The Canon · No. 017
Buddhism
Buddha Dharma; the Middle Way
c.5th c. BCE – present · Dharmic / Indian · Living · East, Southeast and Central Asia; global
III. THE AXIAL AGE — c.900 – 200 BCE
How many
About 324 million (Pew, 2020), 4.1% of humanity. The only major religion whose global share declined in absolute terms over 2010–2020, largely because of secularisation in China and Japan.
Who began it
Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, meaning the awakened one. Traditional dates c.563–483 BCE; most current specialists favour c.480–400 BCE. A prince of the Shakya clan at Kapilavastu who left his palace at twenty-nine after encountering old age, sickness and death, practised extreme asceticism for six years, abandoned it as useless, and attained awakening under a pipal tree at Bodh Gaya at thirty-five.
What it is for
To end dukkha — usually translated suffering, more precisely unsatisfactoriness, the friction of existence. The Buddha framed his teaching as medicine, not metaphysics: diagnosis, cause, prognosis, treatment.
What it worships
No creator god, and none is needed. The Buddha explicitly declined to answer whether the universe is eternal or a self survives death, on the grounds that such questions do not conduce to liberation — the parable of the man shot with an arrow who refuses treatment until he knows who fired it. Later traditions develop celestial Buddhas and bodhisattvas (Amitabha, Avalokiteshvara/Guanyin, Tara, Manjushri) who function devotionally much as gods do, and popular Buddhism everywhere coexists with local spirit cults.
What it holds
Four Noble Truths: there is dukkha; it arises from craving (tanha); it can cease; the way is the Eightfold Path. Eightfold Path: right view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, concentration. Three marks of existence: impermanence (anicca), unsatisfactoriness (dukkha), and non-self (anatta) — the flat denial that there is any permanent, unchanging self or soul. This last is the sharpest break with Hinduism and Jainism, both of which are built on an eternal atman or jiva. Dependent origination: everything arises in conditioned relation to everything else. Rebirth without a soul is explained as continuity without identity, like one flame lighting another.
What it does
Meditation: samatha (calm) and vipassana (insight), plus Zen zazen, Tibetan visualisation and deity yoga, Pure Land recitation. Five precepts for laypeople: no killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying or intoxicants. Monastic sangha under the Vinaya, with 227 rules for monks in the Theravada. Refuge in the Three Jewels: Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. Almsgiving (dana) as the primary lay practice. Vesak, Uposatha observance days, pilgrimage to Bodh Gaya, Sarnath, Lumbini and Kushinagar.
After death
Rebirth across six realms — gods, demigods, humans, animals, hungry ghosts, hell-beings — all temporary, all driven by karma. The heavens are pleasant traps; a god's long life ends and the fall is worse for the height. Nirvana is the extinguishing (literally, blowing out) of the fires of greed, hatred and delusion, and thus the end of rebirth. The Buddha refused to say whether a fully awakened being exists after death, calling the question ill-formed. Tibetan Buddhism maps the intermediate state, the bardo, in detail; Theravada holds rebirth is immediate. Pure Land aims not at nirvana directly but at rebirth in Amitabha's western paradise, where awakening is easy.
Its texts
Pali Canon (Tipitaka: Vinaya, Sutta, Abhidhamma) for Theravada — the oldest complete Buddhist scripture, written down in Sri Lanka c.29 BCE. Mahayana sutras: Lotus, Heart, Diamond, Lankavatara, Pure Land sutras. Tibetan Kangyur and Tengyur. Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika. The Dhammapada is the usual entry point for readers.
Its branches
Theravada (Sri Lanka, Thailand, Burma, Cambodia, Laos). Mahayana (China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam) — including Chan/Zen, Pure Land, Nichiren, Tiantai, Huayan. Vajrayana (Tibet, Bhutan, Mongolia) with the Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya and Gelug schools.
Of note
Buddhism is the standing counterexample to the assumption that religion requires a god. It has doctrine, ethics, monasticism, ritual, cosmology and an afterlife, and no creator anywhere in it.
Its timeline
- c.480–400 BCE Life of the Buddha (revised chronology). First sermon at Sarnath sets the wheel of Dharma turning.
- c.400 BCE First Council at Rajagriha recites and fixes the teaching orally.
- c.268–232 BCE Ashoka, Mauryan emperor, converts after the slaughter at Kalinga, inscribes edicts on pillars across India, and sends missions abroad — the moment Buddhism becomes a world religion rather than a regional order.
- c.250 BCE Mission to Sri Lanka under Mahinda; Theravada takes root.
- c.100 BCE–100 CE Mahayana emerges, with the bodhisattva ideal — postponing one's own nirvana for the sake of all beings.
- c.150–250 CE Nagarjuna and the Madhyamaka philosophy of emptiness.
- 1st–2nd c. CE Transmission along the Silk Road into China.
- c.372–538 CE Buddhism reaches Korea, then Japan.
- c.640–840 CE First transmission to Tibet; Padmasambhava; Samye monastery.
- c.8th–12th c. CE Decline in India — Muslim conquest destroyed Nalanda in 1193, but Hindu bhakti revival and loss of royal patronage were already eroding it.
- 1044–1287 Bagan in Burma; Theravada consolidates in Southeast Asia.
- 1893 World's Parliament of Religions; Anagarika Dharmapala introduces Buddhism to America.
- 1950–59 Chinese annexation of Tibet; the 14th Dalai Lama flees to India in 1959.
- 1956 B. R. Ambedkar converts, with roughly half a million Dalits, in a deliberate rejection of caste — the largest single conversion event of the 20th century.
- 1960s–present Western convert Buddhism; the mindfulness movement strips meditation from its doctrinal frame, which practitioners and critics argue about to this day.
Sources
Not yet checked against named sources. This entry is the house's reading; until it is checked, treat each claim as unverified. Correct it, with a source.