# Buddhism The religion and path founded on the teaching of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, which diagnoses suffering, traces it to craving, and offers a way to end it in nirvana. ## Intro Buddhism is one of the world's great religions. Roughly half a billion people follow it, most of them in Asia. It began with one man, Siddhartha Gautama, who lived in northern India about 2,500 years ago. His followers call him the Buddha, which means "the awakened one." The story Buddhists tell goes like this. Siddhartha was born a prince and grew up surrounded by comfort. As a young man he saw old age, sickness and death for the first time, and he could not stop thinking about them. He left his palace to find a way out of suffering. After years of searching, he sat in meditation under a tree and woke up to the truth about life. He spent the rest of his long life teaching it. What did he teach? That life is full of suffering and dissatisfaction. That suffering comes from craving, from always wanting things to be other than they are. That craving can end. And that there is a path to end it, the Eightfold Path, a way of living, thinking and meditating. The goal is *nirvana*, the end of craving and the end of being born again and again. Buddhism has no creator God at its center. The Buddha did not claim to be God, and he set aside questions about where the world came from. He also taught that there is no permanent, unchanging self inside a person. Over the centuries Buddhism grew into several major branches. Theravada is found in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. Mahayana spread to China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam, and includes Zen and Pure Land. Vajrayana is the Buddhism of Tibet and the Himalayas. Christians and Buddhists agree on more than many expect. Both say life is hard, both say wrong desire causes harm, and both honor compassion. They part ways on the biggest questions: whether there is a personal God, whether you are a real self, who saves, and how the story ends. Buddhism hopes for the blowing out of craving. Christianity hopes for the raising of the whole person to see God face to face. The full side-by-side treatment is [Buddhism vs the Christian God](/codex/buddhism-vs-the-christian-god/). ## In full **Buddhism** is the religious and philosophical tradition that traces itself to Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha, "awakened one"), who taught in the Ganges basin of north India in the fifth or sixth century BC; the exact dates are debated, with the traditional reckoning placing his life around 563-483 BC and many modern scholars favoring a later date in the fifth century. Its core teaching is the Four Noble Truths (suffering, its origin in craving, its cessation, and the path to cessation), set within a worldview of karma and rebirth (*samsara*), the three marks of existence (impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, not-self), and dependent origination. Its goal is *nirvana*, the extinction of greed, hatred and delusion and release from rebirth. The tradition is non-theistic in the sense that it affirms no personal Creator, though it accepts the existence of gods (*devas*) as beings within the round of rebirth. Its three major branches are Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana, with approximately 500 million adherents worldwide (estimates vary). From the Christian side, the codex treats Buddhism as a serious account of suffering that is right about much of the symptom and wrong about its cause and cure. The structured comparison is [Buddhism vs the Christian God](/codex/buddhism-vs-the-christian-god/); this page describes Buddhism on its own terms first and then gives the Christian assessment, clearly labelled. ## History and founder ### The Buddha's life, as the tradition tells it The tradition's account, assembled from the early discourses and later biographies, runs as follows: - **Birth.** Siddhartha Gautama was born into the Shakya clan, traditionally at Lumbini in what is now southern Nepal. His father ruled a small republic or chiefdom; later tellings make him a great king. - **The four sights.** Kept within the palace, the young prince ventured out and saw an old man, a sick man, a corpse and a wandering ascetic. The first three showed him the suffering no one escapes; the fourth showed him a way to seek release. - **Renunciation.** At about 29 he left his wife Yasodhara and infant son Rahula to become a wandering seeker. Buddhists call this the Great Going Forth. - **Ascetic years.** He studied under meditation teachers and then practiced severe austerities, nearly starving himself, before concluding that neither indulgence nor self-mortification leads to freedom. This became the "Middle Way." - **Awakening.** Seated under a fig tree at Bodh Gaya, later called the Bodhi tree, he attained awakening (*bodhi*) at about 35. - **First sermon.** At the Deer Park at Sarnath near Varanasi he taught the Four Noble Truths to five former companions, an event Buddhists call "setting in motion the wheel of the Dhamma" (Samyutta Nikaya 56.11). - **Ministry and death.** He taught for about 45 years, founded an order of monks and later of nuns, and died at about 80 at Kushinagar. His death is called the *parinirvana*, the final passing into nirvana. The Buddha did not claim to be God or a messenger from God. He presented himself as one who had discovered and taught the way to the end of suffering, a way others could walk and verify for themselves. ### Spread and development - **Early councils.** According to tradition, the monks met shortly after the Buddha's death to recite his teachings and the monastic rule. Later councils followed, and disputes over discipline and doctrine produced the early schools. - **Ashoka.** The Indian emperor Ashoka (3rd century BC) embraced Buddhism and sponsored its spread, including, by tradition, the mission that took it to Sri Lanka. - **Writing.** The teaching was transmitted orally for several centuries. The Theravada tradition records that the Pali Canon was committed to writing in Sri Lanka in the first century BC. - **Mahayana.** From around the turn of the era, new sutras and a new ideal (the *bodhisattva*) emerged, and Mahayana Buddhism spread along trade routes into Central Asia and China, then Korea, Japan and Vietnam. - **Tibet.** Buddhism reached Tibet from the seventh and eighth centuries AD and developed into the Vajrayana traditions. - **Decline in India.** By the late medieval period Buddhism had largely disappeared from its Indian homeland, while flourishing elsewhere in Asia. - **The modern West.** Since the nineteenth century Buddhism has drawn Western converts and admirers, often in forms that emphasize meditation and psychology over rebirth, ritual and cosmology. ## Core teachings ### The Four Noble Truths The Buddha's first sermon (Samyutta Nikaya 56.11) sets out the frame for everything else: 1. **Dukkha.** Life is marked by suffering, stress and unsatisfactoriness. Birth, aging, sickness and death are suffering; so is being separated from what we love and bound to what we dislike. 2. **The origin of dukkha.** Suffering arises from craving (*tanha*): craving for pleasure, craving for existence, and craving for non-existence. 3. **The cessation of dukkha.** When craving ends without remainder, suffering ends. This cessation is nirvana. 4. **The path.** The way to cessation is the Noble Eightfold Path. ### The Noble Eightfold Path The path is traditionally grouped in three parts: | Group | Factors | |---|---| | **Wisdom** | Right view, right intention | | **Ethical conduct** | Right speech, right action, right livelihood | | **Mental discipline** | Right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration | "Right" here means fitting or complete, not merely correct. The factors are cultivated together, not in strict sequence. ### The three marks of existence Everything conditioned bears three marks: - **Anicca, impermanence.** Nothing that arises lasts. Bodies, feelings, thoughts, relationships and worlds all pass away. - **Dukkha, unsatisfactoriness.** Because nothing lasts, nothing conditioned can give lasting satisfaction. - **Anatta, not-self.** There is no permanent, unchanging self or soul. In the Anattalakkhana Sutta (Samyutta Nikaya 22.59) the Buddha examines the five aggregates (form, feeling, perception, mental formations and consciousness) one by one and teaches that none of them is "mine," "what I am," or "my self." Buddhist teachers stress that not-self does not deny the ordinary, conventional person who walks and talks. It denies that any permanent essence stands behind the changing process. The monk Nagasena's chariot simile in the *Milindapanha* makes the point: "chariot" is a name for parts in relation, not a further thing beside them. ### Dependent origination Everything arises in dependence on conditions (*paticca-samuppada*). The classical form is a chain of twelve links, running from ignorance through craving and clinging to birth, aging and death, which explains how beings keep cycling through rebirth. Break the chain at ignorance or craving, and the cycle stops. Buddhist texts say that no first beginning of the round of rebirth can be found (Samyutta Nikaya 15). ### Karma and rebirth Intentional action (*karma*) shapes future experience, in this life and in lives to come. Beings are reborn according to their karma into one of several realms, traditionally counted as five or six: gods, demigods (in the six-fold scheme), humans, animals, hungry ghosts and hell beings. None of these states is permanent, including the heavens and the hells. Because Buddhism denies a permanent self, what passes from one life to the next is described as a causal continuity, often compared to one flame lighting another, rather than a soul moving into a new body. See [Karma](/codex/karma/) and [Reincarnation](/codex/reincarnation/). ### Nirvana *Nirvana* (Pali *nibbana*) literally means "blowing out" or "extinguishing." It is the extinction of the fires of greed, hatred and delusion, and the end of rebirth. A person can realize nirvana in this life; at death the awakened one is not reborn. Buddhists insist that nirvana is not mere annihilation. The Buddha rejected both eternalism (a self lives on forever) and annihilationism (a self is simply destroyed), and called his teaching a middle way between them. Udana 8.3 speaks of an "unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned," without which there would be no escape from the conditioned. ### The undeclared questions When the monk Malunkyaputta pressed the Buddha on whether the world is eternal or not, finite or infinite, whether the soul is the same as the body or different, and whether an awakened one (*tathagata*) exists after death, the Buddha declined to answer. He compared the questioner to a man shot with a poisoned arrow who refuses treatment until he learns who shot it and what the arrow is made of: he will die before he finds out. Such questions, he said, do not lead to the end of suffering (Cula-Malunkyovada Sutta, Majjhima Nikaya 63). ### God and the gods Early Buddhism accepts many gods but places them within samsara, long-lived and powerful yet mortal and still in need of liberation. In the Brahmajala Sutta (Digha Nikaya 1) the god Brahma, whom Brahmins revered as creator, is portrayed as a being who arose first in a new world-cycle and mistakenly concluded he had made the beings who came after him. Later Buddhist philosophers argued against a creator God. Mahayana devotion to celestial buddhas and bodhisattvas can look theistic in practice, but Buddhism does not teach a personal Creator who made the world from nothing. ### Ethics - **The three refuges.** A Buddhist "takes refuge" in the Three Jewels: the Buddha, the Dharma (his teaching) and the Sangha (the community). - **The five precepts.** Lay Buddhists undertake to abstain from killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, false speech and intoxicants. - **The divine abodes.** Loving-kindness (*metta*), compassion (*karuna*), sympathetic joy (*mudita*) and equanimity (*upekkha*) are cultivated toward all beings. The Metta Sutta (Sutta Nipata 1.8) asks the disciple to cherish all beings as a mother protects her only child. - **The three poisons.** Greed, hatred and delusion are the roots of unwholesome action. ## Scriptures Buddhism has no single closed canon shared by every branch. The main collections are: - **The Pali Canon (Tipitaka, "three baskets").** The scripture of Theravada, preserved in the Pali language: - the **Vinaya Pitaka**, the monastic discipline; - the **Sutta Pitaka**, the discourses, grouped into the long (Digha Nikaya), middle-length (Majjhima Nikaya), connected (Samyutta Nikaya) and numerical (Anguttara Nikaya) collections, plus a minor collection (Khuddaka Nikaya) that includes the Dhammapada, the Udana and the Sutta Nipata; - the **Abhidhamma Pitaka**, a systematic analysis of mind and phenomena. - **Mahayana sutras.** Texts such as the Lotus Sutra, the Heart Sutra, the Diamond Sutra and the Pure Land sutras, preserved mainly in Chinese and Tibetan translation, with some Sanskrit originals. - **The Chinese and Tibetan canons.** Large collections that include translations of early material alongside Mahayana sutras and commentaries. The Tibetan canon is divided into the Kangyur (words attributed to the Buddha) and the Tengyur (treatises and commentaries). Buddhists do not generally treat their scriptures as revelation from God. They are the record of the Buddha's teaching and of later insight, valued because the path they describe can be practiced and tested. ## Major branches ### Theravada "The teaching of the elders." Found chiefly in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. Theravada keeps the Pali Canon as its scripture and holds up the ideal of the *arahant*, one who has reached nirvana through his own practice of the path. The monastic community is central, and lay people support the monks with alms and gain merit by doing so. ### Mahayana "The great vehicle." The dominant Buddhism of China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam. Its distinctives include: - **The bodhisattva ideal.** The bodhisattva vows to attain awakening for the sake of all beings and to help them across, rather than seeking liberation for himself alone. - **Emptiness.** Nagarjuna (around the second century AD) and the Madhyamaka school taught that all things are empty (*sunyata*) of independent, inherent existence. - **Buddha-nature.** Many Mahayana traditions teach that all beings have the potential for awakening. - **Celestial buddhas and bodhisattvas.** Devotion to figures such as Amitabha (Amida) and the bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteshvara (Guanyin in China, Kannon in Japan). Two Mahayana schools are especially important for Christian conversation: - **Zen** (Chan in China, Seon in Korea) emphasizes seated meditation (*zazen*) and direct insight into one's nature, often through the paradoxical sayings called koans. Its two main Japanese lineages are Rinzai and Soto. - **Pure Land** centers on faith in Amida Buddha, who according to the Larger Sukhavativyuha Sutra vowed as the bodhisattva Dharmakara to bring all who sincerely entrust themselves to him and call his name to rebirth in his Pure Land. Practitioners recite the *nembutsu*, in Japanese "Namu Amida Butsu." In Japan, Honen founded the Jodo school and his disciple Shinran (13th century) founded Jodo Shinshu, which teaches that rebirth comes wholly through Amida's "other-power," not one's own effort. ### Vajrayana "The diamond vehicle" or "thunderbolt vehicle." The Buddhism of Tibet, Bhutan, Mongolia and the Himalayan region, built on Mahayana philosophy with the addition of tantric practice: mantras, visualization, mandalas, initiation by a qualified teacher (lama) and esoteric ritual. Tibetan Buddhism has several major schools; the best-known figure in the West is the Dalai Lama of the Gelug school. ## Practice - **Meditation.** Calm-abiding meditation (*samatha*) settles and concentrates the mind; insight meditation (*vipassana*) observes impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and not-self directly. Zen *zazen*, Tibetan visualization and Pure Land recitation are other forms. - **Monastic life.** Monks and nuns keep the Vinaya, own little, beg or receive alms, and devote themselves to study and meditation. - **Merit-making.** Lay Buddhists give to monks, keep precepts, chant and visit temples, believing this produces good karma. - **Devotion.** Bowing before Buddha images, offering flowers, incense and light, circling stupas that hold relics, and pilgrimage to sites of the Buddha's life. - **Festivals.** Vesak, observed across much of the Buddhist world, commemorates the Buddha's birth, and in Theravada tradition also his awakening and death. ## The afterlife and the ending On the Buddhist view, death is followed by rebirth according to karma, again and again, until the cycle is broken. The ending Buddhism offers is nirvana: no more craving, no more suffering, no more rebirth. What, if anything, the awakened one is after death the Buddha declined to say (Majjhima Nikaya 63). Since there was never a permanent self, there is no self to survive, and none to be annihilated either. Pure Land Buddhism offers an intermediate hope: rebirth in Amida's Pure Land, a realm where conditions make attaining nirvana certain. For how this ending compares with Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and others, see [World Religions Compared by Their Ultimate Ending](/codex/world-religions-compared-by-their-ultimate-ending/). ## Christian assessment Everything above describes Buddhism as Buddhists understand it. What follows is the Christian assessment. ### Points of contact - **Suffering is real.** The Bible does not pretend otherwise: "Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher; vanity of vanities, all is vanity" ([Ecclesiastes 1:2](/codex/ecclesiastes-1-2/), ASV). Creation itself "groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now" ([Romans 8:22](/codex/romans-8-22/), ASV). - **Disordered desire destroys.** "Each man is tempted, when he is drawn away by his own lust, and enticed. Then the lust, when it hath conceived, beareth sin: and the sin, when it is fullgrown, bringeth forth death" ([James 1:14-15](/codex/james-1-14-15/), ASV). - **Impermanence.** Scripture also teaches that the visible world is passing, and that what is seen is temporary. - **Compassion and nonviolence.** Christians should admire the Buddhist cultivation of loving-kindness and compassion toward all beings. - **The limits of self-centeredness.** Both traditions see the grasping, self-centered ego as a problem that must be dealt with. ### Points of divergence 1. **A personal Creator.** Buddhism sets aside the question of why anything exists at all. Christianity answers it: "The God that made the world and all things therein... he himself giveth to all life, and breath, and all things" ([Acts 17:24-25](/codex/acts-17-24-25/), ASV). A chain of dependent things, however long, does not explain itself. See [Contingency Argument](/codex/contingency-argument/) and [Creatio ex Nihilo](/codex/creatio-ex-nihilo/). 2. **The reality of the self.** Suffering, craving, karma and liberation all seem to need someone who suffers, craves, acts and is freed. Christianity holds that each person is a real self, made in God's image and known by Him. See [Soul](/codex/soul/) and [Imago Dei](/codex/imago-dei/). 3. **The root of suffering.** Buddhism locates it in craving rooted in ignorance. Christianity goes a layer deeper, to a heart turned away from God, which explains both the craving and the sense that suffering is wrong, a wound in a good creation rather than the nature of existence. See [Sin](/codex/sin/) and [Original Sin](/codex/original-sin/). 4. **Self-effort or grace.** In Theravada the path is walked by one's own effort; Christianity says salvation is a gift: "by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works, that no man should glory" ([Ephesians 2:8-9](/codex/ephesians-2-8-9/), ASV). See [Grace vs Law](/codex/grace-vs-law/). 5. **Rebirth or resurrection.** Buddhism teaches many lives; Christianity teaches "it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this cometh judgment" ([Hebrews 9:27](/codex/hebrews-9-27/), ASV), followed by bodily resurrection. See [Reincarnation](/codex/reincarnation/) and [Resurrection](/codex/resurrection/). 6. **Love.** Buddhism treats attachment as a cause of suffering. Christianity agrees that self-seeking love is corrupt but grounds love in God Himself, who is love as Father, Son and Spirit, and promises that love will not be lost. See [Argument from Love](/codex/argument-from-love/) and [Trinity](/codex/trinity/). 7. **The founder.** The Buddha presented himself as a teacher who had found the way. Jesus presented Himself as the way: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one cometh unto the Father, but by me" ([John 14:6](/codex/john-14-6/), ASV). See [Christ vs Other Religion-Founders](/codex/christ-vs-other-religion-founders/). ### The Pure Land question Pure Land Buddhism, especially Shinran's Jodo Shinshu, is the nearest thing to grace in the Buddhist world, since rebirth depends wholly on Amida's vow and not on one's own effort. Christians should recognize the resemblance honestly. Karl Barth did (*Church Dogmatics* I/2, section 17), and located the decisive difference in the name of Jesus Christ. The concrete difference is history: Amida's vow is set in an immeasurably distant mythic past, while Christian grace was secured by a death and resurrection under Pontius Pilate. Christian grace also deals with guilt, not only with bondage: "being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus" ([Romans 3:24](/codex/romans-3-24/), ASV). See [Atonement](/codex/atonement/). ### The textual question The Buddha's teaching was preserved orally for several centuries before the Pali Canon was written down, and the Mahayana sutras appeared later still while presenting themselves as the Buddha's words. Buddhists generally do not stake the truth of the path on the historical exactness of these texts, since the path is meant to be verified in practice. The Christian claim is different in kind: it rests on a public event reported within living memory, and it stands or falls with it: "if Christ hath not been raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins" ([1 Corinthians 15:17](/codex/1-corinthians-15-17/), ASV). See [Resurrection of Jesus](/codex/resurrection-of-jesus/) and [Minimal Facts Argument](/codex/minimal-facts-argument/). ### "Jesus was a bodhisattva" Some Buddhist teachers, such as Thich Nhat Hanh in *Living Buddha, Living Christ* (1995), honor Jesus as an awakened teacher of compassion. The Gospels do not allow that reading. Jesus did not teach release from desire or the denial of the self. He forgave sins in His own name, called God His Father, and said He came "to give his life a ransom for many" ([Mark 10:45](/codex/mark-10-45/), ASV). His followers proclaimed not a path to nirvana but His bodily resurrection. ## Standard Christian engagement - **Ask which Buddhism.** A Western meditator, a Theravada monk, a Tibetan practitioner and a Japanese Pure Land believer hold very different views. A good opening question is "What do you hope happens to you in the end?" - **Begin with agreement.** Suffering, impermanence and the danger of craving are shared ground. Say so sincerely. - **Ask the self question gently.** "If there is no self, who is meditating, and who will be free?" Serious Buddhists have thought hard about this, so listen to the answer. - **Raise the Creator question.** The Buddha set it aside, but it does not go away: why is there a world of suffering beings at all? - **With Pure Land believers, talk grace.** They already trust another's power to save. Point to the Savior whose saving act happened in history. - **Offer the better ending.** Not the extinguishing of a flame, but rest with a Person: "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" ([Matthew 11:28](/codex/matthew-11-28/), ASV). Ravi Zacharias's *The Lotus and the Cross: Jesus Talks with Buddha* (2001) stages an imagined conversation along these lines. See also [Lesson 4.5, Comparative Religion Engagement](/codex/lesson-4-5-comparative-religion-engagement/). ## Strengths and weaknesses Stated at its strongest before the objections land. **Strengths, on the Buddhist's own terms:** - An unflinching, honest account of suffering and impermanence that many find truer to experience than cheerful religion. - A demanding and detailed ethical and contemplative discipline, with real psychological insight into how craving and aversion work. - A strong tradition of nonviolence, compassion toward all living beings, and equanimity in the face of loss. - An invitation to test the path in one's own practice rather than accept it on authority (a theme often drawn from the Kalama Sutta, Anguttara Nikaya 3.65). **Weaknesses, from the Christian side:** - It cannot say why anything exists, and deliberately declines to try. - The not-self teaching strains to identify who suffers, who bears karma, and who is liberated. - Rebirth across lifetimes and the attainment of nirvana are not claims anyone can verify in this life, despite the appeal to testing. - Karma cannot forgive; it can only register. Outside Pure Land, the burden rests on one's own effort. - Love for particular persons is treated as attachment to be released rather than a good to be fulfilled. - Its ending does not keep the person, and it offers no vindication of victims by a personal Judge. ## Scholarship Published academic works this page draws on, each matched to a publisher, index or library catalog record. - Thích Nhất Hạnh, *Living Buddha, living Christ* (1995). [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15373820W) ## See also - [Buddhism vs the Christian God](/codex/buddhism-vs-the-christian-god/), the full side-by-side comparison, question by question - [World Religions Compared by Their Ultimate Ending](/codex/world-religions-compared-by-their-ultimate-ending/), nirvana beside every other ending - [Christ vs Other Religion-Founders](/codex/christ-vs-other-religion-founders/), Jesus compared with the Buddha and others - [Karma](/codex/karma/), the impersonal law of consequences compared with grace - [Reincarnation](/codex/reincarnation/), rebirth compared with resurrection - [Hinduism](/codex/hinduism/), the Indian tradition Buddhism emerged from and argued with - [Sikhism](/codex/sikhism/), another Indian tradition with karma and rebirth, but centered on one God - [Pantheism](/codex/pantheism/), how Zen non-duality relates to all-is-God views - [Contingency Argument](/codex/contingency-argument/), why dependent things need an independent ground - [Argument from Love](/codex/argument-from-love/), why love points to a personal God - [Problem of Evil](/codex/problem-of-evil/), suffering in a world made by a good God - [Religious Pluralism Objection](/codex/religious-pluralism-objection/), the claim that all religions teach the same thing - [World Religions](/codex/world-religions/), comparative-religion master hub ## Common questions this page answers **Q: What do Buddhists believe?** Buddhists follow the teaching of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha. Its core is the Four Noble Truths: life is marked by suffering, suffering comes from craving, craving can end, and the Noble Eightfold Path leads to its end. Buddhists believe in karma and rebirth, teach that there is no permanent self, and seek nirvana, the end of craving and of rebirth. **Q: Who was the Buddha?** Siddhartha Gautama was a prince of the Shakya clan in northern India who, according to tradition, left his palace to seek an end to suffering, attained awakening under the Bodhi tree, and taught for about 45 years. His dates are debated; he lived in the fifth or sixth century BC. He did not claim to be God, only to have found and taught the way out of suffering. **Q: Do Buddhists believe in God?** Not in a personal Creator. Early Buddhist texts accept gods but treat them as mortal beings within the cycle of rebirth, and they portray Brahma as mistaken in thinking he made the world. Mahayana Buddhists revere celestial buddhas and bodhisattvas such as Amida, but Buddhism does not teach a God who created the world from nothing. **Q: What are the main branches of Buddhism?** Theravada, found in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, keeps the Pali Canon and the ideal of the arahant. Mahayana, found in China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam, adds the bodhisattva ideal and includes Zen and Pure Land. Vajrayana, the Buddhism of Tibet and the Himalayas, adds tantric practice to Mahayana teaching. **Q: What is nirvana?** Nirvana means "blowing out." It is the extinction of greed, hatred and delusion and the end of rebirth. Buddhists insist it is not simple annihilation, but the Buddha declined to say whether an awakened one exists after death. Christianity's hope is different: bodily resurrection and life with a personal God. **Q: How is Buddhism different from Christianity?** Buddhism has no personal Creator, teaches that there is no permanent self, and offers a path to end suffering mainly through one's own practice, ending in nirvana. Christianity teaches a personal God who made a good world, a real self made in His image, salvation by grace through Jesus Christ, and the resurrection of the whole person. The full comparison is [Buddhism vs the Christian God](/codex/buddhism-vs-the-christian-god/). **Q: Can a Christian practice Buddhist meditation?** Christians differ on this. Breathing and attention techniques are not in themselves Buddhist doctrine, but Buddhist meditation is built to realize not-self and impermanence as the path to nirvana, which conflicts with Christian belief. Christianity has its own long tradition of prayer and meditation, centered not on emptying the self but on attending to God and His word.