B v H

	Buddhism represents 5% of the world’s population	Hindus represents 15% of the world’s population
	BUDDHISM	HINDUISM
Founded	Siddhartha Gautama (The Buddha / Enlightened One) 563-483 BC	Based on traditions that stared around 2000 BC, but probably became Hinduism as a specific identity about 400 BC
God(s)	None (Buddhism is a nontheistic philosophy / religion)	The Hindu tradition encourages Hindus to seek spiritual and moral truth wherever it might be found, while acknowledging that no creed can contain such truth in its fullness and that each individual must realize this truth through his or her own systematic effort. Our experience, our reason, and our dialogue with others—especially with enlightened individuals—provide various means of testing our understanding of spiritual and moral truth. And Hindu scripture, based on the insights of Hindu sages and seers, serves primarily as a guidebook. But ultimately truth comes to us through direct consciousness of the divine or the ultimate reality. In other religions this ultimate reality is known as God. Hindus refer to it by many names, but the most common name is Brahman.
Prophet(s)	The Buddha Himself	Personified Gods and Goddesses created to assist (through stories) understanding of Brahman. Known as Saguna Brahman (Brahman with attributes) these personified forms of Brahman correspond to three stages in the cycle of the universe. Brahmā corresponds to the creative spirit from which the universe arises. Vishnu corresponds to the force of order that sustains the universe. Shiva corresponds to the force that brings a cycle to an end—destruction acting as a prelude to transformation, leaving pure consciousness from which the universe is reborn after destruction. Other personified forms widely worshiped by Hindus are Shakti, the female aspect of divinity, and Ganesha, the elephant-headed deity associated with the removal of obstacles. Krishna appears at times to save the world. The majority of Hindus choose a personal deity, a saguna form of Brahman with whom they can feel a direct personal connection. Devotion to this deity can take a number of forms, including prayer, ceremonial worship, chanting of the deity’s name, and pilgrimage to sites sacred to the deity.
Leader(s)	Monks, Nuns, Scholars, Laymen.	Spiritual authority in Hinduism flows from enlightened sages called gurus. The guru is someone who has attained realization and acts as a guide for other human beings. He or she guides the individual seeker of truth and self-realization to the appropriate deity, practice, or yoga within Hinduism. The disciple’s goal is to transcend the need for a guru through direct experience of the divine and self-awareness. Having a guide is considered critical for traversing the complexities of spiritual practice and self-discovery. The guru thus constitutes an important centre of spiritual activity in Hinduism. Yoga - there are different forms of yoga within Hinduism, hatha yoga (a physical yoga well known in the west), karma yoga (appropriate selfless deeds and actions), bhakti yoga (the yoga of devotion and love for a personal deity), Jñāna yoga (the yoga of knowledge)*
Afterlife	None. (As with many other religions / philosophies, over the centuries Buddhism has split in to many different factions (schisms), and taken up many additional cultural beliefs and schools of thought, some of these factions believe in a cycle of rebirth, others treat The Buddha as a deity. The Buddha is quoted as saying he knew nothing of God/s, or an afterlife, and was only interested in relieving suffering from conscious beings)	We normally think of ourselves as coming into being when we are born of our parents and as perishing when we die. According to Hinduism, however, this current life is merely one link in a chain of lives that extends far into the past and projects far into the future. The point of origin of this chain cannot be determined. The process of our involvement in the universe—the chain of births and deaths—is called samsāra. Samsāra is caused by a lack of knowledge of our true self and our resultant desire for fulfilment outside ourselves. We continue to embody ourselves, or be reborn, in this infinite and eternal universe as a result of these unfulfilled desires. The chain of births lets us resume the pursuit. The law that governs samsāra is called karma. Each birth and death we undergo is determined by the balance sheet of our karma—that is, in accordance with the actions performed and the dispositions acquired in the past. Time in the Hindu universe moves in endlessly recurring cycles, much like the motion of a wheel. The duration of the various phases of the universe’s existence are calculated in units of mind-boggling astronomical duration.
Practices	The understanding of human suffering, its causes, and how suffering can be overcome to achieve happiness through living a non-violent, non-extreme life of moderation, meditation and knowledge.	Daily individual or household worship, occasional communal worship, worship at temples, religious festivals.
Texts	Teaching was initially done orally, followed by various texts and scriptures.	There is no single revelation or orthodoxy (established doctrine) by which people may achieve knowledge of the divine or lead a life backed by religious law. The Hindu tradition acknowledges that there are many paths by which people may seek and experience religious understanding and direction. It also claims that every individual has the potential to achieve enlightenment. Although Hindu tradition maintains that the ultimate reality lies beyond all scriptures, it is equally convinced that the scriptures help people orient their minds and lives towards Brahman. This attitude has given rise to a body of sacred literature so vast that by one calculation it would take 70 lifetimes of devoted study to read all of it.
Human situation/ Life's purpose	Buddhism is often said by its critics to be nihilistic (because there is no belief in God/s or afterlife, life itself is pointless - the same criticism is also made of atheism and humanism) As life's purpose is unknown, the focus is on improving life as we know and experience it.	The highest aim of existence is the realization of the identity or union of the individual’s innermost self with the ultimate reality. Although this ultimate reality is beyond name, the word Brahman is used to refer to it. (But how can the human mind, with its limitations, conceive of this transcendent reality? Human comprehension requires a more personal reality, with attributes. Therefore Saguna Brahman—that is, Brahman with attributes—generally takes the form of one of three main Hindu deities: Brahmā, Vishnu, or Shiva to serve this purpose.)
Punishment for heresy	None (Buddhism is a non-violent belief that throughout history has lived in harmony with all other religions and philosophies.)	Not applicable
Attitude to Women	Historically: Generally one of equality. Currently: Equality.	From the 6th century, the Tantric tradition influenced the role of equality of women in Hinduism including allowing women to be gurus.
Main objectives in theory	Buddhism is a tolerant teaching that takes the individual as the centre of the teachings. Many Buddhist texts are concerned with individuals improving themselves. Buddha said: Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. Do not believe anything because it is spoken and rumoured by many. Do not believe in anything because it is written in your religious texts. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. But, after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and the benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it. The Essence of Buddha's Teaching. Buddha set forth his teaching in the following doctrine The Four Noble Truths: 1. All things and experiences are marked by suffering/ disharmony/ frustration. 2. The arising of suffering/ disharmony/ frustration comes from desire/ craving/ clinging. 3. To achieve the cessation or end of suffering/ disharmony/ frustration, let go of desire/ craving/ clinging. 4. The way to achieve that cessation of suffering/ disharmony/ frustration, is walking the Eightfold Path. The eightfold path to the cessation of suffering: 1. Right Understanding of the following facts: • the truth about suffering ... (The Four Nobel Truths); • everything is impermanent and changes; • there is no separate individual self - this is an illusion. (Life is impermanent, a stream of becoming, a series of manifestations and extinctions. The concept of the individual ego is a popular delusion; the objects with which people identify themselves—fortune, social position, family, body, and even mind—are not their true selves. There is nothing permanent, and, if only the permanent deserved to be called the self, then nothing is self.) 2. Right Determination to: • give up what is wrong and evil; • undertake what is good; • abandon thoughts that have to do with bringing suffering to any conscious being; cultivate thoughts of loving kindness, that are based on caring about others' suffering, and sympathetic joy in others' happiness. 3. Right Speech: • Abstain from telling lies. • Abstain from talk that brings harm or discredit to others (such as backbiting or slander) or talk that creates hatred or disharmony between individuals and groups. • Abstain from harsh, rude, impolite, malicious, or abusive language. • Abstain from idle, useless, and foolish babble and gossip. Abstain from recrimination and negative statements. • Abstain from harsh speech—practice kindly speech. • Abstain from frivolous speech—practice meaningful speech. • Abstain from slanderous speech—practice harmonious speech. • Speak the truth if it is useful and timely. Practice only necessary speech. Let your speech be filled with loving kindness. Speak that which alleviates suffering. 4. Right Action: • Peaceful, honourable conduct; abstain from dishonest dealings; take concrete steps necessary to foster what is good. • Do things that are moral, honest, and alleviate suffering. Do not do things that will bring suffering to others or yourself. 5. Right Livelihood: • Abstain from making your living from an occupation that brings harm and suffering to humans or animals, or diminishes their wellbeing. This includes: activities that directly harm conscious beings, and activities that indirectly harm sentient beings. 6. Right Effort: • Foster good and prevent evil. • Work on yourself—be engaged in appropriate self-improvement. The essence of right effort is that everything must be done with a sense of proper balance that fits the situation. Effort should be balanced between trying too hard and not trying hard enough. Trying hard to progress too rapidly gets poor results, as does not trying hard enough. 7. Right Mindfulness or wakefulness: • Foster right attention. • Avoid whatever clouds our mental awareness. • Systematically and intentionally develop awareness. 8. Right Concentration: • Developed by practicing meditation and/or mental focusing. Proper meditation must be done continuously while awake, and should include work on awareness of body, emotions, thought, and mind objects. Five basic precepts: 1. Abstain from killing living beings (from destroying/taking life)—or practice love. 2. Abstain from taking the not-given (from stealing)—or practice generosity, practice giving. 3. Abstain from sexual misconduct—or practice contentment. 4. Abstain from false speech (from lying)—or practice truthfulness. 5. Abstain from taking intoxicating drinks—or practice awareness and mental clarity.	More strikingly than any other major religious community, Hindus accept—and indeed celebrate—the organic, multileveled, and sometimes pluralistic nature of their traditions. This expansiveness is made possible by the widely shared Hindu view that truth or reality cannot be encapsulated in any creedal formulation, a perspective expressed in the Hindu prayer “May good thoughts come to us from all sides.” Thus, Hinduism maintains that truth must be sought in multiple sources, not dogmatically proclaimed. Anyone's view of the truth—even that of a guru regarded as possessing superior authority—is fundamentally conditioned by the specifics of time, age, gender, state of consciousness, social and geographic location, and stage of attainment. These multiple perspectives enhance a broad view of religious truth rather than diminish it; hence, there is a strong tendency for contemporary Hindus to affirm that tolerance is the foremost religious virtue. On the other hand, even cosmopolitan Hindus living in a global environment recognize and value the fact that their religion has developed in the specific context of the Indian subcontinent. Such a tension between universalist and particularist impulses has long animated the Hindu tradition. When Hindus speak of their religious identity they emphasize its continuous, seemingly eternal existence and the fact that it describes a web of customs, obligations, traditions, and ideals that far exceeds the Western tendency to think of religion primarily as a system of beliefs. A common way in which English-speaking Hindus often distance themselves from that frame of mind is to insist that Hinduism is not a religion but a way of life.
Main objectives in practice	As above.	As Above.
Major benefits to the human condition	The bringing of comfort, order, education and a peaceful structured society to the individual. Many outstanding works of art and architecture around the world. Buddhists have always recognized the importance of community life, and over the centuries there has developed a distinctive symbiotic relationship between monks (and in some cases nuns) and the lay community. Moreover, both the monastics and the laity have engaged in a variety of common and complementary religious practices that have expressed Buddhist orientations and values, structured peaceful Buddhist societies, and addressed the practical concerns of individuals. Despite historically often being seen as a threat in some lands to their kings, emperors and rulers for more than two millennia - being completely banned in many communist countries, Buddhism has been a powerful religious, political, and social force, first in India, its original homeland, and then in many other lands. It remains a powerful religious, political, and cultural force in many parts of the world today. In the Western world, particularly in the United States and Canada, the growth of new Buddhist communities—which include both Buddhist immigrants from different parts of Asia and indigenous converts—has been very rapid indeed. There is every reason to expect that the appeal of Buddhism will continue far on into the future.	Many beautiful works of art and architecture. A religious love of theatre, drama, music and dance. Generally, when not defending themselves from attack, Hindus live in a gentle and peaceful social order.
Major detriments to the human condition in deaths.	Unaware of any Buddhist inspired aggressions or wars. However Buddhists have taken up arms and killed in defensive encounters. Buddhist monks and laymen fought bravely against invading Japanese armies under Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1592 and again in 1597. Buddhists struggled against colonialism throughout Asia, although mostly peacefully, have fought communist incursions, and undergone imprisonment and death when persecuted by other religious / political regimes. Especially so in the South Vietnamese detention/death camps where between 1955-1960 under the fanatical Catholic President Ngo Dinh, president of South Vietnam, an estimated half a million were sent. An estimated 2 million Buddhists died at the hands of the Cambodian Marxist Khmer Rouge government of Pol Pot between 1975-1979 and many of the professional and technical classes were exterminated. In some parts of the world today Buddhists are fighting and killing defensively against Islamic fundamentalist inspired aggressions.	Hindus live with a legacy of domination by Muslim and Christian rulers that stretches back many centuries—in northern India, to the Delhi sultanate established at the beginning of the 13th century. The patterns of relationship between Hindus and Muslims have been different between north and south India. While there is a history of conquest and domination in the north, Hindu-Muslim relations in Kerala and Tamil Nadu have been peaceful. Yet there were periods when the political ambitions of Islamic rulers took strength from the iconoclastic (to destroy religious images) aspects of Muslim teaching and led to the devastation of many major Hindu temple complexes, from Mathura and Varanasi in the north to Chidambaram, Sriringam, and Madurai in the far south; other temples were converted to mosques. Since the 14th century this history has provided rhetorical fuel for Hindu anger against Muslim rulers. In 1946 the Muslim League declares August 16, Direct Action Day for the purpose of winning a separate Muslim state. Savage Hindu-Muslim riots broke out in Calcutta the next day and quickly spread throughout India. As independence approached Hindus and Muslims continued to fight and kill each other. Three wars have been fought between India and Pakistan:- 1947. Pakistani forces invaded independent Kashmir, Kashmir asked for military help in return for Kashmir's accession to India. India then joined the war in defence of Kashmir. 1965. Military personnel disguised as local Kashmiris began to infiltrate into the Kashmīr Valley in early August. Once they entered the valley, the infiltrators intended to foment a rebellion among Kashmiri Muslims. The Kashmiris did not respond as expected; instead, they turned the infiltrators over to the local authorities. Accordingly, the Indian army moved to secure the border and on August 15 scored a major victory after a prolonged artillery barrage. Attacks and counterattacks followed in quick succession. On September 1 the Pakistanis opened a new front catching Indian forces unprepared. Indian forces responded with air strikes, leading to Pakistani retaliation. On September 5 the Pakistanis made a significant thrust into Indian territory that threatened to cut off Kashmir state from the rest of India. The following day Indian troops crossed the international border near Lahore. Faced with this threat to Lahore, the Pakistanis launched a counterattack in the neighbouring Indian state of Punjab. This attack, was anticipated by the Indian forces and failed, with Pakistani forces suffering major losses. 1971. The 1947 partition had created a Pakistan comprised of two “wings”—West Pakistan (present-day Pakistan) and East Bengal (later renamed East Pakistan; now Bangladesh)—that were separated by 1,600 km of Indian territory. In the wake of Pakistan’s first free and fair election in December 1970, the leaders of the western and eastern wings failed to reach an understanding about power sharing. In March 1971, after talks failed to break the deadlock, the Pakistani government launched a military crackdown in East Pakistan. Large numbers of the Bengali intelligentsia in East Pakistan were killed and many prominent Bengali leaders were thrown in jail. In response, the leadership of East Pakistan declared the province’s independence on March 26. As the crackdown escalated into a full-blown and brutal civil war over the next two months, some 10 million Bengalis fled East Pakistan and took refuge in the neighbouring Indian state of West Bengal. The Indian leadership of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi quickly decided that it was cheaper to resort to war against Pakistan than to absorb millions of refugees into India’s already bloated population. The third Indo-Pakistani war formally began with a Pakistani air attack on a number of air bases in north-western India. The Indian air force responded the next day An invading Pakistani tank column was bombed by the Indian air force, which carried out as many as 4,000 sorties during the conflict. An Indian thrust made by three Indian army divisions launched a five-pronged attack on Dhaka, the provincial capital, and received the surrender of Pakistani forces there on December 16. East Pakistan immediately seceded from Pakistan and became the sovereign nation of Bangladesh. The bloody partition of the subcontinent from India into India and Pakistan in 1947 mobilized Hindu sensibilities about the sacredness of the land as a whole, Hindus have sometimes depicted the creation of Pakistan as a dismemberment of the body of India. At the end of the 20th century in a campaign to destroy the mosque built in 1528 by a lieutenant of the Mughal emperor in Ayodhya, a city that has traditionally been identified as the place where Rama (Rama - incarnation of Vishnu) was born and ruled. In 1992 militant Hindu nationalists from throughout India, who had been organized by the VHP “World Hindu Council”, the RSS “National Volunteer Alliance”, and the BJP “Indian People's Party”, destroyed the mosque in an effort to “liberate” Rama and establish a huge “Rama's Birthplace Temple” on the spot. The continuing tensions in the Kashmir region have also spawned outbursts of sectarian violence on both sides, including the destruction of some Hindu temples there by militant Muslims.
Other Major detriments to the human condition.	Through the different factions of Buddhism that have developed over the millennia, some have developed beliefs in afterlives, rebirths, hells etc., probably for cultural reasons, which are far away from the original teachings. Some criticize Buddhism for promoting what they see as nihilism. Some Marxist groups have criticized Buddhism for causing Tibet to have an undeveloped, agrarian economy.	The traditional caste system of India developed more than 3000 years ago when Aryan-speaking nomadic groups migrated from the north to India about 1500 BC. The Aryan priests divided society into a basic caste system. Sometime between 200 BC and 100 AD, the Manu Smriti, or Law of Manu, was written. In it were the four great hereditary divisions of society still surviving today, placing their own priestly class at the head of this caste system with the title of earthly gods, or Brahmans. Next in order of rank were the warriors, then came the farmers and merchants. The fourth of the original castes were the labourers, born to be servants to the other three castes, especially the Brahman. Far lower, in fact entirely outside the social order and limited to doing the most menial and unappealing tasks were those people of no caste, formerly known as Untouchables. In the modern world any form of caste system is totally unacceptable.
Notes	· The 14th Dalai Lama states: "From one viewpoint, Buddhism is a religion, from another viewpoint Buddhism is a science of mind and not a religion. Buddhism can be a bridge between these two sides. Therefore, with this conviction I try to have closer ties with scientists, mainly in the fields of cosmology, psychology, neurobiology and physics. In these fields there are insights to share, and to a certain extent we can work together." · Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche states: "If you are interested in 'meeting the Buddha' and following his example, then you should realize that the path the Buddha taught is primarily a study of your own mind and a system for training your mind. This path is spiritual, not religious. Its goal is self-knowledge, not salvation; freedom, not heaven. And it is deeply personal."