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The first question Buddhists get asked when they meet non-Buddhists is, as likely as not, What is nirvana? Certainly, when I was a Buddhist monk travelling about India, I used to find on trains that no sooner had I taken my seat than someone would come up to me (for in India people are by no means bashful when it comes to striking up conversation) and say, You seem to be a Buddhist monk. Please tell me — what is nirvana?Indeed, it is a very appropriate question to ask. The question is, after all, addressing the whole point of being a Buddhist. You may see Buddhists engaged in all sorts of different activities, but they all have the same overall purpose in view. You may see shaven-headed Japanese monks in their long black robes sitting in disciplined rows, meditating hour after hour in the silence and tranquillity of a Zen monastery.

You may see ordinary Tibetans going in the early morning up the steps of the temples, carrying their flowers and their candles and their bundles of incense sticks, kneeling down and making their offerings, chanting verses of praise to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, and then going about their daily business. You may see Sri Lankan monks poring over palm-leaf manuscripts, the pages brown with age. You may see layfolk in the Theravadin countries of South-east Asia giving alms to the monks when they come round with their black begging-bowls. You may see western Buddhists working together in Right Livelihood businesses. When you see unfolded this whole vast panorama of Buddhist activities, the question that arises is: Why? What is the reason for it all? What is the moving spirit, the great impulse behind all this activity? What are all these people trying to do? What are they trying to achieve through their meditation, their worshipping, their study, their alms-giving, their work, and so on? If you asked this of any of these people, you would probably receive the traditional answer: We’re doing this for the sake of the attainment of nirvana, liberation, Enlightenment. But what then is this nirvana?...

Buddha Maitreya is the Buddha of the future, also known as the Laughing Buddha, is the one to follow up the historical Buddha Sakyamuni. He waits in the Tusita heaven for the moment he is to appear on earth as the Buddha of the fifth world cycle. At present he is considered as one of the dhyani-Bodhisattvas, the creators of the universe. In the future he will be like Sakyamuni, a mortal manusi Buddha who lives on earth for a while in order to teach mankind the doctrine. Maitreya, 'the loving one', is widely worshipped in the Himalayan regions.  

Future History: Shakyamuni Buddha predicted that due to the inevitable degeneration of the times, his own teachings would last just five thousand years before disappearing from this world. People will grow more and more immoral and their lifespan will gradually decrease, as will their health, stature and fortune. While such delusions as miserliness, hatred and jealousy gain strength, the world will go through prolonged periods of famine, disease and continuous warfare until it eventually resembles a vast battlefield of graveyard. Thereupon Maitreya will appear, not in his fully evolved buddha form, but as a person of regal bearing, very handsome and taller than those around him. On seeing this unusual being, people will be filled with wonder and faith, and will ask how he came to have such an attractive appearance. Maitreya will reply that this is due to his practice of patience, avoiding giving harm to others, and if others will also abide in love and tolerance, they could become similar to him.

Maitreya's appearance will mark a great turning point in the fortunes of this world. As more and more beings follow his example, their store of merit, and consequently their lifespan, will increase. Eventually people will live in health for such a long time that the sufferings of old age and death will scarcely be known. At that time, their observance of morality will grow lax as people become more and more involved in the pleasures of their existence. With this laxity will come another gradual shortening and degeneration of their lifespan until eventually beings once again will become suitable ripe to take sincere interest in the spiritual path. When the human lifespan as increased again to many thousands of years, and when the planet will be entirely dominated by a benevolent wheel-turning sovereign (Chakravartin) named Shankha, it is at this time that Maitreya Buddha will descend from the Tushita buddha field (devaloka) where he now resides, to appear in this world as the fifth founding Buddha of this world age. Maitreya will be born the son of a Brahmin priest, and will renounce the world and attain enlightenment in a single day, not requiring six long years. The world in this time will be politically neutralised, and therefore the warrior class and its martial virtues will be obsolete. Thus he will be born among the intellectuals, the priests, and his teaching will bring the gentler emotions to the fore...

At first sight nothing seems more alien to the oldest form of Buddhism, Theravada, than Tantric Buddhism. Where Theravada urges us to reflect on the repulsiveness of the body, Tantric Buddhism tells us to revere it as a temple and to indulge its most sensual impulses. Theravada preaches the renunciation of all desires: Tantric Buddhism their over-fulfillment.

These are very real and significant differences. If we regard nirvana as an ultimate reality which is revered as virtually divine, then most Mahayana schools of Buddhism are pantheisms of the world-rejecting and world-denying varieties. Tantric Buddhism is a pantheism of the world-accepting variety which sees nirvana in the midst of sense-phenomena.Tantric Buddhism also laid great emphasis on mantras (incantations), on mudras (symbolic gestures) and on mandalas (symbolic diagrams of deities and cosmic forces), as well as on magic and a multiplicity of deities.

Yet it has two major points in common with its parent. The first is that it aims at the abandonment or transcendence of the self. Once again, its favoured method - the ecstasy of ritual sexual intercourse and orgasm - is quite foreign to Theravada Buddhism. The Buddha scolded his pupil Ananda for giving in to female attractions.

The sexual aspect of Tantric Buddhism has attracted a great deal of attention, sometimes puritanical, sometimes prurient. Some of the Tantric sutras, such as the Guhyasamaja-tantra, describe elaborate rituals for group orgies. Many scholars claim that these passages are not to be taken literally. They are said to be symbolic of the union of wisdom (symbolized by the female) and means (the male).However, some groups did practise the rituals literally and in the flesh. These are likely to have been primarily males of the higher classes, who could buy lower-caste women or high-class prostitutes to do what they liked with, or landless castes, who had no property to pass on, and for whom female virginity was less critical.

Tantric Buddhism shares another factor with many schools of Mahayana Buddhism. It claims that the existence of the physical world is illusory, and therefore there is no difference between samsara (the world of transmigration and shifting appearances) and nirvana.If this is true, then all we need to be liberated is to realize it. As long as we do so, it makes no difference how we act. We can rape, murder, commit incest - as some of the more extreme Tantric texts encourage - and we will remain undefiled by the world of illusion. In this amoral position Tantric teachings resembled those of the Nicolaitan Gnostics and the Brethren of the Free Spirit.

(Xinhua) China has armed the Leshan Mountain Giant Buddha in its southwest Sichuan Province with an " electronic bodyguard" to protect the world's tallest Buddha statue from fire and flood.

The electronic management system, or "electronic bodyguard," is a 24-hour monitoring and protection network consisting of computers, monitors and miniature cameras around the 71-meter-tall statue and its surrounding scenic areas, said Lu Lin, director of Leshan Mountain Giant Buddha Resort.

"It is the first Chinese scenic resort equipped with an electronic bodyguard combined with high technologies and traditional patrolling," Lu said. The system will raise an alarm as soon as it monitors signs of possible fire or flood then supervisors can mobilize patrolmen to respond accordingly, he said. "The system won't damage the statue and the landscape since the transmission lines linking the system have been hidden while miniature cameras are placed around the statue, not on its body," Lu said.