Buddhism??????????

[CharlotteBMartinez]

Does anyone know any good sites for buddhism and how it started?

[ElenaBLee]

I don't know but i can tell you from my personal experiences.

I have been involved in Buddhism since i was young and now as an adult with a clearer view of life and the real-world, Buddhism is just on the face, a peaceful religion, but in the end, it really brings you no where.

As i grow more matured, I realise that all those chantings and rituals are craps.

You get more enlightenment from meditating at your own during a long shower.

Life is much more than Buddhism.

[AndreaDPhillips]

Sites I don't know about but its origin I do. (For sites, may I suggest you go straight "to the source" and look up the official Dalai Lama of the authentic Thibetan Buddhists? That is the one I would personally go to if I wanted to explore it.) I am middle-aged now and have not been a practising Christian for about fifty years now. I got into the Goddess in the Fifties. I have studied about the religions that arose after the age of the Great Goddess, including Buddhism. There are "the Big Three": Judaism, Christianity and Islam. They all really squashed women's rights flat and we have been centuries trying to pick ourselves back up from that. Buddhism is rather a gentler religion than the Big Three. In its best form, it teaches harmony and gentleness and they do not eat meat. I will recommend the movie "Kundun" to you: it is an excellent film on authentic Thibetan Buddhism and the last days of the Dalai Lama in Thibet. Directed, I believe, by Martin Scorsese. However, I will also recommend that you read the articles on Buddhism in Barbara Walker's Encyclopedia of Women's Myths and Secrets. Although I respect that Buddhists are vegetarians (I am one myself), there are branches of the cult that are not so nice. One of these is involved with the Japanese mob and is a big mind control thing: sort of hypnotic chanting and they really take over your life. I also met a Buddhist "nun" who was escaping her order, though I confess that I do not know exactly what sort of branch she was from. Finally, I have to tell you that, to be fair, I am biased in favour of the Great Mother Goddess;however, were I to pick a patriarchal religion, it probably would be Buddhist.

[MaryRNeedham]

Buddhanet.net has a great deal of excellent information on Buddhism and its origins in Shakyamuni Buddha's teaching.

Here's the page to get started:

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://buddhanet.net/e-learning/index.htm">http://buddhanet.net/e-learning/index.htm</a><!-- m -->

[Emme76]

Shame, shame on the one who calls Buddhism a cult! Really insulting, to Buddhists.

[Fritzie]

Whoever said buddhism is a cult should not be taken seriously.
Buddhism was started by Siddhartha Gautama in India after he saw the poverty of the Indian villages after living his whole life in luxury in his palace clueless of the suffering of other people around him. He noticed that people were very greedy and unhappy and he was saddened by man's sadness with life. He also went to a banyon tree and sat under it for 40 days and nights and meditated. During this time, it was said he did not eat. However, he might have eaten but only small amounts as otherwise he could not have survived. But his primary focus was on meditation. From his 40 days and nights of meditation, he figured out that our strong desire for money and wealth and other materialistic goods was the major problem in our life and we can attain true happiness if we gave up our materialistic desires in favor of living a more simple life. By doing this, we can attain nirvana or enlightenment. He believed in a strong sense of duty in one's life and no expectation of reward. A lot of Buddhism is based upon the teachings of Hinduism and the Hindu version of the Bible Bhagavad Gita. However, Buddhism differed from Hinduism in its criticism of the caste system and in that it encouraged conversion unlike Hinduism which did not try to convert anyone.

[NancyDStrauss]

Look up <!-- w --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.Plum">www.Plum</a><!-- w --> Village, and the Master (teacher) Thich Nhat Hanh

[DorothyCCorriveau]

Ok. I've read all the other answers so far and I think you may have been getting bits and pieces. (Although Brownman definitely knows a lot)

Let me tackle your question directly:
Do I know any good sites...No. I suggest books (much more portable and if you start to like it you will find this handy.)

How it started:
(Forgive me because I will be repeating some of Brownman's answer and I will also be leaving a lot out for the sake of space.)
Approx 2500 years ago a Prince by the name of Siddhartha (pronounced sid-heart-tah) was born in a kingdom in northern India (present day Nepal) to King Shuddhodana (pronounced shoe-doe-da-na) and Queen Maya after she had a dream of a beautiful six-tusked elephant. This dream was in fact an omen that the kingdom would soon have an heir. Prince Siddhartha was born and lived a carefree life in the palace grounds where his father was very careful to ensure he experienced nothing unpleasant (some stories tell of the king hiring servants to cut flowers in the royal garden the moment they started to wilt.) During this time Siddhartha met Yashodhara (pronounced Yah-sho-da-ra) and they married and had a son named Rahula (Rah-hu-la) Life was a peach for this guy.
At the age of 29 Siddhartha wanted to go out and see the kingdom that he would rule after hearing descriptions of it from a musician's song. After obtaining his father's permission to leave the palace, he went out. (I'm going to leave out some significant stuff here) On three different trips into the kingdom he experienced various sufferings that he had not until that point ever seen. Shortly after these outings he decided to renounce his royal life to seek out a solution to this suffering and left his palace, wife, infant son, and went to a forest in the kingdom of Magadha where he cut his long flowing hair off (Buddhist monks still practice this) and began what is called "The six years of self-denial" During this time he lay exposed to the elements day and night and ate only the few wind blown seeds that fell near him. (I know this sounds far-fetched but so does a guy walking on water and turning water into wine - mythology has to be taken with a grain of salt.) This practice of denying yourself even the slightest of pleasures is called being a "ascetic." It is meant to bring you a great spiritual connection by detaching yourself from the physical world.
Siddhartha grew weak and his once glorious form was reduced to a bony shell of a man. After a time he realized that he couldn't think very well anymore in his weakened state and may in fact be farther from his goal then when he started! He decided to refresh himself in a nearby river but nearly drown (again because he was too weak.) While he was laying on the shore recovering, a woman mistook him for a spirit and offered him rice-milk as a prayer for a baby boy (If you understood more about Buddhism the whole food as prayer thing would make more sense...sorry) The other "ascetics" (no he wasn't alone) in the forest saw him take this and left in disgust thinking that their friend had "given up." Siddhartha got his strength back and crossed the river. He had decided that if he was going to succeed he must follow a "middle path" between self-denial and involvement. It was then that he found the famous Bodhi tree (pronounced Bow-dee) and sat under it facing east. (If you care the Bodhi tree is a fig tree and not a banyan as suggested earlier in these answers. The direct and traceable desendant of the original Bodhi tree grows in the same place and is a very important pilgrimage site.) It was here that through determination and thought Prince Siddhartha gained enlightenment and would futhermore be known as Shakyamuni Buddha ("Shakya" is the clan he belonged to "muni" means fully awakened sage) Fast forward ahead to when he reunited with the ascetics that he had shared the forest with. They saw in him the great wisdom and freedom from suffering he had aquired and became his first students. Thus the beginning of Buddhism.
(I know I didn't spend any time talking about doctrine but we can discuss that if you like <!-- e --><a href="mailto:lonefrog615@yahoo.com">lonefrog615@yahoo.com</a><!-- e -->. I extend that invitation to anybody who reads this.) Sorry this got so long...Happy studying!

[Nessa]

There's a great site for all things Buddhist in the source link. There's also a fun one for how to convert to Buddhism.

[Bea17]

Buddhism was founded by Siddhartha Gautama. Buddhists believe that he was the man who, during the course of his life, achieved enlightenment and began to spread the truth (dharma or dhamma) in the hopes of helping others to acheive enlightenment. As far as sites go, <!-- w --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.buddhanet.net">www.buddhanet.net</a><!-- w --> is a very good site and google searching will give you a great deal of information.