What is Tibetan Buddhism?

The third major division of Buddhism is called Tantrism, a blending of Mahayana Buddhism with the ancient occult practices of Tibet. Tantric Buddhism uses incantations and occult signs. It contains strong elements of animism (attributing conscious life to inanimate objects or objects in nature) and is one of many false religions that can leave its followers open to demonic activity. Tantrism is considered the official religion of Tibet and is practiced extensively in Nepal.

Other religions have been compared with it. Mahometanism, everyone knows, was propagated by the sword, and gives a sensual paradise of houris, consecrating men's lusts. Buddhism, the most interesting phenomenon in the world, had no god, it was despair at the state of human nature without a remedy, and its founder obtained - Nirvana - practical annihilation by eating too much pork when he was fully eighty years old. Now he is a kind of god, and in one vast country where it prevails, is embodied in a man and, when he dies, another is ready prepared, and the living power passes into him. The miracles the word of God insists on were for the establishment of the faith, and the faith was established, and the grace and truth taught in it shine yet with undiminished and undeniable moral lustre, while its shell is picked at by those who do not like the truth itself, because it has a power which speaks too plainly to conscience - proves itself too clearly for the conscience to like it.

It had been among the heathen before. The system of monasteries, and celibacy, and begging friars, was all in existence five hundred and forty years before Christ, and many think it was actually borrowed from the East. Certainly it is the same thing morally, but, as I said, many think it was actually borrowed from the East; as a great many of their doctrines were, I have no doubt. A Roman Catholic priest, when visiting the East, was perfectly astounded, and did not know what to think when he found among the Buddhists exactly the same things as Roman Catholics had at home. He told them he was a Lama from the west, and he was received in all their monasteries and elsewhere.

From all this, you can gather that Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism differ radically in their opinion of Buddha. To Theravada, Buddha was only a teacher (as Buddha himself claimed), but Mahayana has raised him to the position of a savior‑god for all people. Because of this, Mahayana Buddhism is by far the more popular. It is influential in Nepal, China, Tibet, Japan, Vietnam and Korea.'

A popular form of Mahayana Buddhism in the West is Zen, a discipline with the primary goal of experiencing enlightenment through meditation (reaching satori). Zen teachers emphasize the saying of the Buddha: "Look within, you are the Buddha."

Nothing is more certain in history; nay, if you want proof, you only need travel in India, or any pagan land. From the earliest days everywhere paganism has its order of priesthood. Why, take the pope himself, the holy head of all Christian priests of the West. Is there such a thought in the New Testament as a pope? Not the faintest, nor shadow of a promise of one. Surely you know that the Roman emperors were the very ancient pagan pontiffs; and when one of these was converted to Christianity, he thought it wrong to retain this pontifex of paganism, but the bishop of Rome actually took his pagan title, and retains it to this day. Well, do you know, that paganism, not scripture, is the undoubted source of the pope’s titles? Nay, in Thibet and China, you will see most of what you call high church, practised still in paganism, only honestly, without christian names. There you will find your monks and nuns practising far greater austerities than you do. Yes, you must go to paganism, not to scripture, for the origin of your religion.

MAJOR BRANCHES OF BUDDHISM

Buddhism was popular in India for several centuries until it was absorbed by Hinduism. The Brahmin priests even promoted the Buddha to an incarnation of Vishnu. During the first thousand years of Christianity, while the gospel was being carried all over Europe, Buddhist monks spread their religion throughout the Orient. Today, from Ceylon to Japan, over 350 million people follow the teachings of Buddha.

Buddhism takes a wide variety of forms, but the three main kinds are Hinayana, Mahayana and Tantrism. Hinayana means "the doctrine of the lesser way," referring to the belief that, for all intents and purposes, only a fortunate few lifelong monks can find nirvana by absolutely following the way to Buddha. Since the term "lesser way" was a derogatory name given by critics, proponents of this path later changed the name to Theravada Buddhism ("way of the elders"). The best that laypeople can hope for in Theravada Buddhism is to rise to a higher level when reborn in their next life so they may become monks. The Theravada branch of Buddhism has become very wealthy through gifts of land and money for monasteries and is dominant today in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Laos and Kampuchea.'

Mahayana Buddhism, the doctrine of the "greater way," teaches that Buddha believed that nirvana is available to all people. Buddha originally taught that the only person who can save you is you, but Mahayana developed the idea of savior gods or Bodhisattvas.

Followers of Mahayana reasoned that Buddha had remained on the earth for 45 years when he could have gone straight to nirvana. He decided, however, to stay to save mankind and became the first and supreme Bodhisattva, a savior to mankind who can be called on by the faithful. Other Buddhist monks who achieve nirvana and become enlightened as Buddha did are also Bodhisattvas.

One of Buddha's most important teachings was his theory of the Middle Way. For Buddha, the Middle Way was a spiritual path of salvation, winding between the extreme asceticism and the unrestrained sensuality he had known while a Hindu. To describe his Middle Way, Buddha offered four main principles, which have come to be called the Four Noble Truths:

Suffering is universal. Buddha taught that the very act of living involves suffering from birth until death. Even death brings no relief, however, because of the cycle of rebirth, suffering and death. Salvation (nirvana) is to be released from this unending cycle of suffering. The cause of suffering is craving (selfish desire). People remain in this endless cycle, because they are too attached to their health, wealth, status and physical comfort. This is because they are ignorant of the nature of reality and they fall victim to what Buddha called tanha (attachment, desire). The cure for suffering is to overcome ignorance and eliminate craving. Since to live is to suffer and suffering is caused by craving, if a person could remove craving from his or her life, suffering would end. Suppress craving by following the Middle Way ‑ the Noble Eightfold Path. First, Buddha isolated the cause, tanha, humanity's inability to escape from the squirrel cage of death and rebirth. Next he worked out a system called the Eightfold Path by which a Buddhist could rid himself of tanha. The Eightfold Path consists of eight ways of right living: (1) right viewpoint, (2) right aspiration, (3) right speech, (4) right behavior, (5) right occupation, (6) right effort, (7) right mindfulness and (8) right meditation.

Buddha claimed that whoever could follow this Eightfold Path would eventually reach nirvana, a release from the endless cycle of death and rebirth. When Buddha was asked to define the state of nirvana, he replied that he had never tried to solve this question. His mission was to show man the way to escape the suffering of life, not to describe what he would find once he had been liberated.

Was there anything abiding for the Israelite under law? They had no divine person manifested. The object of the law was to await redemption (save in figure); they had not received Christ, still less His propitiation. The mission of the Lord Jesus was to manifest God and the Father to the believer in the Son, and the gift of the Spirit was only after He died and rose and ascended to send Him from heaven. It was therefore altogether unprecedented even for converted men. In general too false religions do not even pretend to it. Whatever playing into lusts and passions, with high-flown rhapsodies there may be in the Koran of Mahomet, there is no revelation of God Himself; there is the revelation of a bundle of lies. So it was in all the ancient "Vedas," as Hindus call their sacred books; and still more with the Buddhists, who were atheists though trifling with polytheists. Brahmanism is polytheistic; but Buddhism is a system of atheism in its pantheistic form, and therefore avowedly has no personal God to reveal any more than its rival has the one true God.

There it is, the unadorned truth, still more profound morally than chapter 1, in Christ revealing the grace of God to the utmost, God's glory in His person with man's ultimate deliverance, and thus of the highest moment to the salvation, well-being, and happiness of the believer. All comes out in plain facts, such as a child could take in, yet involving principles truer and deeper than any ideas evolved by the most philosophic of mankind. Herein lies an essential difference between revealed truth and all its rivals. Take Vedaism, Brahmanism, Buddhism, Lamaism, or aught else in India and the adjacent lands; take Confucianism, Taoism, Foism, in China; take Sabaism, Jovism, Fetishism ancient and modern: can any one of these systems allege a single fact as its basis? The religion of the Bible, Old or New Testament, Judaism or Christianity, rests on distinct realities, not on mere ideas of man's mind.

Buddha did accept the Hindu teachings on reincarnation, along with karma (the soul gains merits or demerits according to how one lives his life) and dharma (the duty one has to perform according to his station in life). Buddha taught that one could be reborn as a human, an animal, a hungry ghost, a demon or even as a Hindu god. He also incorporated yoga and meditation, which were highly developed skills in Hinduism, into his teachings.