Talk:Buddhism/Archive 7

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Neutrality

Thank you, Victor. That wasn't actually the one I was thinking of, but it'll do as a caveat lector. (Personally, I think there should be one in large, brightly coloured letters on the main page of WP.)

Neutrality here means mainly between different forms of Buddhism, but also between different scholarly views. One such question is very important here, the one I've dealt with above under the heading Essentialism. The quotations there, along with Gethin's remark (loc cit) that it is fashionable to say this, show that quite a few scholars think there is no such "thing" as "Buddhism", just a range of related phenomena. There may well be other scholars who take the opposite view. There certainly seem to be Buddhists who do, such as the late Dr Rahuls& his colleagues in the WBSC. But both Gethin & Williams were, I think, Buddhists when they wrote the above (Williams susequently became a Catholic).

Anyway, this is a matter of disagreement, so we have to be neutral about it. That means we cannot base the article on some supposed essence, core, essential, basic or fundamental teachings, or foundations or whatever, because that would be just one POV. It would be NPOV to discuss all major theories of that sort, including the negative one, but that I think would be a different article. I don't think it's what the reader would expect from this article. I don't think it's sensible to have the article covering lowest common denominator Buddhism. It would look strange to say in the introduction, "This article concentrates on what different forms of Buddhism have in common, but most Buddhists consider much of this unimportant and other teachings much more so", and it would be dishonest to do it without saying so clearly. Furthermore, what is in common is roughly speaking Theravada, and it would be odd to call such an article neutral.

So I think the only sensible neutral approach is to give a balanced account of all major forms of Buddhism. And what might those be? Here are some figures (in millions) from the World Christian Encyclopedia, Oxford University Press, 2nd edn. (Despite its reputable publisher this is obviously biased: about a hundred million adherents of movements calling themselves Buddhist or Muslim are hived off into a category called new religions, so reducing the totals, while that for Christians includes not only all groups calling themselves Christian, however fringe, but even the Unitarians, who disclaimed the Christian label some years earlier.)

• Mahayana (they use the term in Tony's sense of East Asian Buddhism) 202
  • Chinese 90
    • Falun Gong 30
  • Korean
    • Chogye 7
    • Taigo 3
  • Vietnamese
    • Hoa Hao 2
  • Japanese
    • Nichiren
      • Soka Gakkai 18
      • Rissho Koseikai 5
      • Reiyukai 3
      • Nichirenshu 2
      • Nichirenshoshu 1
    • Pure Land
      • True Pure Land 14
      • Otani 8 1/2
      • Nishi-Honganji 7 1/2
      • Shinshu Honganjiha 7
      • Shinshu Otani 6
      • Pure Land 4 1/2
    • Zen
      • Soto 6 1/2
      • Soto-shu 6
      • Rinzai-shu 3
    • Shingon
      • Shingonshu 11
      • 3 others listed, totalling 3
    • Tendai 5
• Theravada 136
• Lamaism (sic) 21

TBC Peter jackson 11:14, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

To clarify some points on the above. These figures are taken fro WCE's list of the 270 religious groups with more than 500,000 followers. I'm not sure what their definition is. Why do they count Chinese Buddhism as 1 group, Korean Buddhism as several large groups & Vietnamese Buddhism as a lot of small groups? The total for Mahayana should be increased by maybe 50 to cover new religions. I'm not sure whether the 30 Falun Gong are included in the 90 Chinese. If I have time I could study the book in more detail. Perhaps some other sources could be cited. Anyway, let's suppose the figures are about right, group similar groups together (perhaps subjective) & list them in order of size.

1. (or possibly 2) Theravada 136
2. (or 1) "mainstream" Mahayana ?
3. Pure Land about 50
4. (or 5) Nichiren about 30
5. (or 4) Falun Gong 30
6. Tibetan 21
7. Zen about 16
8. Shingon about 14

Then there's quite a gap before we come to the next largest, perhaps neo-Buddhism (Ambedkar), which I didn't list above, but which they give as 6m. I'm not sure whether that counts as a separate form of Buddhism or just a form of Theravada. Anyway, perhaps we should say there are 8 major forms of Buddhism as listed above.

Denominations aren't the end of the matter of course. Most major denominations aren't monolithic like the Catholic Church. (Even there, the clergy may be monolithic, at least publicly, but the laity are another matter.) There are a lot of variations within denominations, perhaps sometimes more important than those between them. In Protestantism the distinctions between evangelicals & liberals/modernists often look to the outsider more important than those between denominations, & something similar may be true for Buddhism. Pe,rhaps Western(ized) Buddhists are more like each other than like traditional Buddhists of the same denominations.

You might also take history into account. Perhaps Yogacara could have more space than the hundreds of thousands of followers of Hosso would give it, while modern movements might be played down a bit. However, this would have to be done in a neutral way: if you play down Soka Gakkai & Falun Gong you must do the same for Westernized Buddhism.

TBC Peter jackson 11:09, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

A word about sources. We've discussed this before, but I'd add here that the guidelines (under verifiability) say:

"An article should rely on reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy."

Notice the term third-party: this would seem to suggest non-Buddhist sources in our case, in addition to the other criteria.

To resume what I entered under Balance above. Harvey's Introduction to Buddhism is published by Cambridge University Press, a leading academic publisher at a leading university. It seems to me the best textbook on the subject. Anyway, I suggest it as a rough guide to the topics needed. Under teachings he has 4 chapters:

• Karma & rebirth: elementary teaching; you can include a bit of cosmology
• 4 holy (noble) truths; advanced teaching of Theravada; only preliminary for Mahayana, of varying importance
• Mahayana philosophy
• Mahayana holy beings

Under practice he has

• Devotion
• Morality
• Sangha
• Meditation

We can go into detail later. Peter jackson 14:00, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Now let's have a look at the article as it is at the moment, firstly topically:

• karma & rebirth: a few odd mentions here & there
• 4 noble truths: a long section, largely unsourced
• Mahayana philosophy: very brief accounts of Madhyamaka & Yogacara; Tendai only mentioned, not explained; no mention at all of Huayan
• Mahayana holy beings: a reasonable amount
• devotion: long section on 3 refuges, largely unsourced; bare mention of Pure Land, with no information on what it is (practised by most Chinese monks in addition to the Japanese schools); ditto Nichiren
• morality: long section, largely unsourced
• sangha: included in above
• meditation: sections on samatha & vipassana, largely unsourced; brief mention of tantric meditation, but no information on what it is; Zen named, but no information about it

Now by schools:

1. Theravada: quite a lot, but pretty selective
2. mainstream Mahayana (China, Korea & Vietnam): a fair amount about the bodhisattva ideal; no information at all about the main doctrinal (Huayan & Tiantai) & practice (Pure Land & Zen) traditions
3. Pure Land: name only
4. Nichiren: name only
5. Falun Gong: no mention at all
6. Tibetan: a bit
7. Zen: bare mention
8. Shingon: only stated to be Vajrayana

Peter jackson 11:09, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't have all that much to contribute here, only that I think this organization scheme is very sensible and that reliable sources should be scholarly and independent, ie not written by religious leaders. In addition to possibly introducing bias, religious sources tend to use terminology and metaphors that, while obvious to insiders, are incomprehensible to those unfamiliar with Buddhism. The ideal form of this article ought to be understandable someone who, though educated enough to read a reasonably complicated article, couldn't tell Shakyamuni from Ravi Shankar. Detailed discussions of technicalities of doctrine belong on other pages. (Side note: The Tibetan word for Buddhist, nang-pa, literally means "inside person"! I will stop geeking out now.) --Gimme danger 13:56, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

The various subschools of Mahayana are all Mahayana schools. Same for all the subschools within Theravada, even though they profess to follow the Pali Canon, the schools vary wildly in what they focus on. So there are many Theravada schools. Do you want to make separate subsections on all Mahayana schools? I'm strongly against this, then you'd need to do the same for the Theravada schools, and it would end up in chaos even if you only do the Mahayana schools. Best to focus on the commonalities, and the mainstream ideas. Those are valid throughout the various schools, Mahayana and Theravada. Keep it simple. Greetings, Sacca 07:16, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

That's wrong. The article must cover everything important, both agreement & disagreement. To dootherwise is to give a false picture of Buddhism, & is not neutral.

As regards your point about differences within Theravada,you're quite right that these exist. I already mentioned above that important differences within schools must be mentioned as well.The article is far from neutral in this respect too. It heavily downplays important aspects of traditional Buddhism that are unfashionable in the West, such as faith & devotion, ritual, Rebirth etc.

Now, as the issue has been raised again, let me say a bit more about sources. WP guidelines say explicitly that secondary sources are to be preferred to primary sources.In our case this means that scholarly studies of Buddhism are to be preferred to Buddhist writings. Likewise, the section on consensus in reliable sources says:

"The claim that all or most scientists, scholars, or ministers hold a certain view requires a reliable source. Without it, opinions should be identified as those of particular, named sources."

Note the word ministers, which must mean clergy. Statements that Buddhism, or a particular denomination, believes such & such must be sourced from scholarly studies. Buddhist writings only give the opinions of their authors. Peter jackson 09:04, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Peter, your view is impractical. To give every exception to the mainstream practices and beliefs is impossible. This is just an introductory article on Buddhism. We can say when certain minority schools have a different view, but to mention all these goes to far. Greetings, Sacca 09:31, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me that having merely a "Mahayana" section in this article would be like having just a "Protestant" section in Christianity. While I disagree that we need to include a great deal of information about each sect, I think at least mentioning all major sects within Mahayana is necessary, even if just so that readers can follow internal links to their respective main pages. I don't know exactly what PeterJ is suggesting in terms of devoting space to sects; I certainly think that a separate subsection for each minor difference would be excessive, but a sub section on each of the 8 or so "major" divisions of Buddhism, as Peter lays out above, would be reasonable. I think we can spare 8 paragraphs for describing the diversity of Buddhist practice. --Gimme danger 02:39, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I think Peter has given an excellent overview of the type of article we should be heading towards and a good synopsis of how it can be achieved, what needs doing, etc. Problems with the various schools can be covered with folks sent off, where appropriate, to subsidiary articles containing extra detail. It is a huge project but thanks to Peter we now have a new 'roadmap' and can get started. thanks regards to all Peter morrell —Preceding signed but undated comment was added at 10:36, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I didn't choose my words very carefully. I should have said that movements within denominations should have similar prominence to denominations of similar size.

Let me make it clear here that I'm not putting forward a view as to how long & detailed the article should be. The only person who seems to have done so is Sacca, & I don't disagree, but if others disagree I'll leave them to sort it out without taking sides.

What I am insisting on is that the amount of detail, however much or little, must be reasonably balanced. We mustn't go on as we are at present having enormous amounts of information on some topics while others of similar importance have little or none. So this can be done in different ways:

• add a lot of detail on karma & rebirth, Mahayana doctrine, devotion (especially Pure Land), Zen & (to a lesser extent) tantra
• add only a little on some of the above topics that are totally ignored at present, & cut out most of the sections on the 4 noble truths, morality, samatha & vipassana
• somewhere in between the above

Let me also make it clear that I'm not putting forward a view as to how the article should be arranged. In the first rewrite section above I've outlined various ways scholars have arranged the material, & our rewrite gives another. I certainly do think the article needs some rearrangement. It's quite chaotic at present. Teachings are variously under Doctrine, Divisions, History & nowhere. Some topics are dealt with in more than 1 place, with different things said. But I leave it to you to decide what particular arrangement you want.

Of couse it's impossible to mention everything. Space should be vaguely proportional to numbers, but it doesn't have to be done with separate sections. There are various different ways you can cover things, & each case has to be looked at once you've decided the overall structure. On the question of minorities, remember Mahayana isn't a minority; it's the majority. Indeed (on most estimates at least) EAsian Buddhism is the majority, so it's quite scandalous that the article gives hardly any information about it. The doctrinal traditions are not mentioned, & the main practice traditions, Pure Land & Zen, are only named, with no information given (& they're only even named because I put them in myself some time ago). Bear in mind that, in addition to being separate denominations in Japan, they are the main pracice traditions in China, Korea & Vietnam, so overall they're roughly on a par with Theravada & should have a similar amount of space. Vajrayana, Nichiren & Falun Gong have substantially fewer followers & therefore should get less space.

Another issue where we have to be careful about neutrality is the tension throughout Buddhist history (mentioned in the Anguttara Nikaya) between (sub)traditions emphasizing study & meditation (not forgetting that most ordinary Buddhists do little or none of either, their Buddhism being largely devotional & moral).

Yet another one is that we must be neutral between Buddhism & other religions. Any suggestion that Buddhism is unique or special must be avoided. In particular, please note the following.

"One indicator that a group or movement is functioning as the sociological equivalent of a religion is that its constituents strongly object to being classified as a religion ... Essentially all religions have adherents who claim that their religion is not a religion. This could even be considered one of the distinguishing characteristics of a religion." [1]

So any mention of suggestions that Buddhism is not a religion must be balanced by mentioning that this applies to other religions too. (Of course the subtext of "not a religion" is "better than religion".)

On the question of modern movements. I think it would not violate neutrality to exclude all of them from the article completely, provided this is clearly stated up front & links are given. Perhaps others might disagree with this opinion. But in any case it would have to be done neutrally, so that you exclude not only Falun Gong & Soka Gakkai, but also all Westernized forms of Buddhism. Probably people wouldn't want to do this.

Another perspective. Each doctrine, practice or whatever should have space vaguely proportional to its overall importance. That is, notionally, you see how important it is in each school, multiply by the number of that school's adherents, & then add up the totals. Obviously you don't really do that, but you think along those lines. So you bear in mind that Buddhist morality is much the same everywhere, but the monastic order has been abolished in Japan, & so on for other topics. Similarly, you take account of the fact that the 4 noble truths are the advanced teaching of Theravada (traditionally), and only a preliminary one in the Mahayana (& probably of little importance in EAsian Buddhism). Peter jackson 10:56, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I've restored this section from the archive as the issue is unresolved. In accordance with the instruction not to edit archives I've left it there as well, but perhaps I'm being too literal.

Most of what's said above is still true. There's now a fair amount about Zen, & a few lines about Pure Land. But Pure Land is a lot more popular than Zen (indeed devotional practices generally, which the article hardly mentions, are far more widely practised than meditation in the strict sense) so this is still unbalanced. Unfashionable ideas like rebirth are still dealt with very briefly, despite their importance in the tradition. The scattering of teachings through several different sections of this article & others could reasonably be considered unbalanced in itself. Peter jackson (talk) 11:12, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

nontheistic

Can anyone explain to me how in the very first paragraph of this article, Buddhism is described as nontheistic, while several articles on Buddhism describe Buddhist deities? Amitabha and Shingon directly state the existence of such beings, and mahayana implies the existence of them. Sure the original faith was one without gods, but isn't the concern to describe how Buddhism is, not how it was intended to be? How then can it be described as nontheistic? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stever Augustus (talk • contribs)

It's a good question, and has been discussed here before. There are certainly beings called gods, as well as angel- or saint-like beings, in many forms of Buddhism, but these tend to be relatively minor characters, very much unlike the gods of monotheistic religions (none are, for example, a Creator) and generally suffer from the same limitations as humans (e.g., gods in the realm of gods are still trapped in samsara). Amitabha, Avalokiteshvara, and others are buddhas or bodhisattvas -- i.e., humans, albeit enlightened ones. More to the point, Buddha is certainly not a God-like figure. Further, there are a lot of forms of Buddhism, and no statement about gods applies to all of them. Overall, "nontheistic" is a pretty good descriptor. (Incidentally, please sign your posts with ~~~~.) bikeable (talk) 05:02, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

There is almost no evidence that the original faith was one without gods. That's simply a Western prejudice. The Pali Canon is full of them.

Amitabha and Avalokiteshvara are not humans: according to orthodox Mahayana doctrine, Buddhas and advanced bodhisattvas are not humans, though they may maintain the appearance of human bodies by magical powers as skilful means.

The problem is that the word theistic is ambiguous: it may mean specifically monotheistic, or it may be more general. It should therefore be avoided here.

In fact the opening paragraph needs a lot of rewriting. It's far from neutral at present:

• the selection of views about what Buddhism is is arbitrary & unbalanced: eg the view that it is a religion is mentioned, but not the view that it is a plurality of religions
• the claim by some Buddhists that it is "not a religion" has the subtext "better than religion" & is not neutral unless balanced by pointing out that similar claims are made by followers of other religions.

Peter jackson 11:01, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Amitabha and other buddhas and bodhisattvas: you're right, I misspoke when I said "humans". What I intended is that they started off as samsarac beings, if you will, that they are (or were) not originally beings of a different order than you and I, but became enlightened over their lives. That is, aside from their enlightenment, they are not (or at least were not) fundamentally different than any other beings; not a class of Gods.

I can't argue with the "Western conceit" that the Pali Canon is full of gods, but I am surprised to hear it, and would like to hear more.

I disagree that "not a religion" carries the subtext "better than religion". bikeable (talk) 18:04, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure from your wording that you've understood what I said. The point I was making was that the statement in the first comment in this section that the original teaching had no gods is supported by very little evidence. On the contrary, the Pali Canon is full of gods: just read any of the discourse collections. Westerners have all sorts of misconceptions about Buddhism, many of which are perpetuated by Wikipedia, & this is 1 of them.

On your second point, read [2] & see what you think. Peter jackson 12:08, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Looking at my wording above, I see it still may not be clear: Westerners frequently imagine Buddhism has no gods, incorrectly. Peter jackson 11:38, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

If we can't even aggree that there is such a thing as Buddhism, why is there an article on it... obviously there is something called Buddhism, or there wouldn't be a word for it and we wouldn't be discussing it. 124.178.148.160 14:07, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Language doesn't always correspond to reality. There is a word Buddhism, & the article should survey the main things conventionally covered by the word, without spending too much time discussing whether the term corresponds to a philosophical reality.

PS That's clever: you look like an anonymous contributor, but you're not. Peter jackson 11:38, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Or are you? You look like one on the face of the page, not on the edit page, but I'm not sufficiently up on WP procedures to tell after following the link. Peter jackson 11:40, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Yeah sorry it was me.. forgot to log in before i made my edit. And I absolutely aggree: {cquote|the article should survey the main things conventionally covered by the word, without spending too much time discussing whether the term corresponds to a philosophical reality.}} Sunfirejake 11:55, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I just remembered something: Indonesian Buddhism claims to believe in God, in accordance with the constitution. Whatever their motives, they do say this, so Buddhism can't be called non-theistic. Peter jackson (talk) 09:30, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

References

I've added a correction. Could someone who knows how improve the format please? Peter jackson 11:14, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

On this subject, I don't like the new double reference system. Is this a recommended WP option? Anyone wanting to look up a ref has to follow the link to the footnote & then look back up to the ref list. Peter jackson (talk) 12:00, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Per Wikipedia:Footnotes:

Consider maintaining a separate bibliography/references section that gives full publication details for frequently cited sources, then you only need to cite the author, short title, and page number in specific notes, following Wikipedia:Citing sources.

I find this separation is particularly important when there are either explicit or implicit op. cit.s (e.g., as in this article where it says in an endnote: "Harvey, Introduction, p. 47 ") since it is often easier to look up a referenced author-date or author-title combination in an alphabetized bibliography than it is to locate the original full citation (possibly imbedded) in a prior endnote. (At least this is my current experience reading Neufeldt's "Karma and Rebirth: Post-Classical Developments" (1995) where I recall, for instance, Bruce Matthew's essay has a single endnote (#22?) which uses two op cits, one being two pages prior (17 end notes earlier) and the other being just a few endnotes earlier but embedded in lengthy text.) As an aside, I personally prefer seeing the Notes section precede the Bibliography/Sources section, but I don't know of this being standardized on WP. Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 06:53, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Four Noble Truths: Wording

An IP contributor recently changed the wording of the Four Noble Truths section.

1. There is suffering. to The world is filled with suffering
2. There is a cause of suffering—craving to Suffering is caused by desire
3. There is the cessation of suffering to To end suffering, one must end desire
4. There is a way leading to the cessation of suffering—the Noble Eightfold Path to To end desire, one must follow the Eightfold Path

Bikeable rightly suggested that we hash this out on the talk page before making a permanent change to the article. It's not clear where either of these versions came from, since neither are sourced. If everything is equal (which it's not, but humor me), the IP's version makes more sense to me and appeals to my love of brevity. As we've discussed regarding other issues, the wording we end up using should probably come from a scholarly rather than religious source, and should reflect some sort of broad consensus in the scholarly world. So, what should our wording be? --Gimme danger 17:31, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Raising point: Translation of "Truth"In fact truths is a mistranslation. These are not statements at all (Gethin, Foundations of Buddhism, page 60). Rather, they are "things" (dhammas): dukkha &c. Peter jackson 12:12, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

ResponseThe Pali, of course, is ariyasacca as in catūsu ariyasaccesu and dukkhe ariyasacce, dukkhasamudaye ariyasacce, dukkhanirodhe ariyasacce, dukkhanirodhagāminiyā, etc. There is a question as to what is meant by sacca (e.g, "truth" or "reality") which I think is addressed somewhat in the WP Sacca article and which I vague recall Harvey articulating particularly well.

The WP Four Noble Truths article currently contains a canonical statement (with links to some related on-line translations, e.g., in the "External links" section) of these four truths or four realities. Prior to reading the Canon, I've often heard that the First Noble Truth was "Life is suffering," etc., and had been frequently dismayed by this apparent overgeneralization. If you read the canonical phrasing itself though, it becomes on the one hand much more reasonable (birth, illness, aging, death, not geting what one wants, being with what is undesirable, etc. are all forms of suffering) and more subtle (ultimately, the five aggregates of clinging are suffering). If anyone knows of a canonical or other scriptural source for "Life is suffering," I'd very much appreciate the education.

I hope this might help, Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 14:12, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Suggested ResolutionWhy can't we quote the canon, as at the four noble truths article... rather than paraphrasing... whoever paraphrases will introduce bias, and we will argue forever as these teachings mean different things to us all.

Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi's translation seems to be the standard, and I have only minor dissagreements with his translation. Sunfirejake 14:20, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Objection and continued discussion of translation"... whoever paraphrases will introduce bias ...": true, but whoever selects canonical passages will introduce bias, & whoever translates will introduce bias. In this case it's a question of translation. Gethin is saying (& I agree with him) that the translation is wrong. The grammatical construction of dukkha ariyasacca &c is appositional: the dukkha & the sacca are the same thing; the sacca is not something about the dukkha. This has always been clear in the tradition itself (abhidhamma &c).

Working back to Larry: what would you mean by a source for "Life is suffering"? What is the Pali word for our concept of "life"? Peter jackson 11:50, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Response Hi Peter - I'm open to interpretations, such as Jake found below. Ultimately, I'm really just trying to understand whence "Life is suffering" in the Buddhist context comes, etc. Thanks, Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 17:30, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Response regarding translation "Jivitam" is something like life. I can't remember a quote in the cannon approximating "Life is suffering" which would be something like jivitam dukkham (Though if I was going to look for one I would start with Dhammapada, Sagathavagga, and Suttanipata)... instead there is "sabbam bhikkhave dukkham. kinca bhikkhave sabbam dukkham?..." followed by a clear definition, which you have obviously read, and the only disaggreement I have with the standard translation is that I believe "jara" refers to "old age", not "ageing". I am also not entirely sure on the breakup, and meaning, of "pancupadanakhanda".

Response to objection But seriously... most scholars agree on the translation.. it's reasonable simple Pali. why can't we just use Bhikkhu Bodhi's.. It's a published standard. Sure whatever anyone writes is biased, but at least here we have a standard which most people agree on. Plus the quotations are short: as at Four Noble Truths. Sunfirejake 12:20, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Response regarding translation Jake -

Nice hit! Gut level, sabbaṃ dukkhaṃ would certainly address what I was asking about. Could you point me to the relevant sutta(s)? I'm very intrigued by and appreciate the find.

FWIW, my understanding is pancupadanakhanda = panca-upadana-khanda, e.g., "five aggregates of clinging."

Intuitively, I strongly agree with you regarding how to represent the four ariya-sacca here. Nonetheless, as always, I'd be interested if Peter were to expand further on what sounds like might be his reservation and alternate idea.

Perhaps sometime you can share with me (us?) how you found sabbaṃ dukkhaṃ ... I'm impressed! Whether you've the time or not, thanks so much for sharing your many skills and prodigious knowledge with us. Best wishes, Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 17:07, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Further objection I think the guidelines are clear: WP shouldn't just record what most scholars think; it should record what all reputable scholars think. We can't simply ignore the opinion of the President of the Pali Text Society on the translation of Pali.

Jivita means life in 1 sense, but is that our sense?

Pancupadanakhandha is a pun: it means 5 bundles of fuel (firewood) as well as its doctrinal meaning, so the latter needn't be taken too literally as it may be adapted to fit the pun.

I think sabbam dukkham is in the Salayatanasamyutta, but you could simply try the search engines in the Burmese & Sinhalese Canon transcripts. Peter jackson (talk) 12:11, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Continued discussion of translation Hi Peter - thanks for the recommendation and suggestions. FWIW, prior to posting, I did do a quick SLTP search via the La Trobe U. engine and found only one hit: SN 35.46 where sabbaṃ dukkhaṃ (with these presumed diacrits) is mentioned the context of the three marks of existence (anicca, dukkha, anatta). I don't think this is the reference that Jake was citing though since I did not see in this context mention of the traditional formulation of dukkha (e.g., as including a reference to the five aggregates of "clinging/sustenance" [to use a Thanissaro-type translation]). But, as you suggest, if Jake doesn't respond, I can always do a more thorough search. Thanks for the ideas. Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 14:27, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Basic Pali question: wouldn't sabbaṃ dukkhaṃ be "all suffering" (as in sabbaṃ dukkhaṃ nijjiṇṇaṃ bhavissatī which Thanissaro translates as: "all suffering & stress will be exhausted") — as opposed, e.g., to sabbe dukkhaṃ which could perhaps be translated as "all is suffering"? Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 07:10, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Certainly it could be just that, depending on grammatical context.You have to look up the passages & see. Peter jackson (talk) 10:10, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Translation I think the quote was in the salayatana samyutta (haven't read it for a while and don't have access to indexes here though).

One I do know in that samyutta is IV.35.26. "Without directly knowing and fully understanding the all, without developing dispassion towards it and abandoning it, one is incapable of destroying suffering."

Develop dispassion towards everything. Abandon everything. (sabbam)

One quote I really like covering this topic is "sabba dukkha vinyana paccaya(a)" "All suffering comes from the condition of consciousness." (I think this is in the Muni Sutta) In my opinion vinyana covers our sense of conscious experience, (you could call that "life"), and this quote hammers the truth of suffering home.. Conscious experience is the problem. Existence is suffering. Sunfirejake (talk) 15:12, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Redirection of discussion I appreciate the expertise and thoughtfulness represented in everyone's comments here. I'm starting to think that Wikipedia editing is furthering my education more than my schooling is. ;-)

Perhaps we can all agree that representing every viewpoint on the translation of these "truths" is an unrealistic goal and proceed accordingly to create the best possible article. The sheer volume of Buddhist scholarship is prohibitive to that end; we cannot possibly represent every opinion. We can, however, identify the majority position and perhaps notable alternative positions and direct the reader of this article to the Four Noble Truths article, where it's appropriate and necessary to get into the details of translation. The point of this article is to give a well-balanced, but fairly basic overview of Buddhism and to direct interested readers to more detailed articles. A good example of this is Islam, which was a FA not long ago. The assessment criteria of WikiProject Buddhism gives a description of what this article, probably the most important article in the project, ought to be like. I quote: Articles in this importance range are written in mostly generic terms, leaving technical terms and descriptions for more specialized pages.

Essentially, I'm saying that the critical part of this discussion is not exactly which translation is correct or what every scholar thinks of the subject, but rather what most Buddhists think. If this isn't possible, perhaps major divisions disagree, then it would be appropriate to indicate the controversy. But we still have to have something and that must have a source. --Gimme danger (talk) 09:59, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

As I said before, I think the guidelines are clear: we must represent scholarship as a whole. How we do that is up for discussion. In some cases we might say "Most scholars think this; for other views see ..." I agree that the article should cover what most Buddhists think. Unfortunately that's quite difficult to find out a lot of the time. Western Buddhists, who make most of the contributions, tend to be very un- & mis-informed about Eastern Buddhism, which is why we need scholars. In this particular case, Gethin's position is in fact the traditional understanding. In Theravada this is still understood in Burma (I haven't got a citation for this yet), but official Sinhalese & Thai Buddhism have been largely adopted from (out-of-date) Western scholarship (citation in Theravada & Pali Canon. (Some) translations from Tibetan talk about true suffering, true cause &c, following the same appositional understanding. I've put a graded bibliography of general scholarly works on my user page. More specialized ones can be found in the bibliographies in most of those. Peter jackson (talk) 09:27, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

For the benefit of those without access to Gethin's introductory text, to enable more people to engage in this discussion using the same referenced material, I think it might be useful to directly quote pertinent material here.

To begin with, here's Gethin's own translation of the SN 56.11 formulation, from his chapter entitled, "Four Truths," in The Foundations of Buddhism (1998; Oxford University Press, pp. 59-60):

This is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, ageing is suffering, sickness is suffering, dying is suffering, sorrow, grief, pain, unhappiness, and unease are suffering; being united with what is not liked is suffering, separation from what is liked is suffering; not getting what one wants is suffering; in short, the five aggregates of grasping are suffering.

This is the noble truth of the origin of suffering: the thirst for repeated existence which, associated with delight and greed, delights in this and that, namely the thirst for the objects of sense desire, the thirst for existence, and the thirst for non-existence.

This is the noble truth of the cessation of suffering: the complete fading away and cessation of this very thirst — its abandoning, relinquishing, releasing, letting go.

This is the noble truth of the way leading to the cessation of suffering: the noble eightfold path, namely right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.

Gethin then maintains (p. 60):

The temptation to understand these four 'truths' as functioning as a kind of Buddhist creed should be resisted; they do not represent 'truth claims' that one must intellectually assent to on becoming a Buddhist. Part of the problem here is the word 'truth'. The word satya ([Skt.;] Pali sacca) can certainly mean truth, but it might equally be rendered as 'real' or 'actual thing'. That is, we are not dealing here with propositional truths with which we must either agree or disagree, but with four 'true things' or 'realities' whose nature, we are told, the Buddha finally understood on the night of his awakening. The teachings of the Buddha thus state that suffering, its cause, its cessation, and the path to its cessation are realities which we fail to see as they are, and this is as true for the 'Buddhist' as the 'non-Buddhist'. The 'Buddhist' is simply one committed to trying to follow the Buddha's prescriptions for coming to see these realities as they are....

If I left out any material that one feels is pertinent, please feel free to add it.

Based on this, I think one can see that Gethin does not have any problems with translating sacca as "truth" though he underlines that it conveys (or indicates that it is better captured by) the notion of "reality."

Similar to my understanding of what Gimme_danger has written, I think Gethin's point can be captured in a brief sentence clause (e.g., "The Four Noble Truths are 'truths' or 'realities' about....") and/or endnote as well as in supporting articles (as I think is already done at least at Sacca). My additional inclination is, as stated by Sunfirejake, to include this entire blockquote given its centrality to (early?) Buddhism and to avoid POV summaries, but I can readily respect and support other views.

Sorry for not participating in this more regularly sooner. I admire Gimme_danger's commitment to resolving this in a collaborative manner and applaud his attempt to structure and resolve this discussion. As I am winding down my WP participation (at least for now), I'll have to leave this as "my two cents." Feel free to ignore it.

Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 04:48, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure you're getting the point. The so-called truths are not about anything. They are the things. Peter jackson (talk) 09:29, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

The parenthetical, hypothetical "about" was simply meant to indicate that the sentence would continue in some fashion. Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 20:46, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

On the question of translation, the fact that Gethin keeps the standard translation while pointing out that it's misleading raises the question of how many other scholars who use the translation know the true meaning but haven't pointed it out, or conversely how many clearly understand it otherwise. Peter jackson (talk) 09:31, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I think you misunderstand Gethin. He is not saying that his very own translation is misleading. He is simpy stating that a commonsensical translation (his own being one of many) is best seen as describing "reality" (according to the Buddha represented in the Canon) not as asserting a Buddhist creed. Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 20:46, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

It's not his translation specifically. It goes back to the 19th century & has become standard. "Part of the problem here is the word 'truth'. The word ... might equally be rendered as 'real' or 'actual thing'. ... four 'true things' or 'realities' ... suffering ... are ... realities ..." As I said, the sacca is dukkha, not a statement about dukkha. Peter jackson (talk) 09:25, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I think you would ultimately find it of benefit if you were able to integrate your understanding of Gethin's straightforward and accurate translation with his subsequent analysis instead of simply focussing on the latter and discounting the former. Nonetheless, I hear your saying that I, on the other hand, just don't get it and that I'm missing the point of his analysis by being overly attached to and misunderstanding the rationale for his translation. Perhaps we won't find a way to agree between ourselves here and now? So as to move this matter beyond our two-headed discussion, I've included Gethin's actual text above for others to decide for themselves the best way to understand what Gethin says.

Peter, I very much sincerely appreciate the resources, knowledge and dedication you bring to your WP edits. I'd like to suggest that in general, if you could be more generous in spirit, less critical in tone, more constructive and concrete in your criticisms, others would also be inclined to proudly sing your many praises. I wish you good health and great happiness, Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 20:43, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Hello Larry, I am happy to see the wording of the Four Noble Truths as suggested by this anonymous user are corrected now. I second your observations on Peter Jackson's attitude. I think, however, it is a issue of age and will be a great challenge for him to correct. Greetings, Greetings, Sacca 05:07, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Gethin simply follows the standard translation, but then explains why it's misleading. The articles should do the same.

It's necessary to be critical in order to get through to people that much of what they think they know about Buddhism is wrong, & encourage them to find out more from reliable sources as defined by WP guidelines (see bibliography on my user page). It's very time-consuming for me to have to do so much myself, with few well-informed contributors to help. That's one difficulty with trying to be constructive & concrete. Another is simply other people's inertia. It's very difficult to improve this article very much while it's still "organized" so chaotically. We've tried reorganizing it, & just been reverted. We've tried suggesting possible reorganizations, & inviting others to do so, but nothing's been done. Peter jackson (talk) 09:27, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

"Chinese Mahayana Buddhist monk lighting incense in a Beijing temple."

there was a time when they would have sent the army in for less than that —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.10.161.253 (talk) 15:31, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Shin

This is not a synonym for Pure Land, as stated in the version I just corrected, but a particular variety. Peter jackson (talk) 10:14, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

What was Buddha's original religeous background?

It would appear that Buddha came from a Hindu society. And saw injustice in his society, and therefore sought the ultimate truth. Many of the shared terms, the locality and the time period of the two belief systems would suggest Buddhism was a kind of reformation of Hinduism, as it was practiceded in Buddha's culture. It then became its own belief system separate from Hinduism, just as Christianity was once a sect of Judaism, and became its own religion and quasi-independant belief system. And, should this possible relation and religious designation about the area in which he grew up be mentioned.76.104.22.182 (talk) 20:47, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

There is a discusison on this on the Gautama Buddha talk page. Repdouger (talk) 00:54, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Buddhism#Criticism

I added a new Buddhism#Criticism section, this time mostly sources. I will continue to look for more sources and add more criticism to it. And I finally learned how to cite :D! Saimdusan 08:55, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I guess someone deleted it because it's not there anymoreDumaka (talk) 04:54, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

There's a general WP policy of including criticism, tho' I'm not sure it applies to things like this. Peter jackson (talk) 09:59, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

WikiProjects

The template at the top of this page says this is in multiple projecs, & the show gives 2: Buddhism & atheism. No mention of religion, tho' there is such a project. This seems pretty perverse, since Buddhism is not atheist. The vast majority of it is polytheist, Mahayana, or some forms, might well be considered pantheist, modern Indonesian Buddhism certainly is, & only some modern, Westernized Buddhism, & some theories of the Buddha's original teaching, are atheist. Peter jackson (talk) 12:13, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Statistics

I've deleted the link to the article on estimates of numbers of Buddhists, as that seems to consist largely of wildly inflated estimates put together by Chinese Buddhist propagandists who can't speak English properly. Peter jackson (talk) 12:10, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree that that article is a travesty (although please be careful to be civil about it). I spent a fair bit of effort on it months ago and gave up; now I just check it occasionally to make sure it's still tagged "disputed". I do think that the better solution is to improve that article, with references, which will bring it more in line with typical estimates. (One problem is that the article as it stands requires a number of calculations for totals and subtotals when any single number is changed; it desperately needs to be simplified.) Unless we are prepared to spend real time cleaning it up, however, I'd support your removal of the link here. (Wow, that was a long-winded agreement.) bikeable (talk) 15:51, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Bear in mind also that the article contains a table of numbers of Buddhists in aparently every country in the world. Just imagine the amount of work involved in tracking down reliable sources for all of them. On the other hand, there are some genuine issues here, which I'm just about to deal with here. Peter jackson (talk) 09:54, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

congratulations

Hello,

I just happened to notice the new introduction the the article, and I am very pleased with it. Well done!

There is one sentence which needs a source still, the sentence that says that buddhism falls outside of the definition of religion according to some. Please if someone could add this it will be near perfect! Greetings, Sacca 10:09, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Hello,

Buddhism may be considered a religion indeed. But Buddha never taught any religion. As such it isn't a true claim. Buddha wasn't a deity, let's not forget. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sortabove (talk • contribs) 20:14, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

There is no agreement among historians as to what the Buddha taught. I'm not sure what claim you're saying is not true. Peter jackson (talk) 11:35, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Polytheism

This, and other buddhism articles are being repeatedly re-added to without explanation. I suspect this is due to a general ignorance of buddhism as a set of teachings. Let's stop this before it turns into an all-out multi-article edit war. Zazaban (talk) 07:31, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Your criticism of this is weaker than mine above of the inclusion of this article in the atheism project: the vast majority of Buddhism is polytheistic; only some modern Buddhism is atheistic (& some theories of original Buddhism). What is "essential" to Buddhism is a question of opinion, not fact. Peter jackson (talk) 10:57, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm inclined to disagree. There are no 'gods' in buddhism. I agree, my argument sucks, but it was around midnight and I was very tired. Zazaban (talk) 18:57, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

"the vast majority of Buddhism is polytheistic;"

In that case, why not keep it in then? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.253.57.143 (talk) 06:24, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Obviously you can define gods so as to exclude devas, just as you can define religion so as to exclude Buddhism. Such claims should be treated with suspicion, as part of apologetics, until proven otherwise. Peter jackson (talk) 15:22, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

The buddhist 'gods' seem more akin to saints than gods. Zazaban (talk) 18:56, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Saints? Arahants are saints. Perhaps you mean angels? A number of well-known Hindu gods are mentioned in the Pali Canon. It seems reasonable to keep calling them gods. Peter jackson (talk) 11:58, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Of course it should be considered, that the word "God" has several meanings:
Creator God: I opine that this concept is regarded as a non-productive metaphysical speculation in Buddhism. This might be the reason why Buddhism is sometimes classified as atheistic.
Devas / Gods of the Olymp etc.: I think from the Buddhist point of view these Gods do exist, but they are considered as noneternal sentient beings – same as mice, dolphins, elephants, humans, butterflies, moles and so forth.
Deities: As far as I know, this is just a matter of terminology and translation. Buddhist deities are not Gods at all, but saṃbhoga-kāyas.
--Liebeskind (talk) 20:43, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

The 1st 2 are standard. the 3rd seems to be a terminology adopted by some Western writers for a concept in Tibetan Buddhism. Peter jackson (talk) 11:19, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, the fact that Buddhism has "Devas/gods" makes it polytheistic, from my POV. Yes, I realize that a person can be Buddhist without believing in any of these deities, & thus, for that person Buddhism is atheistic. But, in the cases where the people that do practice Buddhism & believe in its deities, I consider polytheistic.

I know for a fact that a person can be Jewish, & not believe in God. In such cases, these people practice a kind of "atheistic Judaism." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.253.112.100 (talk) 04:50, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

"... a person can be Jewish, & not believe in God"? In fact there are people who claim to be Christians but don't believe in God. It all depends what you mean by Christian, Jewish, Buddhist etc. If you define them as simply anyone who calls themself that, then there are people in any religion who believe & don't believe anything. If you define a Christian as someone who believes in God etc. then obviously all Christians believe in God by definition. This is not very helpful. Clearly statements like "Christians believe in God" are either false or tautologies, & should in either case be expunged from Wikipedia, unless the article concerned has already clearly defined what it means by the terms. Peter jackson (talk) 10:57, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

"In fact there are people who claim to be Christians but don't believe in God."

That's not true. People who come from a Christian background, but, decide that they do not believe in God, either describe themselves as simply atheists, or just say they don't have any religion at all. True, they might mention that their families were Christian or that they themselves were once Christian, but, that's it.

By contrast, atheists from the Jewish culture, still prefer to be identified as Jews. There are at least 2 Jewish sects--Reconstructionist Judaism & Humanist Judaism--that are primarily for Jews who are either agnostic or atheist.

There is no equivilent in Christianity. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.96.151.250 (talk) 02:28, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes it is true. It may be the case that there are no organized Christian atheist denominations, though that would require proof. However, there are certainly people who call themselves Christian & atheist. A well-known example is Don Cupitt. Peter jackson (talk) 12:00, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I think the use of the term "polytheism" would be misleading, as those who don't know much about the Buddhadharma—in particular that Devas are considered as ordinary sentient beings—might conclude, that those who try to follow the dharma worship Devas. --Liebeskind (talk) 12:05, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

A lot of things could be misleading. My original point at the top of this section was that it's inconsistent to include Buddhism in the atheism project but not the religion project or the polytheism category. I've noticed quite a lot of argument about categories, but I haven't looked up the guidelines, so I won't comment specifically for now. Peter jackson (talk) 12:10, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Well – I think that the Buddhadharma doesn't fit any of these categories, or rather that these categories don't fit the Buddhadharma ;-) --Liebeskind (talk) 13:17, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, what is Buddhism, or Buddhadharma if you prefer? As noted in the article, many scholars think there's no such "thing": that is, it's just a name given to a variety of phenomena with no defining characteristic. So what category/ies should it go under? Undefined terms? I'll have to look at the guidelines on categories. Peter jackson (talk) 18:04, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

This appears near the beginning of WP:CAT:

"The categories to be included, which serve as classifications, should be the significant (useful) topics to which the subject of the article most closely belongs to as a member, and where users are most likely to look if they can't remember the name of the thing they are trying to look up."

This would seem to imply that religion is the best category. Peter jackson (talk) 18:11, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

However, later on the same page we have the following:

"Categories appear without annotations, so be careful of NPOV when creating or filling categories. Categories that are not self-evident, or are shown through reliable sources to be controversial, should not be included on the article; a list might be a better option."

This would seem to imply the exact opposite. Peter jackson (talk) 18:14, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

NPOV

From WP:NPOV:

"Neutral point of view is a fundamental Wikipedia principle. NPOV is absolute and non-negotiable.

All Wikipedia articles ... must be written from a neutral point of view ... representing fairly and, as much as possible, without bias all significant views ... This is non-negotiable and expected on all articles ..."

"Assert facts, including facts about opinions—but do not assert the opinions themselves."

• "If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts;
• If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents;
• If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it does not belong in Wikipedia (except perhaps in some ancillary article) regardless of whether it is true or not; and regardless of whether you can prove it or not."

This last quote is paraphrased from Mr Wales himself.

So I think the procedure we should be following in cases of difference of opinion is something like this.

• First give the view(s) given in the "commonly accepted reference texts". In principle give them the preponderance of space. Do not, however, assert that they are the majority without an explicit statement in a reliable source. (This is stated in WP:Reliable_sources.) Instead, ascribe them to the reference text(s).
• Then give any other views espoused by "prominent" scholars.
• This I can't find in the guidelines, but it seems logical to me. On questions of Buddhist teaching & its interpretation, as distinct from history, we are presumably trying to report what Buddhists believe. By analogy, this should cover all "significant" views within Buddhism. Therefore, by analogy again, we should add any other views of prominent Buddhists, that is, those not already covered by scholars. The reliable sources guidelines say secondary sources should be preferred to primary, ie scholars to Buddhists.

I'm going to make a start with the introduction to the 4NT section. Peter jackson (talk) 11:11, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Enlightenment

I want to reach Enlightenment, but I don't want to be 'stuck' in a religion. Can some body help me? --Jay ^{Lights! Camera! Action!} 17:41, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Buddhism and nature

My ignorance will show here, but one point I haven't seen addressed, in these Wikipedia articles or elsewhere, is the Buddhist view of the natural world, especially in the modern environmentalist sense of nature as an entity that is beautiful, bountiful, and well-regulated by itself. For example, to an outsider the practice of Patikulamanasikara seems mysterious; how can contemplation of the healthy parts of one's body be viewed primarily as revulsion, when they are so well-formed that half the people in America can't believe they weren't directly crafted by the hand of God? Water, air, and fire are among the Kammaṭṭhāna, but are they viewed as static essences or as living phenomena that manifest the song of the natural world? One of the types of suffering is the separation from pleasant things; is nature one of these pleasant things? Fundamentally, when one considers the essence of nature (not a mountain or a species, but the materially manifested ability of planets to create beautiful geology or elegant species), is this seen as impermanent? Or is it some form of dharma or Buddha-nature that is beyond time? I think an article Buddhism and nature could be very interesting. Wnt (talk) 20:04, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Could well be, but there are a lot of different points of view to cover, & the article would risk serious bias. Peter jackson (talk) 12:10, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I was too lazy to read all your message I would like to say the buddhist has a negitive view about everything, with all the suffering. Was the buddha a virgin? --Jay^Tur₁ (Contribs) 21:09, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Criticism article

I am going around and checking the faiths that do not have "criticism" articles. Criticism of Buddhism redirects to Criticism of Religion. Any thoughts? --Be happy!! (talk) 04:27, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

There was quite a bit of discussion on this on Talk:Criticism of Religion recently- the consensus was that there was material that should be covered, but as yet I don't think anyone has acted on it. --Clay Collier (talk) 04:50, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Further to Angelo's remarks in the history, at a quick glance it looks to me as if there are not even links to criticism articles from Christianity and Judaism, but there are from Islam and Hinduism. Could this be because most people in English WP are Christian or Jewish? Peter jackson (talk) 18:26, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Bias?

I've deleted the following material as it looks biased:

The Sangha, at the same time, became increasingly fragmented both in terms of Abhidharma and Vinaya practice. The Mahayana movement, on the other hand, was ecumenical, reflecting a wide range of influence from various sects.

If anyone can find a reliable source it can be restored Peter jackson (talk) 12:10, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism

Maybe this article should be protected as a big part of the edits of the last days seems to be vandalism committed by anonymous users. --Liebeskind (talk) 14:13, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Statistic of Edits

	obviously vandalism	reverts caused by that	other edits	total
2008-01-30	8	7	0	15
2008-01-31	0	0	6	6
2008-02-01	1	1	1	3
2008-02-02	0	0	7	7
2008-02-03	1	1	3	5
2008-02-04	4	4	6	14
2008-02-05	5	6	10	21
2008-02-06	6	5	2	13
2008-02-07	10	7	2	19
2008-02-08	3	3	1	7
	obviously vandalism	reverts caused by that	other edits	total

--Liebeskind (talk) 23:28, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I have requested semi-protection and will link in this chart. Nice work. Sethie (talk) 19:37, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Zen Buddhism in the United States

I am looking for editors to come to my sandbox at User:Mind meal/Sandbox26 to collaborate on creating a first-class article on Zen Buddhism in the United States. Interested parties can contact me on my talk page. I would like to see a group of research-oriented editors come aboard. I think it may work best if various editors focus on one particular dimension of Zen in America (always backed by references) and we can add various sections, come up with section titles, and eventually bring the article to "completion." While this is a labor of love for me, I fear it will take eons to get the article right alone. With the help of other editors, however, we can make progress much faster. Please contact me before starting to edit my sandbox. I want to know the members I am working with before doing so. Thank you. (Mind meal (talk) 19:12, 10 February 2008 (UTC))

New Idea for Introductory Paragraph

I propose the following text to be the introductory paragraph for the Buddhism article:

Buddhism refers to the teachings of the Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, as recorded in the Pali Canon and the several Mahayana and Vajrayana texts. It is also known as Buddha Dharma or Dhamma, which means roughly the "teachings of the Awakened One" in the Sanskrit and Pali langauges of the aforementioned texts. Buddhism originated in North-East India around the 5th century BCE.

I think that the above is a better paragraph than the present one because it provides a short, accurate, clear, clean and objective definition, with which I think nearly everyone can agree. Also, it obviously avoids the confusing "religion v. philosophy" issue that mars the present paragraph. The present paragraph appears to be the beginning sentences of a college essay explaining what Buddhism may be, rather than an encyclopedic definition what it is. Coolbo (talk) 22:04, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

The problem that I can see with that is that it's reducing Buddhism to the contents of the Canons; there's lots of ritual, cultic practices, oral teachings, popular religion, etc. that are considered under the heading of Buddhism. I do agree that the intro as it stands is very rocky: "Buddhism is this. Sometimes people say it isn't. Other people like to say this." Too much qualification for an intro. My proposal would be something like this:

Buddhism is the term used to describe several related collections of philosophy and practices that take as their origin the teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, an Indian sage most commonly believed to have lived during the 5th century BCE. Buddhism is variously described by observers as a religion, a philosophy, or as a set of practical guidelines for living. While Buddhism is often discussed as a single phenomenon, recent scholarship tends to consider Buddhism as multiple social, religious, and philosophical phenomena, unified by a belief in a shared origin in the life and teachings of Siddhartha Gautama.

Trying to retain the nuances of the current intro, while synthesizing things a bit... --Clay Collier (talk) 07:39, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Also, the wording 1st suggested seems to imply that the teachings of the Buddha really are recorded in the scriptures, or at least could be so interpreted.

My wording was intended simply to improve on what was there before, not to be the final word.

I prefer Clay's version to Coolbo's, but I think it still needs improvement.

• Philosophy appears in the 1st part, but religion only in the opinions section. This is biased.
• "take as their origin the teachings attributed to" doesn't make clear that they disagree on what those were, not just on their interpretation. Read "take as their origins various teachings attributed to"?
• I'm not sure Siddhartha Gautama is correct.
  • Does the context imply that this is historically correct? The name Siddhartha occurs only in late texts & probably can't be regarded as historical fact.
  • I read somewhere that the name should be Gautama Siddhartha; I don't know enough about Indian naming conventions to say.
• "most commonly believed to have lived during the 5th century BCE"? I'm doubtful about this. It's probably true that most scholars place his death around 400, but that means that a fair number would suggest his life ran into the 4th. In any case, is this verifiable? Under the guidelines, you need an explicit statement in a reliable source to say most scholars. I think best keep wording "around 5th century", which covers all scholars.
  • As an aside, if we're going to insist on the politically correct (B)CE, we must always link it at 1st occurrence in any article, as most readers will have no idea what it means.
• "Buddhism is variously described by observers as a religion, a philosophy, or as a set of practical guidelines for living."? Who are these observers?
  • Most reference books & government censuses call it a religion. Presumably most ordinary people do too.
  • As you note in the next sentence, many scholars consider it a plurality of religions, but that option is not mentioned in this sentence.
  • I don't know of anyone who consider it a philosophy, except perhaps those who mean by Buddhism a theory of the original teaching of the Buddha, rather than what Buddhists actually believe & do.
  • Does anyone actually consider real life Buddhism to be philosophy at all? I find even that hard to imagine, except for certain forms of Buddhism.
  • The "practical guidelines" bit sounds like something some Western Buddhists say, rather than observers. The citations for this and the "philosophies" one are from Buddhist sources. I was trying to cut down on Buddhist special pleading & apologetics, but there's still more to be done.
• "recent scholarship tends"? Possibly, but this too requires a citation. gethin only says it's fashionable, which I've translated as many.
• "unified by a belief in a shared origin in the life and teachings of Siddhartha Gautama"? Again, the wording needs careful looking at, bearing in mind disagreement on what those teachings were.

That's what occurs to me at the moment. Peter jackson (talk) 11:27, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I think the current version is not that bad – there is no need to change it totally:

1. There is a term "Buddhism"
2. This term is a western term which was invented to refer to a phenomenon which westerners didn't really understand when this term was invented (maybe it can't be understood by non-enlightened beings at all). There was no eastern equivalent.
3. There is no consensus about what this term exactly covers. Does it cover the teachings and texts? Which texts and teachings does it cover? Does it cover the sangha? Does it cover the adherents? Who is an adherent? Maybe those who define themselves as "Buddhists" (which of course is a problematic term – if somebody defines himself or herself as Buddhist those who didn't try to understand "Buddhism" will expect him or her to be a prototypic example of living "Buddhism")?… Caused by that some or even many prefer the term Buddhadharma and don't define themselves as Buddhists, but as beings who try to realise the Buddhadharma.
4. There is no consensus about what the term "religion" exactly covers, so it is hard to tell whether "Buddhism" is a religion or not.

…

But there are lots of prejudices:

1. Buddhism is an eastern religion.
2. The Dalai Lama ist the highest authority of Buddhism, like a pope.
3. We don't know what Buddhists believe and what they worship (maybe Buddha is their god, as there must be a god.), but they are always friendly, non-violent and smiling, they like to make and destroy mandalas, their official color is orange, they like incents etc.

Maybe it could be concluded, that the term Buddhism is used with inconsistent meanings. There is no consesus what it means and how it should be shelved. Maybe "Buddhism" covers just various ranges of prejudices. I think that the current version describes that excellently, but we might add a short description of the genesis of that term (who used it first and when did that happen…).

Best wishes --Liebeskind (talk) 13:41, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree with most of what you've just said. I'd make one or two comments at present:

• This use of the term Buddhadharma looks suspiciously like the Jehovah's Witnesses' distinction between Christianity (themselves) & Christendom (everyone else). It reminds me of something that happened in Ceylon. The Westernized elite, thinking in English, issued orders that school textbooks for 6-year-olds should tell them that Buddhism is not a religion. They'd forgotten that in Sinhalese religion & ism are the same (agama), to the great confusion of the poor children. A supposed distinction between dharma & ism looks equally dubious.
• I think it's misleading to say there's no consensus on what Buddhism means. It's true that there's no consensus on the term's connotation, its essential meaning, characteristics etc, or even whether it has any. On the other hand, there is a fair amount of consensus on its denotation, the collection of things the term is used to refer to. There's some disagreement about some groups such as Soka Gakkai & Falun Gong, & as you say about some popular practices, but there's a wide range of things that pretty well everyone agrees come under the heading of Buddhism, & the article should cover those. Unfortunately it does so in a very unbalanced way, with far more space given to forms and aspects popular in the West than its perhaps 1 or 2 % of the world's Buddhist population would justify.

On the origins of the term, I think it originated in the early 19th century, but the concept, grouping together various forms of Eastern religion, was already quite widespread in the West in the late !8th (eg Gibbon) & occasionally found earlier (probably the earliest is Marco Polo). Peter jackson (talk) 11:47, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

No, of course I did not mean a distinction like that one. I think that the term Buddhadharma in that sense does not refer to any person. I think it's just the teachings and the methods which were supposedly introduced by Buddha Śākyamuni and commented or supplemented by ohter beings with high realization. Moreover the only difference between those who prefer the term Buddhadharma and those who prefer the term Buddhism is just that the first group does not want to use the word Buddhism.

Above I dropped the question if the term Buddhism covers the adherents:
In German the term "das Christentum" means "the Christian religion" and "die Christenheit" (which is a little bit outdated) means "those who adhere the Christian religion" (the term "Christenheit" was in the past also used to refer to those who are know called Europeans or westerners). In English the terms "Christendom" and "Christianity" seem to be rather the same. The german Wikipedia article "Christentum" says, that the term Christentum interestingly originates the greek term christianismós – and indeed in German the term "das Christentum" corresponds to the term "der Buddhismus". So I conclude that at least in German the term "der Buddhismus" does not include the "adherents" who are called "die Buddhisten" (the Christian version is "das Christentum" vs. "die Christen" and the islamic version is "der Islam" vs. "die Moslems") and I think that comparably in English the term Buddhism does not include the so called adherents.
--Liebeskind (talk) 14:01, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Langdell's version is unacceptable. It's just someone's opinion. We must stick to WP:NPOV. Peter jackson (talk) 11:05, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

With the actual content of the intro aside, I think the wording needs to at the very least be re-arranged in a manner in which one whom comes across the intro feels confident in reading the article. My main criticism is right now the intro feels disjointed, I think the quicker, easier, and more practical course of action would be to attempt to address this issue, and I believe this can be done easily without perversion of meaning.

HappyColor (talk) 09:11, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Certainly the intro is disjointed, but then so is the article: Buddhist teachings, those that it bothers to cover at all, are randomly scattered through several different sections. We ought to get the article itself into proper shape 1st, then perhaps it would be obvious how to summarize it in the intro. Peter jackson (talk) 12:08, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

External Links

Please add the following external link:

Buddhist Society of Western Australia - http://www.bswa.org/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sachi04 (talk • contribs) 10:58, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Why? How many states have Buddhist societies? Do you expect us to link them all from this article? Peter jackson (talk) 12:03, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Buddha wasn't born in India...he was born in Lumbini, Nepal

A lot of sources falsely say that Buddha was born in Northern India...he was actually born in Lumbini, Southern Nepal. The wikipedia page refers to UNESCO site as its source of information about the birth place of Buddha, but if you check the UNESCO site, it clearly says that his birthplace is Lumbini, Nepal. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.148.5.169 (talk) 03:12, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

It's perfectly true that what has been believed since at least the 3rd century BC to be the Buddha's birthplace is now in Nepal. It has been since 1860, when Britain transferred it as a reward for Nepal's support against the Indian mutiny. Nepal wasn't even invented in the Buddha's time. It is customary to use geographical terms as they apply to the time referred to. We don't usually talk about Pakistan before 1947, for example. Peter jackson (talk) 12:07, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

flaky...and embarrassing

The current introduction is an embarrassment. It makes me ashamed to be a Buddhist. One of the self-appointed current editors of this article just left a note on my user page saying, "There are numerous opinions about what, if anything, Buddhism is..." (my italics). And this very same person is apparently an advocate for NPOV! There may be numerous opinions about what Buddhism is in this gentleman's circle of friends but not in the Buddhist world. It is not 'a body of philosophies' as the current introduction claims. Neither is it a plurality. The Buddhadharma is very much a unity in whichever cultural form it has found itself expressed. It is only to the dilettante that Buddhism appears to be a plurality. Instead of speculating as to whether Buddhism is religion or philosophy (or psychology for that matter) would it not be better to say what Buddhism actually is? The current entry does not say what Buddhism (buddhadharma) is. Instead it presents various points of view as to what some people think it is. This is very unencyclopedic, to say the least. Langdell (talk) 21:10, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Aren't there varying sects with different beliefs in what Buddhism is? Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 01:06, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm pleased to see you're taking this to the talk page. It's nothing to do with my circle of friends. If you'd (you here means Langdell, out of sequence) take the trouble to read the text you'd find that nearly all the opinions there are cited from reputable sources. You have still not cited any such evidence for your view. It is certainly true that some Buddhists, & some scholars, believe that Buddhism is all the same in essence. Others do not. For example, if you will again actually read what is said, you will find that 2 sources are cited for the theory that Buddhism is a plurality rather than a unity:

• Rupert Gethin, who is a Buddhist as well as a scholar
• the latest edition of Robinson et al, which adds as 3rd author (you couldn't have been expected to know this of course) Thanissaro Bhikkhu

The intro doesn't say that Buddhism is a collection of philosophies; it says that some people say this. The source cited is a statement by a body calling itself the World Buddhist Sangha Council, which in fact advocates precisely your view that Buddhism is the same in essence.

We have previously discussed the question of whether this intro should discuss the question of whether Buddhism is or isn't a religion. We can discuss this some more if you like.

The intro doesn't tell you what Buddhism is because there are different opinions. See WP:NPOV where it is clearly stated that this is what we do; we don't try to decide for ourselves what is true.

As Daniel says, there are cetainly a variety of schools which appear to teach different things, & there's plenty of source material of their denouncing each other as heretics (obviously they don't use the English word). There is a theory that they're only pretending to disagree, but it's only a theory.

Let me say again (if you read what's writen above you'll see that I said it before your intervention) that I'm not claiming that the current intro is perfect. We were already discussing possible improvements, & you can join in the discussion, but please do so in accordance with WP principles. Peter jackson (talk) 12:10, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

There are people (and I am afraid but I must count you among them, Peter) who because they themselves have not studied Buddhism comprehensively and do not themselves know what Buddhism is, assume, therefore, that nobody else knows what Buddhism is. It is a curious form of reasoning. What it amounts to, however, is simple churlishness and an attempt to transfer the reality of one's own ignorance onto the outer world instead of having the humility to admit that it is oneself who does not know what Buddhism is. You seem to me to be a sceptic and your remark, "There is a theory that they're only pretending to disagree" does reveal your disingenuousness. Now there are interesting debates within the Buddhist world such as whether the Buddha really did deny the existence of Brahman or whether Mahayana Buddhism can be considered Buddhism because it unashamedly posits a substantial Ground to phenomenal reality but though interesting these debates do not have decisive bearing on the question of what Buddhism is. What Buddhism is is well understood and whether you ask Ajahn Sumedho, H.H. The Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, Sogyal Rinpoche, Thanissaro Bhikkhu or any other senior representative of the Buddhist world they will give you answers of remarkable uniformity. It is utterly untrue to say that there are different opinions as to what Buddhism is. What never fails to astound me, however, is that people who know very little about a given subject set themselves up as arbiters of truth when they themselves are in no position to be appointing themselves as such. This is one of the great problems of wikipedia, of course. You say, "It is certainly true that some Buddhists, & some scholars, believe that Buddhism is all the same in essence. Others do not." You seem to believe that the reality on the ground is that scholars and practitioners disagree what Buddhism is but I have never in all my many years of practise and study encountered this. What is more prevalent is anxiety as to how to put the teaching into practise. There is very little debate as to what the teaching actually is.

To return to Daniel's question, however, Buddhism, like Hinduism, is an invention of the colonial mind. In India there are no such things as Hinduism or Buddhism. These are racist terms coined by invaders who viewed India's religions as pagan and degenerate. They were originally pejorative terms that came into mainstream usage. But what the English word Buddhism is meant to translate is Buddhadharma. In whichever country you visit where the Buddha's teaching has become naturalised you will always find the teaching, the practise, referred to as Buddhadharma. It is quite wrong as the current article states to say that 'Buddhism is also known as Buddhadharma'. The correct thing to say would be 'Buddhadharma is referred to in English speaking countries as Buddhism'. But even with this correction the introduction still does not say what Buddhadharma is and that is why it is an embarrassment. It gives the misleading impression that Buddhism is a half-baked, nebulous thing that doesn't know what it is when in reality the teaching and practise are very clear and unambiguous. Langdell (talk) 15:14, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Of course there are people who know what the Buddhadharma is – at least those who teach it should know ;-)

Dear Langdell, would you agree with that short description:

"The term Buddhism is an analogy to the term Christianism which was established by european/western explorers and scientist to refer to something called Buddhadharma. The Buddhadharma is a set of teachings and methods which were initially developed by Siddhārtha Gautama/Buddha Śākyamuni. It aims to liberate all sentient beings from suffering by helping them to realise/to get aware of the true nature of phenomena.
Usually the Buddhadharma is categorized as religion of philosophy, but there is no definite consensus about that caused by the fact that the definitions of religion and philosophy are disputed. From the angle of Buddhadharma this discussion could be seen as non-productive and irrelevant."

Best wishes --Liebeskind (talk) 16:16, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps an article should be created on Buddhadharma with the text of Langdell's description above. Assuming there are references that support it. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 02:37, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

If Langdell is claiming that there is something called Buddhadharma that is different from Buddhism, which I don't think he/she is, & can prove it with proper citations, then there can be an article on it. Otherwise, we simply mention here that it's an alternative name, & perhaps say that some English-speaking Buddhists prefer it, & put a redirect under the name. Peter jackson (talk) 11:23, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Langdell, you are still ignoring Wikipedia guidelines, though you do at least say that WP is aproblem, implying at least some glimmering of understanding that its approach is different from your own. You must do better than that if you want to participate. It is no good endlessly asserting the truth of your statements: anyone can do that, & it doesn't get us anywhere.

It's not true that Buddhists call their religion Buddhadharma. That's a Sanskrit word, & few Buddhists use Sanskrit. They use a lot of different terms in various languages. The English term is Buddhism. It is, as you say, an invention of Westerners. We'd alreay mentioned that, I think. I don't understand your poit here: you say it's an invention of Westerners, but then attack those Westerners who say it doesn't exist.

Liebeskind, I gather you're German, so we can forgive the term Christianism, which is rare if it exists at all.

The statement that B was taught by the historical Buddha is a matter of history, & historians are not agreed. In any case, the traditional Buddhist attitude was not fundamentalist: it didn't really matter whether he actually taught something. You could say something like

B is a collective name given to various teachings regarded by their respective followers as in some sense the teachings of the Buddha.

No more time now. Peter jackson (talk) 18:47, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

"Christianism" is just an English version of [Χριστιανισμός] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help). --Liebeskind (talk) 21:14, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Has there been previous problems? Otherwise I don't see the advantage of a harsh tone. If you want wikipedia to be the best it can be, need to be nice, and give advice, rather than a harsh tone. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 02:37, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I should have said a German speaker, rather than German, not having checked. We have to be careful about presuming things like that.

Now, to continue my comments on your draft.

Your wording implies that Buddhadharma is the "real" name & Buddhism is a "false" name. Wikipedia really can't say things like that.

"It aims to liberate all sentient beings from suffering by helping them to realise/to get aware of the true nature of phenomena."

This may be a start to saying something useful, but it won't do as it stands. The word "all" has to go, as some Buddhists think some beings will never be liberated. This is the traditional Theravada view, though many modern Theravadins take a universalist position. Formerly, many Mahayana authorities took a non-universalist position as well, but very few do nowadays. If we delete "all" then this statement can probably be put in the intro as representing something all schools of Buddhism agree on. Bear in mind, though, that Jains, Hindus & Sikhs would probably agree too (I think Langdell mentioned this). Peter jackson (talk) 11:23, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I just noticed that someone changed the wording from saying that many scholars consider Buddhism a plurality to saying that recent scholars do so, which implies that they all do. Perhaps Langdell was reacting to this overstatement rather than my original wording. Peter jackson (talk) 11:30, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure that I understand this discussion of the term "Buddhadharma". As Peter has pointed out, very few Buddhists speak Sanskrit. You would expect to hear Pali terms like "Buddhadhamma" or "Buddhasāsana" in the Theravadin countries but in the rest of the Buddhist world, you would hear completely different words like fójiào (Mandarin Chinese), phật giáo (Vietnamese), bukkyō (Japanese), nangchö’ (Tibetan), buddyn surgaan (Mongolian), fucihi i xajin (Manchu), etc., etc. Meanwhile, in English, we usually call it Buddhism, and so that term seems entirely appropriate for use in this version of Wikipedia.—Nat Krause^{(Talk!·What have I done?)} 18:51, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, the point is, that the concept represented by the European term "Buddhism", which was coined by Eugène Burnouf in the 19th century, differs heavily from the concept of "Buddhadharma", "Buddhadhamma", "Buddhasāsana", "fójiào (Mandarin Chinese), phật giáo (Vietnamese), bukkyō (Japanese), nangchö’ (Tibetan), buddyn surgaan (Mongolian), fucihi i xajin (Manchu), etc., etc.". This does not mean, that the term "Buddhism" should be banned (what would be ridiculous), but I think that it would not be amiss if people were aware of that difference (particularly with regard to the fact that some people prefer to use solely the term (Buddha)dharma/dhamma), and if we mention the etymology of the word "Buddhism" then the difference of concepts must be mentioned anyway. --Liebeskind (talk) 23:23, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Can you elaborate on that? What is the distinction between the concept of Buddhadharma and all those other words vs. the concept of Buddhism? I have seen your definition of Buddhadharma, but what is your definition of Buddhism?—Nat Krause^{(Talk!·What have I done?)} 02:51, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I think this difference appears in three layers/on three levels:

The first layer might be word formation: "Buddhism" consists of two morphemes of which the second one is the derivative Suffix [-ism] that has a very vague and abstract meaning in contrast to dharma. Both, -ism and dharma are the head of the according construcion and Buddh(a) is the modificator. Thus, from the angle of word formation, "Buddhism" could be paraphrased as "a vague thing according to Buddha" and "Buddhadharma" could be paraphrased "the dharma (teaching, doctrine, ?law?) according to Buddha".

The second layer might be the meaning of "Buddhism" observed on a historical basis. See Beinorius Audrius 2005: Buddhism in early european imagination: a historical perspective.

The third layer might be the contemporary use of "Buddhism": An indicator for a difference might be translation: Buddhadharma is often translated as "Buddhas doctrine" (in English) and in German as "Buddhalehre" instead of "Buddhism" – If "Buddhism" and "Buddhadharma" had the same meaning, the words "Buddhas doctrine" and "Buddhalehre" might not exist.

Usually "Buddhism" is regarded as "just another variation of a prototype which is also the prototype of Christentum/Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism etc." But why is it not possible to make such a list where "Buddhadharma" or "Buddhas doctrine" is used instead of "Buddhism"? Maybe because Buddhism and Buddhadharma are not synonyms. Nobody would say something like "there are five world religions: Christinity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhadharma/Buddhas Doctrine" or "the trinity of Buddha, Buddhism and sangha".

Futhermore there is another test: Writing down the imaginations/association which appear when you come across these words (like a brainstorming).

• Buddhism: The Buddha, statues, Asia, H.H. the Dalai Lama, the Lamas I met, incents, mantras, non-violence; orange, yellow and red vested monks, bald heads, esoterics, hippies, Tibet, Sri Lanka, thangkas, kathas, lisa simpson, The Matrix/Keanu Reeves, Richard Gere, Schopenhauer, Heinrich Harrer, Seven Years in Tibet, Zen, Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana, Bell an Dorje, British Empire, the Buddhist flag, Dharmacakra… (and many more)
• (Buddha)dharma: The Four Noble Truths, The Eightfold Path, Dharmacakra, The Five Silas/śīla, Pali Canon, Mahayana Sutras.

Actually I think it is wrong to state that "The term Buddhism…was established by european/western explorers and scientist to refer to something called Buddhadharma." as I did above. I ralise more and more that "Buddhism" (possibly) just represents the European concept/prototype of religion painted up with an exotic asian colour. Maybe I should say it that way: "The term Buddhism…was established by european/western explorers and scientist to refer to a concept which had no name before that (and possibly did not exist before that)." It seems to me, that Buddhism is that thing that European scientists perceived/believed to see when they regarded a phenomenon which was new to them. Certainly this concept has evoveld as time passed by and more and more westerners delved into that phenomenon, but the concept of "Buddhism" is still based on that Asian coloured European concept of religion.
Therefore I think, that Buddhism and "Buddhadharma" etc. are not equivalent. Maybe that interview (search for "I gather from reading"…) confirms my assumption. Best wishes --Liebeskind (talk) 14:42, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

To add to what Nat says, I don't know whether any Theravada country refers to Buddhadhamma either. The Sinhalese term is Buddha agama.

It's almost certainly wrong to say that the term Buddhism was invented by Burnouf in the 19th century. Acording to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the English word is 1st recorded in 1801.

It's certainly the case that there are different ideas of what Buddhism is. But it seems pretty unlikely that there is 1 Western/non-Buddhist one or that there is 1 Eastern/Buddhist one. It seems much more likely that there are a lot of both. Peter jackson (talk) 11:17, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

By saying that Burnouf coined the term I did not mean that he invented the word, but that he coined it's meaning/concept. As far as I know the meaning of "Buddhism" was extremely unclear untill that.
Yes, I also think that the existence of exactly one Western and exactly one Eastern concept is unlikely. But it might be that the existing concepts can be grouped together and that the distribution of these concepts has changed over time.
Apart from that I recommend to put the text "Beinorius Audrius 2005: Buddhism in early european imagination: a historical perspective." up for discussion to make our discussion more concrete. --Liebeskind (talk) 19:16, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

An attempt concerning word formation:

Language	Term	Meaning of Components	Comment
Mandarin Chinese	佛教 (fójiào)	Buddha-teach
Vietnamese	phật giáo	Buddha-teach
Japanese	仏教 (bukkyō)	Buddha-teach
Korean	불교 (bulgyo)	light-religion	교 (gyo): A religion. Is equivalent to hanja: 敎: teach, instruct, give lessons. Thus I think that the literal meaning is/was "the teaching of the enlightened one"
Language	Term	Meaning of Components	Comment

Thus all these terms are apparently translations of "Buddhadharma/dhamma" or translations of such translations.
Of course it is important to be aware of the fact, that the meaning of compounds is not necessarily the sum of the meanings of its components. --Liebeskind (talk) 21:03, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I don't think that's quite correct. For one thing, each of these words comes from a Chinese original, so, as far as etymology, they are really only one example. More to the point, "dharma" in Chinese is almost always rendered as 法 (fă)— "Buddhadharma" would be 佛法. 敎 (jiào) is a word which can mean teach, but it is used a suffix for the names of all religions, such as Daojiao (Taoism), Jidujiao (Christianity), Yisilanjiao (Islam), etc., as well as in the word for religion itself, 宗敎 (Zōngjiào). Also, the Korean term "bul" does mean Buddha—I don't know if it also means "light", but, if so, that's probably a coincidence.—Nat Krause^{(Talk!·What have I done?)} 22:09, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

"For one thing, each of these words comes from a Chinese original, so, as far as etymology, they are really only one example." – So would you agree with the second part of my assumption ("…or translations of such translations.") to some extent?
Finally your remark on 法 (fă) and 敎 (jiào) gives evidence for the awarenes of the "Chinese Buddhists" that "Buddhism" and "Buddhadharma" do not represent the same contents: Seemingly the English distinction of "Buddhism" and "Buddhas doctrine/Buddhadharma" and the German distinction of "Buddhismus" and "Buddhalehre/Buddhadharma" equal/resemble a Chinese distinction of "佛教" and "佛法". Why should there be one Chinese Word for "Buddhism" and another one for "Buddhadharma" if "Buddhism" and "Buddhadharma" represent the same concepts? Best wishes --Liebeskind (talk) 23:23, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I feel like we're getting quite far astray here from a concrete discussion of how to work on the opening to the article; we can't expect to settle long-running debates over the terminology for discussing Buddhism in this space. It seems like this is circling close to the "is Buddhism a religion?" debate- is "religion" a fundamentally Western Procrustean bed that the teachings of the Buddha have been forced onto, in the form of the term "Buddhism", or is there an underlying similarity that makes it reasonable to analyze the teachings of the Buddha using some of the same techniques that are applied to other things that we think of as religion. It seems that you are saying that if there is debate over what Buddhism is, because Buddhism is fundamentally a Western analysis, rather than a single concrete phenomenon, that uncertainty should not be extended to cover what is or isn't the Buddha's teaching (Buddhadharma). I think this is mistaken. You seem to be equating Buddhadharma with what is recorded in the scriptures and saying "we can say unambiguously that this is what the Buddha's teachings are." But despite some shared teachings (the agamas/nikayas), there has always been ambiguity over what it was exactly the Buddha taught: differences of meaning in shared teachings, the status of scriptures that certain communities consider later additions, differences in the various Vinaya rules that governed monastic life, differences in the importance assigned to various parts of the teaching and its practice, etc. Picking a set of teachings of the Buddha, as recorded in some particular scripture, and stating "this is the Buddhadharma- Westerners might argue over what Buddhism is, but everyone concedes that this is what the Buddha taught" amounts to implicitly accepting one of the various competing claims at what constitutes the authentic message of the Buddha. Your either siding with a particular interpretive school (Theravada, one of the Mahayana recensions, etc.) or performing an original synthesis, whether you call that "restoring" the original teaching or admit to doing so explicitly. We can't do that here. We need to present competing claims, rather than try and settle them. Western observers argue: is Buddhism religion? Philosophy? Way of life? Buddhist practitioners argue (and have argued, since nearly the time of the Buddha): Which teachings are more important? Which teachings are authentic? Which recording is most accurate? (Actually, most of the time, Buddhist practitioners say: how much rice do I have to donate to be reborn as a rich man? ;) ). Both debates are something that has historically been discussed under the heading of Buddhism, so both have a place in an encyclopedia article that purports to discuss Buddhism. --Clay Collier (talk) 03:54, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I totally agree and if it seems that I wanted to define what is authentic and what is not then I verbalized my thoughts probably mistakable.
In the end it seems to me, that there are concepts of "Buddhism", which are distinct from concepts of "Buddhadharma" (otherwise it would be incomprehensible that there are distinct terms in several languages), but the closer one tries to regard these concepts the the more blurred they get.
Thus I conclude that we can not implement Langdells wish for an introductory paragraph which does not present "various points of view as to what some people think it is"

According to this I compiled a new draft:

"Buddhism is a set of teachings described as a religion or way of life. One point of view says it is a body of philosophies influenced by the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, known as Gautama Buddha. Another point of view says it is teachings to guide one to directly experiencing reality. Many scholars regard it as a plurality rather than a single entity. Buddhism is also known as Buddha Dharma or Dhamma, which means roughly the "teachings of the Awakened One" in Sanskrit and Pali, languages of ancient Buddhist texts, although it is sometimes heavily debated if the terms Buddhism and Buddha Dharma or Dhamma represent the same concepts (this debate applies not only to English, but also to other languages with similar word pairs). Buddhism began around the 5th century BCE with the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, hereafter referred to as "the Buddha"."

The bracketed part might go too far, but concealing that from the readers might also be inappropriate.

--Liebeskind (talk) 10:08, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

The fact that there are 2 words doesn't prove there are 2 concepts. Synonyms are common in many/all languages.

Langdell says that the various Western meanings & the various native meanings might fall naturally into those 2 groups. Perfectly possible, but we can't simply assume that.

Clay understates the differences between Buddhists about what is authentic scripture. Let's do a little comparison.

• All Muslims accept the same Koran (though of course they interpret it differently)
• Christians disagree on the contents of the Bible, but these disagreements, while reasonably substantial quantitatively, are mostly fairly peripheral in terms of actual teachings
• Now look at Buddhism
  • Those scriptures that East Asian Buddhists regard as the most important are rejected as inauthentic by Theravada
  • Those scriptures that Tibetan Buddhists regard as the most important are rejected as inauthentic by both Theravadins & East Asian Buddhists
  • The above are the traditional positions. Nowadays there is an ecumenical movement that considers all scriptures equal. This is probably important enough to be mentioned in the article, which it isn't at present, but we need a proper citation.

In brief, the differences on scriptures are like the difference between Jewish & Christian Bibles, not like the difference between Catholic & Protestant Bibles.

An aspect of the East-West interaction that doesn't seem to have been mentioned so far in this discussion. What we have here is a bizarre form of colonialism. Since the 19th century Western scholars have been telling Buddhists what their religion is. The really interesting point is that they're very often believed. A lot of native Buddhism as it is now is actually derived from those very Western scholars.

For example, most Buddhists had never heard of the 4 Noble Truths until Westerners told them about them. The idea that they are "the" teaching of Buddhism is based on a superficial 19th century reading of some Pali texts, but has fed back into a lot of native Buddhism. Then probably Western scholars & certainly Western Buddhists come across native teachers saying it & assume it must be right. In fact the Pali Canon explicitly states that the Buddha taught them to people when they were ready, after other teachings. In Mahayana they are a step on some paths to enlightenment, but most Mahayanists follow other paths & have no contact with them.

Of course this is now part of Buddhism & so has to be covered by the article, but so should more traditional forms, aspects & interpretations. The article at present is massively unbalanced in favour of the West. Pure Land has more followers than Zen, but much less space. Nichiren has more followers than Tibetan Buddhism, but much less space. ...

A thought on ism. The original Western names for other religions are all isms: Judaism/Hebraism, Mohammedanism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Shintoism, Zoroastrianism. But their own religion is called ChristianITY (I looked up Liebeskind's word Christianism & it does exist, but it's certainly rare). Coincidence? Or was ism originally intended as derogatory?

Various meanings. Theravada tradition distinguishes 3 meanings of dhamma relevant here:

• pariyatti: learning, scriptures, doctrine
• patipatti: practice
• pativedha: realization

There are also distinctions made between dhamma & sasana. Certainly some Western scholars say that dhamma is the teaching in a rather morev theoretical sense while sasana is the teaching as actuallized in real life practices & institutions.

Do we want to go into all thi here? Peter jackson (talk) 12:10, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Perfectly wonderful! Finally we understand each other.
"Do we want to go into all thi here?" – Maybe not in the introductory Paragraph ;-) --Liebeskind (talk) 12:39, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I think it should be considered, that "the Dharma" is ought to be dynamic, not static ("May the buddhas and bodhisattvas…continue to turn the wheel of Dharma."). Consequently nobody can claim that Buddhist texts do represent an absolute truth (in contrast to the Koran or as well as the Bible).
Thus we might state, that the blurriness of what Buddhism or the Dharma exactly is is not a bug, but a (possibly desired) consequence of its features. --Liebeskind (talk) 13:29, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

You would argue that no one says that?—Nat Krause^{(Talk!·What have I done?)} 13:34, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

No (if I got your question right), but I would not recommend anybody to do so as the support of the others will be extremely weak compared to Christianity or *sl*m. --Liebeskind (talk) 14:23, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Why I would not recommend it: Normally "Buddhists" assume, that the nature of phenomena is illusory, that nothing inside the samsara is of inherent existence, that everything inside the samsara is dependent/relative, not absolute and that a conceptless state like nirvana can not be described by concepts. Thus if somebody claims that Buddhist texts are absolute, ohters will possibly accuse him of ignoring that a text is part of the samsara and that it is nothing but an accumulation of interweaved concepts which are inevitably blurry and non-inherently existent. --Liebeskind (talk) 16:02, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

We're getting off the point again. Interesting as it can be (& I do it myself), we're theoretically not here to decide the truth ourselves. Certainly we aren't supposed to do that for the article, tho' in practice nobody's going to stop us doing it on the talk page. What the article is supposed to do is simply report expert opinion. Where there are different opinions, we must be neutral. That means on any particular question in any particular place we have only 3 permissible options:

• don't mention it at all
• mention that there are different views, but don't give details
• give details of all significant views

On any question where the last option would take a lot of space, that option is excluded for the opening intro. Peter jackson (talk) 11:23, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Intro:

Maybe we should dare to undertake a paradigm shift.

I think there are two possible ways of forming an intro:

• An abstract that tries to cover the content of the whole article (as it is done now)
• A definition of what the article is ought to be/aims to be/what should be covered (like the intro of a scientific article)

So if we can't apply the first option we might try the second one.

Just a draft:

"This article is ought to/shall illustrate the phenomenon/phenomena covered by the term Buddhism, the basic concepts of this phenomenon/these phenomena as well as the genesis/origin/provenance of the term."

This option has two advantages over the other option:

• We would not be enforced to classify and describe Buddhism within an extremely short paragraph (I think that's impossible)
• As we decided first what the article should cover and made it clear to all readers & editors of the article, the article would become much clearer and if the definition within the intro is done right the article would not raise wrong expectations anymore.

Article:

I think we should first compile/develop a set of well structured chapter titles.

Then we could decide chapter by chapter whether we

• "give details of all significant views"

or (if giving "details of all significant views" would be too extensive/bulky) we

• "mention that there are different views, but don't give details" and refer to a main article and/or a selection of literarture for further reading.

Best wishes --Liebeskind (talk) 12:48, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

For ease of reference, here's the intro to the guideline on intros.

"The lead section, lead, lede, or introduction of a Wikipedia article is the section before the first heading. The table of contents, if displayed, appears between the lead section and the first heading. The lead serves a dual role both as an introduction to the article below and as a short, independent summary of the important aspects of the article's topic.

The lead should be able to stand alone as a concise overview of the article. It should establish context, summarize the most important points, explain why the subject is interesting or notable, and briefly describe its notable controversies, if there are any. The emphasis given to material in the lead should roughly reflect its importance to the topic according to reliable, published sources. The lead should not "tease" the reader by hinting at but not explaining important facts that will appear later in the article. It should contain up to four paragraphs, should be carefully sourced as appropriate, and should be written in a clear, accessible style so as to invite a reading of the full article."

So it looks to me as if the idea is indeed to summarize the article, though there is also a template saying there can be exceptions. It doesn't seem to me as if the current intro attempts to do that, which you seem to think it does. If we do want to do it that way, I'm firmly of the view that we should wait until the article itself is reasonably balanced. Your alternative suggestion has some points in its favour, but again the article as at present constituted does not actually fulfil the promise. So again I think we should get the article into a reasonably balanced state before trying anything radical on the intro. Peter jackson (talk) 18:03, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Well – we tried to define and classify the term Buddhism in the intro – a task that might be even too voluminous for a whole article and even if we would try to fullfill just the guideline, the intro might get rather vast.
I tried the "radical" intro version already in the article de:Indische Ziffern, and it worked well, but even if we decide not to implement the radical version we should clarify what should be covered by the article.--Liebeskind (talk) 19:33, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

What should be covered by the article is all the main things conventionally described as Buddhism. In borderline cases like Falun gong, if they're not included there should be a note to say so. The point I'm trying to make is that there are important things conventionally described as Buddhism that the article at present doesn't deal with, such as devotional practices, so to change the intro wording to say that the article does this before it actually does so would not be correct. It would look rather strange to have the intro saying "this is what the article should do but it doesn't yet actually do it", so I suggest not radically changing the intro till the article is sorted out. Peter jackson (talk) 11:24, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

By stating that "we should clarify what should be covered by the article" I meant clarifying it for internal use on the discussion page, not as part of the intro. Best wishes --Liebeskind (talk) 12:07, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Tags

As I've had no respose after more than a week to my query about the difference on 2 talk pages, I've simply put both in. If anyone is certain they're the same they can delete 1. If anyone knows the difference they can tell me so I can decide which is/are appropriate. Alternatively, they might decide for themself that both are needed. Peter jackson (talk) 11:33, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Western Buddhism

I know Buddhism might be a minority faith outside Asia, but shouldn't there be more information about Buddhism in Europe or the United States? I was thinking of the writings of Christmas Humphreys or Alan Watts. Would such mention be beyond the scope of this article?Smiloid (talk) 07:38, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Western Buddhism is mentioned in the Buddhism today section. In addition, most of the article is about those forms, aspects & interpretations of traditional Buddhism that happen to be popular among Western Buddhists, while things like faith, devotion, ritual, karma & rebirth are treated briefly if at all. In effect, the article is mainly about Western Buddhism already. Peter jackson (talk) 11:42, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Mindstream, etc.

Could someone who knows a bit more about Tibetan Buddhism have a look at Mindstream and some of the other articles that are mentioned on the Fringe Theory Noticeboard article? It seems that a great deal of New Age content and original research is being blended together, and passed off as a conventional understanding of some Tibetan Buddhist terms. --Clay Collier (talk) 02:35, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware, this is all the work of one editor—so it's basically a question of how we should interact with him.—Nat Krause^{(Talk!·What have I done?)} 04:11, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

shortcomings of the lead section

1) Buddhism is more than a 'set of teachings'. It is also (more importantly): a) the putting into practice of those teachings. b) Cultural institutions such as temple and monastic life. You cannot describe 'a set of teachings' either as a religion or 'a way of life'. The teachings may outline and point in the direction of a particular way of life but the teachings themselves cannot be 'described... as a way of life'. Nor can they be described as a religion. Religion is the actualisation of religious/spiritual/moral teachings in personal action and social and cultural symbolic ritual.

2) The second sentence says, 'One point of view says it is a body of philosophies influenced by the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, known as Gautama Buddha'. One is then referred to a statement by the First Congress of the World Buddhist Sangha Council in which no such thing is said. The understandable reason why this is not said is because this is not what Buddhism is. Buddhism is an English term invented by racist conquerors quite certain of their own superiority to describe the practise of those who follow the teaching of Siddhattha Gotama. This teaching and practise is known in India and the East as Buddhadharma. There is no such thing as Buddhism in the East. The Buddhadharma on the other hand is a way of mind-body transformation not 'a body of philosophies'. The Buddha eschewed philosophical speculation.

3) 'Many scholars regard it as a plurality' (apparently the view of Rupert Gethin). The teaching and practise of the Buddha is highly integrated and internally coherent. Whether you follow the Vajrayana, Zen, Theravada, you are always a disciple of Lord Buddha (the historical Gautama Buddha or Sakyamuni as he is commonly known in the Mahayana). Gautama Buddha is the teacher of the Buddhadharma - what we call 'Buddhism'. His teaching is recorded in the tipitaka (tripitaka or Pali Canon) but all Mahayanists regard the Pali Canon (the agamas) as authoritative. Ask the Dalai Lama! Don't take my word for it. There is controversy about the historical authenticity of the Mahayana texts partly because they appear to innovate doctrines which Sakyamuni did not teach in the tripitaka (an example being the dharmakaya/Buddha-mind substrate equivalent to the post-vedic conception of Brahman. However, some eminent Pali scholars believe that the Buddha did not deny the existence of Brahman rather he did not feel that cataphatic theology was conducive to the goal of liberation) but one might easily argue that apart from minor variations there is in the main unity between the two great traditions - greater unity than the expression 'many scholars regard it as a plurality' suggests. You may just as well say 'many scholars regard it as a unity' and give a reference to a university tenured lecturer in Buddhism to back that claim up. However the truth behind the claim that 'many scholars regard it as a plurality' in this lead section is rather a reticence or timidity to assert what the Buddha actually taught and practised.

4) 'Buddhism is also known as Buddhadharma'. Again, one is putting the cart before the horse. It is the Buddhadharma that is also called Buddhism. As i say, there is no such thing as Buddhism in the lands where that spiritual tradition has become naturalised. The same can be said for Hinduism (another racist term).

Lastly, the guidelines for writing lead sections states that, The lead section should briefly summarize the most important points covered in an article in such a way that it can stand on its own as a concise version of the article. It is even more important here than for the rest of the article that the text be accessible. In other words somebody who does not have the time to read the whole article should be able from reading this introductory section to get a concise definition of what Buddhism is. As it stands the current version does not do this. There is no reason why it should not.Langdell (talk) 12:58, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Numbering is helpful for cross ref.

1 There's a lot of validity in this. However, if we're going to go into this we need to look at what experts in comparative religion/study of religion(s) have to say about the meaning of the term.

2 Thanks for pointing out that the source cited doesn't actually say what the article says it says. You're perfectly entitled to delete things like that, & it's a good thing that people check from time to time.

Then you go on to repeat, like the bellman, what you said before, which we've already proved wrong, about people in the East talking about Buddhadharma rather than Buddhism.

The statement that the Buddha eschewed philosophical speculation is theory & interpretation. There is no consensus among historians on the historical question of what the Buddha actually taught.

3 You don't mention Pure Land, which is more popular than Zen, or Nichiren, which is more popular than Tibetan Buddhism.

Now, let's have a look at the concept of teaching of the Buddha, or, more precisely, word of the Buddha. As I mentioned above, there is no consensus among historians on the historical question of what the Buddha actually taught. However, this doesn't necessarily matter. Nobody ever said that only things the historical Buddha actually, as a matter of historical fact, said should count as the word of the Buddha. Both the Pali Canon & the Mahayana sutras include material quite openly taught by disciples, eg Theragatha & Vimalakirti. Also, the vinayas of all schools include accounts of events after the Buddha's death. What counts is whether things harmonize with the Teaching, or however you prefer to phrase it. So followers of any Buddhist tradition can simply take it on faith that that tradition so harmonizes.

It's probably true that Mahayana as a whole regards the Pali Canon as authentic in some sense, though the Dalai Lama hasn't asked all 200000000 of them what they think, so his statement, if any, on that point is worthless. I don't know what you mean by historical authenticity. If you mean what the Buddha actually said, then as I said there's no consensus, but no scholar would claim more than that about 1/4 of the Pali Canon represents, in content but not form, the words of the Buddha, & few claim even that much. No scholar would make any such claim about the Mahayana sutras.

I don't know whether one could easily argue for essential unity. Certainly some do so. In any case, as already pointed out, Wikipedia is not about arguing out the truth ourselves, it's about reporting expert opinion. However, one could easily argue the contrary. The Jodo Shinshu doctrine of salvation by faith alone, or the Tibetan practice of sexual yoga, would be totally rejected by many other Buddhists, & would certainly appear at 1st sight to be radically different from much other Buddhism.

"You may just as well say 'many scholars regard it as a unity'". Perhaps, if you can find a citation. I put it the other way round because the other view had already been given.

"However the truth behind the claim that 'many scholars regard it as a plurality' in this lead section is rather a reticence or timidity to assert what the Buddha actually taught and practised." Again, there is no consensus among historians on the historical question of what the Buddha actually taught. Furthermore, this is not the conventional meaning of the term "Buddhism": it doesn't mean what the Buddha actually taught, it means what Buddhists believe he taught.

It's obviously true that the Sanskrit term Buddhadharma is older than the English term Buddhism, but this is English Wikipedia, not Sanskrit Wikipedia, & we use the standard English term. It's no good endlessly repeating you obsessions. That doesn't get us anywhere.

I'll get back to the guidelines when I have time. Peter jackson (talk) 12:11, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, a bit of time. Yes, the guidelines say that, & that's what we should do if we can. However, guidelines are subordinate to policy, so the NPOV requirement comes 1st: we can only have such a summary if it's balanced. Eg, noting the guideline recommendation of 3 or 4 paras for a long article like this:

1. general
2. Pure Land
3. Theravada
4. others

This is balanced because 2-4 have about 1/3 of world Buddhists each. Peter jackson (talk) 15:04, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

I put Pure Land 1st because the figures I have suggest it has rather more followers than Theravada, but the difference is probably small & the figures are uncertain, so on further consideration I think we can treat them as equal, & put Theravada 1st to make all Mahayana contiguous.

Anyway, that's 1 way of doing it. There may well be others, but they must satisfy WP policies on neutrality & verifiability. Peter jackson (talk) 11:30, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

There are many false things that you say, Mr Jackson. You say you have proved wrong the assertion that people in the east do not talk about Buddhadharma. No one who has visited India, Burma, Thailand, Japan, Korea, lived in monasteries and studied the dharma with qualified teachers would assert such a thing. It is such an elementary error that it confirms my suspicion that you are a poseur. To any serious student of the dharma your claims are simply embarrassing. I do not know where you find the presumption to say such things. What hubris! What folly! How silly you look with you pseudo-authoritative pomp. That there is no such thing as Buddhism in the East but only the Buddhadharma is not obsession but fact.

You say there is no consensus among historians on the historical question of what the Buddha actually taught. Again, you are wrong. Please provide some documentation for your claims. You say "Nobody ever said that only things the historical Buddha actually, as a matter of historical fact, said should count as the word of the Buddha". Nobody except an estimated 100 million Theravada Buddhists! The sutras in the Pali canon taught by disciples are expositions of what the Teacher (Gautama) taught - nothing else. There is a doctrine, you see. This is understood by all practising Buddhists. This doctrine is called the Dharma. It is what the Buddha taught. Thus it is called the Buddhadharma. This doctrine has a very definite form. It has a very definite aim. It is remarkable among the religious teachings of the world in its clarity, coherence and rationality.

To say as you do, "The statement that the Buddha eschewed philosophical speculation is theory & interpretation" displays such a gross ignorance of elementary matters that again one can only blush at yout ill-informed comments. In the words of Sayagyi U Ba Khin, "The Dhamma is not the result of conjecture or speculation, but the result of personal attainments, and it is precise in every respect." You contradict yourself, Mr Jackson: "What counts is whether things harmonise with the Teaching...so followers of any Buddhist tradition can take it on faith that that tradition so harmonises." What Teaching is this that you are talking about? You say there is no consensus on what the Buddha taught. How can students know what harmonises with the teaching if we cannot be sure what the teaching is. You have been claiming that we have a plurality of doctrines each claiming to be what the Buddha taught. You say that Buddhism is not what the Buddha actually taught but what people think the Buddha taught. That sort of relativism is very far from the truth; very far from the dharma. Do you not feel ashamed to say such things?

As for His Holiness The Dalai Lama, I don't think any of his statements are worthless. He is a man of great wisdom and learning. The point in brief is that there is a coherent doctrine attributable to the historical Buddha and there is little dispute as to what this doctrine is. To claim otherwise is to speak falsely. Perhaps you rejoice in schism. Is this your agenda? To cause schism in the community of the faithful? You wish to darken the light? You wish beings to remain in ignorance? Langdell (talk) 18:53, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

• Peter's point about 'Buddhadharma' is that that particular term- being Sanskrit and thus foreign to most Buddhists in the world- is not typically used by Buddhists themselves. It's incorrect to posit that 'Buddhism' is what it is called in the West and 'Buddhadharma' is what it's called in the East.
• With regards to what the Buddha talk, Peter is spot on about the scholastic consensus. We don't even know what language the Buddha taught in, though we have some good guesses. By cross-referencing the various Agamas with the Pali Nikayas, some scholars claim to have identified a core strata of teachings that were in use by the community before the earliest schisms that took place (Warder reasons along these lines). That's as far as we can go as scholars; we can see "the earliest texts seem to have shared these ideas." We can't go past that to claim that they are then the what the Buddha taught specifically. For all we know, a very small kernel of it was taught by the Buddha and then it was elaborated into a standard form in the period between the Buddha's death and the early schisms. The Pali Canon contains the teachings of monks other than the Buddha, and texts that were added long after the Buddha's death- the Kathavatthu of the Abhidhamma Pitaka, for instance. Practitioners tend to regard the tradition that they inherited as being the true teachings of the Buddha, but there's no getting around the fact that the various traditions contradict one another and set different priorities to different teachings. In order to keep with NPOV, we need to acknowledge that there is a difference between what a practitioner of a particular tradition would say about those teachings, how other traditions regard them, and what scholars say about them. We have a plurality of philosophic traditions, different ritual and cultural forms.
• The Dalai Lama is great. But he doesn't take polls of Mahayana adherents before speaking, nor are his statements on how to understand Buddhism binding for anyone in particular. His opinion is one data point, as is the opinion of any other single teacher within the tradition.
• You're straying into personal accusations here by accusing Peter of somehow trying to foment a split within the Buddhist community by encouraging the representation of scholarly opinion within a Wikipedia article. Remember WP:AGF. We ain't selling plasma here, as an elderly relative used to say, so there's no need to get worked up. I think a lot of your points regarding the intro were addressed in the discussion above. I'm working on a revised version of the proposed intro that I posted as well. I think it would be more constructive to focus concretely either on 1) improving the intro, or 2) improving the article- we're not going to settle the issue of the existence or non-existence of a set of core Buddhist beliefs on a Talk page. --Clay Collier (talk) 20:38, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I see you've already replied to most of Langdell's remarks for me.

Let me respond to the request for documentation by referring to 2 citations that I've already put in, in this article & in Agama (text)

"The sutras in the Pali canon taught by disciples are expositions of what the Teacher (Gautama) taught - nothing else." Exactly what I said, in different words: "What counts is whether things harmonize with the Teaching, or however you prefer to phrase it." As mentioned above, what Mahayanists believe to be the most important teachings/scriptures are rejected by Theravada. In other words, there is fundamental disagreement, not just peripheral. That is the surface position. It may not be so on a deeper level. Certainly some scholars say so, but I don't think there's a consensus. Nor is there a consensus among Buddhists. Many Theravadins don't even regard Mahayana as proper Buddhism. Dogen claimed that his Soto Zen was the only true Buddhism (Macmillan Encyclopedia of Buddhism (Volume One), page 135). &c

Because there's no historical consensus, Buddhists can take things on faith. They can't know what the Buddha taught without advanced psychic powers, which Wikipedia cannot take any notice of.

"You have been claiming that we have a plurality of doctrines each claiming to be what the Buddha taught. You say that Buddhism is not what the Buddha actually taught but what people think the Buddha taught. That sort of relativism is very far from the truth; very far from the dharma." It is blatantly obvious that there are, on the surface, a plurality of doctrines claiming to be the Buddha's teaching. As aforesaid, that may not be so at a deeper level. The conventional reference of the term Buddhism is the religion practised by 300000000 people, not scholars' theories of ancient history. Wikipedia is not about "truth" & it's certainly not about dharma. It's about collecting together all the things that have been said by "reliable sources" in 1 place, no more & no less. Peter jackson (talk) 11:54, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

It may be worth mentioning here that there's a distinction between the origin of a term & its current meaning. The British Conservative Party is perfectly happy with its nickname Tory, which was originally an insult. When survivors of the British Expeditionary heard that the Kaiser had called them a contemptible little army they started calling themselves (old) contemptibles. The vast majority of English-speaking Buddhists, East & West, are perfectly happy with the term. There's the well-known Buddhist Publication Society in Ceylon. There are endless Buddhist Societies throughout the English-speaking world. There are adverts for courses in Buddhist meditation. There are books by the Dalai Lama & many other teachers with Buddhism/t in the title. Peter jackson (talk) 11:08, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I should modify something I said above. My rejection of the idea of drastic rewriting of the intro was too hasty & sweeping. I was reacting to some particular types of suggestions. In fact, the guidelines seem to suggest that the intro should be a sort of mini-article. If Clay or anyone else can produce a neutral & verifiable summary of Buddhism in 4 paras, I'd be only too pleased to have it in the article. Then we could get down to producing a neutral & verifiable article. Peter jackson (talk) 17:51, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Now, while we're waiting for Clay to prepare his version, here's a rough draft of my own for consideration.

"Buddhism is the beliefs & practices regarded by their respective adherents as the teaching of the Buddha (awakened 1). The Sanskrit form of his name was Gautama, & he lived & taught in or around the 5th century BC in NE India, including parts of present-day Nepal. According to the Buddhist tradition, one's karma, ie actions by thought, word & deed, tends to produce appropriate rebirths (strictly speaking, reconceptions) &/or experience. The ultimate goal of Buddhism is to transcend this in some sense. In most of the Buddhist world a leading role is played by a celibate order of monks, & sometimes nuns. Japan, however, has a mostly married clergy.

Theravada (Teaching of the Elders, or Ancient Teaching) Buddhism teaches a graduated path. Starting from a moral foundation, one practises various forms of meditation to calm the mind. These are followed by, or combined with, meditational practices to develop insight into the true nature of reality, using doctrinal frameworks of greater or lesser complexity. By doing this sufficiently, one can attain liberation from the cycle of rebirth.

All other present-day forms of Buddhism are classified as Mahayana (Great Way or Vehicle), which emphasizes dedication to the spiritual welfare of others. Pure Land Buddhism is an essentially devotional tradition. Its main practice is recitation of homage to the Buddha Amitabha. Followers hope or expect to be reborn in his Pure Land of the West, a spiritually advanced realm.

Zen (Meditation) Buddhism emphasizes forms of meditation intended to break through conceptual thinking. Nichiren Buddhism, named after its founder, is a devotional tradition. The main object of its homage is the Lotus Sutra, the principal scripture of this tradition. Tibetan Buddhism, also found elsewhere, is often grouped together with Shingon (True Word) under the heading Vajrayana (Thunderbolt Way or Vehicle). These traditions emphasize various ritualistic forms of meditational practices. There are other forms of Buddhism. Falun Gong is sometimes counted as a form of Buddhism."

Peter jackson (talk) 11:50, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

This discussion appears to have stalled, so lemme see if I can ask a few provocative questions to get the samsara rolling again...

1. Is Buddhism a revealed religion?
2. Does Buddhism have a cosmogony and cosmology?
3. Does Buddhism have a soteriology?
4. Does Buddhism have a professional priesthood?
5. Does Buddhism have a pantheon? And what role does that play within its framework?
6. Does Buddhism have a core canon that is considered authoritative by all branches?

Of course there is vast room for differences under the big umbrella that we call "Buddhism", but the basic, elementary features are the same everywhere. These are the things that make its followers consider themselves "Buddhists." So please don't wax philosophical in the lead section of what Buddhism may be, and for heaven's sake don't make the reader try to figure out what Many scholars regard it as a plurality rather than a single entity" is supposed to mean. Similarly "as a religion or way of life"; is someone seriously arguing that a religion is not a "way of life"?

Most of the first paragraph of Peter's last suggestion (immediately above this one) is at any rate better than the present lede, but (most of) the 2nd-4th paras is just hair-splitting, and can be summarized in one simple sentence: "There are several different [[schools and movements]] within greater Buddhism; each represents a different approach to achieve moksha—[brief explanation here]."

Come on folks! Nirvana doesn't come without action! :) -- Fullstop (talk) 02:18, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

1. In a sense. That is, the teaching is revealed by the Buddha.
2. A cosmology, yes. Cosmogony only in a sense. That is, the universe is repeatedly re-created & redestroyed.
3. A number of variants. Whether they differ less from each other than they do from some other religions is not obvious.
4. It has a full-time clergy. One of their roles is performing rituals for people, which is the basic meaning of priesthood, I think.
5. Not in a useful sense. That is, there are texts that everyone recognizes as scripture, but they're not recognized as core, as the most important, by everyone.

The '"basic", elementary' features are faith & devotion, karma & rebirth, ritual, the 5 precepts &c. That's where everyone in all traditional Eastern forms of Buddhism starts. The idea that the 4 Noble Truths, meditation &c are basic & elementary is a Western fantasy, tho' one that has fed back into Some Eastern Buddhism in modern times.

1. The guidelines recommend 3 or 4 paras for a long article like this. Or would you like to shorten the article? It was similar in length to Christianity & Islam, last time I cheched.
2. Moksha is not a straightforward concept applied to Buddhiam. Peter jackson (talk) 09:45, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

#1 So start with "the 'basic, elementary' features are faith & devotion, karma & rebirth, ritual, the 5 precepts &c."

#2 The guidelines don't override common sense. Iff it takes one paragraph to get the gist, then thats all it takes. If it takes 5, then so be it. Forcing 3 or 4 paragraphs just because a guideline tells you to is not very wise, particularly when 3 of 4 paragraphs don't contribute anything to an understanding of Buddhism is. Thats my take on it anyway. Its not necessary to compare what the Christianity or Islam articles do/don't. (And besides, if you want to compare to another article, then compare content, not number of paragraphs). To put it another way: Imagine your audience is a high school kid who knows nothing of Buddhism. Do you really intend to tell him/her that Buddhism is so fractured that there 3/4 of a definition goes into listing the schisms? -- Fullstop (talk) 03:39, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Quite possibly, if that's the way it is. Our job is to give a fair & accurate picture of Buddhism, which the article at present signally fails to do. Remember we're supposed to base the article on reliable sources. That means scholarly studies of Buddhism. Writings by Buddhists are reliable sources only for their authors' views, not for those of the other 300,000,000 Buddhists. Everything in the article must be verifiable from such sources. So what do they tell us about Buddhism as a whole? Very little. Most of them don't even attempt to say what Buddhism as a whole is. They just start detailing all the different things covered by the name. So maybe that's what we should be doing.

Working backwards to your previous point. A fair & balanced account of Buddhism must cover both the elementary & the advanced teachings of all major forms of Buddhism. That's a tall order for 1 para in the intro. That's why I thought it sensible to use the recommended allowance. Coincidentally, it allowed me, using the approach I was using, to achieve an automatic balance between the main forms of Buddhism. As I said above, the world's Buddhists can be divided into 3 roughly equal groups:

1. Theravada
2. Pure Land
3. the rest

I'm not saying this is necessarily the only way to do it. Perhaps Clay's version when ready will be suitable. Or perhaps you or someone else can come up with something. Peter jackson (talk) 09:34, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

How about this for a plan of action: Summarize each top-level (==x==) section in the article as one or two sentences. Then, consolidate that collection of sentences into a lead proposal, using as much space as necessary. Then, let other editors (including Clay) apply Occam's razor.

What do you think? -- Fullstop (talk) 21:42, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

The problem with that is that the article is

• chaotically arranged, with teachings randomly scattered thro' several sections
• massively unbalanced, with nearly all the space going to those bits & pieces of Buddhism that happen to be fashionable in the West; to take only the most obvious example, Pure Land, followed by about 1/3 of the world's Buddhists, gets only a few lines, because it has virtually no Western followers (probably because those of a devotional mentality will simply stay with Christianity)

If we can get the article properly organized & balanced, then we might be able to apply your suggestion. Alternatively, we could do it the other way round, as I was trying to do: summarize what the article ought to be like, & then make the article fit afterwards. Peter jackson (talk) 09:41, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

That (brief->detail) sounds like the way to go. -- Fullstop (talk) 20:05, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Buddhism against climate change

Please include information about the buddhist community fighting against climate change/environmental damage in the article. See the Association of Buddhists for the Environment (ABE

81.246.172.166 (talk) 09:03, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

That's far too specialized for this article. Perhaps someone can tell you of an appropriate one. Peter jackson (talk) 11:26, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

A couple of comments

The Shambhala Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen, pub. 1991 by Shambhala Publications, Inc., is a translation of the Lexikon der oestlichen Weisheitslehren, edited by Stephan Schuhmacher and Gert Woerner, pub. 1986 by Otto-Wilhelm-Barth Verlag. The entry for Buddhism begins "Buddhism; the religion of the awakened one; one of the three great world religions." So there's your scholarly citation for Buddhism as a single religion, to go along with your citation for Buddhism as several entities.

The article states that Chan Buddhism disappeared in China after the Communist Revolution. In fact, it continued in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and disappeared in the mainland only during the Cultural Revolution. After the Cultural Revolution, the surviving monasteries reopened and monks resumed training. Chan is being practiced today on mainland China. The information about mainland China is from the same article on Buddhism cited above. This is the URL for a web page with info on a contemporary Chinese Chan teacher who practices in Taiwan; http://www.cooper.edu/organizations/clubs/meditation/founder.html RenGalskap 02:04, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Check with Liebeskind, but with my German that translates as Dictionary of Eastern Wisdom Teaching(s?). If the Shambala (check spelling) title is an accurate description of the contents of the book, then the German title isn't, & vice versa, assuming you've understood correctly & they are indeed the same book. Shambala are a Buddhist propaganda organization, & so not a reliable source by WP definition, except for statements about their own views. I don't know about the German publisher; they may well be reputable. All this raises qestions about the source here.

That's a bit unfair. Shambala is a publisher of religious texts, most of them Buddhist, and some of them translations by excellent scholars. You have to judge the individual book, and not condemn the lot because because the publisher chooses to specialize in religious material.

In this case, it's unclear whether an anonymous writer at Shambala or the original German author is responsible for the content, and I understand that is a problem. But that's a problem with this dictionary, not with all books published by Shambala. --RenGalskap 13:58, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Its purpose is tp propagate its brand of Buddhism, isn't it? Then it's a propaganda organization.

This is from WP:V, ie it's official WP policy:

Reliable sources

Articles should rely on reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. Reliable sources are necessary both to substantiate material within articles and to give credit to authors and publishers in order to avoid plagiarism and copyright violations. Sources should directly support the information as it is presented in an article and should be appropriate to the claims made: exceptional claims require exceptional sources.

All articles must adhere to Wikipedia's neutrality policy, fairly representing all majority and significant-minority viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in rough proportion to the prominence of each view. Tiny-minority views and fringe theories need not be included, except in articles devoted to them.

In general, the most reliable sources are peer-reviewed journals and books published in university presses; university-level textbooks; magazines, journals, and books published by respected publishing houses; and mainstream newspapers. As a rule of thumb, the greater the degree of scrutiny involved in checking facts, analyzing legal issues, and scrutinizing the evidence and arguments of a particular work, the more reliable it is.

Academic and peer-reviewed publications are highly valued and usually the most reliable sources in areas where they are available, such as history, medicine and science. Material from reliable non-academic sources may also be used in these areas, particularly if they are respected mainstream publications. The appropriateness of any source always depends on the context. Where there is disagreement between sources, their views should be clearly attributed in the text.

For a guideline discussing the reliability of particular types of sources, see Wikipedia:Reliable sources (WP:RS). Because policies take precedence over guidelines, in the case of an inconsistency between this page and that one, this page has priority, and WP:RS should be updated accordingly. To discuss the reliability of specific sources, consult the Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard.

Shambala (or whatever) is not 3rd party, & doesn't fit the picture given here. Note that it's the publisher that counts.

Reputation for fact checking. Eg normal procedure at Cambridge University Press is as follows. A book submitted is passed to 2 referees who are specialists in the field, usually at British universities. If they disagree a 3rd is called in. If the book is published it will also have been read by editor, subeditor & proofreader, graduates in the relevant discipline. This is what it means. Peter jackson (talk) 10:33, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Then let me point out that you're not following these guidelines in the article. You have the following reference:

Speaking of Zen in general, Buddhist scholar Stephen Hodge writes (Zen Masterclass, Godsfield Press, 2002, pp. 12–13)

Here's a description of Godsfield Press from their web site:

Godsfield Press publishes inspirational titles covering areas such as spirituality and religion, personal growth, alternative health and healing, divination and humour so you can grow in mind, body and spirit.

In other words, they are a trade publisher that specializes in the same type of books that Shambala specializes in.

Furthermore, if you go to Stephen Hodge's user page here at Wikipedia, you'll see that he has no academic background in Zen, nor does he have training with Zen teachers. His book Zen Masterclass is a trade publication intended for a general audience, and there's no indication of the sort of fact checking carried out at Cambridge.

Note that I'm not slamming Hodge, who has very strong academic qualifications in a number of areas of Buddhism. And I agree with his description of Zen. I believe it is accurate. However, that source doesn't measure up to the standards that you describe above. RenGalskap (talk) 16:11, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

I'll assume you're using "you" in the plural. I didn't write that material. User:TonyMPNS did. I didn't look into whether the sources were reliable, since it was my complaints about the lack of material on the subject that prompted him to add this material, & I think it's better to leave it for now, though you can delete it if you like, along with much, or most, of the article, as there's a lot here that either cites no source or cites Buddhist propaganda sources. My attitude is that it's a matter of priorities. Where I notice something I know to be seriously wrong or misleading I try to deal with it. Otherwise I tend to leave it till later. My 1st priority is to get the article into some sort of coherent arrangement. Then we can redress the massive imbalances, such as having only a few lines on Pure Land, whose followers are about 1/3 of the Buddhists in the world. Only after the article is broadly balanced would I want to start going thro' everything to check against reliable sources. Peter jackson (talk) 09:46, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I mean you, singular, as the enforcer of standards. :)

I think you're doing a really good job. I'm trying to find a way to avoid having obviously untrue statements like "Chan is dead on the mainland" while adhering to the standards you're trying to enforce. Since I haven't worked with the standards before, I'm making suggestions that you can't use, but the suggestions seem to be leading to modifications that work. So I think the process is working. :)

I agree completely with your comments about the imbalance between Chan and Pure Land. I realize that I'm pestering you about a numerically unimportant group while much larger, major groups are being neglected. I'll see what I can do about getting some citations on Pure Land, but as a Chan/Zen Buddhist, I don't have anything in my bookshelves that would offer much. --RenGalskap (talk) 21:38, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough, but I don't want to be held responsible for all the failings of the article. I've tried in the past to get it sorted out, & run into opposition. Although I'm leaving a lot of unsatisfactory material to concentrate on other priorities, I tend to take up new material if that's unsatisfactory. Not entirely logical perhaps. Peter jackson (talk) 11:51, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Your flattery is going to my head. I should have said we've tried ... Peter jackson (talk) 11:46, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

However, it doesn't actually matter. I never suggested there weren't scholars who held that view, & the wording wasn't intended to suggest otherwise.

I never claimed that you suggested that. You mentioned earlier that you had no citation for Buddhism as a single religion. I merely offered a citation to go along with your citation for Buddhism as multiple entities. And I stated explicitly that that was what I was doing. :) --RenGalskap 13:11, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

This is what was actually said above:

'"You may just as well say 'many scholars regard it as a unity'". Perhaps, if you can find a citation.'

What I meant was a citation for "many". WP:RS says such statements should cite a reliable source to that effect, tho' I admit I don't always do this myself when it seems uncontentious.

In fact I'm inclined to the view that we should get rid of all this stuff about the nature of Buddhism from the introduction. My draft above tries to find an uncontentious way of doing this.Peter jackson (talk) 11:53, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

What you say about Chan may well be citable from a reputable source, in which case the article will have to be updated accordingly. Provisionally, it could probably go back to the previous wording, that Chan was kept up in a small number of monasteries, but that would be subject to further reliable information.

As to the distinction between the communist takeover & the cultural revolution, Welch quite specifically stated that Chan was killed off by the land reforms of 1950. If other scholars disagree (or if he changed his mind later), then again the article should be adjusted accordingly.

The statement that Chan disappeared in China after the communist takeover should be understood by any reasonably intelligent reader as applying only to China in the sense of the territory where the communists took over. Peter jackson (talk) 11:17, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't know what Welch wrote, but the article currently says "Chan survived into the 2oth century in a small number of monasteries, but died out after the communist takeover." A reasonably intelligent reader would take this literally; there currently is no Chan Buddhism. The implication of the sentence is that Chan existed only in areas that fell under communist rule. Otherwise, it wouldn't have died out after the communist takeover. That's not an unreasonable implication if you don't know anything about Chan. Hong Kong and Taiwan are both relatively small, peripheral areas.

I don't have any citations at my fingertips, but I've talked to people who have studied with Chan teachers who currently live in mainland monasteries. Chan went into hiding, but it didn't die out. I'll see what I can do about a citation, but there isn't much scholarly material in English on current Chan. I realize that you need a citation, but even without one, I would recommend changing that sentence, particularly since Chan teachers are putting their biographies on web pages. --RenGalskap 13:24, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I notice my wording above might be misunderstood. I'm not saying your spelling of Shamballa is wrong, but there are different spellings of the name, & I'm not sure myself which the publisher uses. Peter jackson (talk) 11:53, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Shambala. Spelling is correct. :) --RenGalskap 13:11, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Dug out my copy(1991 printing) of the book in question. It says:

The Shambhala Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen is based on material from The Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion (C) 1989 by Shambhala Publications, Inc., a translation of Lexikon der Ostlichen Weishwitslehren, edited by Stephan Schuhmacher and Gert Woerner, (C) 1986 by Otto Wilhelm-Barth Vrelag...

My bad. I should have looked at that more carefully. --RenGalskap 13:11, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

The LOC citation indicates that the Shambhala book consists of selections from the translation of the Lexikon; no indication of what, if any, other editing took place. The general Buddhism material is attributed to Ingrid Fischer-Schreiber. Suitable for a reference to the idea of Buddhism specifically as religion, but as mentioned above is only one data point. --Clay Collier (talk)

A citation is only one data point. I merely offered a citation for one scholarly viewpoint. :) --RenGalskap 13:11, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Chan citations

A web page containing a brief article describing an active Chan temple and monastery in mainland China; http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=18,3883,0,0,1,0

Subtle Wisdom, by Sheng-Yen, pub 1999 Dharma Drum Publishing Corp; p. 51 has a brief description of how Chan teaching continued under communism in China.

I've avoided any reference to the famous Shaolin Temple, since that is more of a tourist trap than an example of Chan survival in China. :) RenGalskap (talk) 05:45, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

I've clarified the wording in the article.

This is from the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Buddhism (2004, vol 1, p 133):

"Since the 1980s, there has been a resurgence of interest in Chan, mostly an intellectual curiosity about this most Chinese form of Buddhism."

Peter jackson (talk) 11:56, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

This is true, as far as it goes. However, I've given citations to eye witness accounts of Chan's survival and current resurgence on the mainland.

I think it would be better to tackle the problem head on and say something like

During the communist suppression of religion in China, researchers were unable to find evidence that Chan was being practiced. Since then, there have been published first person accounts of Chan's survival both on the mainland and in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

That makes clear which information is based on scholarly sources and which is first person, while avoiding the false claim that Chan is dead on the mainland. RenGalskap (talk) 16:29, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Be careful to distinguish between survival & revival. Peter jackson (talk) 09:48, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Good point. --RenGalskap (talk) 21:55, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

"researchers were unable to find evidence that Chan was being practiced" is an unsourced interpretation of Welch. In fact he mentions earlier writers who had said that Chan was already extinct before making the statement about a small number of monasteries. So it would be quite arbitrary to assume he made the same mistake himself simply thro' lack of positive evidence. Here's an attempt at a neutral phrasing of what we have.

"The field anthropologist Holmes Welch, in a book published by Harvard University Press in 1967, said that Chan had been killed off in Communist China by the 1950 land reform. The Macmillan Encyclopedia of Buddhism (2004) says that there was a resurgence of interest in Chan from the 1980s, mostly intellectual curiosity. Some people say they have seen ..."

This makes clear exactly who said what, & gives the reader the necessary information to determine the weight they place on things. Then we can add anything else we come across until the position becomes clear (if ever).

Works for me. :) --RenGalskap (talk) 21:55, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

An issue that might be relevant here is what exactly is meant by Chan/Zen. Dumoulin says it died out in China centuries ago, meaning "pure" Chan. In recent centuries Chan has been combined with Pure Land, if not other traditions as well. Peter jackson (talk) 12:02, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Dumoulin was idealizing Song era Chan, as did all scholars up to and including his generation. The fact is that Zen (Japanese Chan) and Son (Korean Chan) don't resemble Song era Chan any more than modern Chan does. Modern Zen is partly the result of influences from Tendai, Shingon, and Pure Land (as Dumoulin showed in his book on Zen in Japan). I'm not as familiar with the history of Son in Korea, but it obviously is Korean and not a Chinese survivor from the Song era.

Thank you for your patience. :) --RenGalskap (talk) 21:55, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I did notice in reading Dumoulin that he mentioned the involvement of Eisai & Dogen in mikkyo, but he does nevertheless regard Zen proper as being the same as classical Chan in a sense in which he doesn't regard modern Chan as being the same.

Dumoulin was a giant in his field, and there's no substitute for his history of Zen. However, the field has moved on and Dumoulin is somewhat outdated. Dumoulin depicted Zen as Zen saw itself. Since him, scholars have been casting a more critical eye on the official histories of the various forms of Zen.

We have to be careful here: Wikipedia must not take sides in disputes about what is genuine Zen, or genuine Buddhism, or whatever. Peter jackson (talk) 11:57, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

That was my point. Claims to be pure should be treated skeptically. All forms of Zen have evolved. --RenGalskap (talk) 05:02, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Your point on official histories is an important illustration of the importance of reliable sources. Much of the early "history" of Chan is fiction, which needs to be corrected by up-to-date specialist scholarship. Peter jackson (talk) 18:05, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Organization of the article

Recent changes have confused things still further. I've tried to minimize the damage, but we really have to sort this out. First, on the recent changes:

• I'm insisting on the section title Some teachings as long as that's what the section is: ie a haphazard selection of teachings, with others being scattered thro' several other sections of the article & other articles. If we can get the article into some sort of coherent arrangement then these problems won't arise any more.
• The new heading History and origins didn't cover enough. As the editor had it, it covered Indian & modern Buddhism, but not the history of non-Indian Buddhism. I've demoted the traditions headings so they're now in that section, until someone can think of a better idea.

Now what are we going to do about the structure of the article? There are a number of possible ways it could be organized coherently, but the present arrangement isn't one of them.

• Thematic: teachings/doctrines, practices, history, divisions, scriptures ..., or something along those lines
• Denominational:
  • general
  • Theravada
  • Mahayana
    • Various subdivisions
• Historical: this has the advantage of being the way most scholarly sources do it, thus making it easier to find citations
• Others?

Peter jackson (talk) 11:43, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I want the article to give the reader as much notice as possible of its own inadequacies. Not just the reader: any passing editor might notice & do something about it. Therefore:

• heading Some teachings, immediately followed by a note on several other places teachings can be found, to indicate the absurdity of scattering them around at random like this
• information on the popularity of Pure Land, to indicate the inadequacy of space devoted to it
• ditto Nichiren
• citations to show some of the limitations on the importance of the 4 Noble Truths, to indicate the inappropriateness of spending such an enormous amount of space on them

Peter jackson (talk) 18:02, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Reincarnation

Do Buddhists believe in reincarnation? I take it from this article that they don't, but I just heard a Buddhist on the radio who claimed they did. Thanks, Maikel (talk) 12:39, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

• Hallo Maikel. Yes, the Buddha very much taught reincarnation (although some people who call themselves Buddhists choose not to believe in it). When he himself became Awakened, he saw countless numbers of his own past lives stretching back into the infinite past, as well as the lives of all other beings. He also saw that we are reborn into circumstances and conditions in accordance with our "karma" (the good or bad that we have done in past lives). But once a person has become a Buddha, that ongoing cycle of enforced reincarnation is brought to an end - and Great Nirvana (eternal happiness and freedom) is attained. However, at that point a fully Awakened Buddha will choose to come back into the ordinary world and help other beings to reach Nirvana too. Many Buddhists in the West insist that we use the word "rebirth" instead of "reincarnation" - but in my view this is a bit silly, because it is quite clear that there is an ongoing stream of consciousness or character (essentially a personality) which gets born again and again into a fleshly body (reincarnation means "taking on flesh again"). Of course (according to the Buddha) we can get born as a ghost or hell-dweller - and those beings perhaps do not have fleshly bodies! So technically, "reinarnation" would not be the ideal word there. But in general parlance, it is acceptable to say that the Buddha taught reincarnation. Certainly the article should make it clearer that reincarnation (or "rebirth") is a central aspect of the Buddha's teaching. Hope that helps! Best wishes to you. From Tony. TonyMPNS (talk)

Thanks Tony, very good of you to put me in the know. I think that the article really fails on this point. Although I'm sure a lot of work went into it, it is unfortunately so written as to be inaccessible to dumb outsiders like me. Maikel (talk) 14:49, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

• Hallo again Maikel. Thank you for your kind thanks! It is really good to get the feedback from a person like yourself (not a specialist in Buddhism) - so that those of us who are more regular editors of the "Buddhism" article on Wikipedia can see where we have not always made things as clear as they should be. Your help is very valuable, Maikel. Thank you so much. Best wishes to you again. From Tony. TonyMPNS (talk)

Keep up the good work. Maikel (talk) 15:49, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Tony is not being very precise here. To say that the Buddha taught this, or anything else specific, is not correct as an historical statement, since there is no consensus among historians as to what he did teach. However, it's certainly true that the scriptures of all schools of Buddhism present him as teaching rebirth. This is one of the topics that are grossly under-represented in the article.

Neither rebirth nor reincarnation is a strictly accurate term. Life begins at conception. According to Theravada at least, ghosts & hell dwellers do have bodies, but some gods don't.

Maikel is perfectly correct about the inadequacies of the article. I've been pointing this out for a long time. Unfortunately, when we attempted to sort it out, people just kept reverting, & they've since ignored all requests to suggest their own arrangement. If we can just get a coherent structure it will then be possible to redress the imbalances. Peter jackson (talk) 09:39, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

• Thanks, Peter, for your citation reference (elsewhere in the article) - I had not realised that it was yourself who had written that particular bit (if I had known, I would not have asked, as I am aware that you are very careful with such details). Thanks, too, for your comments above, which are helpful. You are absolutely right that the "hungry ghosts" and "hell-dwellers" do have bodies ("rupa") - but whether they are "fleshly" bodies (as ours are), is perhaps not so certain ...

As for the historical Buddha: yes, you are perfectly correct that no one knows for sure what the historical Buddha really taught. But as a shorthand, when I refer to the "Buddha", I mean the Buddha figure presented in the various suttas and sutras, etc. Whether that Buddha and his teachings are close to the historical Shakyamuni Buddha and his ideas is, of course, beyond the present reach of scholarship. There is largely speculation on this, as you know. But I suspect that what Maikel wanted to know was whether Buddhism (as taught by the Buddha in the relevant scriptures) has the idea of reincarnation in its Doctrine - i.e. life and death and then a new life, followed by another death, which leads on to a new life (on and on) for the same (but always mutating) "person" (or "consciousness" or "mind-stream" - however one wishes to define a person here) throughout time. As you say - yes, that teaching is certainly importantly present in "the Buddha's" teachings. Thanks again for your valuable input. All best wishes. From Tony. TonyMPNS (talk) 10:55, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I think the proper convention to follow is that statements in the past tense ("the Buddha said") are historical statements & statements in the present tense ("the Buddha says") are literary statements. Certainly I'd understand the question as you did, I was simply making sure your answer wouldn't be misunderstood.

I'm pleased to see you haven't entirely left us. Peter jackson (talk) 09:26, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

• Many thanks indeed, Peter. I am touched by your kind words. As always, you make a very useful point (this time on appropriate tenses when referring to the Buddha's statements). I may not be able to contribute much to Wiki in the next several months, as I am preparing to move abroad (terribly busy time for me, as you can imagine). Anyway, thanks again, and best wishes to you and all. From Tony. TonyMPNS (talk) 10:27, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Ready for Copyedit?

Hello, all involved in improving this article. This article was in the list of articles that need copyedit. But from what I've read here, I'm not sure whether this article is really ready for copyedit or not. It sounds to me like you're considering rewriting/reorganizing some sections, so I wouldn't want to put the effort in before the restructure. What do you think? Pandora (talk) 20:02, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid you're right. There's far more to do before we get to that stage. Peter jackson (talk) 12:11, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, I'll remove the request so that it doesn't show up on the list. When the article is ready for editing, just put the tag back in. Thanks! Pandora (talk) 18:35, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Buddha WASNOT born in India

Buddha was not born in India. He was born in Lumbini, NEPAL. Please correct this article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by R1 r2 (talk • contribs) 21:14, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Nepal didn't exist in those days. Do we want to say Kant was born in Russia, Bartok in Roumania, Jesus in the West Bank ...? Peter jackson (talk) 09:26, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

You could say "Buddha was born in Lumbini, a province north of India now known as Nepal." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.229.191.182 (talk) 20:07, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I added something to this effect. Yours is worded more elegantly so feel free to replace. Thanks. Windy Wanderer (talk) 21:47, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Budda/angel houses (small external shrines)

I need help with defending a family member's desire to place a small Budda/angel house outside of her home. The homowners association see's it as "ornamental" (like a bird bath) and I have no way of describing its relilgious an spiritual significance. Could someone please point me to articles that discuss these houses and their uses and purposes? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.54.20.194 (talk) 14:27, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

The Spirit house article is probably what you are looking for, but it is fairly sparse on information. Googleing 'spirit house' or things connected with the Erawan Shrine would be your best bet. --Clay Collier (talk) 20:32, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Archive 16 created

There were no posts between April 9th and 22nd, so I archived everything up through April 9th into Archive 16. Windy Wanderer (talk) 15:28, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Structure of the article?

Per the template at the top of the article, is there a group of people ready to work on cleaning it up? This article was once a feature article (see this) and seems to have seriously degraded into a confusing and wordy morass.

As a start, what do people think of the first paragraph here as a replacement for the current paragraph? Windy Wanderer (talk) 21:51, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Copied here for convenience:

"Buddhism is the religion and philosophy based on the teachings of Siddhārtha Gautama, who lived between approximately 563 and 483 BCE. This religion originated in India and gradually spread throughout Asia, to Central Asia, Tibet, Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia, as well as the East Asian countries of China, Mongolia, Korea, and Japan. Buddhism is unusual among world religions because it does not involve the worship of gods or other higher beings. For the Buddha, the key to liberation was mental purity and correct understanding, and for this reason he rejected the notion that we can gain salvation by petitioning a distant deity."

We've already had lots of discussion on "religion" and "philosophy". There are various points of view here, of which that stated in this draft is only one. It therefore fails to satisfy NPOV.

Dates are probably wrong. See current article for what seems to be the majority position.

The bit about worship is highly misleading. The Macmillan Encyclopedia of Buddhism has an article on worship that appears to give no indication that anyone might consider the word inappropriate to Buddhism.

All statements about the Buddha's own teaching are only theories. There is no consensus on what his teachings actually were.

The basic idea of Pure Land Buddhism, followed by about 1/3 of the world's Buddhists, is pretty much just gaining salvation by petitioning Amitabha Buddha.

"distant" deity is an insult to other religions. Peter jackson (talk) 10:39, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Okay, sounds like that paragraph isn't suitable (kind of scary actually in that it was the lead when the article was a "featured article" if it had all these mistakes!). Regarding your options above about reorganization, I suggest that "Thematic" be the first order followed by "Historical." (That is, organize by themes and then within themes order historically, e.g., "Practices" followed by "first this," "then this," etc.) How does that sound? Windy Wanderer (talk) 13:04, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Another example of bad FA is History of Buddhism, which, when I queried its status on its talk page, appeared to have not a single citation for any of its statements, which seemed to include many theories, legends & mistakes presented as facts.

Looking on the bright side, I thought the present version was bad, but that old one is far worse. That's encouraging. The article has actually improved a lot over the last few years, which gives hope that it might get into a reasonable state in another few. After all, it seems from the above that nearly everything in the old intro is wrong. there's not much in the present article that's outright wrong, tho' there's a lot of questionable interpretation. More to the point is that the present version (largely) ignores most of the subject.

Now to your suggestion. I hadn't thought of combining 2 arrangements like that. If it's done that way we'll need an introductory outline of history to give context. It's an interesting idea. Perhaps it should be sandboxed. Trouble is, last time we tried working out a large-scale rewrite outside the actual article virtually nobody contributed, & then they kept reverting when I tried importing it to the actual article in the hope of getting some constructive response. We never did manage to get much of that, apart from some material from Tony on East Asian Buddhism, which now turns out not to be properly sourced (like much of the article). Peter jackson (talk) 17:39, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm okay with a sandbox but am concerned about the reversions. I can't believe the amount of silly vandalism this page gets, which is a separate issue from the reversions.

Who tended to revert the edits? Can they be part of the sandbox? One suggestion is to do the outline in the sandbox so we know where we're going and then enter section by section into mainspace as it's done, which may mean that for a few days there is redundancy as new sections are added. Obviously, it'd be better to input the whole agreed-upon page at once as long as we have consensus and then carefully monitor the page after it's input (of course making sure that there is consensus). This might seem like ownership to new persons so we'd have to figure out a way to accomodate newbies so we avoid WP:BITE. What does everyone think? Windy Wanderer (talk) 18:42, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

New Structure

You'd have to look back to find who was reverting. There's a fair amount of discussion in the archives of this talk page, which would help you find the dates to search.

I'm not clear on the details of what you're suggesting. There's an enormous amount to be done on this article, & I don't whether it can all be sandboxed in one go. As I said before, experience suggests people don't participate, & then violently object to the result. So probably step by step is the approach. The 1st step is reorganization.

The historical arrangement is fairly consistently as follows:

1. India
   1. Early ("Hinayana"; derogatory name)
   2. Middle (Mahayana)
   3. Late (Vajrayana/tantra/esoteric)
2. Theravada: close to early Indian Buddhism
3. East Asian Buddhism: derived from middle-period Indian Buddhism, but adapted very substantially to Chinese civilization
4. Tibetan: close to late Indian Buddhism
5. Modern/Western

We don't need a sandbox just for tables of contents. Perhaps you can suggest an outline for a thematic arrangement. Peter jackson (talk) 10:04, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

As far as I can tell it's been over a month for serious reversions? I've read the talk page and it seems that people have come and gone so I'm unsure of the current interest. If it's been over a month I suggest we just move forward. What would you think about archiving the talk page up to this point so we can start with the new structure? (Feedback from others welcome too.)

The historical arrangement looks great. Regarding themes within, how about:

1. Origins (where/who
2. Beliefs/Practices
3. Contribution to Buddhism today/Current groups
4. Relation to other Buddhist traditions

Having written this, I'm sure there are some commonalities across both, but (for instance), if the 4 Noble Truths occurred within the first historical time period above, then they would be covered there and then referred to in the other sections' Beliefs/Practices sections. Does this make any sense? Thanks, Windy Wanderer (talk) 19:47, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Are you switching from historical within thematic to thematic within historical? That's what your wording suggests, but I find it hard to reconcile your numbered list with either arrangement. Perhaps you could do a fuller list of contents for clarity. Unfortunately, the religion project (to which this article was not affiliated last time I checked) doesn't have a standard recommended pattern for such articles. Peter jackson (talk) 10:37, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm suggesting historical as the main structure, and then within that go by themes. I don't know the body of literature well so don't know much more to suggest. Here are some layperson ideas but I'm not an expert:

1. Origins (where/who/when)
2. Beliefs/Practices (what/how)
3. Contribution to Buddhism today/Current groups (where groups are? who practices? current activities?)
4. Relation to other Buddhist traditions (more conservative? literal? austere?)

What would you suggest?

Also, any other editors out there who want to give feedback on this? Windy Wanderer (talk) 14:55, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm a bit puzzled by this. You want historical structure outside, then thematic inside, but 1 of your themes is Origins, ie history inside themes inside history.

Perhaps I should clarify the history a bit more. Indian Buddhism is virtually extinct. Recent revivals there are derived from elsewhere. The 3 main living branches are as listed above, & haphazardly detailed in the article.

Therefore, your headings above might have to be distributed differently for living & dead.

Historical arrangement has the advantage of being how most scholarly accounts cover the subject, so it makes it easier to find citations. The disadvantage is it's not what the reader expects of this article. It's what they expect of History of Buddhism. Thematic arrangement has the opposite (dis)advantages.

Another possibility is denominational. We could start with some shared ideas, tho' making clear they aren't necessarily the most important. Then deal with the different branches.

Let me try to rough out how your scheme might work in practice:

1. Indian Buddhism
   1. Early
      1. Origins: the Buddha &c
      2. karma & rebirth, 4 noble truths, 5 precepts, monastic order, stupas, abhidharma ...
      3. Theravada Buddhism close to this; many ideas & practices still used in mahayana as well
      4. ?
   2. middle
      1. origins of Mahayana
      2. teachings &practices: bodhisattvas, emptiness, mind-only ...
      3. East Asian Buddhism derived from this
      4. radical reform of earlier tradition
   3. late
      1. origins of tantra
      2. practices
      3. Tibetan Buddhism close to this
      4. less radical relative to Mahayana
2. Theravada
   1. arrival in Ceylon
   2. ...
   3. main religion of Veylon, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos
   4. conservative
3. East Asian Buddhism
   1. introduction to China
   2. Pure Land, Zen &c
   3. main Buddhism of China, Korea, Vietnam, Japan
   4. nonliteral
4. Tibetan
   1. introduction to Tibet
   2. ...
   3. Tibet, Mongolia, Bhutan, Kalmykia
5. ...

?

Peter jackson (talk) 11:17, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I think this sounds great. Go for it! Does anyone else have comments? feedback? Now's the time to raise your horns if yes. Windy Wanderer (talk) 00:39, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

That was only a tentative attempt to see what your suggestion might mean in practice. You still have a lot of detailed working out to do, & I suggest again that you do things a bit at a time. Peter jackson (talk) 09:43, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi Peter, As I mentioned before, I am no expert in Buddha so am relying on you and others to make sure the substance is accurate. I do know Wikipedia policies very well and am just here to help on that front. If you don't like what I did and/or think it's inaccurate, then please change it. I'm not sure what or who you're referring to above when you say "I suggest again that you do things a bit at a time." I thought you wanted to get an overall structure because you disliked the current organization and I just offered ideas. Windy Wanderer (talk) 15:24, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

To clarify. As I said before, we did try to give this article a coherent structure before, but people just kept reverting it. Therefore I'm reluctant to try again myself, but I want to encourage others if they're interested, & offer advice. That's all. As regards doing things a bit at a time, it simply seems less likely to get reverted that way. Give people time to consider & comment on each stage before proceeding. Peter jackson (talk) 10:20, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Yes, doing a bit at a time sounds good. Looking forward to reviewing future edits. Windy Wanderer (talk) 11:29, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Bias

The material I've just deleted presents the 4 Noble Truths & 8-fold path as the main teachings of Buddhism. As the citations I've put in the sections on them show, that is not true. Peter jackson (talk) 09:45, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

The difs make it difficult to make out exactly what you did, but it looks like you just deleted one line in the lead? This is fine. Windy Wanderer (talk) 15:27, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

New Lead

I agree that the opening paragraph is poorly-written. Not only does it over-emphasize the suggestion that Buddhism is not a religion, but it fails to summarize key distinctive features of Buddhism. I attempted to rewrite it, but was summarily reverted by someone who (I surmise) likes his own writing far too much. Hopefully this something that can be discussed rather than simply imposed by whoever has the most time to waste. Here is the new opening as I wrote it:

---

Buddhism is one of the world's major religions (though some argue that its doctrines are not essentially religious). Its founder, the historical Buddha--sometimes referred to as Siddhartha Gautama, or as Sakyamuni Buddha, in order to distinguish him from other enlightened beings--was an ascetic teacher who lived in north India around the 5th century BC.

His teachings--collectively referred to as the Dharma--describe a path through which practitioners may escape the suffering of samsara (i.e. the cycle of birth, death, and reincarnation) and ultimately attain nirvana. A paradigmatic example of these teachings would be the Four Noble Truths. Meditation and ethics are emphasized.

Buddhists generally revere the Three Jewels: the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. "Sangha" refers to the Buddhist community, especially monks and nuns.

Major varieties of Buddhism include

1. Theravada Buddhism, which is the major religion of Sri Lanka, Burma, and Thailand; and

2. Mahayana Buddhism, inclusive of

2a. Tibetan Buddhism, which spread from Tibet to Mongolia and various Himalayan regions such as Bhutan; and

2b. East Asian Buddhism, one of several important religions of Japan, China, and Korea. Examples include Zen and Pure Land Buddhism.

The world's population of Buddhists probably amounts to several hundred million. Depending on how one counts adherents who also identify with other religions, or who participate irregularly, the total might fall anywhere from ________ to _______.

-- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.167.164.176 (talk) 00:45, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Constructive. A few comments.

• Neutral point of view is especially important in lead paras. Therefore, if we mention the view that Buddhism is a religion, we must also mention, not only the view that it's not a religion at all, as you do, but also the view that it's more than one religion, as is done at present. Alternatively, avoid the question altogether, as I tried to do in my draft.
• To call the Buddha an ascetic is questionable. Asceticism is a matter of degree. Buddhism often talks of the middle way between asceticism & indulgence, but most ordinary people would regard Buddhist monks as pretty ascetic. Some scholars consider the middle way a later invention, with the original teaching more ascetic.
• Don't slur the difference between the Buddha's teachings, which are an historical matter on which historians disagree, & the teachings of Buddhism, which claim to be the teachings of the Buddha, in some sense.
• The teachings of Buddhism describe a variety of paths, which some people might regard as essentially the same. Jodo Shinshu does not teach a path at all: salvation is a free gift of Amida.
• Describing the 4 NTs a a paradigmatic example is not neutral. they are far more important in Theravada than in Mahayana.
• Ethics comes before meditation. Also, depending how you define meditation, the degree of truth of this statement varies a lot. Most Buddhists practise little or no meditation in the sense in which most readers would be likely to understand the word. To make the statement broadly true it's necessary to make clear that it includes devotion, ritual, study, listening to sermons ...
• Sangha traditionally means either the communion of saints, to borrow a Christian term, or the monastic order. Use to refer to the Buddhist community as a whole is, as far as I know, modern.
• East Asian Buddhism should come before Tibetan Buddhism because
  • it is older
  • it has far more followers
• Similarly, Pure Land should come before Zen because it has far more followers.
• "Several" sounds a bit big. "Hundreds of millions"?

Peter jackson (talk) 08:35, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Peter, can you offer a specific rewrite below of what 218.167.164.176 wrote above? That's easier for me to see what you mean? (and maybe 218.167.164.176 will agree with it too) Thanks, Windy Wanderer (talk) 12:35, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with WW's suggestion.

The meaning and scope of the word "religion" is not at all clear, and perhaps "religions" is correct--but this is a subject better left to the articles on "religion" or "religious studies." As a practical matter, the whole world and most Buddhists think that Buddhism is a religion, and so it is.

Perhaps we could refer to the historical Buddha as a "renunciate." I was going to say "religious teacher," but that would be too repetitive, and "spiritual teacher" too woo-woo.

No argument with the order of presentation. One difficulty is that in fact, Tibetan Buddhism also incorporates Pure Land practices--but oh well, good enough for jazz.

As a student of Tibetan Buddhism, my impression is that the Four Noble Truths (and their sixteen elaborations) are often referred to--but in connection with the "First Turning." Where Theravadins accept them as expressing the highest truth, Tibetans see it as relatively introductory comparared to emptiness and bodhicitta. But the fact that they see it as a suitable introduction also recommends it for use as an example here, as I see the matter. For the sake of comparison, practically all Christians seem to approve of the Sermon on the Mount, though it is less often put into practice.

In view of the diversity within Buddhism, perhaps a handful of Buddhist practices might be described--"meditation" (whatever that means), sadhanas, prayers to Amida, charms for snakebite and easy childbirth, etc. This would pose a real writing challenge, though, if they are to be incorporated in a summary.

Think--what is most important for an uninformed person to know about Buddhism? I look forward to your rewrites. --Dawud

It's not my job to rewrite other people's proposals. My own was entered above, now archived by WW.

In my draft I did try to leave out the question of religion. the point I was making above was that if we do it at all we must be neutral & give different views.

I'm not sure what you mean by Pure Land practices in Ribetan Buddhism, as I don't know all that much about it. In East Asian Buddhism it means mainly recitation of homage.

4NTs. Christianity is not an appropriate analogy here. Christians follow largely the same scriptures (& Muslims follow entirely the same scriptures), while Buddhists follow quite different scriptures. So we have to look very carefully at balance. To oversimplify, we might divide teachings into levels:

1. karma & rebirth
2. 4NTs
3. Mahayana

We might then say that Theravada recognizes 1 & 2, Mahayana 1-3. A lead is supposed to cover all the most important points in the subject. This would include all 3, with the disagreements pointed out. This is the theoretical side. On the practical side we have devotion, morality, meditation &c, as you suggest.

Another point in the guidelines on leads is that they are supposed to be self-explanatory. So

• Should we be mentioning the 4NTs in the lead without explanation?
• Should we, as in the last proposed draft, mention types of Buddhism without description?

On the 1st point, we might alternatively try to talk in terms of liberation/enlightenment, mentioning that there are different ideas.

"real writing challenge", as you say. hence I think we need the full suggested 4 paras. Peter jackson (talk) 08:36, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Peter, Do you have the dif or an approximate date of the lead you wrote? Let's just re-paste it here. Thanks, Windy Wanderer (talk) 12:52, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Buddhism is a religion, if the word is to have any meaning at all. Sure, a few revisonists deny this, but there's no reason to credit their claim with any special importance--let alone to insist on "balance" with the more sensible view. For the sake of comparison, some Christians deny that Christianity is a religion (because "religions" try to reconcile man with God, but Christianity recognizes that this cannot be done, or some such). Think about it: practically every introduction to world religions ever penned has included Buddhism (and Christianity), though some doubt is typically expressed with respect to Confucianism. --Dawud —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.167.177.36 (talk) 17:30, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

If you look around [3] you'll find that essentially all religions have some followers who say they're not a religion. In principle the question is whether significant numbers of scholars in the field of religious studies say it's not a religion, which might be hard to find out. There's also the plurality view, which is held by many scholars. Some scholars might say that "religion" has no meaning,it'sjust an arbitrary category. More likely, some say it should be understood in terms of Wittgenstein's doctrine of family resemblance: members of a family resemble each other in many ways, but there is no characteristic or set of characteristics that defines membership of the family, & indeed it can be fuzzy at the edges. Peter jackson (talk) 08:31, 3 May 2008 (UTC)