Buddhism

Buddhism Buddhism Buddhism was developed from the teachings of the ,Buddha, Gautama (or Gotama) who lived as early as the 6th century BC. Spreading from India to Central and Southeast Asia, China, Korea, and Japan, Buddhism has played a central role in the spiritual, cultural, and social life of the Eastern world and during the 20th century has spread to the West. Buddhist worship consists mainly in reciting prayers and sacred texts and chanting hymns to the accompaniment of horns, trumpets, and drums. For this worship, which takes place three times a day, the clergy are summoned by the tolling of a small bell and are seated in rows according to their rank. The supreme position is occupied by two lamas—namely, the Grand, or Dalai Lama, and the Panchen, or Bogodo, Lama. Before the Chinese invasion of the area in 1950, both lamas theoretically had the same authority, but in actuality the Dalai Lama, possessing a greater temporal jurisdiction, was considerably more powerful. Next in rank are the Hutukhtus, or spiritual dignitaries. The third order is that of the Hobilghans, or bodhisattvas, those who have undertaken various ethical and spiritual disciplines with a view to achieving Buddha hood, or complete enlightenment. These buddha, clergy, world, spiritual, lama, worship, two, toward, three, texts, tendency, sacred, result, religious, rank, orders, order, members, lower, life, karma, good, evil, enlightenment, each, doctrine, dalai, creates, conduct, commentary, chinese, century, central, canon, buddhism, brings, authority, according, 1000, worldly, works, while, west, vow, voluminous, volumes, view, various, undertaken, trumpets, tolling