Buddhism

One of the world's faiths least understood in the West is Buddhism. How can there be a religion without a God? everyone asks. But when a system of thought and practice has a distinct, high moral code; a method of raising character and consciousness to higher levels; an exemplary model of human living in the form of a historical person; has millions of adherents in many lands of the Orient and beyond; what can we call it but a religion? If we study the life of the historical Buddha, Gautama Siddhartha, who left behind his palace and his family, wealth and position, and wandered in forests practicing spiritual disciplines until he attained Nirvana --indescribable Enlightenment-- we are struck by the saga of his superhuman adventure and achievement, what to speak of his going on to give forty-five years of public service to his people.
We in the West, familiar with the three Semitic religions, are so conditioned as to suppose that religion is always associated with a God. But God is described or defined in different ways by each religion. If we consider that all of them are talking about an Ultimate Reality, can we not say, then, that this is also what the Buddha means by his Nirvana? The mystics of all the great faiths declare that the human being can achieve a state of awareness which is beyond the ordinary. Jewish mystics describe it in the Hassidic tales and the Kabbalah. Christians speak of Union with God. The Muslim Sufis call it fana. Once we realize that Buddha was leading mankind to that enlightened and heightened state of consciousness, it should matter little to us that he did not "personalize" it in any way. Some of us may even be glad.
Many Buddhists have forgotten that Gautama was born a Hindu, and just as the study of Judaism helps greatly in understanding Christianity, so a study of Hinduism can help one put Buddhism in proper perspective.
In fact, the Vedantic teacher Swami Vivekananda said that Buddha was the greatest man who ever lived.

"He never bowed down to anything, neither Veda, nor caste, nor priest, nor custom. He fearlessly reasoned as far as reason could take him. Such a fearless search for truth the world has never seen"

"He went to the feast of Ambapali, 'the sinner.' He dined with the pariah, though he knew it would kill him, and sent a message to his host, on his deathbed, thanking him for the great deliverance. Full of love and pity for a little goat, even before he had attained the Truth!...Such a mixture of rationalism and feeling was never seen!"

This from a man whose philosophy reached quite different conclusions from the Buddhists'.
Buddhism, like Hinduism champions monasticism as the most illustrious style of life. There have been hundreds of thousands of Buddhist monks and a slightly smaller numbers of nuns, in its history. Some of them went as missionaries into the Middle East and to the borders of Europe; some were the first to devise hospitals for animals. This latter sprang of course from the heavy emphasis on ahimsa, the idea of non-violence, of harm to no creature. Throughout the course of history no religion has had such a pervasive influence for peace, mediation and harmony as Buddhism.
As found in today's world, there are several main divisions or cultural adaptations as we might call them: Mahayana, found chiefly in China, Japan, Viet Nam, Mongolia etc.; Chan, the chief Chinese form, became Zen in Japan. Tibetan Buddhism has its own history and style; probably the earliest types of the faith were several, in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Burma and Cambodia, the one now surviving being called Theravada.
Here are some remarks which give us different "flavors" of the Buddhist religion:
An anonymous author writes: "It became a part of the Buddhist self-schooling to sit quietly in a concentrated effort to call forth from the depths of the heart a love so comprehensive that it embraced every living being in the universe and at the same time so intense that it was unlimited..." How can love issue from anyone engrossed in his own salvation? The question is a serious one. That there is at least a practical inconsistency here was recognized early in the history of Buddhism. In fact, it led eventually to the fundamental division between the Mahayana and the Theravada [with personal salvation espoused by the latter.] What Buddha evidently meant was that the love which his disciples should cultivate should be for all mankind, the love of men as Man. This is not like the love of one individual for another, which is a relation of dependence and passionate attachment, and therefore fraught with the miseries attendant on unhappy chance and change; it is the love of Man, and benevolent ministry to individuals as representatives of mankind can be unstinted and even material in quality. Kept on a high, impersonal level, it can bring no pain; rather it may remain pure and unalloyed through every circumstance; nothing can check it and no more sorrow can enter it....It is not affected by the response it meets; through every rebuff it remains inalienable.
One Buddhist practice has become popular world-wide in the modern movement featuring Vipassana meditation and retreats.
The tremendous holiness of the genuine lamas of Tibetan Buddhism; the amusing and enlightening koans and meditations of Zen; the absorbing and uplifting account of Buddha's life --are all well worth the reader's investigation.