Lausanne World Pulse – A Focus on South Asia: 340 Least-Reached Buddhist/Other People Groups Remain
Links
- Get resources to pray, to mobilize prayer and to do outreach.
- Discover Northeast Asia’s 121 least-reached peoples.
- Pray for the peoples of Northeast Asia region.
- Obtain daily prayer guides for peoples of this region.
Background
|
Buddhism originated in India, not East Asia. |
South Asia: The Original Home of Buddhism
(Compiled by Wesley Kawato)
Did you know that Buddhism originated in India, not East Asia, where it is now more widely accepted? It was a reform movement within Hinduism which began perhaps five hundred years before the birth of Jesus Christ, during a time when India was divided into numerous petty kingdoms. The founder of Buddhism, Siddharta Guatama, was a Hindu prince of one of India’s petty kingdoms. Historians cannot agree on the date of Siddharta’s birth or the date of his death. They are not even sure to which royal family Siddharta belonged. One of the few things historians agree upon is that Siddharta came from a small Indian kingdom near today’s border with Nepal. That is because Siddharta spoke Pali, a language once spoken in the part of India just south of Nepal.
Little is known about Siddharta Guatama because little was written about him during his lifetime. What we know about his life comes from documents written centuries after his death. Many historians believe these documents were oral traditions eventually put in written form. According to these oral traditions, Siddharta Guatama lived a sheltered life until the age of 35, when he saw human suffering for the first time. That caused him to go on a search for spiritual truth. He tried self-gratification and self-mortification, but found no satisfaction in either extreme. Siddharta then meditated under a fig tree until a “middle path” between these two extremes was revealed to him. That is when he became known as the “Buddha,” or “enlightened one.”
Pages: ALL Prev 1 2 3 4 5 Next