The Foundations of Buddhism

2 Introduction

Shinto, and, more recently but less happily, Communism; it

remains a significant religious tradition for a population of soo

million to I,ooo million.

3· The Tibetan tradition, also sometimes referred to as 'north-

ern' Buddhism. Its scriptures are preserved in Tibetan and once

more its outlook is broadly that of the Mahayana, but its i:nore

specific orientation is that of the 'Vehicle of the Diamond Thun-

derbolt' (vajra-yiina), also known as Tantric Buddhism, Today

it is the religious tradition followed by IO million to 20 million,

principally in Tibet and Mongolia, but also in parts of Nepal and

Himalayan India.

All three of these traditions look back to ancient Buddhism and

the land of India, where Buddhism was born but whence it vir-

tually disappeared over five centuries ago. ·
The present volume was conceived as an introduction to
Buddhist thought and practice, and is intended to be accessible
to the reader with no previous knowledge of Buddhism. Given
its great diversity and its long history, the task of introducing
Buddhism is a daunting one. As is fashionable to point out these
·days, 'Buddhism' is something of an intellectual abstraction: in
reality there is not one Buddhism but many Buddhisms. Any writer
of an introductory text to Buddhism is faced with the problem
of how to do justice to the richness and diversity of ~Buddhism
both past and present. Most of the existing introductory volumes
to Buddhism offer their readers some kind of general survey
of the different 'Buddhisms', and attempt to give an equal and
balanced treatment of all that Buddhism has been and still is.
The advantage of this approach is that, ideally if not always in

practice, it avoids the pitfall of seeming to imply that one or other

form of Buddhism represents a 'truer' form of Buddhism than

others, or that one has somehow captured the real essence of

Buddhism. Its disadvantage is that, in a volume of some 300 pages,

one is in danger of saying very little about an awful lot, and of

presenting the reader with what amounts to a catalogue of dates,

people, places, doctrines, and practices; a reader may finish such

a book, yet somehow know very little of Buddhism. For this