How to Make Buddhism Part of Your Life

Buddhism has its origins in the historical Buddha, Sakyamuni or Siddhartha Gotama. He lived and taught in northeastern India from about 563 to 483 BCE. In the ensuing centuries Buddhism spread through India, China and the Far East, developing into myriad schools and sects. Recently, several sects have found popularity in the West, in part because their emphasis on such things as compassion, non-violence, human agency, and vegetarianism complement the values of disaffected modern westerners.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

What You Can Do

1. Contact a Buddhist community near you. Some of the most popular forms of Buddhism in the West are Nichiren, Pure Land, Shingon, Tendai, Theravada, Vajrayana, Yogacara and Zen.

2. Learn one of the Buddhist styles of meditation.

3. Celebrate the Buddha's life during Wesak, which occurs in May or June.

4. Commemorate the Buddha's first sermon, when he taught the principles of Buddhism. This celebration is called Dhammacakka and it happens in July.

5. Learn how Buddhists deal with the life-changing events they encounter, including birth, initiation, marriage, renunciation and death.

Basic Tenets

6. Begin your study of Buddhism with the basic teachings of the Buddha himself. Foremost are the four noble truths: All existence is suffering; all suffering is caused by craving; all suffering can be ended; suffering is ended by practicing the noble eightfold path.

7. Follow the eightfold path of right views, aspirations, speech, behavior, livelihood, efforts, thoughts and contemplation.

8. Emulate the Buddha's "Middle Way" between extreme hedonism and extreme asceticism. In the affluent western world, hedonism is the greater spiritual danger, although we act a bit like ascetics from 9 to 5.

9. Acquaint yourself with the Buddhist worldview and philosophy. Creation and time are cyclical, and humans are attached to the created world by their sense of selfhood and desires. Actions in one lifetime affect the type of rebirth in the next. Through self-perfection, one can eventually achieve a state of Nirvana or strive until all humans achieve it.

10. Study the Tri-Pitaka, or "Three Baskets" of early Buddhist scripture. They consist of the discourses of the Buddha, the rules for Buddhists monks and nuns, and all further knowledge - the "great teaching basket."

11. Follow Buddhism's developments as it encountered cultures of the Far East, particularly China and Japan.

How To Learn More

12. Get your hands on Buddhist scriptures; they're more authentic than modern Buddhist manuals. The most popular scriptures include: The Discourses of the Buddha, The Dhammapada, The Diamond Sutra, The Heart Sutra, and The Lotus Sutra. Authoritative scriptures of later Chinese and Japanese Buddhism include The Platform Sutra and Dogen's meditation manuals (Soto Zen). Some of these can be downloaded (pay a visit to a major search engine like Yahoo! or Google and type in the name of the scripture).

13. Try to be challenged by your encounter with Buddhism. If you only absorb what you already know, you aren't learning anything new.

14. Browse informative websites, find more literature, and contact a Buddhist community in your neighborhood.

Tips & Warnings

• This eHow is a very brief introduction to a few of the practical and theoretical aspects of Buddhism. It is not comprehensive, nor does it represent any one Buddhist sect. Instead, it includes a few core teachings and some suggestions on how to begin incorporating Buddhism into your life.