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This 8 page paper discusses various aspects of Buddhism. Bibliography lists 7 sources.
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8 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_HVFctBud.rtf
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of Buddhism, various forms of Buddhism, and aspects of the religion. Origins of Buddhism Buddhism apparently developed in India as a reaction to the concentration of power in the hands
of Vedic priests in the 7th-5th centuries BC (Hooker, 1996). "Indian philosophers and religious sages were reacting to the increasingly restrictive and empty formalism of Vedic sacrifices and rituals" (Hooker,
1996). The priests had become so powerful that they were placed above nobles and kings (Hooker, 1996). But a "small revolution occurred in the development of intellectual Hinduism," which pitted
itself against the concentration of power represented by the priests (Hooker, 1996). These thinkers admitted that the rituals might have some value, but instead of focusing on formality, they looked
instead at "the inspiration contained in the hymns that formed the backbone of Hinduism" (Hooker, 1996). Their teachers were called the "Upanishadic" after the way in which they were disseminated;
i.e., the "Upanishads" (Hooker, 1996). The Upanishads were "largely secret teachings and their religious focus was on the ability of human beings to understand the mysteries of the universe and
their own relationship to the divine" (Hooker,1996). These thinkers introduced several new ideas into the Vedics thinking: "the doctrine of transmigration, that is, that the soul goes from life to
life; the unity of the human soul with the universal soul, or Atman; the doctrine that self-discovery is also the discovery of the one god; and finally, a focus on
spirituality rather than material reality" (Hooker, 1996). Of these, transmigration was the most important, and with this came several new tenets that are familiar to anyone who knows much about
Buddhism. Along with the endless cycle of the soul came the idea that there is a "moral order" to the universe, called "rita"; and the idea of that "the type
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