Buddhism is a religion whose followers follow the teachings set forth by Lord Gautam Buddha. Buddhism is also known as Buddha Dharma or Dhamma. A follower of Buddhism is called a Buddhist.
Buddhism is the world’s fourth-largest religion. It was founded by Lord Gautam Buddha in India. Buddhism advocates salvation as the ultimate aim of life.
Teachings of Buddhism:
1. Three Guiding Principles: Buddha, Dhamma, and the Sangha are the three guiding principles for a Buddhist.
2. Salvation: As Hinduism believes in salvation, Buddhism also believes in salvation as the ultimate aim of life. Salvation is liberation from the cycle of birth and rebirth. According to Buddhism one can attain salvation if a man lives a good life, does good things, thinks good, and does things without the intention of rewards.
3. Four noble truths:
a. Life is full of misery: Human life is full of miseries. Birth, diseases, deaths, unfulfilled wishes are all sorrows.
b. Desire is the root of misery: every misery has a desire at its root. As long as we are attached to the pleasures of this world, we will remain in misery.
c. To destroy misery, desire must be destroyed: Hence, in order to destroy misery, desires must be destroyed.
d. Desire can be destroyed by following the eight-fold path outlined by Buddha: Buddha suggested the Middle Path, which avoids extremes of pleasure and extremes of asceticism to destroy desire.
4. Eight-Fold Path: The eight-fold path is also known as the Middle Path. It is as follows:
a. Right views: Follow the path of knowledge, avoid superstitions, rituals, ceremonies, sacrifices, etc.
b. Right aspirations: Aspirations to serve others without expecting rewards.
c. Right speech: Do not hurt others, do not lie.
d. Right conduct: Do good deeds and live a life of strict discipline.
e. Right livelihood: We must earn a livelihood for our livings but should avoid avarice.
f. Right Effort: Mere good thoughts are useless. Efforts should be made to do implement those good thoughts.
g. Right mindfulness: We should remain aloof from wealth, power, fame, etc. We should not take pleasure in worldly things.
h. Right contemplation: Buddhism does not advocate prayers or rituals. It believes in meditation. We should meditate on our conduct and try to improve ourselves.
At one time, the people of India had started to fear that Buddhism would replace Hinduism. It would have been so if Adi Shankaracharya had not intervened. He defeated Buddhist scholars in many religious arguments and reestablished Hinduism in India. Still, Buddhism is fairly popular in India. Buddhism became more popular outside India in countries like Sri Lanka, China, Japan, Thailand, Myanmar, etc.
Causes of the Popularity of Buddhism:
1. The personality of Gautam Buddha.
2. Preaching of complete nonviolence.
3. Refusal to believe in the caste system.
4. Refusal to believe in sacrifices.
5. It answered people’s questions in their language, Pali whilst Hindu scriptures were written in Sanskrit which was not well understood by common people.
6. Missionary activities of Buddha. Buddha sent his monks across the world to preach Buddhism.