Some Context and an Overview

So now let’s begin with some context for what came to be the Buddhist worldview, its cosmology, and its metaphysics. This is in some ways central to Buddhist philosophy as the inner workings of the human are often regarded by it as microcosmic of th
ese universal “realities” (in other ways arguably not, as this was not a focus of Siddhartha at all, but it was certainly a context of his thoughts and of course of the thoughts of later Buddhist philosophers).

To do that context provision, here now begins a history of Indian religion and the historic Buddha’s place in it. In overview, Siddhartha propounded his ideas in a relatively narrow space (if still significant) of the Ganges valley and Nepalese civilisation areas. He had first joined a renunciate movement that argued that an end to all suffering was possible to renunciates. Upon realising what came to be the tenets of Buddhism, at Bodhigaya, he taught widely in north-east India after some apparent hesitation. At first he taught others of the renunciate movement as he naturally expected them to share more of his understanding and thus worldview but he eventually encouraged a large following of both religious orders (both monks and nuns) as well as laypeople. He taught (mainly to monks (Bhikkhus) and nuns (Bhikkhunis)) for the remaining 45 odd years of his life.

Around the time of his death, several of his major followers sought to collect all of his teachings together in one place. This was not in written form but a somewhat systematic oral collection in the form of an organised recitation (because of the conditions, literacywise, of the time).

Buddhism was first really widely popularised in India by a king Asoka, the first major Buddhist king, in the 3^rd Century BCE – around two centuries after Siddhartha ‘died’ (as a non-Buddhist I would say died but the meaning of his ‘death’ is not necessarily seen as straightforward within Buddhism). Asoka first converted to Buddhism and then united most of India under his rule and proselytised for Buddhism as far as Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. Even during this time no comprehensive written version of any major collection of Buddha’s teachings was made (the first accepted written canon was compiled in the Pali language in Sri Lanka two centuries later in the 1^st Century BCE.

Sri Lankan Buddhism eventually came to be known as Theravada. Theravada means “elders’ doctrine” (so- called on account of claiming to have the oldest universally accepted written versions of Buddhist ideas as its basis, as mentioned above). It spread to Southeast Asia including parts of Vietnam and possibly southern China.

What later came to be the dominant Indian form is today known as Mahayana (meaning “great vehicle” for reasons I will explain later – early practitioners called it vaipulya – expanded). This spread to Afghanistan and via the Silk Route as far as Korea and Japan (and from there also to parts of Vietnam). Important archaeological written artefacts buried near Dun Huang in both Sanskrit and Tibetan reveal how the transfer of views along the Silk Road and from Tibet occurred:The major orthodox Mahayana canon that we have today was eventually written in Chinese. This form of Buddhism was dominant in India until at least the 4^th and 5^th Centuries CE. An additional variation is a form of Mahayana called Vajrayana that achieved popularity especially in Tibet, Nepal and Bhutan. It appears to have spread there in two main waves from India in the 7^th and 11^th Centuries when Buddhism was under particular threat there (first from Islamic and then from Hindu fanaticism). A Tibetan canon appears to have been translated from Sanskrit writings not part of any other canon. There is also a Mongolian canon but it is substantially the Tibetan canon translated into Mongolian.