Hinayana Buddhism
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Hinayana Buddhism
Hīnayāna (, ) is a Sanskrit term literally meaning the "small/deficient vehicle". Classical Chinese and Tibetan teachers translate it as "smaller vehicle". The term is applied collectively to the ''Śrāvakayāna'' and ''Pratyekabuddhayāna'' paths. This term appeared around the first or second century. Hīnayāna was often contrasted with ''Mahāyāna'', which means the "great vehicle". In 1950 the World Fellowship of Buddhists declared that the term Hīnayāna should not be used when referring to any form of Buddhism existing today. In the past, the term was widely used by Western scholars to cover "the earliest system of Buddhist doctrine", as the ''Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary'' put it. Modern Buddhist scholarship has deprecated the pejorative term, and uses instead the term ''Nikaya Buddhism'' to refer to early Buddhist schools. ''Hinayana'' has also been used as a synonym for Theravada, which is the main tradition of Buddhism in Sri Lanka and Southeast As ...
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Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late Bronze Age. Sanskrit is the sacred language of Hinduism, the language of classical Hindu philosophy, and of historical texts of Buddhism and Jainism. It was a link language in ancient and medieval South Asia, and upon transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia, East Asia and Central Asia in the early medieval era, it became a language of religion and high culture, and of the political elites in some of these regions. As a result, Sanskrit had a lasting impact on the languages of South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, especially in their formal and learned vocabularies. Sanskrit generally connotes several Old Indo-Aryan language varieties. The most archaic of these is the Vedic Sanskrit found in the Rig Veda, a colle ...
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China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and borders fourteen countries by land, the most of any country in the world, tied with Russia. Covering an area of approximately , it is the world's third largest country by total land area. The country consists of 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four municipalities, and two Special Administrative Regions (Hong Kong and Macau). The national capital is Beijing, and the most populous city and financial center is Shanghai. Modern Chinese trace their origins to a cradle of civilization in the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. The semi-legendary Xia dynasty in the 21st century BCE and the well-attested Shang and Zhou dynasties developed a bureaucratic political system to serve hereditary monarchies, or ...
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Bhikkhu
A ''bhikkhu'' (Pali: भिक्खु, Sanskrit: भिक्षु, ''bhikṣu'') is an ordained male in Buddhist monasticism. Male and female monastics ("nun", ''bhikkhunī'', Sanskrit ''bhikṣuṇī'') are members of the Sangha (Buddhist community). The lives of all Buddhist monastics are governed by a set of rules called the prātimokṣa or pātimokkha. Their lifestyles are shaped to support their spiritual practice: to live a simple and meditative life and attain nirvana. A person under the age of 20 cannot be ordained as a bhikkhu or bhikkhuni but can be ordained as a śrāmaṇera or śrāmaṇērī. Definition ''Bhikkhu'' literally means "beggar" or "one who lives by alms". The historical Buddha, Prince Siddhartha, having abandoned a life of pleasure and status, lived as an alms mendicant as part of his śramaṇa lifestyle. Those of his more serious students who renounced their lives as householders and came to study full-time under his supervision also ad ...
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Vinaya
The Vinaya (Pali & Sanskrit: विनय) is the division of the Buddhist canon ('' Tripitaka'') containing the rules and procedures that govern the Buddhist Sangha (community of like-minded ''sramanas''). Three parallel Vinaya traditions remain in use by modern ''sanghas'': the Theravada (Sri Lanka & Southeast Asia), Mulasarvastivada (Tibetan Buddhism and the Himalayan region) and Dharmaguptaka (East Asian Buddhism). In addition to these Vinaya traditions, Vinaya texts of several extinct schools of Indian Buddhism are preserved in the Tibetan and East Asian canons, including those of the Kāśyapīya, the Mahāsāṃghika, the Mahīśāsaka, and the Sarvāstivāda The word ''Vinaya'' is derived from a Sanskrit verb that can mean to lead, take away, train, tame, or guide, or alternately to educate or teach. It is often translated as 'discipline', with ''Dhamma-vinaya'', 'doctrine and discipline', used by the Buddha to refer to his complete teachings, suggesting its integral ...
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Paul Williams (philosopher)
Paul Williams (born 1950) is Emeritus Professor of Indian and Tibetan Philosophy at the University of Bristol, England. Until his retirement in 2011 he was also director for the University's Centre for Buddhist Studies, and is a former president of the UK Association for Buddhist Studies. Biography Williams studied at the University of Sussex's School of African studies, African & Asian Studies where he graduated with a first class Bachelor of Arts, BA in 1972. He then went on to study Buddhist Philosophy at Wadham College, University of Oxford, where he was awarded his DPhil in 1978. His main research interests are Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophy, Mahayana Buddhism, and Medieval philosophical and mystical thought. Williams was a Buddhist himself for many years but has since converted to Roman Catholicism, an experience he wrote about in his book ''The Unexpected Way''Paul J. Griffiths"On honeymoon" ''Commonweal (magazine), Commonweal'', 17 January 2003. and in an article, "On co ...
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Jan Nattier
Jan Nattier is an American scholar of Mahāyana Buddhism. Early life and education She earned her PhD in Inner Asian and Altaic Studies from Harvard University (1988), and subsequently taught at the University of Hawaii (1988-1990), Stanford University (1990-1992), and Indiana University (1992–2005). She then worked as a research professor at the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, Soka University (2006–2010) before retiring from her position there and beginning a series of visiting professorships at various universities in the U.S.Academia.edu profile. https://berkeley.academia.edu/JanNattier Career Nattier is one of a group of scholars who have substantially revised views of the early development of Mahāyana Buddhism in the last 20 years. They have in common their attention to and re-evaluation of early Chinese translations of texts. Her first notable contribution was a book based on her PhD thesis which looked at the Chinese Doctrine of the Three A ...
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Vajrayana
Vajrayāna ( sa, वज्रयान, "thunderbolt vehicle", "diamond vehicle", or "indestructible vehicle"), along with Mantrayāna, Guhyamantrayāna, Tantrayāna, Secret Mantra, Tantric Buddhism, and Esoteric Buddhism, are names referring to Buddhist traditions associated with Tantra and "Secret Mantra", which developed in the medieval Indian subcontinent and spread to Tibet, Nepal, other Himalayan states, East Asia, and Mongolia. Vajrayāna practices are connected to specific lineages in Buddhism, through the teachings of lineage holders. Others might generally refer to texts as the Buddhist Tantras. It includes practices that make use of mantras, dharanis, mudras, mandalas and the visualization of deities and Buddhas. Traditional Vajrayāna sources say that the tantras and the lineage of Vajrayāna were taught by Śākyamuni Buddha and other figures such as the bodhisattva Vajrapani and Padmasambhava. Contemporary historians of Buddhist studies meanwhile argue that ...
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Asanga
Asaṅga (, ; Romaji: ''Mujaku'') (fl. 4th century C.E.) was "one of the most important spiritual figures" of Mahayana Buddhism and the "founder of the Yogachara school".Engle, Artemus (translator), Asanga, ''The Bodhisattva Path to Unsurpassed Enlightenment: A Complete Translation of the Bodhisattvabhumi,'' Shambhala Publications, 2016, Translator's introduction.Rahula, Walpola; Boin-Webb, Sara (translators); Asanga, ''Abhidharmasamuccaya: The Compendium of the Higher Teaching,'' Jain Publishing Company, 2015, p. xiii. He was born in ''Puruṣapura'', modern day Peshawar, Pakistan. Traditionally, he and his half-brother Vasubandhu are regarded as the major classical Indian Sanskrit exponents of Mahayana Abhidharma, ''Vijñanavada'' (awareness only; also called ''Vijñaptivāda'', the doctrine of ideas or percepts, and ''Vijñaptimātratā-vāda'', the doctrine of 'mere representation)) thought and Mahayana teachings on the bodhisattva path. Biography According to later hagiogr ...
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Thrangu Rinpoche
Thrangu Rinpoche ( ) was born in 1933 in Kham, Tibet. He is deemed to be a prominent tulku (reincarnate lama) in the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism, the ninth reincarnation in his particular line. His full name and title is the ''Very Venerable Ninth Khenchen Thrangu Tulku, Karma Lodrö Lungrik Maway Senge''. The academic title ''Khenchen'' denotes great scholarly accomplishment (English-language analogues include the titles Distinguished Professor and Academic Fellow), and the term ''Rinpoche'' ("Precious" or "Precious One") is a Tibetan devotional title which may be accorded to respected teachers and exemplars. Biography Early life and exile Thrangu Rinpoche was installed at Thrangu Monastery in Kham (eastern Tibet) after his identification by the Sixteenth Karmapa and the previous Tai Situpa at age five. He is one of the principal lamas there, although Traleg Rinpoche is the supreme abbot of the complex. He fled to India following the Chinese invasion in 1959. At the ...
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Rangjung Yeshe Wiki
The Rangjung Yeshe Wiki is a Wiki community established in 2005 focused on building a Tibetan-English Dictionary, glossaries of Buddhist terminology, biographies of Buddhist teachers, and articles on important Tibetan Buddhist literary works and collections. The site aims to develop resources useful for the "community of lotsawas" involved in translating Buddhist texts from Classical Tibetan to English and other European Languages. The original content of the Wiki was based on a digital Tibetan-English dictionary compiled by the translator Erik Pema Kunsang Erik Pema Kunsang (born Erik Hein Schmidt) is a Danish translator and was, along with Marcia Binder Schmidt, director of Rangjung Yeshe Translations and Publications in Kathmandu. He has translated over fifty volumes of Tibetan texts and oral ... in the early 1970s. The Rangjung Yeshe Wiki currently has over 23,720 articles, 1,060 uploaded files, and 825 registered users. The site is hosted and supported by the Tsadra Found ...
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Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north toward the East China Sea, Philippine Sea, and Taiwan in the south. Japan is a part of the Ring of Fire, and spans Japanese archipelago, an archipelago of List of islands of Japan, 6852 islands covering ; the five main islands are Hokkaido, Honshu (the "mainland"), Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa Island, Okinawa. Tokyo is the Capital of Japan, nation's capital and largest city, followed by Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Kobe, and Kyoto. Japan is the List of countries and dependencies by population, eleventh most populous country in the world, as well as one of the List of countries and dependencies by population density, most densely populated and Urbanization by country, urbanized. About three-fourths of Geography of Japan, the c ...
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