Word: buddha
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Human or Divine? In the 2,480-odd years since the Buddha attained Nirvana, there have been six World Buddhist Councils. Their story outlines the progress of the world's fifth largest faith. The first council took place soon after the Buddha's death in the 5th century B.C., when about 500 of the leading monks of the New Order met in a cave to decide on the first collection of their master's teachings: the universality of suffering and the Eightfold Path by which one might escape from it-right belief, right contemplation, right speech, right...
...split in Buddhism. At the third council, about 244 B.C., it was decided to send out missionaries to other countries; and at the fourth, in the 1st century A.D., the big split crystallized. It divides the Buddhist world to this day between the traditional Hinayana Buddhists, who look upon Buddha as a human teacher, and the more recent and increasingly influential Mahayana Buddhists, who worship him as a divine being...
...Marx or Buddha? The present council, which will last for two years, was called to codify some changes in the texts and to prepare them for propagation throughout a morally shaken Asia. The man behind the council is Burma's pleasant, scholarly Prime Minister U Nu, who has been doing his best to spark a religious resurgence in his country since it got its independence in 1948. A devout Buddhist, who rises to pray at 4 a.m. each day, U Nu was meditating one day several years ago in the sacred cave where the first Buddhist council was held...
...ancient prophecy holds that 2,500 years after Buddha's death the Way he founded will either fade away entirely or experience a renaissance. The present council will disband in May 1956, when the 2,500 years will be up, and U Nu is hoping for the upsurge. Said he recently: "The growing [Marxist] challenge to Buddhism has not effectively been met. . . The Buddhist organization we are going to have will combat these challenges not only in the intellectual field but if need be in the physical field as well...
...southern Tibetan monastery. He had fled there to escape the Red Chinese hordes advancing on Lhasa, capital of his theocracy, to which he returned later that year. In the picture, the Dalai's Lord Chamberlain shows him a golden urn said to contain the ashes of Buddha's two chief disciples...