Decay Of Buddhism
- The History Of Buddhism - Gautama, a member of the warrior-ruler caste, preferred the royal vocation and provided his son...
Submitted by krinder on 06/30/2008 05:21 PM
- Category: Social Issues
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Decay Of Buddhism
"All conditioned things are of a nature to decay." Just before the Buddha Tathagata passed out of the realm of the living world, he said these words. Whether he was preemptively condoling his followers for the loss of their leader or making a final sermon about the nature of reality, his final message to his disciples was: all things are impermanent. He proved his point when moments later he, the Buddha (neither human nor god, entity of ultimate wisdom and power), died. But if all things are impermanent, as the Buddha claimed, then reality itself is impermanent, the universe is destined to nonexistence, thought is an ephemeral thing, and, logically, Buddhism itself will fade into oblivion. The Buddha realized the entirety of his statement when he spoke, and his disciples were indeed educated enough to grasp the all-encompassing nature of this idea. In the past fifteen hundred years, Buddhism as a religion has experienced cycles of strength and weakness, but unfortunately the general trend of the religion has been the downward spiral that is characteristic of all things. While Buddhism persists as a religion today, time, popularity, and human conceptions have irrevocable damaged Buddhism's very foundation; erroneous transmission of information, by either not fully transmitting a message, altering a message, or adding to the message, has been a leading cause of the religion's decay.
Perhaps Buddhism was destined to corruption from its beginnings, as historically it is difficult to study the religion's early years and to assert exactly what the original ideals and thoughts of the religion were. Though writing existed in India in many forms by 500 BCE and though it may have been common practice to transcribe records of exchange, monetary information, statistical information, and even current events, it was not a widely accepted art. Writing was a skill learned by few and mastered by fewer. Still however, Buddhist scriptures exist that have been...
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