Meditation in Tibetan Buddhism

To see how a connection can be made between Tibetan Buddhism, meditation, and the relief of emotional or mental illness, it will be instructive first to explore the background of Buddhism itself. Buddhism originated in India in the third and fourth centuries B.C. and reached throughout Asia, overlapping with the spread of Christianity. It took some four centuries to find its way to China and Tibet, but the world view took hold there decisively. Buddhism arose in China as an alternative to Confucian rationalism and class distinctions and moved toward individual mysticism (Wright, 1959, passim). This is connected to the idea that Buddhism contains egalitarian elements and that "all men had the potentialities for Buddahood" (Tsunoda, de Bary and Keen, 1958, p. 114). In each of the countries to which Buddhism spread, it took on culture-specific characteristics. This

. . .
s not organized. Except in Lamaism, which is heavily ritualistic, Buddhism is highly personalistic and not dominated by a priestly class. There are Buddhist monks, typically made up of the most devout persons, but on the whole each person is free to discover nirvana on his own. Teachers may mediate religious praxis, but they advise rather than prescribe. On the other hand, it is clear that variants of individual religious experience breed variants of ritualistic experience: The Sramanas or Bhikshus (mendicants) are simply a religious order, a class of monks, who, in order to accomplish the more speedy attainment of nirvana, have entered on a course of greater sanctity and austerity than ordinary men; they have no sacraments to administer or rites to perform for the people, for every Buddhist is his own priest. Their approximation of a clerical function is the reading of the scriptures or discourses of the Buddha in stated assemblies held for that purpose. But in some countries there is a complete Buddhist ritual, with rites and worship somewhat similar to those of the Roman Catholic Church ("Buddhism," 1975). To the degree there are objects or specific practices associated with Buddhism, they are connected to meditation p
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
West Chiefly, Doctrine Elders, Buddhism Pelletier, Mahayana Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, Compare Wayman's, EEG EMG, Buddhism Buddhism, Mahayanan Buddhism, Mandala Sanskrit, buddhism 1975, world view, mental illness, tibetan buddhism, pelletier 1977, china tibet, schools buddhist, mahayanan buddhism, meditation theory, concentration virtuous object, cosmology adams, emotional mental illness, funk wagnal's encyclopedia, tsunoda de bary, buddhist world view,
Approximate Word count = 2908
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)

More Essays on Meditation in Tibetan Buddhism