history of Buddhism

Tripitaka and the First Buddhist Council

 
Recording the Buddha’s teachings was perhaps the most important legacy left to us by the Buddha’s followers of monks and nuns. The Tripitaka (its name in Sanskrit) or Tipitaka (in Pali) are a large body of the Buddha’s teachings that were recorded after the Buddha’s passing away. It was at the First Buddhist Council that the Buddha’s teachings were first recalled and committed to memory. The Tripitaka (also known as the Pali Canon) is composed of the Vinaya, Sutras and Abhidhamma (or Abhidharma). These form the foundations for what are considered some of the most important Buddhist scriptures.

There is no single book that can be pointed to as a ‘Buddhist bible’, rather there are volumes of teachings that are attributed to the Buddha, and you would need a whole bookcase to house them all. Fortunately, there is no requirement for a Buddhist practitioner to read the whole Pali Canon, and Buddhist literature is not limited to the Pali Canon alone, but they possess some of the most fundamental teachings required for a basic Buddhist education (namely, The Four Noble Truths and Noble Eightfold Path).

In the Suggested Reading section of my website you can find many great Buddhist books I highly recommend reading.
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About Buddha: Life of the Buddha

 
This is a brief video biography about Buddha. The Buddha has inspired so many around the world to find peace and happiness through meditation and his teachings, but who is the Buddha and what happened in his life that made him become the Buddha, the ‘Awakened One’?

Buddha was born around 2,600 years ago. He was born into a royal family and was given the name Prince Siddhartha Gautama. He lived a protected and carefree life of luxury, until one day he came face to face with the harsh realities of life: old age, sickness and death. These three sights were to change the course of Siddhartha’s life.

Embarking on a spiritual quest to find liberation from the sufferings in the world, Siddhartha finally discovered the truth of suffering and how to end it. He achieved enlightenment under the Bodhi tree in Bodhgaya, India, and from that moment on was known as the Buddha, the ‘Awakened One’.
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