Sakyamuni: The Original Thread

The original thread begins with Sakyamuni, who was born in India in approximately 566 B.C.E and is considered the founder of Buddhism. Sakyamuni dedicated his life, first to the pursuit and attainment of his own enlightenment, and then to showing others the way to awaken to the oneness of all life. He taught the Four Noble Truths (on the right), which reveal the cause of suffering, and the Eightfold Path, which shows the way out of suffering . Through years of dedicated spiritual practice, he learned that austerity was not the way to enlightenment, nor was indulging the senses. He found that the middle way—not going to one extreme or the other—was the only way to awaken spiritually. This and the many other Teachings of Sakyamuni formed the basis of the Buddhist Path (See Panel 3 for more details).

The Spread of Buddhism: A Complicated Tapestry

After Sakyamuni’s death, philosophical and interpretational differences arose, which, over the years, splintered the once-unified Buddhist Teachings into various schools or sects. These different schools are usually organized into three categories: Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana (See Panels 4-6 for more details).  As these different schools spread into other countries, from India, they often interweaved with local customs and indigenous religions to give each country its unique flavor of Buddhism. This is a natural occurrence, and also, in some ways, essential. In order for people of a different culture to understand the Teachings, the Teachings have to be presented within a context people can understand. However, it takes a Wisdom Master or Awakened consciousness to be able to do this in such a way that the purity of the Teachings is not lost.

China

When Buddhism was first introduced into China by monks from Central Asia, who translated several Buddhist texts into Chinese, it was considered by most to be a foreign version of Taoism. Taoism was a Chinese religion introduced by Lao-tzu, which taught ‘nondoing,’ refraining from interfering with the natural course of things, and instead, responding naturally, without premeditation, to each moment. Part of this initial confusion resulted from the fact that the Chinese language did not have terms for many of the Buddhist concepts, so translators used Taoist terminology to convey these ideas. Later, this was stopped, but the intertwining of Buddhist and Taoist thought, which this practice enabled, had already occurred. Continued...

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