Buddhism is a set of teachings or philosophies often described as a religion - but not everyone agrees on that. Some definitions of religion would exclude it ..... or at least one form of Buddhism, if not the whole. However you define it, Buddhism has at its core the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, also known as Gautama Buddha. Some scholars, it is reported, regard Buddhism as a plurality rather than a single entity."Trying to describe Buddhism is a little like trying to describe a snowflake - or Christianity," Robert Buckley Farlee writes in "Honoring Our Neighbor's Faith," which has been used as a Sunday School text in Midland over the years. "Buddhism has taken many forms in its 2,500-year history. Some forms of Buddhism are non-theistic, while the adherents of other forms pray to various 'gods.' Some emphasize meditation while others argue that only faith matters. This proliferation of forms - schools, branches, sects - has been the result of Buddhism's inclusiveness and openness. which led to a tendency to absorb local cultures and religious forms ..... among this proliferation of branches, however, all forms of Buddhism have the same root: the life and teachings of Gautama Buddha."
In Thailand, our Mission Team will encounter adherents of Southern (TheravÄda) Buddhism, the oldest surviving Buddhist school, that for many centuries has been the predominant religion of most of continental Southeast Asia (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand).
At the core of all forms of Buddhism, Farlee notes, are Four Noble Truths - 1. life is suffering; 2. there is a reason for this suffering; 3. there is a way to end the suffering; and, 4. the way to end the suffering is the Eight-Fold Path. That Path, Farlee goes on to write, can be arranged under three headings - 1. Wisdom (Right Views, Right Aspirations); 2. Morality (Right Speech, Right Conduct, Right Livelihood); and, 3. Concentration (Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right Meditation).
Americans are no strangers to Buddhism, though our exposure to it may be a little haphazard ..... at the beginning of the 20th-century, American readers were introduced to some of the concepts of Buddhism through Okakura Kakuzo's "The Book of Tea," which has been republished many times since then ..... in the 1950s, American readers were exposed to some facets of Zen Buddhism when Jack Kerouac followed-up his milestone "On the Road" with the novel "The Daharma Bums ..... during the 1970s, American television audiences were exposed to some facets of Mahayana Buddhism as they followed the adventures of a Shaolin monk as he traveled across the 19th-century American West in "Kung Fu" ..... today, a quick 'Google search' of the Internet brings up many references to articles, books and television documentaries that suggest links between Buddhism and Christianity. And just a couple of months back, there were the images of Buddhist monks who took to the streets to speak out against the military junta that rules Myanmar (Burma) ..... until the protests were quashed and the monks were arrested.
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