Founded in India of North to the Life front century J. - C. by a family member of Gautama, in the tribe of Sakya, Buddhism is one of the great religions of the world.
Contemporary of the advent of a company hierarchical as castes and strongly nourished beliefs hindouists, the doctrines of the Buddha are articulated around the topic of the suffering and the means of freeing itself some. If the Buddhist art is in charge of a very precise symbolism, it is that it is used deliberately as support with the teaching of the doctrines and the meditation of the faithful one.
When Buddhism appears, in the prolongation of the Brahmanism, India undergoes a social transformation and a religious crisis: on the one hand the development of a partitioned Aryan company, supplanting the old tribal structures, on the other hand birth of religious currents deviating from the Hinduism. After having swarmed in India during several centuries, Buddhism woke up the Far East with a religious philosophy and an ethics original.
The teaching of the Buddha
The doctrines of the Buddha rest on the idea that the suffering is inseparable from the existence. Although he professes a fundamentally pessimistic vision, Buddhism affirms that the knowledge and morals make it possible to escape the cycle from the rebirths and to enter a state of absolute purity, the nirvana.
The four “noble truths” are already summarized in the very first sermon of Bénarès:
1. The first truth makes to pain the partner of the life, because no happiness is durable. Me is transitory, since any being dies to reappear in another body, which will suffer and reappear in its turn - it is will samsara it Brahmanic, or cycles reincarnations. This cycle is governed by the karma, result of good and last ill deeds.
2. The second truth is that the pain is born from the “thirst” for living, of the desires and passions, as many sources which feed covetousness, the jealousy, hatred and the error.
3. The third truth rises from the preceding ones: if the cause is removed, his effect is cancelled. Thus, if the desires are extinguished, the suffering is destroyed.
4. The fourth truth is the morals of Buddhism, the “Way of the eight virtues”. It recommends the pure meditation, the knowledge, the truth and the good, it leads to the nirvana, the extinction of the desires, the supreme state of non-existence, of not-reincarnation, with absorption to be it by cosmic energy.
The nirvana, which is not immediately accessible, is a state which escapes fate from becoming and with the unceasingly taken again cycle of the new lives.
Buddhist schools of thought
The Buddha did not leave any writing. Broadcast orally by its faithful, its words were joined together in crowned texts (will sutra). Various Buddhist councils took place between Ve and Ier front century J. - C.; a first schism, towards 450, precedes the appearance of many schools by Buddhist philosophy.
Hinayana
The first of the three more important schools is Hinayana (the Small Vehicle, that which one borrows to reach the nirvana); it is particularly widespread in Sri Lanka, in Burma and Thailand. Divided into several sects, she does not recognize with the Buddha a divine nature and holds the way of the nirvana to the only monks armed with a strict morals. Its doctrines very whole are contained in a canonical text, Tripitaka.
Mahayana
Called also Large Vehicle, Mahayana is the second influential school; it gained the north of India, Tibet, Mongolia, China, Korea, Japan and part of the Southeast Asia (Viet-Nam, Kampuchea). For Mahayana, metaphysical Buddhism, holiness is not only one ideal of personal perfection, but a means of helping the individual to reach this state thanks to the support the wise ones “waked up”.
Like the Buddha, those temporarily give up (or definitively) entering to the nirvana to help the other men to know the Illumination. Thus this religion envisages it safety for all. Its Pantheon is populated divinities (bodhisattvas), who are closer to faithful than the Buddha. Become popular religion, Mahayana gives up the atheistic design of Buddhism and proceeds to a kind of deification of the Buddha, to which it allots a human aspect, divine and cosmic (doctrines of the three bodies). Mahayana is characterized by the exceptional stature from its philosophers and its religious thinkers: Nagarjuna, towards 100 apr. J. - C., Asanga, with the O C century, the Shantideva poet, to the VII E century.
In China and in Japan, the school mahayanist was compartmentalized in many sects of which most known is Zen (or chan). Their followers, who meditate on crowned texts and carry out an ascetic life, endeavor to empty their spirit at the same time time and space, for better arriving at the Buddhist Illumination. Thus the schools Zen (meditation) practice activities supporting the concentration (ceremony of the tea, archery, judo, gardening, poetry, painting).
The lamaïque school
The school of will tantra, particularly developed in Tibet and in Mongolia, is resulting from Mahayana and takes again various aspects of the Hinduism, ousted a long time by the Buddhist heterodoxy. Its crowned writings (will tantra) are connected with works of ritual practice, and even of magic (recitation of crowned syllables, exercises of yoga laying out the body and the spirit with supernatural powers). Tantric philosophy is centered on the examination of cosmos and its multiple facets. The Dalai Lama, religious dignity of Tibet, are considered by will tantra like the reincarnation of the Buddha.
Monks
Constituted after the disappearance of the Buddha and enriched little by little by rites and cérémonials, the monastic communities acquired an immense spiritual and moral influence within the Far-Eastern populations.
The followers of Buddhism who wish to enter the monastic life are devoted by a double ordination. The beginner, old of at least sixteen years, commits himself respecting ten interdicts: not to kill, neither to fly, neither to fornicate, neither to lie, neither to gulp down strong drinks, neither to eat at the hours prohibited, neither to dance and sing or attend spectacles, neither to embellish itself, neither to use a bed or a comfortable seat, nor to receive gold or money. At the end of a more or less long instruction, the beginner undergoes the one second ordination, after having passed an examination. However, it is free to leave constantly.
The ordered monks, occupied by the prayers, the studies, the ritual ones of confession and the religious ceremonies, also take part in the instruction of the children, the ceremonies (marriages, cremations), and sometimes in activities plus ground with ground (irrigation, agriculture). They thus live near the laic ones.
One of the key concepts of Buddhism is the gift. The laic ones offer to the monks daily food and, at the time of the seasonal festivals, of the new dresses. They carry flowers and incense to the images of the Buddha and bodhisattvas of the Pantheon mahayanist. On their side, the monks make offerings in the form of sermons, of liturgical songs, prayers for the late ones. By making gifts, the individual obtains merits each time and, thanks to a favorable karma, can hope that it will reappear in a better existence, leading to the Illumination.
Large texts of Buddhism
They are the monks who, for approximately 2 ' 500 years, have preserved the doctrines, the texts crowned and the accounts transmitted initially orally by the faithful ones, as well as the artistic representations of their spiritual Master and of the divinities.
Tripitaka (“three baskets” or “three treasures”) was written in Sanskrit, work is divided into three parts: Vinaya (regulation of the monastic life); Sutra (collection of preachings of the Buddha); Abhidharma (together of works metaphysics and doctrinal). They are texts hinayanists, from which the drafting extends over five centuries, starting from 500 av. J. - C.
Saddharmapundarikasutra (“Lotus of the good law”) belonged to Tripitaka and constitutes a mahayanic design of the sermon of Buddha on the unicity of the ways of the hello (towards 300 apr. J. - C.).
Written by Nagarjuna, Madhyamika is a doctrinal work (IIIe century apr. J. - C.).
Milindapanha is a philosophical dialog between the Greek sovereign Milinda and the monk Nagasena (IIe century apr. J. - C.).
Will tantra are works of esotericism (towards 350 apr. J. - C.).
Several tales and apologues evoking the former lives of the Buddha were gathered in the jataka (IVe century apr. J. - C.).
Avadana gathers moral apologues (towards 200 apr. J. - C.).
Sutra is a collection of aphorisms (towards 400 apr. J. - C.).
Buddhism today
Resulting from the Brahmanic tradition and its essential principles, but being opposed to the formalism hindouist, Buddhism was essential like a religion of hello. Without referring to true God, it constitutes a philosophy based on a pessimistic vision of the existence. Mû by the desire to deliver the humanity of the power struggles, hatred, persecution and racism, it remains close to the concerns of the laic ones. He affirms with force his ideal of justice and respect of the man, not hesitating to engage in political and social conflicts: at the time of the war of Viet-Nam, the monks supported the pacifist movement and the Buddhists of Tibet, who always recognize the Dalai Lama in exile, continue to protest against the annexation of their country by China.
During this century, many Asian States (China, Laos, Kampuchea, Viet-Nam, North Korea, Mongolia) chose the way of socialism atheistic and undertaken the eradication of all the religions. The forced secularization of the Far East, as well as the occidentalization of the area, seems, indeed, to threaten thousand-year-old Buddhism. However, in addition to Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Burma, where Buddhism knows a great vitality, the Asian States which had adhered to the Marxism could entirely extirpate this religion: in certain countries of the Southeast Asia, where the power endeavors to avoid any political and religious dissidence, it is often treated with a benevolent neutrality.
If Buddhism almost completely disappeared in India after the XII E century, all Far East remains deeply marked by its twenty centuries old influence and all the Far-Eastern cultures and civilizations continue to take as a starting point the metaphysics and the values morals of this spiritual current.