Talk:Buddhism

Beyond Charles Eliot and the 4NT

Archived to Talk:Buddhism/Archive Buddhism_Policy and re-submitted at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Buddhism

This article is full of absurd claims about a Nepalese Gotama

Nothing in the history, archaeology, literature, or art of early Nepal has the faintest hint of Buddhism, and it is uncanny that the patently absurd story of the rise of Buddhism in Nepal has survived scholarly scrutiny for nearly a century. Sir Aurel Stein, who almost single-handedly established the material basis of Buddhism, found nothing in Nepal. It is most important to note is that the antecedents of Buddhism are found in the Indus-Saraswati area and South Iran, not Nepal. The largest number of Buddha images is from Gandhara, not Nepal or eastern India where one should expect them in the Jones-Cunningham Theory. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mejda (talk • contribs) 14:04, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Could you cite one of these "absurd claims"? I see three references to Nepal in the article: only one mentions the Buddha's birth and upbringing in a location that happens to fall within Nepal's modern-day boundary (nothing there about early Nepalese culture, the "rise of Buddhism", or where Gotama subsequently lived and taught). The others refer to the modern presence of Buddhism in that country, not its development or historical importance. If it is the first mention you are talking about, and there is evidence that the given birthplace is incorrect, I am not familiar with the scholarship and would love to know more—but I'd hardly conclude that the article is thus "full of absurd claims". /ninly_(talk) 15:26, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Story

The story of enlightenment was when Sidharta (Buddha), was trying to find enlightenment. He fast, and became so thin it was said you could see his spin through his stomach. He eventually realised that none of this was getting him very far, so he sat under a tree, vowing not to move until he had reached his goal of enlighten ment. And there it was he found it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Flipa25 (talk • contribs) 17:07, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Lead image

I think there's better images that could be put in the lead. Does anyone else think that? Someone65 (talk) 06:16, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Do you have any to offer or suggest? /ninly_(talk) 13:20, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Who is Lord Buddha?

Gautam Buddha was physically born in Nepal. He is formless God come to play Divine role to teach people how to get enlightened(From mind to soul) or free from suffering,In other words to attained liberation .There is still proof of his divine play from birth to end in Kapilvastu, Lumbini(Nepal). He forbid his disciple don`t pray by making his idol.Once he spoke that " You are also Buddha, I am also Buddha difference is that I am aware of it but you are still in deep sleep. " He has taught how to realize the universal truth! the ultimate truth. Truth is God. According to Lord Gotama Buddha, "All the people in this earth are Buddha. All have Buddha(Self)nature. Here, the Self indicates SOUL. Every living being have Soul. This soul or self nature is Buddha nature. Nowadays people have many paths(ways) to pray or worship the God. There are so many ways but the goal is same. Hence, what the Lord Gotama Buddha saying is that "This world itself is Gumba(Monastery) where Buddha resides. Your Body itself is Gumba (Monastery)where the Lord Gotama Buddha resides. There is only one religion the religion of Love. There is only one caste, the caste of humanity. He did not come to established new sect what nowadays people are saying Buddhism, Hindu, Christian, Muslim etc. These are the human made label(Name). He came to this earth to show the whole humanity:the right way! Gotama Buddha infact himself is Supreme One. You may find somewhere his pose indicating I am the Supreme One. But he never say about God or soul. He refused to answer such questions.Infact, religion and Dhamma are different word and differnt meaning. Name can be changed, form can be changed but the Dhamma can not be change. Dhamma means the law of nature. Dhamma means the quality of element,the self nature! Let us say the sun in the sky gives light and heat and it is Dhamma of the SUN. However, without the Dhamma of the Sun, there is no life in this earth similarly without the Self(soul)there is no life of living beings. If we follow our self, we never make mistake.But, if we follow our mind(Monkey mind) we may do many many mistake. Hence,Once Buddha spoke that "Ahimsa Parmo Dhamma." If you wake up from yourself, you never do himsa. He came to this earth to unite the people,not divide the people. God never discriminate same like the sun in the sky never discriminate among the living and non living beings. The Lord Buddha`s Dharsan often termed as ShunayaBad. It means he can be visible and invisible. He comes from Zero (0) and merge with Zero (0). He is immortal. He has no start no end. He is omnipresent, omnopotent and omnificent. "You are also Buddha, find Buddha nature in yourself". This is Lord Buddhas profound saying. He was for whole world, He is for whole world and he will be for whole world. His divine play is for whole humanity! This is fact! He did not come to this earth to make sect. The term "Buddha" indicates the selfnature i.e. quality. Infact, the religion is a Greek word which is combination of two words: Re+Ligion. Re= Again, and Ligion= Join back with Supreme one! Hence, the Love is the royal road to close with Supreme one. The main objectives of spiritual (Dhamma) practice is Realising that All is One and One is all. Infact, all are interconnected and interrelated. Blind leads Blinds. Ha Ha Ha....! Books for Reference- 1)Dhamma- An art of Living (By: Satya Naryan Goenka) 2) Characterology ( By Swami Sachchidananda BishuddaDev) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.148.213.156 (talk) 07:52, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

The figure of 1.6 billion Buddhists

The figure of 1.6 billion Buddhists is ridiculously exaggerated. Counting the amount of followers of Chinese folk religion, Shinto, Shamanic religions and other Asian religions as Buddhists is totally amiss and inane. They're not Buddhists and their religions are not Buddhist schools, even though Buddhism exerted somewhat of an influence on their organizational and artistic features. The old figure of 350 million Buddhists in the world is obviously totally outdated, particularly given the recent rise of Buddhism in China where 20% of the population tend to identify as Buddhist. The outright number of Buddhists in the world today is probably between 600 and 700 million, and many studies endorsing similar figures can be found throughout the web. Some examples:

• http://www.oppapers.com/essays/Compare-Contrast-Hinduism-Buddhism/160128
• http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:VGQ3BUyYQAoJ:www.heritage-cartman.co.in/artpdf/Inter-religious%2520Harmony.pdf+600+million+buddhists&hl=it&gl=it&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESivlldPq_qCBZBgfV8OlNAXsbQoFz-4thRGdj9R7YQtq-z3fiIghWD9B-okFYAtfyKOvnDg-Jus5d8XUDtP6e2tn0A4iWAeKSq23FFC3-idJidFmi40-Do6n6lQjfUx9k-0N7Rk&sig=AHIEtbTwjMKMZiIJiDKevesdJOs4F02fNQ
• http://books.google.it/books?id=nr1qxpJ9vksC&pg=PA39&lpg=PA39&dq=600+million+buddhists&source=bl&ots=P7ZCHve95e&sig=Wb4QPemCkqULpiLmsC8ClexDxwU&hl=it&ei=ZNZTTcr3JsyaOvTi4KMJ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CGcQ6AEwCTge#v=onepage&q=600%20million%20buddhists&f=false
• http://books.google.it/books?id=5KYSwOO3DBIC&pg=PA13&dq=600+million+buddhists&hl=it&ei=z9ZTTb2-Eo6hOo3JvccJ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CE4Q6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=600%20million%20buddhists&f=false

--79.50.78.247 (talk) 12:17, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

I am in complete agreement with you, but unfortunately, others are not, and they have overturned my edits. I suggest that this dispute be elevated to at least an RFC. Viriditas (talk) 12:35, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

The guy used google books Viriditas, didn't you say we don't use this? Yet you're in complete agreement? Then why don't you at least put his sources insteaed of declaring there are only 350-500M Buddhists

Look at your sources more closely, your "Buddhism" by Di Sue Penney is giving you official figures when most Buddhists in China aren't assigned officially at a temple, how about Buddha Nature Now"? It says there are 1.8 billion muslims when the true figure is 1.6 billion(http://pewforum.org/The-Future-of-the-Global-Muslim-Population.aspx). But worse, it claims 1.1 nonbelievers, you seriously believe this?

I also don't think there are 1.6 billion Buddhists, it's probably closer to 1.4 billion, but estimates are estimates. I also don't think there are 350 million Buddhists, an absolutely ridiculously low number, yet I don't remove it, didn't we reach an agreement on this already?

I'm not saying that Taoism/Confucianism/Shinto/Jainism/Kirant Mundhum/Shamanism/whatever is Buddhism, I'm just saying they mix it, look at the international religious freedom report at places like Burma, it says "Buddhism coexists with astrology, numerology, fortune telling, and veneration of indigenous pre-Buddhist era deities called "nats.", in Taiwan it says "Researchers and academics estimate that as much as 80 percent of the population believes in some form of traditional folk religion. Such folk religions may overlap with an individual's belief in Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, or other traditional Chinese religions.", in Thailand it says "most Buddhists also incorporate Brahmin-Hindu and animist practices", in Vietnam it says "Many Buddhists practice an amalgam of Mahayana Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism that is sometimes called the "triple religion."", do I really need to continue? Anyway my sources say "Buddhism" not that there are 1.6 billion Taoists, so I'm not making facts up and counting Taoists/Confucianists/whatever as Buddhists, I'm not making this stuff up, the data is there

Kim-Zhang-Hong (talk) 13:10, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

He said we don't use Google searches, which is true. Google Books is fine if the source is reliable. I'm not sure a 125-year-old article without an author counts as reliable. /ninly_(talk) 13:50, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I see the other references (besides the 1884 article) now. Still, we need proper citation of these if they are to remain. Also review the bold, revert, discuss process before undoing reversions. My impression of this is that, even given this data, we can't claim 1.6 billion Buddhists. Maybe something like "Buddhist thought and practice has strongly influenced as many as 1.6 billion people" would have better traction among editors (although that is imprecise and synthetic as is). /ninly_(talk) 14:04, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Did you say sorry because you realized that these old sources are there only so that I can claim that Buddhism was once the largest religion? What's the difference between Google searches and google books, all you have to do is get into the book and a google search turns into a google book, you don't have to delete all of this just for that, fix it rather than eliminate it. Besides, the most important source for the claim that Buddhism was the largest is a google book, not a search Define " proper citation" Actually Viriditas discussed nothing and he reverted it back to how it was, meanwhile, I discussed this topic a long time ago and the users have agreed to the 1-1.6 billion estimate along with the lower estimate, I didn't edit it that way, I only returned it to the way the users who agreed with me edited this, they agreed and they edited, should just anyone delete stuff on wikipedia after people reached a census just because something seems unlikely? I might as well claim that +2 billion adherents of Christianity is unlikely since it's so high, would we say that most of those are secularists like you guys do with Buddhism? No, why are you giving Buddhism a special treatment This is consuming alot of my time guys, look, we discussed this long ago and we reached an agreement, I already laid out everything, why go on over this again? Am I supposed to do this next year also and the year after that just because some guy thinks this is improbable? Kim-Zhang-Hong (talk) 15:57, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I apologized because I made my first statement based on seeing only the first of several references (the 1884 document), whose reliability i questioned. Proper citation is discussed at the link I posted, and more fully described there under inline citations and text-source integrity. Also see Embedded links. A reader should be able to look at the footnote associated with a reference and determine some information about the source – nominally its author, title and publication, at least (publisher and date are also standard) – ideally without having to click on any links.

I would contend that a stable consensus has never really been reached on this topic. /ninly_(talk) 18:44, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

We have that, thefirstpost article for example was published in 2010. In addition, another sources which I mentioned and are not there are "The complete book of Buddha's lists--explained" in 2006 by David N. Snyder, also Alex Smith article in 2004(http://web.archive.org/web/20050205002827/http://www.seanetwork.org/article.php?story=20041020143036414)

A census was reached, they got it into the +1 billion figure not me, were you even there to make that claim? What? Now all of a sudden there is no consensus and I'm supposed to start all over again because a new guy joins in and declares these numbers to be improbable? And this even happened without any talks at all, some guy just comes and removes all the sources that I worked so hard to find and declares that no concensus was reached and I'm supposed to accept this?

If you disagree then give me a reason, opinions are meaningless in the face of evidence Kim-Zhang-Hong (talk) 19:06, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Here is a 3-year-old discussion (which I happened to initiate) of the issue. My point in linking it is to show that I've been following this discussion (and occasionally involved in it) for some time. That particular thread ended with the removal of a poorly referenced 1.6+ billion figure, but I recognize that much has happened since then. Note that I said there has never been a stable consensus. Like many specific points in religion articles, there are diverse and strongly felt differences of opinion on this matter. We therefore need to be very careful about what is stated as fact and how we reference the data that backs it up. /ninly_(talk) 20:32, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Reply to Kim-Zhang-Hong

You have the burden of proof, Kim. Here's why your edits are not acceptable:

• The complete book of Buddha's lists--explained By David N. Snyder - This is a self-published book. It does not meet our criteria for a WP:RS.
• Religioustolerance.org - The references offered at RT quote Wikipedia.[1] This is a self-ref and unreliable.
• The First Post, a free and independent daily online news magazine, whose author quotes a figure about Buddhist adherents without any reference, likely taken from Wikipedia or RT above.[2] Again, a self-ref.
• Non-Resident Nepali Association - a website hosting a speech. Not a reliable source.[3]
• Educational Leadership - a 1954 article.[4] Out of date, and misused to push your POV. This is called original research and is unacceptable.
• Google Search - A Google search pointing to an 1884 book.[5] Unacceptable misuse of source. You can't just perform a Google search and use the result as a "source" to prove your POV.
• Google Search - A Google search pointing to many things, all of which are irrelevant.[6] Misuse of primary sources.
• Google Search - A Google search pointing to a book published in 1910.[7] Unacceptable misuse of a primary source.
• Buddhism: Religion in Korea - An interesting book about Korean Budhism published by a reliable source,[8] but looking at it in depth, it appears to be written as a promotional hagiography. It would have to be used very carefully, and with attention to any references used by the author. I looked for references in the book and found none. This tells me it is more of a textbook than a secondary source, and we generally avoid tertiary sources like textbooks.

I am therefore reverting Kim's additions. More importantly, the misuse of all of these sources together is evidence of original research and POV pushing. Viriditas (talk) 20:05, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

It seems there are (at least) a couple of points that perhaps should be discussed separately:

1. Buddhism was at one time the most populous religion (whatever the population figure), and
2. the 1.6 billion figure.

If true, the first point should be easier to cite, provided proper references. The second point involves a more difficult discussion of how or whether mixed adherence or heavy Buddhist influence should be counted. /ninly_(talk) 20:53, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. There are quite a number of Buddhist scholars who have received PhD's in Buddhist Studies in the last three decades, so we should be able to find scholarly material for use in this article. For example, many popular reliable academic sources about Buddhism are listed on the University of California web page. It should be easy to find at least one that has the information we need. There's also the Group in Buddhist Studies at UC Berkeley and the Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford University. Viriditas (talk) 04:19, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Although this is not exactly the best source, the Buddha Dharma Education Association (as of 2008) maintains the number of 350 million, which is in parity with other sources.[9] Note, Chinese traditional religion is not included in that number. Adherents.com lists an updated (current) number of 376 million.[10] Viriditas (talk) 04:46, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Part of the problem with Kim's research is that it is not a representative sample of reliable secondary sources, but rather cherry picked POV from unreliable sources. When we truly start to look at the RS, we find the following:

• "Today, it is considered that there are more than 300 million Buddhists in the world..." [11] Faith & Philosophy of Buddhism (2009) Kalpaz Publications. Please note the extensive bibliography.[12]
• "There are over 300 million Buddhists in the world."[13] A World Religions Reader (2009). John Wiley and Sons.
• "There are over 300 million practicing Buddhists worldwide today."[14] The Knowledge Book (2009). National Geographic.
• "There are somewhere between 230 and 500 million Buddhists in the world today..."[15] Globalization (2009). John Wiley and Sons. Note: This publication makes use of extensive footnotes.
• "There are 350 million Buddhists worldwide making up 6% of the global population (www.adherents.com)."[16]Religion, Belief and Social Work (2010). The Policy Press. Note from publisher: "This book is the first to deal with social work and religion so comprehensively and will therefore be essential reading not only for social work students, but also for practitioners in a range of areas, social work academics and researchers in the UK and beyond."[17]
• "...in sheer numbers there are...roughly 350 million Buddhists (Theravada and Mahayana)..." [18] Introducing Philosophy of Religion (2009). Routledge. Note from publisher: "...ideal for student use...this is the perfect introductory package for undergraduate philosophy of religion courses."[19]
• "According to Russell Chandler, the author of Racing Toward 2001, there were an estimated 359 million Buddhists in the world in 2000, with a projected growth rate of 1.7 percent annually. Some estimates have placed this number much higher with over 1 billion Buddhists worldwide, and an increasing number coming from the West." The Everything Buddhism Book (2011). Adams Media. Note: the author appears to be quoting Chandler's 1992 book, which estimates the size of Buddhism in 2000. This 1992 estimate has been superseded by more current sources. The "some estimates" claim about 1 billion Buddhists does not have a footnote. The author of this source does not take a critical view of Buddhism, but rather promotes it as a religion for interested neophytes. The publisher is known for its selection of popular religion books, but not for academic works.

Something to be aware of: One of the archived discussions of this topic raised the issue that the estimate here did not jive with the numbers at Buddhism by country. That page uses a different, more piecemeal approach to securing and citing its estimates, and while it does acknowledge that numbers depends heavily on the "degree of syncretism" allowed in making an estimate (if I'm reading it correctly), it also gives a fairly confusing presentation, in my opinion, and appends a more daunting list of references than would be appropriate here. I would also ask whether mirroring the results of that approach constitutes synthesis, at least for the purposes of this article. /ninly_(talk) 15:43, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from 188.64.0.254, 11 February 2011

{{edit semi-protected}} On the first line of the Buddhism article it says Buddhism is a religion. I believe citation is needed for this claim, as it is debatable.

http://www.amtb.cn/e-bud/releases/educati.htm

188.64.0.254 (talk) 11:57, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

 Not done: You are correct in observing that it is debatable. Please look at the archives, where every conceivable aspect of this debate has been covered, including a look at probably every English source on the subject. The consensus on this debate is settled: we describe it as a religion and a philosophy. Viriditas (talk) 18:14, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

spelling error

The word "comparison" in the second paragraph of this article is spelled incorrectly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ZanClan (talk • contribs) 26 February 2011

Fixed, thanks. /ninly_(talk) 21:15, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Someone is illegally erasing my disscussion about Buddhism being born in Ancient India

I have started a discussion about Buddha being born in Ancient India, in what is now known as Lumbini Nepal, and someone took it off. This is wrong. The point of discussion is to discuss. And if your taking that off, then your not even allowing discussin. 71.106.83.19 (talk) 00:18, 10 March 2011 (UTC)