Jun 18, 2019

>Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota<, Volume V, No. 10, April 2019 >>>>> Article #5 >>>>> World Religions: Micro-Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education


World religions are presented here under four main categories:  1) the monotheistic Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam;  2) faiths originating in India:  Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism,  and Sikhism;  3)  the Chinese religious complex (Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and popular religion) ;  and  4) the polytheistic religions from the Graeco-Roman Norse tradition, Japanese (Shinto), African, and Native American traditions.

               

I.  The Monotheistic Abrahamic Faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam 

                                                                                                                                       

A.  Judaism

 

1.  The Patriarchs

 

Abraham (c. 1800 B. C. / [BCE])

 

Abraham was the first of the great patriarchs of the Hebrew faith (Judaism).  Living in the first part of the second millennium B.C. (BCE), it was he to whom Yahweh (God in the terminology of the Hebrews [Jews]) first spoke of a special relationship that would become known as the Covenant.  The first book of the Bible, Genesis, records the words attributed to God in providing guidance to Abraham at a time when Palestine (frequently categorized geographically into northern [Israel] and southern [Judah]) was teeming with competing states and warring peoples, compounding the troubles on a natural landscape that was facing climatic challenge because of a long drought.  Yahweh urged Abraham to leave Palestine (also known extensively as Canaan) for more hospitable regions.  Abraham thus led his people on a southwestward trek that would eventually locate them in Egypt.

 

Abraham had two sons who would succeed their father in leadership of the Hebrew people on their journey and come to be regarded as the second and third of the great patriarchs.   Isaac was the elder son and first to assume leadership, succeeded in turn by his brother Jacob, who as an adult took the name Israel.  Under Jacob’s leadership, the Hebrew people at last firmly ensconced themselves in Egypt, where they thrived for many centuries before the 13th century B. C. (BCE) pharaoh Ramses II implemented prosecutorial policies against this long established immigrant population.

               

2.  Moses (c. 1200 B. C. [BCE])

                                                                               

The biblical book, Exodus, records the story of Moses, whose life as a baby was under threat when Ramses promulgated an edict declaring that the first-born child of all Jews would be put to death.   Moses’s mother took her chances by putting Moses in a basket in the Nile and setting her precious child afloat.  The child was in fact discovered, but with the ironic twist that pharoah’s daughter reclaimed the child at riverside and brought the infant to the palace to be raised.  Moses

therefore grew up with intimate knowledge of the royal house of Egypt and the life of the palace.  But in time, he came to know of his Hebrew heritage, taking offense at how his people were suffering under the pharaoh.

 

Under these circumstances, Moses followed the voices of his conscience and resolved to lead his people on an exodus (“going out” or “departing”) from Egypt.  The flight was harried but successful, as Yahweh (according to the account in Exodus) parted the Red Sea for the fleeing Jews under pursuit of Egyptian forces, leading them into the desert of the Sinai Peninsula.  On Mount Sinai, God appeared through a burning bush to Moses and gave him the Arc of the Covenant featuring the Ten Commandments, which established the moral code that would forever assert the moral standards to be followed by all pious Jews and Christians:  1) Thou shalt have no other gods before me;  2) Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image;  3) Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain;  4) Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy;  5) Honor thy father and thy mother;  6) Thou shalt not kill;  7) Thou shalt not commit adultery;  8) Thou shalt not steal;  9) Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor;  10) Thou shalt not covet.

 

Moses led his people forward toward the Promised Land but died before the journey was quite complete.  But under leader Joshua the Jews did thereafter reestablish themselves in Palestine and forever regarded themselves as God’s chosen people of the Covenant, destined to dwell in the Holy Land promised to them by Yahweh.

 

The Old Testament of the Holy Bible records the history of the Jews and books of wisdom,  poetry, and prophesy that would forever guide them.

 

3.  The Sacred Texts

 

a.  Torah

 

The first five books of the biblical Old Testament (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy) are particularly sacred to the Jews, collected in holy book known as the Torah, which conveys accounts of creation, the temptation and fall from grade of Adam and Even in the Garden of Eden, and moral principles and practices that would forever guide Jewish people.

 

The Old Testament, contains 39 books;  those succeeding the Torah, while not as important for scholarly mastery, carry important information pertinent to Jewish history, wisdom, poetry, and prophesy to which all practicing Jews assign great importance.

 

b. Talmud

 

The Talmud consists of texts known as the Mishnah, containing verses for repetition and study; and the Gemara, featuring the Haggadah and Halakah, works of the Hebrew legal tradition produced by Jewish scholars during the period of Babylonian captivity.  These two main works (Mishnah and Gemara) are presented over six parts into which the Talmud is divided.

 

3.  The Jews in History

 

The experiences of Abraham and Moses were formative in terms of God’s Covenant with the Jews as a Chosen People.  After Moses, Palestine was ruled leaders known as the Judges and immediately thereafter by three great kings:  Saul, David, and Solomon;  during Solomon’s reign, the Temple was built.  The Temple would undergo processes of destruction and rebuilding, remaining a fixture in Jewish life and consciousness to this day.

 

During the years 922 B. C. (BCE) through 721 B.C. (BCE), Palestine was divided into two kingdoms, Judah and Israel.  Judah continued to function independently until 598 B.C., but Israel was controlled by a succession of outsiders , from 722 B.C. (BCE).  Outsider control included that of the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Alexander the Great and his successors, and---  most notably--- the Romans.  Judah was mostly controlled by outsiders beginning in 598 B.C. (BCE), beginning with the Babylonian Captivity of 598-538 B.C. (BCE).  The Romans controlled Palestine (both Judah and Israel) from 63 B.C. (BCE) forward into the first centuries A.D. (CE).  Two revolts against the Romans during the first century A.D (CE) precipitated an oppressive counter-response that resulted in the great Jewish diaspora (scattering to live in places outside Palestine) that found Jews living in many places throughout the globe, most especially in Europe.

 

In European urban centers, Jews were economically successful but were often confined to certain residential areas that became known as ghettoes.  Viewed by European Christians with disdain due to religious differences, but also resented for their success in business and academia, Jews were always the targets of discrimination in Europe.   Persecution became especially fierce in the course of the 19th century with oppression of Jews in the ghettoes and the pogroms conducted under the Russian tsars (csars).  Such oppression led Theodore Herzl and others to advocate a Zionist movement for return to the homeland of Palestine.  After persecutions reached their height under the Nazi “Final Solution”  culminating in the holocaust, a post- War United Nations voted in 1948 to recognize the new state of Israel, understood as a Jewish homeland.  This set the stage, though, for a conflict with the Palestinian population of ethnic Arabs who are mostly Muslim.  Armed conflicts in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973 did not resolve the issues of territorial rights in Israel and Palestine, and the two sides are still in dispute in the year 2015.   

 

Jews in the contemporary world may be classified as Orthodox, those who follow very traditional practices;  Reform, those who accommodate themselves in many ways to liberal social change;  and   Conservative, those resolving to strike a balance between Reform and Orthodox practice.

 

 

B.  Christianity  (Historic roots to 4 B. C./ BCE)

 

1.  The Life and Teachings of Jesus

 

The gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John convey the life and teachings of Jesus.

 

Since Jesus was born in the time of King Herod, the leader of Roman-controlled Palestine who

died in 4 B.C. (BCE), he was almost certainly born no later than that date.  He was born in Bethlehem on the way to Jerusalem, toward which Jesus’s mother Mary and her husband Joseph had traveled from their community of Nazareth to fulfill their obligation to register for a Roman census.  The birth is presented in the Gospels as a nonsexual miracle, whereby God chose Mary to bear and deliver a son who would become Christ the Messiah or “Anointed One,” at once God’s incarnation on earth and His Son.  

                                                                               

According to the Gospel of Matthew, the family spent time in Egypt, then returned to raise Jesus in Nazareth.  The Gospel of Luke records a family trip to Jerusalem when Jesus was 12 years old, during which he impressed local religious authorities with his answers to questions based on scripture.  At about age 30, Jesus was inspired to spread a religious message, beginning in his own region of Galilee at the seaside community of Capernaum.   He traveled also to other areas of Galilee and to such areas northward as Tyre, Sidon, and Decapolis.  According to gospel accounts, Jesus frequently taught in parables and performed many miracles.  His teachings emphasized compassion, love, and respect for those in humble circumstances.

 

Jesus reentered Jerusalem to the cries of “Hosanna” from the exuberant multitude, but he knew that he was incurring the wrath of both secular (Roman) and religious (Hebrew priests, especially of the Pharisee group).  He dined at a Last Supper with His disciples, the Twelve Apostles:  the fisher brother duos of Simon and Peter, James and John;  Matthew the tax collector;  along with Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, James, Lebbaeus (also known as Thaddeus), Simon the Canaanite, and Judas Iscariot.   Afterwards, Jesus and the disciples went to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Simon Peter denied that he knew Jesus upon questioning to Roman guards and Judas betrayed Him to the authorities.  Then guards found Jesus and arrested him.  Jesus was taken first before Herod, who deferred his case to the higher official, Pontius Pilate.  Pontius condemned Jesus to death on the charge of threatening Roman authority, but the official at one point gave a huge crowd gathered on the ground below the government building the opportunity to free either Jesus or a thief by the name of Barabbas.  The crowd, presumably including those who once had cheered Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem, now turned on him and chose Barabbas for commutation of sentence.  Jesus was given humiliating sentence of crucifixion.  Jesus died on a cross in a place known as Golgotha.

 

According to gospel accounts, though, three days later two women found Jesus’s tomb empty.  Jesus thereafter appeared to his disciples in an assertion of the rebirth that would come to those who believed in Him and gained eternal life.     

 

3.  The Importance of Paul and the other books of the New Testament

 

Paul was originally named Saul, a resident of Tarsus (in southwestern Asia Minor or contemporary Turkey, approximately 12 miles from the Mediterranean Sea).  During the life of Jesus and immediately after, Saul was known as a vicious persecutor of Christians;  but one day as he was traveling to Damascus, Paul was struck to the ground by lightning and experienced an epiphany that led him to become the leading missionary advocate of his day for Jesus as savior.

 

The epistles of Paul were written to communities that included some hailed from the Jewish tradition but were dominated by Gentiles (non-Jews) in these locales outside Palestine.  Paul

articulated the essence of a Christian theology that would prove enduring:  the saving grace of Jesus as the Christ, at once God, son of God, and the Holy Spirit abiding in the world:  the Holy Trinity.

 

Thirteen Pauline letters comprise the bulk of the New Testament succeeding the gospels.  Paul’s communications are preceded by Acts, which details the historical effort of those generating new communities of faith;  and is succeeded by epistles written by others, plus Revelations, a startling work of apocrypha.  

 

4.  Christianity in History

 

Christians were persecuted under Roman rule until the Emperor Constantine decreed the faith of the followers of Jesus to be legal in 313 A.D. (CE);  Constantine himself converted to Christianity on his deathbed.  Emperor Theodosius made Christianity the state creed in 395 A.D.  In Rome there developed a tradition of a religious leader, the pope, successor to the apostle Peter, the “rock” upon which Jesus had said he would build his kingdom.  Popes came to be considered infallible in matters of religious doctrine, the contravention of whom was heresy.  Christian doctrine as articulated by Paul and elaborated by the pope as leader of the Roman Catholic Church offered spiritual certainty to the faithful, but absolute authority also proved the gateway to temptations of an earthly nature and questionable practices such as the sale of indulgences that offered salvation for a price.

 

Charlemagne set a precedent for papal approbation of secular rule for Holy Roman Emperors when he accepted the blessing of the pope at his coronation in 1000 A.D. (CE).  Roman Catholicism gained majority acceptance across Europe during the medieval era (500-1500 A.D. [CE]), but by the late 15th century and the early 16th century Martin Luther (in Germany), John Calvin (Switzerland), and Jon Zwingli (Sweden) articulated alternative versions of Christianity during a Protestant Reformation that saw a large minority of people on the continent flocking to new sects.  King Henry VIII of England, seeking but not securing papal annulment of his marriage to Anne Boleyn, also broke with the Roman Catholic Church.  

 

The departures of these towering personalities after centuries of overwhelming Roman Catholic dominance in Europe created a diversified Christianity that would thereafter replace the exclusivist claims of the pope (advised by his cardinals), issuing decrees and preaching homilies at the top of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in the Vatican (formally an independent city, enveloped by Rome).  The Roman Catholic leadership met at the Council of Trent in 1545 A.D. (CE) to discuss the Protestant challenge and to formulate a viable program for Counter-Reformation.  While internal reform did reclaim and stabilize support in southern (Italy, Spain, Portugal) and eastern (Poland, Austro-Hungary) Europe, much of northern (Great Britain, Scandinavian countries) and western (France, Germany, Netherlands) Europe would produce various Protestant denominations with administrative leadership strong and capable enough to supersede Roman Catholic authority.  The United States over time would prove a haven to people of many faiths seeking freedom of religious expression;  Christians attending a multiplicity of Protestant churches formed a sizable majority.    

                                                                                                                                                                       

The three major divisions consist of the Roman Catholic, Greek (Eastern, Russian) Orthodox, and Protestant.  In the United States, Protestant churches are legion and very diverse as to beliefs and practices;  Protestants have in common a belief that an individual’s interpretation of the Bible and personal relationship with God supersedes any religious authority.

 

C.  Islam  (Historic roots to 600 A. D./ CE)

 

1.  The Life and Revelations of Muhammad

 

Muhammad was born about 570 A. D. to a humble family of Mecca, a traditional religious center on the Arabian peninsula.  On his West Asian journeys as a caravan driver, Muhammad met many Christians and (especially) Jews, from whom he learned the teachings of the Old and New Testaments.

 

At about 28 years of age, Muhammad married a wealthy widow by the name of Khadija.  His enhanced economic security gave the introspective young man more time to contemplate the religious texts that he had encountered on his travels and to compare these with his own reflections upon the religious ideas and practices common to Arabia.  In Mecca, there was a religious elite of priests who conducted rituals in worship of a variety of jinn (deities of nature and commerce) and superintended a number of shrines, including the mysterious Ka’ba, which drew circumambulating worshipers around its cuboid structure.  

 

At forty years of age Muhammad was inwardly rent by spiritual turmoil, leading him to retreat to a nearby mountain for deep thought and soulful solitude.  After a time, he perceived that the angel Jibra’il (Gabriel) spoke to him the very words of God, whom he would call Allah, giving him revelations destined to reshape the religious landscape of the Arabian peninsula, other parts of West Asia, an expanse of North Africa, and eventually the Malay peninsula and islands now known collectively as Indonesia.  Jibra’il commanded Muhammad to “Recite” the words;  thus did Muhammad go forth to speak the words of Allah that he soon committed to memory.  This process continued over a 22 year period during which Jibra’il continued to impart the words of Allah to Muhammad.

 

2.  The Words of the Prophet Recorded in the Qur’an

                                                                                      

Muhammad was, like Jesus and all but a few people of their times, illiterate.  The revelations of Allah (via Jibra’il) to Muhammad would eventually be recorded in the holy book, Qur’an (Koran).  The Qur’an is composed of 114 suras (chapters) divided into many ayat (verses) containing in all about 78,000 words.  The message in the Qur’an exhorts people to believe in the august power of Allah, honoring Him with just and moral actions.  For all aspects of life, the Qur’an is the complete referent for Muslims, those who adhere to the religion of Islam  (“Submission” [to the Will of Allah]).

               

3.  The Hejira and Return to Mecca

 

Muhammad stirred the jealousy and moral discomfort in the established jinn priests, who rightly perceived the Prophet as a threat to their own power, prestige, and livelihoods.  Such was their nature of their pressure on and admonitions to Muhammad that he felt impelled to leave Mecca one evening in 622 A.D. (CE), an event known to the Islamic faithful as the hegira (hejira, hjra).  This “flight” took him to Medina, some 100 miles (160 kilometers) from Mecca.  There Muhammad regrouped, recited the revelations, and prophesied according to the mission that Allah through Jibra’il had given him.  Over the course of the next several years, Muhammad attracted a devoted following,

trained a skilled army of soldiers for the holy war (jihad) against the religious establishment in Mecca, and planned his return to the holy city.

 

In 630 A.D. (CE), Muhammad implemented his plan, returning in force to Mecca.  His forces soundly defeated the army of the established priesthood and other members of the traditional elite.  Muhammad died two years later having set the tone and the context for a vigorous expansion of the new faith, first on the Arabian peninsula, and then far beyond.

 

4.  The Five Pillars of Islam

 

Five sustained, lifetime commitments are incumbent upon every devout Muslim.  They are known as the “Five Pillars of Islam,” as follows: 1) to repeat with sincere regularity the Muslim Creed:  There is no God (Allah) but God (Allah), and Muhammad is his Prophet.”;  2) to give alms to the poor and for religious purposes, in the amount of about one-fortieth of one’s income;  3) to fast at the occasion of the holy month of Ramadan;   4) to pray facing Mecca five times each day;  5) to make a pilgrimage to Mecca at least one time during the course of the able-bodied life.

 

5.  Major Divisions of Islam

 

When Muhammad died, important figures in Muslim community of Mecca, taking stock of social standing, closeness to the Prophet, and leadership skill, opted for Abu Bakr as the first of the Caliphs (Khalifa).  The next two Caliphs “Successors” chosen were ‘Umar and ‘Uthman.  Fourth came ‘Ali, the husband of Muhammad’s daughter, Fatima.  The latter selection was none too soon for some of the leaders who had touted Ali’s case from the very beginning and harbored ill-feeling at his having been passed over.  Those who had lobbied for Abu Bakr considered themselves to be the followers of custom (Sunnah);  those whose campaigned for ‘Ali and failed considered themselves the ”party of Ali”(shi’at ‘Ali).  Today these divisions between the first group, Sunni Muslims, and the second group, Shi’ite Muslims, persist.

 

And Shi’ites in general differ in quite a few ways with Sunnis as to religious practice.  Shi’ites have a more flexible view of marital unions with regard to permanency, with divorce as a viable option.  They believe that God also can and does reverse His decisions on occasion, whereas Sunnis regard the decisions of God as eternally immutable.  But the historical dispute over the succession to Muhammad lies at the heart of the Sunni-Shi’ite division.

 

As the minority group harboring ill-feeling for a perceived injustice, the Shi’ites have frequently been considered the more irascible and militant of the two groups.  Events in Iran with the violent  overthrow of the Shah of Iran and the taking of American hostages, both in 1979, buttressed that perception.  But recently, Sunni fringe groups have given evidence of a propensity to use violence with the purported goal of spreading their interpretation of the will of Allah throughout the world.  Such minority groups agitating for an idealized Islamic state include Al-Qaida (worldwide movement originating in Saudi Arabia), Taliban (Afghanistan), and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS;  also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [ISIL]).

 

Two Muslim groups that bear mention in a discussion of Islam are the very different Sufis and the adherents of the Nation of Islam. 

 

The development of Sufism is traceable to the life of the Persian poet, Jelaluddin Balkhi (1207-1273 A.D. (CE), who became known as Rumi.  Rumi had a sense of spirituality as ecstatic experience.  Sufis do not consider themselves to be a denomination or sect, identifying either as Sunnis or Shiites who seek direct experience with Allah via music, dance, and poetry.

 

The Nation of Islam was founded as a religious movement by Wallace Dodd Ford, who took the name Fard (“Righteousness”) Muhammad.  He identified as Muslim but generated ideas divergent in many ways from orthodox Islam.  For example, orthodox Muslims, whether Sunni or Shi’ite, consider Muhammad to be the Prophet of Allah, not in any sense an incarnation of God or messianic in nature;  Fard, though, claimed to be the Messiah.  His successor, Elijah Poole, introduced additional unorthodoxies, such as the idea that black people, as the first humans created by God, would survive an apocalyptic event at the “end of times”;   white people, though, as later creations possessing Satanic propensities, would be destroyed.  In time, Elijah Poole took the name Elijah Muhammad.  

 

In the early 1960s, the civil rights campaigner Malcom X (formerly Malcom Litte) joined the nation of Islam and became the most charismatic spokesperson for the movement led by Elijah Muhammad.  From 1960s forward, there was a trend toward more orthodox Muslim beliefs among members of the Nation of Islam.  Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam and founded the Organization of Afro-American Unity in 1964;  he was assassinated by a member of the Nation of Islam in 1965.  When Elijah Muhammad died in the 1970s, his son (Warith Deen Muhammad) changed the name of the movement to American Muslim Mission and advocated ideas consistent with Sunni orthodoxy.  A group calling itself the Original Nation of Islam continued to espouse the doctrines of Elijah Muhammad.  In the year 2000 the two organizations announced an end to their rivalry.

                                 

II.  Faiths Originating in India:  Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism

 

A.  Hinduism (Historic roots to 600 A. D./ CE)

 

1.  Arrival of the Aryans (c. 1500 B. C. [BCE])

 

In about 1500 B.C. (BCE), a people known as the Aryans stormed into the India from the steppes of Central Asia and forever changed the religious life of the subcontinent.  They brought with them belief in a pantheon of deities:  Agni (fire), Indra (Thunder and Lightning), and others that resembled in many features those of the Norse and Graeco-Roman traditions.

 

In the course of the last centuries B.C. (BCE), the Aryans worked their innovations upon ideas present in the land of their adoption, in time producing the synthesis that became Hinduism, which incorporates texts and ideas generated over many centuries.  Hinduism rivals Judaism for ancient origins, and like Judaism spawned other faiths drawing inspiration and many ideas from the religion long embedded in the region’s culture.          

 

Those in charge of leading ceremonies guided by the hymns, chants, rituals, and spells recorded in , the Vedas were from the priestly class called the Brahmins.  The Brahmins topped a

social order that was in itself an important aspect of the Hindu tradition.

 

Hindus by tradition live with a firm idea of a social order in which people have certain societal and occupational roles by virtue of the family into which they are born. 

 

Hindu texts present four broad varnas (social classes):   1) Brahmins, a priestly class;  2) Kshatriyas, comprised of warriors and governmental leaders;  3) Vaishyas, comprised of farmers and merchants;  and 4) Shudras, servants who take care of routine tasks for members of the upper three varnas.

 

Below the four varnas there are those who live as outcastes, considered the dregs of society. 

Within the four main varnas there are jati, highly specific occupational categories, each with its own rules of conduct and expectations as to social interactions.  In contemporary times, many Hindu thinkers and leaders have endeavored to rework varna and jati in the context of democratic ideals of social equality.     

                                                                               

3.  Major Deities and important Theological Concepts

 

Hindus have a multiplicity of gods, three of which are particularly important:  Brahma (the god of original creation), Vishnu (the god of preservation), and Shiva (the god of individual creation and destruction).   Other gods are often considered to be incarnations (different fleshly manifestations) of those three deities (as in the case of Rama and Krishna, incarnations of Vishnu);  many Hindus view the many deities as expressions of a unifying divine principle

                                                                                               

Hindus have made great contributions to abstract religious thought:  Brahman, the World Soul, explored in the Bhagavad Gita;  atman, the individual human soul;  Ultimate Reality beyond maya (illusion);  karma, the balance of good and bad deeds;  samsara, the cycle of births and deaths that end with moksha (spiritual liberation) and the achievement of the enduring blissful experience known as nirvana.

 

Hindus see the Four Permissible Goals of Life as kama (physical pleasure);  artha (power)

dharma  (moral duty), and moksha  (spiritual liberation).  They perceive Four Stages of Life as bramacharin  (student), grihastha  (householder), forest-dweller, and sannyasin (wandering ascetic).

 

The sacred texts for Hindus include the Vedas:  Rig Veda  (a collection of hymns) Sama Veda (compilation of chants), Yajur Veda (a manual of ritual) and the Artharva Veda (book of healing rites and spells);  the Upanishads (books of wisdom and philosophy);  Mahabharata (conveying the familial rivalry of the Pandavas and the Kauravas and including the Bhagavad Gita (“Song of the Adorable One”;  and the Ramayana (a tale of Rama’s unfailing fidelity to wife Sita).  The monkey king character of this tale, Hanuman, has become a deified object of bhakti (devotion) for whom his devotees conduct puja, (worship) rituals, as is the case for the multiplicity of Hindu gods beyond those of the main triad and its incarnations.    

 

B.  Buddhism 

 

1.  The Life of Siddhartha Gautama (563-483 B. C. [BCE])

 

The story goes that there lived in the sixth century B.C. (BCE) a good but naïve young prince in a northern kingdom of India who one day in his early twenties ventured for the first time beyond the palatial luxury that he had known all of his life to confront the realities of sickness, old age, and death.  Deeply moved, Siddhartha embarked on a spiritual journey that led at last to Enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree and the revelations of the Four Noble Truths (suffering at the core of life, caused by desire, ended with the termination of desire, achieved by the Noble Eightfold Path of Right Understanding, Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Occupation, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Meditation).  Upon attaining these insights, Siddhartha Gautama became the Buddha (Enlightened One).  He deferred entrance into nirvana upon achieving moksha so that he could continue his travels, now with the purpose of conveying his startling revelations to others.  The Buddha did not seek deification, nor did he speak of God.  But adherents of his teaching did in time develop practices of puja in demonstration of bhakti, demonstrating the reverence in which the Buddha was held. 

 

The major divisions of Buddhism became Theravada (Doctrine of the Elders) and Mahayana (Great Vehicle).  Theravada Buddhism, practiced in Sri Lanka (Ceylon) and the Southeast Asian nations of Thailand, Myanmar (Burma), Laos, and Cambodia, focuses on the support of pious monks who aspire to the spiritual journey of the Buddha.  Mahayana Buddhism, practiced in East Asia (Vietnam, China, South Korea, and Japan), takes generally less monk-focused, more salvation-oriented forms in which adherents worship bodhisattvas  (those who have attained Enlightenment but dedicate themselves to the salvation of devotees).  Schools of the latter include Pure Land (Qingtu [Chinese];  Chingdo [Japanese]), Maitreya, Tientai (Chinese; Tiendai in Japanese), Nichiren, and Zen.

 

Buddhism was the least successful of the religions that developed in India on home turf, but by far the most popular in other societies.  Back in India, two other religions other than the dominant Hinduism have been particularly important:  Jainism, in which the value of ahimsa (nonviolence) in treatment of all living things is paramount;  and Sikhism, featuring highly disciplined codes of behavior in a belief system drawing from both Hindu and Muslim practice, revealed by Guru Nanak after an mystical experience in1499 A.D. (CE).

 

III.  The Chinese Religious Complex

 

Traditional Chinese societies have historically featured a Chinese a complex of religions of indigenous and external origin:   the belief systems of Confucianism and Taoism (Daoism), which are Chinese in origin;  and Mahayana Buddhism, which originated in India.  Most pervasive as a system of ethical action and social practice is Confucianism.

 

A.  Confucianism  (Confucius, 551-479 B. C. [BCE])

 

Confucianism is named for the great sage Confucius (Kungzi), from the state of Lu in today’s Shandong Province, who traveled China offering his services to the leaders of small states during the Spring and Autumn Period of the Zhou (Chou) Dynasty.  The wise instruction and sayings of Confucius

were collected by his acolytes and their successors in a famous book known as the Analects.  Confucius emphasized social harmony, in which the emperor of all China or the ruler of a state display humanity (ren [jen]) toward his people, and the people performed their own jobs for the good of their families, their communities, the state, and the ruler.  Two adherents of Confucianism who made their own philosophical contributions were Mengzi (Meng-tzu or Mencius), who stressed the goodness of human nature, to  be nurtured through education;  and Xunzi, who considered people to have a propensity toward selfishness and immorality, necessitating vigorous ethical instruction.

 

B.  Taoism (Daoism)

 

The great work of mystical poetry and philosophy known as the Tao de ching (Daode jing , “The Way and its Virtue”) begins, “The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao.”  This is because the Tao Is the mystical force that one must approach through metaphor, analogy, and, ultimately, by listening, feeling, and observing Nature;  the great unfolding of the Tao, the Way, the Great Principle that moves in all things cannot be understood through conventional thought.  The Tao works according to the interplay of yin (the female, dark, lunar, hidden, gentle force) and the yang (the male, bright, solar, visible, vigorous force) in all things.  Lao Tzu (Laozi), the philosopher to whom the Tao de ching is attributed, uses vivid imagery to demonstrate that the apparently weak or empty is often the very strong or prospectively full.  The ruler who governs best, according to Lao Tzu, is he who takes little action, moving in the world with natural ease, in tune with the great Tao.  The other great work of Taoist philosophy is known as the Chang-tzu, for the namesake writer who tells tales of traveling great distances in one’s dreams and imagination without leaving one’s own room, and as one who awakes as a butterfly but returns with natural ease to human form when timely.  In the popular imagination, the emphasis on nature and oneness with the Eternal Tao became a search for immortality and the veneration of gods, ghosts, and ancestors.  

 

C.  Mahayana Buddhism 

 

People in Chinese societies incline toward the Mahayana school of Buddhism.  Most of the sects of Mahayana Buddhism began in China.  This was true for Pure Land, Tiantai, and Chan.  Of these three, Chan became more important in Japan as Zen Buddhism, while the former two continued to have great impact on the lives of the Chinese people.  Buddhism in China is deeply woven into the fabric of the Chinese religious complex, wherein one is very likely at once to integrate Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and purely popular religious expression into one’s belief system, ethical code, and ritual practice.     

 

The bodhisattva tradition is very vigorous in Chinese societies, wherein people seek salvation as devotees of benevolent beings such as Amitofo and Guanyin.  Adherents seek some combination of their benevolent grace bestowed on lives lived on earthly terrain;  and an eternity in the Western Paradise or Pure Land (Qingtu). 

 

IV.  Polytheistic Religions

 

African Tradition, very different in particulars from one village, clan, or region to another, tends toward certain similarities.  In African the animistic tradition is strong, with a propensity for

people to see supernatural efficacy in rocks, trees, plants, the sun, the moon, and animals as various as all of those that grace the continent.  Ancestor worship is very strong, whether directed toward very immediate kin from one’s own family of nativity;  or toward great ancestors perceived to be the guiding spirits of great clan associations.  The reverence for nature and family;  for those propitiations that will sustain occupations depending on nature;  and for those acts of reciprocity and justice that will sustain relationships rooted I family and community is very strong in the African tradition.

 

Ancestors, animals, and elements of nature also loom large in the Native American Tradition.  As in the case of African traditions, particular practices differ from tribe to tribe, confederacy to confederacy, nation to nation of Native American people;  but mnay similarities may be observed. 

The animistic tradition is strong, with particular reverence for the sun, moon, rain;  and for particular animals upon whom lives depended.  The buffalo was particularly venerated on the Great Plains of North America, and in many Native American societies the spirit of the deer was an object of worship.  Jaguars, rabbits, coyotes, crows, and eagles were among the many other animals to gain deified forms.  Many Native American people developed exquisite art work around natural and supernatural spirits, the latter generating a particularly refined aesthetic in the kachina figures of the Hopi people.

 

The Shinto belief system of japan features very prominent a great variety of animistic spirits known as kami.  Shinto is a religion intensely and exclusively identified with the island of Japan.  The island itself was thought to have been created by the exertions of a brother-sister pair know as Izanami and Izanagi, grandchildren of the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu.  Shinto aesthetics, along with those of the imported religion of Zen, may be seen in the preference of the Japanese people for the natural, the pure, and the elegantly simple. 

 

And the Greek, Roman and Norse Pantheons present vivid gods of polytheistic worship from great antiquity.   The Greek gods congregated on great Mount Olympus and were honored with their own temples, such as the famous Parthenon (for worship of Athena.  Gods from these traditions were not typically small animistic creatures, plants, or rocks;  they were, rather, the great forces of nature:  thunder and lightning;  the sun, moon, and sea.  They also embodied important qualities, such as those found in the messenger, patron or muse of the artist, ruler of the underworld, god of the feast, or divinities of the harvest and the hunt.  The Greeks and Norse, especially, were oriented to the open air, the sea, the power of fire.  They sought immortality as much in heroic action as in divine intervention, and they preferred the funeral pyre to the cemetery.

 

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