanghathe community of monks (bhikshus)
and nuns (bhikshunis). Those who became monks
and nuns underwent an ordination ceremony of
shaving their heads and donning robes to
symbolize world-renunciation. They entered into
the homeless life of wandering monastics who
settled down in monasteries only during the
months of the rainy season.
Paying respect to a monk in Thailand, Roberto Trm (2012), Flickr
Creative Commons.

For some, the Sangha is the whole community of

the Buddhas followers. From the beginning, the
Buddhas disciples included laypeople who
followed the Buddhas teachings but remained
householders.

Both the ordained and the laity followed the five precepts of basic ethics that are the foundation of
religious life. In addition, a more extensive code of monastic rules, the Pratimoksha, eventually
developed to govern the conduct of ordained persons.

The monastic and lay communities are interdependent. Even today, the laity receive teachings and
guidance from monastics, while the monastics receive food, clothing, shelter, and in some cases all of
their material requirements from the laity. Providing food and supplies to the monks is considered by
many lay Buddhists to be an act of merit-making, earning good karma for oneself or loved ones.

The Three Treasures

The Three Treasures of the Buddhist tradition are the Buddha,

the Dharma, and the Sangha. Throughout the Buddhist world,
Buddhists have these Three Treasures in common. To be a Buddhist
means taking refuge in the Three Treasures, that is, to put ones
trust in them. Buddhists see as central to their lives the Buddha as
well as enlightenment in general, the teachings of those who are
enlightened, and the community that follows these teachings.
In the ancient Pali language the words of taking refuge are these:

Buddham saranam gacchami. I take refuge in the Buddha.

Dhammam saranam gacchami. I take refuge in the Dharma.
Sangham saranam gacchami. I take refuge in the Sangha.

The Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha continue to provide

inspiration to Buddhists, but they are not understood in exactly the
same way everywhere. A Sri Lankan Theravada Buddhist might
insist that the Buddha was a human pathfinder, nothing more. A
Chinese Pure Land Buddhist might chant the name of Amitabha
Buddha, seen as the eternal Buddha of Endless Light, with a prayer

Monks gather at Tharlam Monastery,

Kathmandu (2007), Wonderlane, Flickr
Creative Commons.

Adapted from On Common Ground (www.pluralism.org/buddhism)

Buddhism 2015

to be reborn in the Pure Land after death. A Japanese Zen master might shock one with the words, If
you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him! in recognition that grasping for the security of the Buddha
creates as much suffering as any other desire.

The Expansion of Buddhism

In India, Buddhism began to wane in the sixth and seventh centuries CE when devotional Hinduism
replaced Buddhism in the south and Hephthalite Huns invaded and sacked monasteries in the north.
By the thirteenth century, repeated invasions by the Turks ensured that Buddhism had virtually
disappeared. By this time, however, Buddhism was flourishing in many other parts of Asia. As early as
the third century BCE the Indian emperor Ashoka, a convert to Buddhism, is said to have established
the tradition on the island of Ceylon, or Sri Lanka. By the fifth century CE Buddhism had spread
throughout what are now Myanmar and Thailand. By the thirteenth century, one of the early Buddhist
schools, called the Theravada, the way of the elders, had become the dominant tradition of South and
Southeast Asia.

A Zen Buddhist sand garden in a Japanese monastery, Kyoto

(2010), Lars K, Flickr Creative Commons.

As early as the first century CE, Buddhist monks made

their way over the Silk Road through Central Asia to
China. By the seventh century, Buddhism had made a
significant impact in China, interacting with Confucian
and Daoist cultures and ideas. By this time the tradition
was also firmly established in Korea. In the sixth
century, the Buddhist tradition was also introduced
into Japan, where it developed in a milieu shaped by
both Shinto and other indigenous traditions. This form
of Buddhism that first developed in India and later
flourished in East Asia is known as the Mahayana, or
Great Vehicle.

In the eighth century, Buddhism, shaped by the Tantric traditions of northeast India, spread to the high
mountain plateau of Tibet. There, in interaction with the indigenous Bon religion, and with forms of
Buddhism that had traveled to Tibet from East Asia, a distinctive and vibrant form of Mahayana
Buddhism emerged known as Vajrayana, the Diamond Vehicle.
These streams of Buddhism are differentiated to some extent by their interpretations of the Buddha
and the Buddhas teachings, the scriptures they hold in special reverence, and the variety of cultural
expressions they lend to Buddhist life and practice. It would be a mistake, however, to identify these
streams of tradition too rigidly with either specific ideas or specific geographical areas.

Theravada: The Way of the Elders

The Theravada, literally the way of the elders, is the school of Buddhism most prominent today in the
countries of Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka. As the name suggests, it regards itself as the school most
faithful to the teachings that have been passed down through the generations. In the United States,
Theravada Buddhism has had its greatest growth since the 1960s when Euro-Americans started
practicing vipassana, or insight meditation. At the same time, large numbers of immigrants from Sri
Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, and other traditional Theravadin countries traveled to the United States.
The major characteristics of the Theravada can be summarized as follows:

Adapted from On Common Ground (www.pluralism.org/buddhism)

Buddhism 2015

1. The Pali Canon, comprised of scriptures and commentaries written in the ancient Pali language, is
regarded as the most accurate source of the teachings of the historical Buddha. While other schools
have various other versions of the canon or a broader interpretation of what the canon includes, the
Theravadins believe that the Pali Canon is definitive.
2. The human and historical Buddha, the spiritual pathfinder, who lived 2,500 years ago in India is
emphasized. While other schools of Buddhism might focus on the teachings of another Buddha or
venerate multiple Buddhas, the Theravadins see Shakyamuni Buddha as central.

3. The ideal spiritual model of Theravada Buddhism is the arahant (arhat). Arahants, literally worthy
ones, are Buddhist practitioners who attain nirvana and have perfected their discipline such that
defilements and desires are extinguished.

Mahayana: The Great Vehicle

By around 200 CE, the beginnings of a new stream of the Buddhist

tradition were visible within Indian Buddhism. This stream can be
called the Mahayana, literally the Great Vehicle. In general, this
movement of monks, nuns, and laity can be characterized as follows:

1. As the name implies, the Mahayana came to think of itself as great

both in its interpretations of the Buddhas teaching and in its openness
to a broader group of people, especially lay people. The
word yana means vehicle or raft which evokes the image of Buddhist
teaching as a raft or vehicle that can help one cross over the river of
suffering to the other shore. The Mahayana is, thus, the Great
Vehicle.

2. The Mahayana tradition is more flexible about the orthodoxy of

scriptures, regarding many new scriptures composed in the early
centuries CE as authentic teachings. A number of new scriptures
the Lotus Sutra, the Avatamsaka Sutra, the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, and
the Pure Land sutrasfocus on teachings such as the emptiness of all
phenomena (shunyata), the importance of compassion (karuna), and
the universality of Buddha Nature.

Joan Halifax, an American Zen Buddhist

teacher in California, On Being, (2007),
Flickr Creative Commons.

3. The ideal religious figure in the Mahayana tradition is the bodhisattva, an enlightened being engaged
in helping others become free from suffering. The bodhisattva is motivated entirely by compassion
(karuna) and informed by deep wisdom (prajna). The bodhisattva ideal is often contrasted with the
monastic arahant (arhat) ideal, characterized by some Mahayana schools as being directed toward
self-liberation and thus as too egotistical.

Mahayana Buddhism was the first major stream of Buddhism in the United States, brought by the
Chinese and Japanese immigrants who arrived in the nineteenth century. Today, the two main
expressions of the Mahayana tradition, Zen and Pure Land Buddhism, have both Asian-American and
Euro-American practitioners. In addition, Korean and Vietnamese immigrants introduced their
cultures' expressions of Mahayana Buddhism in late twentieth century America and have steadily
gained their own followings.

Adapted from On Common Ground (www.pluralism.org/buddhism)

Buddhism 2015

Vajrayana: The Diamond Vehicle

In the seventh century, a major movement within Mahayana
Buddhism arose. This stream of Buddhism, called the Vajrayana, is
most prominent in Tibet and its surrounding regions, although
forms of it are found in China and Japan. The Vajrayana, literally
the Diamond Vehicle or the Thunderbolt Vehicle, understands
itself to be an esoteric form of Mahayana Buddhism with an
accelerated path to enlightenment.
This Tibetan tradition sees itself as embodying both the teaching
and meditation practice of the Theravada monks, as well as the
teaching of the emptiness of all conditioned things that is
distinctive to Mahayana philosophy. Vajrayana is also called
Tantrayana, because it is based on the tantras, the systems of
practice which emphasize the indivisibility of wisdom and
compassion, symbolized as the union of male and female.

Three terms characterize the practice of Vajrayana, each one of

which has overt ritual meanings, inner psychophysical meanings,
and secret transcendent meanings:

Musicians at Tharlam Monastery,

Kathmandu, Nepal (2007), Wonderland,
Flickr Creative Commons.

Mantraa syllable or phrase for chanting or meditation, containing

within it the sacred power and cosmic energies of a Buddha
or bodhisattva. The mantra literally protects the mind from
negative mental states by invoking these divine energies within
oneself.

Mandalaa circle or cosmic diagram for ritual or interior

visualization, representing various realms of Buddhas
and bodhisattvas and their cosmic energies in two- or threedimensional forms.

Mudraa symbol or ritual gesture, made by the position of the

hands or body, and signifying the qualities and presence of various
Buddhas and bodhisattvas in Vajrayana ritual.

A mudra displayed on a statue of the

Buddha at the Chuang Yen Monastery in
New York (2011). Dafyd Jones, Flickr
Creative Commons.

Since the Tibetan uprising in 1959, more than 100,000 Tibetan

Vajrayana Buddhists have become refugees in India and around the
world. The Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso is head of one of the four major
lineages of Tibetan monks and led the Tibetan government in exile in
north India until 2011. At that time, the Dalai Lama proposed that the
political leadership of the Tibetan people be separated from the
spiritual leadership and that the political leader should be elected. A
Harvard trained Tibetan legal scholar named Lobsang Sangay won the
election and became Prime Minister in August of 2011.
Adapted from On Common Ground (www.pluralism.org/buddhism)

Buddhism 2015

Global Buddhisms
The Dalai Lama is undoubtedly the most famous face of
contemporary Buddhism and is considered a spiritual leader
among Buddhists from many different schools and traditions.
Tenzin Gyatso has traveled widely as a teacher, scholar, and
statesman promoting peace and nonviolence to a world
audience. The annexation of Tibet by the Chinese in the 1950s
and the subsequent establishment of the Tibetan Government in
exile in Dharamsala, India have inspired Free Tibet movements
around the world. Though the Chinese dispute this version of
history, global admiration and support of the Dalai Lama and his
message of peaceful coexistence is widespread and pervasive,
leading many to associate Buddhism with a universal and
uncompromising understanding of nonviolence. Other wellknown Buddhists representing a nonviolent understanding of
Buddhism are the Vietnamese monk Thich Nht Hanh who
protested against the Vietnam War and continues to promote
peaceful coexistence through his Center in France known as
Plum Village, and the American Buddhist nun Pema Chdrn
who teaches about paths to individual spiritual enlightenment.

The Dalai Lama (2009), Michael Thibault, Flickr

Creative Commons.

Other contemporary representations of Buddhism challenge the widespread association of Buddhism

with nonviolence. For example, the Buddhist 969 Movement in Myanmar has targeted the ethnic
Muslim Rohingya who are not recognized by the government and who comprise nearly one sixth of the
Muslim population there. The leader of the 969 Movement is a monk named Wirathu. He justifies the
ethnic cleansing campaign as a necessary protection of Buddhism, which is culturally aligned with
ethnic Burmese nationalism in a nation that has long struggled with power imbalances between the
dominant Burmese and other, smaller ethnic groups seeking integration or independence.
In Sri Lanka, a new form of Buddhist nationalism known as the BBS (Buddhist Power Force in
Sinhalese) has recently emerged following the end of the nearly 30-year civil war with the separatist
Tamil Tigers. Its leader Galagodaththe Gnanasara likened the defeat of the separatists to an ancient
Sinhalese victory and justifies ongoing violence in defense of (Buddhist) Sri Lankan culture. In this
same vein, he also promoted anti-Muslim rioting in 2014 in the southern villages. In both Myanmar
and Sri Lanka there are Buddhist monks and lay leaders who are challenging the violent expression of
Buddhism, but they are currently marginalized by other factions that are in positions of power. These
examples demonstrate how Buddhism, like all religions, is internally diverse and interpretations of the
tradition justify the full range of human agency.

Adapted from On Common Ground (www.pluralism.org/buddhism)