Buddhism - Origin and History

Question 1

The Buddha’s real name was…

Answer 1

Siddhartha Gautama

Question 2

Buddhists believe Siddhartha Gautama lived from…

Answer 2

583 – 463 BCE

Question 3

Scholars believe Siddhartha Gautama lived from…

Answer 3

490 – 410 BCE

Question 4

Where was Siddhartha Gautama born?

Answer 4

Lumbini, near the border of India and Nepal in the Ganges River Plain

Question 5

From the subjective perspective, Siddhartha Gautama’s parents were…

Answer 5

said to be a King and Queen.

Question 6

From the objective perspective, Siddhartha Gautama’s parents were…

Answer 6

likely members of the ruling caste (2nd level) and tribal elders.

Question 7

According to tradition, what was Siddhartha’s childhood like?

Answer 7

He lived a sheltered life in his father’s palace. He was kept from seeing any form of suffering. He never saw sickness, old age, or death.

Question 8

What were the four sights in Buddhism?

Answer 8

An old man, a sick man, a dead man, and a teacher.

One day Siddhartha leaves the palace without his father’s permission and for the first time comes across people who are suffering. He first encounters an old man who is walking with a limp. Siddhartha follows him and next encounters a sick man being tended to by others. This journey eventually leads him to the river’s edge where he encounters a funeral where he sees a dead man.

Siddhartha is befuddled having never seen suffering before. He runs across a wandering guru and asks the meaning of what he has just seen. The teacher tells him that it is the nature of the world that people suffer.

Question 9

After Siddhartha saw the four sights, he…

Answer 9

was deeply disturbed and unsettled by the sights of suffering he had seen.

He decided that he could no longer live a life of pleasure and self-indulgence.

He left the palace and his family behind.

Question 10

Once Siddhartha left the palace…

Answer 10

he decided to pursue a life that was the complete opposite of what was used to experiencing. He began a process of deep meditation and fasting.

Question 11

What is self-mortification?

Answer 11

a process of deep meditation and fasting. Siddhartha lost so much weight that he said he could press his stomach in and feel his backbone.

Question 12

During his process of self-mortification and asceticism, Siddhartha…

Answer 12

gained several disciples.

Question 13

After nearly starving to death, Siddhartha…

Answer 13

stops fasting and meditating. He realized that this method would not give him the wisdom he was seeking. He begins to eat and lead a normal life again.

Question 14

What happened to the disciples after Siddhartha stopped fasting?

Answer 14

The disciples he gained left him in disgust because they thought he was weak-willed.

Question 15

After regaining his health, Siddhartha…

Answer 15

sets on a new course to discover the wisdom of why people suffer.

Question 16

What’s the significance of the fig tree?

Answer 16

One day Siddhartha sits under a fig tree (today called a Bodhi tree) at Bodh Gaya. He begins a new kind of meditation called Mindfulness.

Question 17

What is mindfulness?

Answer 17

It begins by focusing on the sensations your own body is experiencing at the moment.

Question 18

After many days and nights of intense meditation…

Answer 18

Siddhartha begins to gain knowledge of all his past lives. He then suddenly gains knowledge of the four noble truths that concern the cause of suffering and how to overcome it.

Question 19

Siddhartha becomes the Buddha…

Answer 19

After being awakened to the four noble truths

Question 20

What is Nirvana in Buddhism?

Answer 20

Breaking free of Samsara

Question 21

What is the Middle Way?

Answer 21

a middle path of neither self-indulgence nor self-mortification, which can lead to nirvana.

Question 22

After gaining Nirvana, the Buddha…

Answer 22

decides to stay in this life for a while and try to help others also achieve nirvana as he did. He goes to a local Deer Park (a place many ascetics used to gather and mediate) in order to find the disciples who had left him earlier.

Question 23

What is the significance of Deer Park?

Answer 23

It was a place many ascetics used to gather and meditate. This is where he finds his old disciples and gets them to rejoin him. He also delivers a famous sermon there.

Question 24

When Siddhartha passes a man at deer park, what happens?

Answer 24

The man asks the Buddha if he is a god. Buddha replies that he is no god, he is awake!

Question 25

Why did Siddhartha go to Deer Park? What did he do there?

Answer 25

Buddha finds his old disciples and they notice a striking change in him and immediately rejoin him.

Question 26

What was the sermon at Deer Park?

Answer 26

Buddha gives a speech at the Deer Park that proclaims the Four Noble Truths and describes the Eight-fold Path. He calls it the Dharma.

Question 27

What is Dharma in Buddhism?

Answer 27

the Four Noble Truths and Eight-fold Path

Question 28

Buddha’s first disciples are also considered…

Answer 28

the first monks

Question 29

What is the Sangha?

Answer 29

The community of disciples that follow the four noble truths and adhere to the eight-fold path are referred to as the Sangha. This is the oldest continuous existing religious community in the world.

Question 30

When did Buddha die?

Answer 30

The Buddha died at the age of eighty after forty -five years of teaching. He gained many followers including several close disciples.

Question 31

How did Buddha die?

Answer 31

By tradition, Buddha ate a meal given to him by a blacksmith. He fell violently ill but told his disciples to tell the blacksmith the meal had nothing to do with his sickness. It is believed he accidentally ingested poisonous mushrooms. Over the next few hours, he reassured the monks around him and then he died.

Question 32

What is Parinirvana?

Answer 32

This is the final release from samsara. It literally is a ceasing to exist. The Buddha will never live a life again. This is the ultimate goal of Buddhism.

Question 33

What was the first council?

Answer 33

(c. 453 BCE by tradition) It occured soon after Buddha’s death. The top monks in the Sangha built the Buddhist canon and all agreed on what the Buddha taught.

Here the sutras are finalized in spoken form. They record the life and teachings of the Buddha.

Question 34

What are the sutras? When were they finalized?

Answer 34

The life and teachings of the Buddha. They were finalized during the first council (453 BCE).

Question 35

What was the second council?

Answer 35

(c. 350 BCE by tradition) While the monks in the Sangha agreed about what the Buddha taught, they did not all agree on how to exactly understand the Buddha’s teachings.

The result was not to relax any of the rules the Buddha had set forth, but this caused some monks to split off.

This eventually led to the formation of the 18 schools of Buddhist philosophy. Of these original 18 schools of philosophy, only Theravada survives.

Question 36

Which of the 18 schools of philosophy survived?

Answer 36

Theravada

Question 37

What is Theravada Buddhism?

Answer 37

The “Way of the Elders” – Also known as Hinayana (“Lesser Vehicle”). Today it is the predominant form of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Burma (Myanmar).

It emphasizes the individual’s effort in seeking an end to suffering. It emphasizes monasticism.

Question 38

What was the third council?

Answer 38

(c. 247 BCE) Included Ashoka. This council was called in order to try to form an orthodox view of Buddhist teachings and practices, as the 18 schools had begun to pull away from each other in these matters. In other words, they want to try to purify the Sangha.

The results of this council are in dispute, but it seems clear that Ashoka’s son took the decisions of this council to Sri Lanka.

Question 39

What was the fourth council?

Answer 39

(c. 100 BCE) In Sri Lanka, the teachings of the Buddha and the decisions of the earlier councils were recorded in Pali (a local language related to Sanskrit that regular people spoke).

These writings became the Pali Canon. The Pali Canon is the oldest existing source of Buddhist teachings.

Question 40

What is the Pali Canon?

Answer 40

The oldest existing source of Buddhist teachings. Finalized during the fourth council (100 BCE).

Question 41

Who was Ashoka?

Answer 41

(304 – 232 BCE). Ashoka is widely considered one of the greatest king in the history of India, if not the whole world. He waged a deadly and destructive war that ending with him conquering a rival state.

He converted to Buddhism after witnessing the horrors and death of the war. He successfully ruled his new kingdom. He sent Buddhist monks to Sri Lanka and Central Asia. He created monuments at important sites in the life of the Buddha.

Question 42

Where did Buddism get its first art style?

Answer 42

Alexander the Great (356 – 323 BCE) conquered an area all the way to modern Afghanistan and the Indus
River Valley. With the arrival of Buddhism in central Asia during the reign of Ashoka, there was a merging of cultures.

Called Greco-Buddhist art.

Question 43

What is Mahayana Buddhism?

Answer 43

(100 BCE – 100 CE) – Happened under Ashoka. “The Greater Vehicle” = largest Buddhist sector. The Buddha is thought of as an expression of ultimate reality. It has a complex cosmology. Introduces the notion of Bodhisattva. Not one of the original 18 schools.

Question 44

By about 100 CE…

Answer 44

Buddhism was the majority religion in India

Question 45

The Gupta Dynasty viewed Buddhism in what way?

Answer 45

Positively

Question 46

What is Vajrayana Buddhism?

Answer 46

Was introduced near the end of the Gupta Dynasty (6th century CE) – “Diamond Vehicle”. The smallest school. It is influenced by Mahayana Buddhism. It is also influenced by the Tantric Texts (from Hinduism). It is the most philosophically complex school of Buddhism. The prominent form of this school is Tibetan Buddhism.

Question 47

After the fall of Gupta Dynasty…

Answer 47

Hinduism made a resurgence and became the dominant religion in India again. Buddhism had been in a slow decline in India. By the time of the Muslim invasions into India (The Mughals), Buddhism was a small minority religion.

Question 48

Today most Buddhists in the West are from…

Answer 48

the Mahayana tradition, but the other two schools also have growing followings.