NEH Institute 2008

Buddhism is a religion and philosophy with between 230 and 500 million adherents worldwide, the vast majority living in Asia. It consists of two major schools: Mahayana and Theravada. The Mahayana school is in turn divided into East Asian (including Pure Land, Chan/Seon/Thien/Zen, Nichiren, Shingon and others) and Tibetan (sometimes grouped with Shingon under the term Vajrayana). However there are many other sects besides these. These divisions reflect a combination of doctrinal differences and regional syncretisms.
Buddhism is based on the teachings of Gautama Buddha who lived circa the fifth century BCE in ancient India, in parts of what is now Nepal, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar on the northeastern Indian subcontinent. While there is disagreement between denominations over the Buddha's teachings, nearly all Buddhists recognize some version of the Tipitaka ("Three Baskets"), though it plays a far more central role in Theravada Buddhism than in Mahayana Buddhism. Also, Mahayana Buddhists recognize a set of texts called the Mahayana Sutras which Theravadins do not accept.

Scholars usually categorize Buddhist schools by the ancient languages of surviving Buddhist religious scripture. These are the Pāli, Tibetan, Mongolian and Chinese collections, along with some texts that still exist in Sanskrit and Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit. While practical, this method doesn't always correspond to doctrinal divisions. Despite these differences, there are several concepts common to both major Buddhist branches:

Both accept the Buddha as their teacher.
Both accept the middle way, dependent origination, the four noble truths and the noble eightfold path, in theory, though in practice these have little or no importance in some traditions.
Both accept that members of the laity and the sangha can pursue the path toward enlightenment (bodhi).
Both consider buddhahood to be the highest attainment; however Theravadins consider the nirvana (nibbana to the Theravadins) attained by arahants as identical to that attained by the Buddha himself, as there is only one type of nirvana. According to Theravadins, a buddha is someone who has discovered the path independently and has taught it to others.

History and origins

The Buddha
Gautama Buddha, whose personal name was Siddhartha, was born in Ancient India in the city of Lumbini and was raised in Kapilavastu.
Very little of the traditional story of his life is historical. It is as follows based on the Tipitaka: Born a prince, his father, King Suddhodana, was visited by a wise man shortly after Siddhartha was born. The wise man said that Siddhartha would either become a great king (chakravartin) or a holy man (sadhu) based on whether or not he ever saw life outside of the palace walls. Determined to make Siddhartha a king, the father tried to shield his son from the unpleasant realities of daily life. However, despite his father's efforts, at the age of 29, he discovered human suffering, first through an encounter with an elderly man, then on subsequent trips outside the palace, he encountered a diseased man, a decaying corpse, and a monk or an ascetic. These are often called "The Four Sights".
These four sights deeply affected Gautama. He then sought to overcome old age, illness, and death by living the life of an ascetic. Gautama escaped his palace, leaving behind this royal life to become a mendicant. For a time on his spiritual quest, Buddha "experimented with extreme asceticism, which at that time was seen as a powerful spiritual practice...such as fasting, holding the breath, and exposure of the body to pain...he found, however, that these ascetic practices brought no genuine spiritual benefits and in fact, being based on self-hatred, that they were counterproductive."
He abandoned asceticism and concentrated instead upon meditation and, according to some sources, Anapanasati (awareness of breathing in and out). Gautama is said to have discovered what Buddhists call the Middle Way—a path of practice that is outside of the extremes of self-indulgence and self-mortification. He accepted a little milk and rice pudding from a village girl and then, sitting under a pipal tree or Sacred fig (Ficus religiosa), also known as the Bodhi tree, in Bodh Gaya, he vowed never to arise until he had found the Truth. His five companions, believing that he had abandoned his search and had become undisciplined, left. After 49 days meditating, at the age of 35, he attained bodhi, also known as "Awakening" or "Enlightenment" in the West. After his attainment of bodhi he was known as Buddha or Gautama Buddha and spent the rest of his life teaching his insights (Dharma). According to scholars, he lived around the fifth century BCE, but his more exact birthdate is open to debate. He died at the age of 80 in Kushinagara (Pali Kusinara) (India).

Indian Buddhism
Early Buddhism
The history of Indian Buddhism may be divided into the following five periods:

Early Buddhism (also called Pre-sectarian Buddhism); Hajime Nakamura subdivides this into two subperiods:

original Buddhism (other scholars call this earliest Buddhism or precanonical Buddhism)
early Buddhism

Period of the Early Buddhist schools (also called Sectarian Buddhism, Nikaya Buddhism)
Early Mahayana Buddhism
Later Mahayana Buddhism
Vajrayana Buddhism (also called Esoteric Buddhism)

These developments were not always consecutive. For example, the early schools continued to exist alongside Mahayana. Some scholars have argued that Mahayana remained marginal for centuries.
The term Early Buddhism can be applied to both Pre-sectarian Buddhism and the Buddhism of the Early Buddhist Schools.

Sutta Pitaka and Vinaya Pitaka
The earliest phase of Buddhism (pre-sectarian Buddhism) recognized by nearly all scholars (the main exception is Dr Gregory Schopen, is based on a comparison of the Pali Canon with surviving portions of other early canons. Its main scriptures are the Vinaya Pitaka and the four principal Nikayas or Agamas.
Certain basic teachings appear in many places throughout the early texts, so most scholars conclude at least that the Buddha must have taught something of the kind:

Some scholars disagree, and have proposed many other theories.
Councils

International flag of Buddhism
According to the scriptures, soon after the parinirvāna (Pāli: parinibbāna, "complete extinguishment") of the Buddha, the first Buddhist council was held. As with any ancient Indian tradition, transmission of teaching was done orally. The primary purpose of the assembly was to collectively recite the teachings to ensure that no errors occurred in oral transmission. In the first council, Ānanda, a cousin of the Buddha and his personal attendant, was called upon to recite the discourses (sūtras, Pāli suttas) of the Buddha, and, according to some sources, the abhidhamma. Upāli, another disciple, recited the monastic rules (Vinaya). Scholars regard the traditional accounts of the council as greatly exaggerated if not entirely fictitious.
According to most scholars, at some period after the Second Council however, the Sangha began to break into separate factions. (Schopen suggests that Buddhism was very diverse from the beginning and became less so.) The various accounts differ as to when the actual schisms occurred: according to the Dipavamsa of the Pali tradition, they started immediately after the Second Council; the Puggalavada tradition places it in 137 AN; the Sarvastivada tradition of Vasumitra says it was in the time of Asoka; and the Mahasanghika tradition places it much later, nearly 100 BCE.
The Asokan edicts, our only contemporary sources, state that 'the Sangha has been made unified'. This may refer to a dispute such as that described in the account of the Third Buddhist Council at Pataliputta. This concerns the expulsion of non-Buddhist heretics from the Sangha, and does not speak of a schism. However, the late Professor Hirakawa argued that the first schism occurred after the death of Asoka. These schisms occurred within the traditions of Early Buddhism, at a time when the Mahāyāna movement either did not exist at all, or only existed as a current of thought not yet identified with a separate school.

The root schism was between the Sthaviras and the Mahāsā ghikas. The fortunate survival of accounts from both sides of the dispute reveals disparate traditions. The Sthavira group offers two quite distinct reasons for the schism. The Dipavamsa of the Theravāda says that the losing party in the Second Council dispute broke away in protest and formed the Mahasanghika. This contradicts the Mahasanghikas' own vinaya, which shows them as on the same, winning side. On the other hand, the northern lineages, including the Sarvastivada and Puggalavada (both branches of the ancient Sthaviras) attribute the Mahāsā ghika schism to the '5 points' that erode the status of the arahant. For their part, the Mahāsā ghikas argued that the Sthaviras were trying to expand the Vinaya; they may also have challenged what they perceived to be excessive claims or inhumanly high criteria for Arhatship. Both parties, therefore, appealed to tradition. The Sthaviras gave rise to several schools, one of which was the Theravāda school. Originally, these schisms were caused by disputes over vinaya, and monks following different schools of thought seem to have lived happily together in the same monasteries, but eventually, by about 100 CE if not earlier, schisms were being caused by doctrinal disagreemen

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This site was created by Benyonne Schwortz at the NEH Summer Institute "Literatures, Religions, and Arts of the Himalayan Region," held at the College of the Holy Cross, Summer 2008.