Post 3: Buddhism

I wanted to find out more information about Buddhism after starting my research project, so I read a section of the book World Religions that I found at my house. This book looks at many different religions, but I read the twenty-page section pertaining to Buddhism. After reading doing my research project, I had one main question: What happens to the Buddha after he dies? All other people are reborn, and I found out that the Buddha probably was too, but he, “dissuaded his followers from speculating about his existence after death”(64). This quote made me think that the Buddha didn’t want people to think about his rebirth, because that would be changing the person’s focus. It would no longer be a life focused on devotion and the Eightfold Path, but only following the Buddha himself and not his teachings. A second question I had was about monks and how they got into the Sangha, the monks following the Buddha. Kids starting at, “the age of eight, a boy may be accepted as a novice, then full membership of the Sangha is conferred by a higher ordination at about the age of 20”(72). I still don’t know how the children are chosen, but this seemed like a very long process to become a monk. Reading about Buddhism provided a different view on the novel Siddhartha, since now I have a clearer idea at what he is striving for. I believe that even though he didn’t join the Sangha with Govinda he was still finding the enlightenment on his own, and will possibly attain it by the end of the novel.

Bowker, John. World Religions. New York: DK, 2006