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Concept 1. ‘Buddhism’ is the term used to denote the religion descending from the ascetic movement founded by Gautama Buddha. To be sure, the teachings of early Buddhism have been developed in very different ways over the course of time. A large number of schools, at times with considerably divergent philosophical systems and corresponding monastic rules, were and are scattered across an immense geographical space (today nearly all of Asia, with the exception of India, Buddhism's land of origin). The three great directions are Tantric ( Tantra), Mahāyāna (Northern), and Hīnayāna (Sou…

The Historical Buddha 1. According to tradition, Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, was sprung of a noble family of the Śākya people. Presumably he was born in the fifth century BCE (today's research places his life span c. 450–370), the offspring of Śuddkodana and Māyā(devī), in the border region between today's Nepal and India, and given the name Siddhārtha. Shortly after the birth of his son, Rahula, deeply stirred by a meditative experience, he left his family and began to embrace variou…

Definition The expression name indicates a certain category of words that serve to designate persons and groups (peoples, classifications of peoples, families), localities (countries, places, mountains, rivers), things (animals, plants, stars, days of the weak, months and seasons, institutions, colors) and events (Waterloo, Bethlehem) in their individuality and singularity. Proper names ( nomen proprium) refer to individual objects. This distinguishes them from appellatives (and: classifications, nomen appellativum), which denote an entire kind (‘angels,’ ‘dev…

Definition 1. Prayer is one of the typically religious forms of communication. With prayer, a person turns to the gods—aloud or in a whisper, wordlessly or in thought, as an individual or in a group, for oneself or for others. The purpose is not (or at least not primarily) so that the god will make an appearance (epiphany); rather in conformity with the emphatically asymmetrical relationship between gods and human beings, prayer is usually formulated as a request, so that it frequently includes t…