can ne1 explain to me the story of the buddhist religion?

Answer 1

Good historical-rundown, Martin. "Thumbs up!"

I've been studying Buddhism and mediation for
the past several months, and would very highly
recommend that you read the books of Joseph
Goldstein--co-founder of and teacher at the
Insight Mediation Society, in Barre, MA:
The Experience of Insight
Insight Meditation: The Path to Freedom...and,
One Dharma

Perhaps the premise of Buddhism--which is an
entire 2,500 (some-odd) years old--can best be
explained by an ancient saying:
"If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him."
What that means is that the Buddha's teachings
were never intended to for a flock of followers--
like the Biblical scriptures; on the contrary, they
were intended for enlightenment and discipline
of one's own mind.

Peace--and may you live in contentment from all
that you learn.

Answer 2

I'm not Buddhist, but I live in Taiwan and I will try.

Please have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddha

When most people speak of "Buddha" they refer to an Indian prince named Siddhartha Gautama. He never claimed to be divine, only to have discovered the path the enlightenment and freedom from the sorrow and suffering of this world.

I'm a Christian, and maybe God will throw a thunderbolt at me for saying this, but I find that there is a lot in the Buddhist philoosophy that I find wise and comforting.

Answer 3

Buddhism is one of the leading world religions in terms of adherents, geographical distribution, and socio-cultural influence. While largely an "Eastern" religion, it is becoming increasingly popular and influential in the Western world as well. It is a unique world religion in its own right though it has much in common with Hinduism in that both can be called "eastern" religions, believing in Karma (cause and effect ethics), Maya (illusory nature of the world), and Samsara (the cycle of reincarnation) among other things. Its founder Siddhartha Guatama was born into royalty in India nearly 600 years before Christ. As the story goes he lived luxuriously growing up and even marrying and having children with little exposure to the outside world. His parents intended for him to be spared from influence by religion and any exposure to pain and suffering. However it was not long before his thin shelter was penetrated and he caught a glimpse of an aged man, a sick man, and a corpse. His fourth vision was of a peaceful ascetic monk (one who denies luxury and comfort). Seeing his peacefulness he decided to become an ascetic himself. He abandoned his life of wealth and affluence to pursue enlightenment through austerity. He was very skilled at this sort of self-mortification and intense meditation. He was a leader among his peers. Eventually he let his efforts culminate in one final gesture. He "indulged" himself with one bowl of rice and then sat beneath a fig tree (also called the Bodhi tree) to meditate till he either reached enlightenment or died trying. Despite his travails and temptations, by the next morning, he had achieved enlightment. Thus he became known as the 'enlightened one' or the 'Buddha.' He took his new realization and began to teach his fellow monks, with whom he had already gained great influence. Five of his peers become the first of his disciples.

What had the Gautama discovered? Enlightenment lay in the "middle way," not in luxurious indulgence or self-mortification. Moreover he discovered what would become known as the ‘Four Noble Truths’ – (1) to live is to suffer (Dukha), 2) suffering is caused by desire (Tanha, or "attachment"), 3) one can eliminate suffering by eliminating all attachments, and 4) this is achieved by following the noble eightfold path. The "eightfold path" consists of having [a] right 1) view, 2) intention, 3) speech, 4) action, 5) livelihood (being a monk), 6) effort (properly direct energies), 7) mindfulness (meditation), and 8) concentration (focus). The Buddha's teachings were collected into the Tripitaka or "three baskets." [Win Corduan, Neighboring Faiths (IVP, 1998): 220-224].

Answer 4

The Buddha was a man who was the son of a rich man in India and lived with his father, his own wife, and his son. He was finally let out of the palace, and saw people dying, being sick, starving, hurting with old age, etc.

He realized life is full of suffering, and basically went with the ascetic Hindu Monks to meditate and figure out how to get past the suffering. He realized that suffering is caused by desires, so to not suffer, you have to stop wanting things. You have to get yourself into the right mindset. All of Buddhism is basically to get you to this point.

Answer 5

Google it, there's alot behind it and I suggest you look into it. Fascinating to say the least, even if I'm not a buddhist.

Answer 6

this dude wondered why there was so much suffering in the world so he went all around just to meditate to wait for enlightenment. eventually he got it that there was so much suffering because people are evil and eat cows!!

and the rest was history (that means i don't know the rest).

Answer 7

http://www.greatcom.org/resources/areadydefense/

Buddhism began in India about five hundred years before the birth of Christ. The people living at that time had become disillusioned with certain beliefs of Hinduism including the caste system, which had grown extremely complex. The number of outcasts (those who did not belong to any particular caste) was continuing to grow.

Moreover, the Hindu belief of an endless cycle of births, deaths and rebirths was viewed with dread. Consequently, the people turned to a variety of beliefs, including the worship of animals, to satisfy this spiritual vacuum. Many different sects of Hinduism arose, the most successful being that of Buddhism, which denies the authority of the vedas.

The Buddha

Buddhism, unlike Hinduism, can point to a specific founder. However, in Buddhism, like so many other religions, fanciful stories arose concerning events in the life of the founder, Siddhartha Gautama (fifth century B.C.).

The Buddha, or "enlightened one," was born about 560 B.C. in northeastern India. His family name was Gautama, his given name was Siddhartha. Siddhartha was the son of a rajah, or ruler. His mother died when he was just a week old and Siddhartha was cared for by his mother's sister, who was also the rajah's second wife. There was supposedly a prophecy given at the time of his birth by a sage at his father's court.

The prophecy said that the child would be a great king if he stayed at home, but if he decided to leave home, he would become a savior for mankind. This bothered his father, for he wanted his son to succeed him as king. Therefore, to keep him at home, his father surrounded him with wealth and pleasures and kept all painful and ugly things out of his sight.

Siddhartha eventually married and had a son but was still confined to the palace and its pleasures. One day he informed his father that he wished to see the world. This excursion would forever change his life, for it was during this journey that he saw "the four passing sights."

Although his father ordered the streets to be cleansed and decorated and all elderly or infirmed people to stay inside, there were those who did not get the message. The first troubling sight Siddhartha saw was that of a decrepit old man. When Siddhartha asked what happened to this man, he was told that the man was old, as everyone someday would become.

Later, he met a sick man and was told that all people were liable to be sick and suffer pain like that individual.

He then saw a funeral procession with a corpse on its way to cremation, the followers weeping bitterly. When he asked what that meant, the prince was informed that it was the way of life, for sooner or later both prince and pauper would have to die.

The last sight was that of a monk begging for his food. The tranquil look on the beggar's face convinced Siddhartha that this type of life was for him. Immediately he left his family and the palace in search of enlightenment. The night he left his home to seek enlightenment became known as the Great Renunciation.

The former prince, now a beggar, spent his time wandering from place to place seeking wisdom. Unsatisfied by the truths taught in the Hindu scriptures, he became discouraged but continued on his quest. He tried asceticism but this gave him no peace. The fateful day in his life came while he was meditating beneath a fig tree.

Deep in meditation, he reached the highest degree of God-consciousness, known as nirvana. He supposedly stayed under the fig tree for seven days. After that, the fig tree was called the bodhi, or the bo tree, the tree of wisdom. The truths he learned he would now impart to the world, no longer as Siddhartha Gautama, but as the Buddha, the enlightened one.

When the Buddha emerged from his experience under the bo tree, he met with five monks who had been his companions. It was to these monks that the Buddha began his teaching ministry with the sermon at Benares. The sermon contained the following:

These two extremes, monks, are not to be practiced by one who has gone forth from the world. What are the two? That conjoined with the passions and luxury, which is low, vulgar, common, ignoble, and useless; and that conjoined with self-torture, which is painful, ignoble, and useless. Avoiding these two extremes the Blessed One has gained the enlightenment of the Middle Path, which produces insight and knowledge, and leads to calm, to higher knowledge, enlightenment, nirvana.

And what, monks, is the Middle Path . . . ? It is the noble Eightfold Path: namely, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.

After the sermon at Benares, the Buddha started to spread his teachings to the people of India. The Indian people, disillusioned with Hinduism, listened intently to this new doctrine. By the time of Buddha's death, at age 80, his teachings had become a strong force in India.

Some time after his death, the Buddha was deified by some of his followers, even though veneration of the Buddha is against the basic teachings of Buddha himself.

Answer 8

a fat man took his shirt off in the vietnamese barber shop i get my haircut at, and asked for people to put spare change at his feet

Answer 9

Buddhism comprises the teachings of Shakyamuni, who was born a prince of the Shakya tribe in northeastern India about twenty-five hundred years ago. In his youth he was distressed by and deeply thought over such unavoidable problems of human beings as aging and illness, and life and death. Therefore, he renounced his worldly life at the age of twenty-nine to seek the way to liberate from suffering all human beings, including himself.

In Shakyamuni's time, the long dominance of the priestly class was in decline, and instead newly emerging classes of royal families, merchants, and artisans were rising to power and becoming prosperous in the area around the middle reaches of the Ganges River. In that shifting society, where established value systems were being questioned, various types of thinkers appeared who harbored doubts about traditional religious thought. Among them were those who embraced such philosophies as nihilism, materialism, determinism, and skepticism, and thus India at that time was flooded with competing schools of thought.

With an open but critical mind toward these philosophies, Shakyamuni studied them, sometimes practicing them, adopting or rejecting them. After he renounced the secular life, his hardships and search for truth continued for six years. Finally, as he sat meditating under a bodhi tree, he comprehended the Dharma permeating all things and all phenomena in the universe. He attained this perfect wisdom (enlightenment) at the age of thirty-five.

Following his enlightenment, Shakyamuni preached teachings based on the Dharma first at Sarnath to five ascetics who had been his fellow truth-seekers. Thus began his forty-five-year teaching ministry. Throughout north-central India, he brought many people to enlightenment before his death at the age of eighty.

Shakyamuni trusted his disciples to govern their groups themselves and never asked that they integrate his teachings. Since his only purpose was to save people from suffering, he preached the Dharma to them in various ways, according to their ability and level of understanding, and according to the time and the place. It therefore would have been impossible to compile Shakyamuni's teachings systematically during his lifetime.


Two Schools of Buddhism and the Lotus Sutra

What, then, became of Buddhism after Shakyamuni's death? In time, differences arose in the interpretation of precepts and teachings among his disciples. Later disciples had separated into roughly two schools--the conservative and the liberal--and were further divided into about twenty sects by 300 B.C.

Around the same time, the great Maurya dynasty emperor Ashoka, who was a devout Buddhist, introduced the conservative school of Buddhism into Ceylon (Sri Lanka). From there this teaching (which is known as Theravada Buddhism) spread to Burma (Myanmar), Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and other parts of Southeast Asia, where it still flourishes, having long served as a major basis of the life and culture of the people there.
Disputes between the conservative and liberal schools became increasingly heated in the first and second centuries A.D. Followers of the liberal school criticized the conservative school's unyielding insistence on personal salvation. They viewed its attitude as departing from the essential pragmatism of Shakyamuni's teaching, and called its doctrine Hinayana, or the "Small Vehicle." The liberal school initiated a movement for the salvation of ordinary lay people and compiled many of the sutras that comprise the sacred books of Mahayana, or "Great Vehicle," Buddhism. The conservative school responded to this challenge with resolute declarations of the correctness of its traditional orthodoxy.

It was under these circumstances that the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma, or the Lotus Sutra, was introduced. It was an effort to unite the two schools of Buddhism in a single vehicle (which is called Ekayana, or the One Vehicle) to be followed by all people. Since its content represents the essence and climax of Shakyamuni's teaching of wisdom, compassion, and liberation, the Lotus Sutra was revered by innumerable people. As time passed, however, people began to find the sutra difficult to understand because of its profound message and its position as a superb work of literature.