Contents1. Introduction2. The place of Buddhism in context of other world religions3 History of Buddhism4.The three traditions of Buddhism4.1 Theravada4.2 Mahayana4.3 Vajrayana5 Ideas of Buddhism5.1 Four noble truths5.2 Noble Eightfold Path5.3 Nirvana6. Reference1. IntroductionThe teachings of Gautama Buddha, the prince Siddhartha, who lived 500 BCE in India, spread since the 200s over China. Reason for this dispersion can be found in the silk road. This road was a famous road for merchants and had influence even to Japan and Korea.
Buddhism flourished in 700s and 800s until it was prohibited in China.
Today Buddhism attract followers worldwide and is considered a major world religion. It is the fifth-largest religion in the world behind Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and traditional Chinese religion. Today there are around 350 million people practising this religion.
Buddhism is even studied scientifically in the West. E.g. the meditation. Many long-term practising Buddhists, for instance, have been shown to have physically different brain structure, in areas associated with spiritual happiness or profound joy.
The following paper will tackle the topic of Buddhism, its history philosophy and ideas. First of all I will explain the present status of Buddhism in context of other world religions. After that the history will be presented. In this chapter I tried to focus on the main parts of historyand give an overall outline. Therefore I used bullet point to cover up most of the facts.
Chapter four deals with the three traditions of Buddhism. Differences and similarity in the three schools Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana are shown. The fifth chapter deals with the most important ideas of Buddhism. This paper focuses on the four noble truth, the Noble Eightfold Path and Nirvana.
2. The place of Buddhism in context of other world religionsBuddhism is a dharmic, non-theistic religion, a philosophy and a...