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Current Issues Paper - Buddhism

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Submitted By markyfekete
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Current Issues Paper: Buddhism

Mark A. Fekete

REL/133

04/18/2016
James Finch

Current Issues Paper and Class Handout

Religion is a cultural system of behaviors and practices, mythologies, world views, sacred texts, holy places, ethics, and social organizations that relate humanity to what an anthropologist has called "an order of existence". The world is comprised of a wide range of religions that impart regular practices and convictions to each other and this paper will inspect normal qualities that Buddhism offers with different religions and in addition examine how Buddhism has reacted to challenges in the current and what has changed about the roles of females in Buddhism after some time. Buddhism The History of Buddhism spans the 6th century BC to the present, starting with the birth of Siddhartha Gautama in Lumbini, Nepal. This makes it one of the oldest religions practiced today. Its roots started in India from the encounters noted by Siddhartha Gautama, a “mortal prince born miraculously to Maya who was kept from all the evil and misery of the world throughout his youth” ("Siddhartha Gautama," 1996). Siddhartha was forbidden to leave the royal grounds; in any case one day he defied those request given by his dad and went to a close-by town where he saw what is known as the four passing sights. The four passing sights were “an old man, crooked and toothless, a sick man, wasted by disease, and a corpse being taken for cremation. Then he saw a sannyasin (a wandering holy man, a renunciate), who had no possession but seemed to be at peace” (Molloy, 2013 p.125). When Siddhartha saw the four passing sights he was overcome with emotions that incited him to leave the kingdom and his family behind to begin on a trip to look for answers to questions relating to human enduring and accomplishing inner peace. Common

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