✳flâneur — a map of the web's best reading

What is Theravada Buddhism?

accesstoinsight.org · 4,111 words · saved by 1 readers

Theravada (pronounced — more or less — "terra-VAH-dah"), the "Doctrine of the Elders," is the school of Buddhism that draws its scriptural inspiration from the Tipitaka, or Pali canon, which scholars generally agree contains the earliest surviving record of the Buddha's teachings.[1] For many centuries, Theravada has been the predominant religion of continental Southeast Asia (Thailand, Myanmar/Burma, Cambodia, and Laos) and Sri Lanka. Today Theravada Buddhists number well over 100 million worldwide.[2] In recent decades Theravada has begun to take root in the West. The Buddha — the "Awakened One" — called the religion he founded Dhamma-vinaya — "the doctrine and discipline." To provide a social structure supportive of the practice of Dhamma-vinaya (or Dhamma for short [Sanskrit: Dharma]), and to preserve these teachings for posterity, the Buddha established the order of bhikkhus (monks) and bhikkhunis (nuns) — the Sangha — which continues to this day to pass his teachings on to subseq

What is Theravada Buddhism? Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License . To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ . Documents linked from this page may be subject to other restrictions.} { } {1} [DIACRITIC_EQUIVALENTS_FOR_INDEXING]= [EDITION]={} [EDITORS_NOTE]={} [EOD]={} [EXTENT]={complete} [EXTRA_INFO]={} [FORMAT_PRINT]={} [FORMAT_SUTTAREADINGS]={} [FORMAT_ZIP]={} [HEADER_POST]={} [HEADER_PRE]={} [HEAD_EXTRAS]={} [LICENSE]={CC-BY} [MULTI_AUTHOR]= [MY_TITLE]={What is Theravada Buddhism?} [NIKAYA]={} [NIKAYA_ABBREV]={} [NO_COLOPHON]={} [NO_LI

Explore this link on the map →

related reading