Hinduism and Islam are two of the world’s three largest religions. Orthodox Hinduism is the socio-religious way of life of the Hindu people of the Indian subcontinent, their diaspora, and some other regions which had Hindu influence in the ancient and medieval times. Islam is a monotheistic religion in which the supreme deity is Allah and the last prophet being Muhammad ibn Abdullah. Orthodox Hinduism mostly shares common terms with the ”dhārmic” religions, including Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. Islam shares common terms with the ”Abrahamic” religions (those religions claiming prophet Abraham), i.e. Judaism and Christianity.

The scriptures of Islam are the ”Qurān”, which is primary(most authentic0 book because it is considered the word of God, and the several Shia and Sunni Hadīths, which are secondary in authority, and deal with the life and acts of Islamic Prophet Muhammad. The scriptures of Orthodox Hinduism are the ”Shrutis” (the four ”Vedas” and their three tier of commentaries), which are considered authentic, most authoritative and Divine Revelation. Furthermore, Hinduism is also based on the ”Smritis” (including the ”Rāmāyana”, the ”Bhagavad Gītā” and the ”Purānas”), which are considered to be of secondary authority and human creation.

Nevertheless, Hinduism and Islam do have many similarities, as well as differences, as discussed below.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Hinduism and Islam, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Vikas Khanna’s [http://www.holykitchens.com/ Holy Kitchens] film series explores the food sharing traditions in a spiritual context. The first film in the series [http://www.vkhanna.com/HolyKitchensSikhism.htm/ True Business], is based on the Sikh community kitchens, known as Langars, with introduction by Deepak Chopra. The film will premiere at the [http://www.sikharts.com/film-festival.html/ Sikh International Film Festival] in October 2010. Other films in the Holy Kitchens series are based upon the food traditions of Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Judaism.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Vikas Khanna, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Buddhist scriptures and other texts exist in great variety. Different schools of Buddhism place varying levels of value on learning the various texts. Some schools venerate certain texts as religious objects in themselves, while others take a more scholastic approach. Buddhist scriptures are written in these languages: Pāli, Tibetan, Mongolian, Chinese, along with some texts that still exist in Sanskrit and Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit.

Unlike many religions, Buddhism has no single central text that is universally referred to by all traditions. However, some scholars have referred to the Vinaya Pitaka and the first four Nikayas of the Sutta Pitaka as the common core of all Buddhist traditions. However, this could be considered misleading, as Mahāyāna considers these merely a preliminary, and not a core, teaching, the Tibetan Buddhists have not even translated most of the āgamas, though theoretically they recognize them, and they play no part in the religious life of either clergy or laity in China and Japan. Other scholars say there is no universally accepted common core. The size and complexity of the Buddhist canons have been seen by some (including Buddhist social reformer Babasaheb Ambedkar) as presenting barriers to the wider understanding of Buddhist philosophy.

The followers of Theravāda Buddhism take the scriptures known as the Pāli Canon as definitive and authoritative, while the followers of Mahāyāna Buddhism base their faith and philosophy primarily on the Mahāyāna sūtras and their own ”vinaya”. The Pāli sutras, along with other, closely related scriptures, are known to the other schools as the ”āgamas”.

Over the years, various attempts have been made to synthesize a single Buddhist text that can encompass all of the major principles of Buddhism. In the Theravada tradition, condensed ‘study texts’ were created that combined popular or influential scriptures into single volumes that could be studied by novice monks. Later in Sri Lanka, the Dhammapada was championed as a unifying scripture.

Dwight Goddard collected a sample of Buddhist scriptures, with the emphasis on Zen, along with other classics of Eastern philosophy, such as the Tao Te Ching, into his ‘Buddhist Bible’ in the 1920s. More recently, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar attempted to create a single, combined document of Buddhist principles in [http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ambedkar/ambedkar_buddha/ "The Buddha and His Dhamma"]. Other such efforts have persisted to present day, but currently there is no single text that represents all Buddhist traditions.

Pāli Tipitaka

The Pāli Tipitaka, which means “three baskets”, refers to the ”Vinaya Pitaka”, the ”Sutta Pitaka”, and the ”Abhidhamma Pitaka”. The ”Vinaya Pitaka” contains disciplinary rules for the Buddhist monks and nuns, as well as explanations of why and how these rules were instituted, supporting material, and doctrinal clarification. The ”Sutta Pitaka” contains discourses ascribed to Gautama Buddha. The ”Abhidhamma Pitaka” contains material often described as systematic expositions of the Gautama Buddha’s teachings.

The Pāli Tipitaka is the only early Tipitaka (Sanskrit: ”Tripiṭaka”) to survive intact in its original language, but a number of early schools had their own recensions of the Tipitaka featuring much of the same material. We have portions of the Tipitakas of the Sārvāstivāda, Dharmaguptaka, Sammitya, Mahāsaṅghika, Kāśyapīya, and Mahīśāsaka schools, most of which survive in Chinese translation only. According to some sources, some early schools of Buddhism had five or seven pitakas.

According to the scriptures, soon after the death of the Buddha, the first Buddhist council was held; a monk named Mahākāśyapa (Pāli: Mahākassapa) presided. The goal of the council was to record the Buddha’s teachings. Upāli recited the ”vinaya”. Ānanda, the Buddha’s personal attendant, was called upon to recite the dhamma. These became the basis of the Tripitaka. However, this record was initially transmitted orally in form of chanting, and was committed to text in the last century BCE. Both the sūtras and the ”vinaya” of every Buddhist school contain a wide variety of elements including discourses on the Dharma, commentaries on other teachings, cosmological and cosmogonical texts, stories of the Gautama Buddha’s previous lives, and various other subjects.

Much of the material in the Canon is not specifically “Theravadin”, but is instead the collection of teachings that this school preserved from the early, non-sectarian body of teachings. According to Peter Harvey, it contains material which is at odds with later Theravadin orthodoxy. He states: “The Theravadins, then, may have ”added” texts to the Canon for some time, but they do not appear to have tampered with what they already had from an earlier period.”

Mahayana Sutras

The Mahayana sutras are a very broad genre of Buddhist scriptures that the Mahayana Buddhist tradition holds are original teachings of the Buddha. The adherents of Mahayana accept both the early teachings (including in this the Sarvastivada Abhidharma, which was criticized by Nagarjuna and is in fact opposed to early Buddhist thought) and the Mahayana sutras as authentic teachings of Gautama Buddha, and claim they were designed for different types of persons and different levels of spiritual understanding.

The Mahayana sutras often claim to articulate the Buddha’s deeper, more advanced doctrines, reserved for those who follow the bodhisattva path. That path is explained as being built upon the motivation to liberate all living beings from unhappiness. Hence the name ”Mahāyāna” (lit., ”the Great Vehicle”).

According to Mahayana tradition, the Mahayana sutras were transmitted in secret, came from other Buddhas or Bodhisattvas, or were preserved in non-human worlds because human beings at the time couldn’t understand them:

Approximately six hundred Mahayana sutras have survived in Sanskrit or in Chinese or Tibetan translations. In addition, East Asian Buddhism recognizes some sutras regarded by scholars to be of Chinese rather than Indian origin.

Generally, scholars conclude that the Mahayana scriptures were composed from the 1st century CE onwards: “Large numbers of Mahayana sutras were being composed in the period between the beginning of the common era and the fifth century”, five centuries after the historical Gautama Buddha. Some of these had their roots in other scriptures composed in the 1st century BCE. It was not until after the 5th century CE that the Mahayana sutras started to influence the behavior of mainstream Buddhists in India: “But outside of texts, at least in India, at exactly the same period, very different—in fact seemingly older—ideas and aspirations appear to be motivating actual behavior, and old and established Hinnayana groups appear to be the only ones that are patronized and supported.” These texts were apparently not universally accepted among Indian Buddhists when they appeared; the pejorative label ”hinayana” was applied by Mahayana supporters to those who rejected the Mahayana sutras.

Only the Theravada school does not include the Mahayana scriptures in its canon. As the modern Theravada school is descended from a branch of Buddhism that diverged and established itself in Sri Lanka prior to the emergence of the Mahayana texts, debate exists as to whether the Theravada were historically included in the ”hinayana” designation; in the modern era, this label is seen as derogatory, and is generally avoided.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Buddhism, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Hinduism in the narrow sense (to the exclusion of Vedism and Iron Age Brahmanism) is the new religious mainstream arising with the decline of Buddhism in India and from about the 4th century AD.

Mauryan and Sangam period

The Mauryan period saw an early flowering of classical Sanskrit Sutra and Shastra literature and the scholarly exposition of the “circum-Vedic” fields of the Vedanga. However, during this time Buddhism was patronized by Ashoka, who ruled large parts of India, and Buddhism was also the mainstream religion until the Gupta empire period.

The Sangam literature (300 BC – 300 AD) is a mostly secular body of classical literature in the Tamil language. Nonetheless there are some works, significantly Pattupathu and Paripaatal, wherein the personal devotion to god was written in form of devotional poems. Vishnu, Shiva and Murugan were mentioned gods. These works are therefore the earliest evidences of monotheistic Bhakti traditions, preceding the large bhakti movement, which will given great attention in later times.

Gupta and Pallava period

The Pallavas (4th to 9th centuries) were, alongside the Guptas of the North, patronizers of Sanskrit in the South of the Subcontinent. The pallava reign saw the first Sankrit inscriptions in a script called Grantha. Early Pallavas had different connections to South-East Asian countries. The Pallavas used Dravidian architecture to build some very important Hindu temples and academies in Mamallapuram, Kanchipuram and other places; their rule saw the rise of great poets, who are as famous as Kal

The Gupta period (4th to 6th centuries) saw a flowering of scholarship, the emergence of the classical schools of Hindu philosophy, and of classical Sanskrit literature in general on topics ranging from medicine, veterinary science, mathematics, to astrology and astronomy and astrophysics. The famous Aryabhata and Varahamihira belong to this age. The Gupta established a strong central government which also allowed a degree of local control. Gupta society was ordered in accordance with Hindu beliefs. This included a strict caste system, or class system. The peace and prosperity created under Gupta leadership enabled the pursuit of scientific and artistic endeavors.

The practice of dedicating temples to different deities came into vogue followed by fine artistic temple architecture and sculpture (see Vastu Shastra).

Expansion in South-East Asia

From about the 1st century, India started to strongly influence Southeast Asian countries. Trade routes linked India with southern Burma, central and southern Siam, lower Cambodia and southern Vietnam and numerous urbanized coastal settlements were established there.

For more than a thousand years, Indian Hindu/Buddhist influence was therefore the major factor that brought a certain level of cultural unity to the various countries of the region. The Pali and Sanskrit languages and the Indian script, together with Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism, Brahmanism and Hinduism, were transmitted from direct contact as well as through sacred texts and Indian literature, such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata epics.

From the 5th to the 13th century, South-East Asia had very powerful Indian colonial empires and became extremely active in Buddhist architectural and artistic creation. The Sri Vijaya Empire to the south and the Khmer Empire to the north competed for influence.

Langkasuka (-”langkha” Sanskrit for “resplendent land” -”sukkha” of “bliss”) was a ancient Hindu kingdom located in the Malay Peninsula. The kingdom, along with Old Kedah settlement, are probably the earliest territorial footholds founded on the Malay Peninsula. According to tradition, the founding of the kingdom happened in the 2nd century; Malay legends claim that Langkasuka was founded at Kedah, and later moved to Pattani.

From the 5th-15th centuries Sri Vijayan empire, a maritime empire centered on the island of Sumatra in

Indonesia, had adopted Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism under a line of rulers named the Sailendras. The Empire of Sri Vijaya declined due to conflicts with the Chola rulers of India. The Majapahit Empire succeeded the Singhasari empire. It was one of the last and greatest Hindu empires in Maritime Southeast Asia.

Funan was a pre-Angkor Cambodian kingdom, located around the Mekong delta, probably established by Mon-Khmer settlers speaking an Austro-Asiatic language. According to reports by two Chinese envoys, K’ang T’ai and Chu Ying, the state was established by an Indian Brahmin named Kaundinya, who in the first century C.E. was given instruction in a dream to take a magic bow from a temple and defeat a Khmer queen, Soma. Soma, the daughter of the king of the Nagas, married Kaundinya and their lineage became the royal dynasty of Funan. The myth had the advantage of providing the legitimacy of both an Indian Brahmin and the divinity of the cobras, who at that time were held in religious regard by the inhabitants of the region.

The kingdom of Champa (or ”Lin-yi” in Chinese records)

controlled what is now south and central Vietnam from approximately 192 through 1697. The dominant religion of the Cham people was Hinduism and the culture was heavily influenced by India.

Later, from the 9th to the 13th century, the Mahayana Buddhist and Hindu Khmer Empire dominated much of the South-East Asian peninsula. Under the Khmer, more than 900 temples were built in Cambodia and in neighboring Thailand. Angkor was at the center of this development, with a temple complex and urban organization able to support around one million urban dwellers. The largest temple complex of the world , Angkor Wat , stands here; built by the king Vishnuvardhan , a king of the dynasty that believed themselves to be incarnations of Vishnu.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article History of Hinduism, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Yāna (Sanskrit and Pāli: “vehicle”) refers to a mode or method of spiritual practice in Buddhism, and in particular to divisions of various schools of Buddhism according to their type of practice.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Yana (Buddhism), under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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When the revolutionaries — determined to modernize their country and to reform its society — took power, they confronted a massive ecclesiastical structure that enrolled a larger part of the population, monopolized education and medical services, administered justice in a part of the country, and controlled a great deal of the national wealth. The Buddhist church, moreover, had no interest in reforming itself or in modernizing the country. The result was a protracted political struggle that absorbed the energies and attention of the party and its Soviet advisers for nearly twenty years. As late as 1934, the party counted 843 major Buddhist centers, about 3,000 temples of various sizes, and nearly 6,000 associated buildings, which usually were the only fixed structures in a world of yurts. The annual income of the church was 31 million Tögrögs, while that of the state was 37.5 million tögrögs. A party source claimed that, in 1935, monks constituted 48 percent of the adult male population. In a campaign marked by shifts of tactics, alternating between conciliation and persecution, and a fe reported uprisings led by monks and abbots, the Buddhist church was removed progressively from public administration, was subjected to confiscatory taxes, was forbidden to teach children, and was prohibited from recruiting new monks or replacing living Buddhas. The campaign’s timing matched the phases of Joseph Stalin’s persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church. Robert Rupen reports that in the 1920s there were over 112,000 Mongolian Buddhist monks, representing mor

Since the late 1940s, one monastery, the Gandan Monastery, with a community of 100 monks, was open in Ulaanbaatar. It was the country’s sole monastery and was more for international display than functionality. A few of the old monasteries survived as museums, and the Gandan Monastery served as a living museum and a tourist attraction. Its monks included a few young men who had undergone a five-year training period, but whose motives and mode of selection were unknown to Western observers. The party apparently thought that Buddhism no longer posed a challenge to its dominance and that — because Buddhism had played so large a part in the country’s history, traditional arts and culture, total extirpation of knowledge about the religion and its practices would cut modern Mongols off from much of their past, to the detriment of their national identity. A few aged former monks were employed to translate Tibetan-language handbooks on herbs and traditional medicine. Government spokesmen described the monks of the Gandan Monastery as doing useful work. Today the monastery has been reinvigorated as the Gandantegchinlen Khiid Monastery by the post-Communist governments of the country.

Buddhism, furthermore played a role in Mongolia’s foreign policy by linking Mongolia with the communist and the noncommunist states of East and Southeast Asia. Ulaanbaatar was the headquarters of the Asian Buddhist Conference for Peace, which has held conferences for Buddhists from such countries as Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, and Bhutan; published a journal for international circulation; and maintained contacts with such groups as the Christian Peace Conference, the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organization, and the Russian Orthodox Church. It sponsored the visits of the Dalai Lama to Mongolia in 1979 and 1982. The organization, headed by the abbot of then-Gandan Monastery, advanced the foreign policy goals of the Mongolian government, which were in accord with those of the Soviet Union.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Buddhism in Mongolia, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Dharma doll, is a hollow, round, Japanese doll modeled after Bodhidharma, the founder of the Zen sect of Buddhism. These dolls, though typically red and depicting a bearded man (Dharma), vary greatly in color and design depending on region and artist. Though considered an ”omocha”, meaning toy, Daruma has a design that is rich in symbolism and is regarded more as a talisman of good luck to the Japanese. Daruma dolls are seen as a symbol of perseverance and good luck, making them a popular gift of encouragement. The doll has also been commercialized by many Buddhist temples to use alongside goal setting.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Daruma doll, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Aspects of Christian meditation was the topic of an October 15, 1989 document of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on differences, and potential incompatibilities, between Christian meditation and the styles of meditation used in eastern religions such as Buddhism.

This “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on some aspects of Christian meditation” is known formally by its incipit Orationis formas. Similar warnings were issued in 2003 in ”A Christian reflection on the New Age”.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Aspects of Christian meditation, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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The earliest Buddhist influence on Scotland came through its imperial connections with South East Asia, and as a result the early connections were with the Theravada traditions of Burma, Thailand, and Sri Lanka. To begin with, 150 years ago, this response was primarily scholarly, and a tradition of study grew up that eventually resulted in the foundation of the Pali Text Society, which undertook the huge task of translating the Pali Canon of Theravada Buddhist texts into English.

The rate of growth was slow but steady through the century, and the 1950s saw the development of interest in Zen Buddhism. In 1967 Kagyu Samyé Ling Monastery and Tibetan Centre was founded by Tibetan lamas and refugees Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and Akong Rinpoche. It is in Eskdalemuir, in south west Scotland and is the largest Tibetan Buddhist centre in Western Europe, and part of the Karma Kagyu tradition.

As well there are other Buddhism-based new religious movements such as the New Kadampa Tradition, Friends of the Western Buddhist Order and Sōka Gakkai International. The FWBO maintains a retreat centre at Balquhidder in the Trossachs.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Buddhism in Scotland, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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* Buddhism

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Outline of Buddhism, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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