- •Vocabulary list 6
- •Inside the temple
- •6.1. Christianity
- •Exercises
- •1. Read the text and entitle its parts. Use the headings from the list below.
- •2. Answer the following questions.
- •3. Give definitions for the following .
- •4. What do these figures refer to in the text?
- •6.1.2. Church flocks in steady decline
- •Exercises
- •1. Give equivalents of the following:
- •2. Find synonyms in the text:
- •3. Translate into English:
- •4. Translate the underlined passages. Listening 6.1. Archbishop says Christmas story a legend
- •Text translation 6.1.
- •6.2. Islam
- •1. Answer the following questions.
- •2. Define the following words.
- •3. What do these figures refer to in this text?
- •6.2.2. Clarke launches guidance on religious education
- •Exercises
- •1. Give equivalents of the following:
- •2. Find synonyms in the text:
- •3. Translate into English:
- •4. Translate the underlined passages into Russian. Listening 6.2. Trousers woman' in Islamic World
- •Text translation 6.2.
- •6.3. Buddhism
- •1. Answer the following questions.
- •2. Give definitions for the following .
- •3. What do these figures refer to in the text?
- •6.3.2. The real teenage Witches
- •It's cool to be a Witch
- •Exercises
- •1. Give equivalents of the following:
- •2. Find as many synonyms as you can:
- •3. Translate into English:
- •4.Translate the underlined passage into Russian. Text translation 6.3
6.3. Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha - "the awakened one".
Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent sometime between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE. He is recognized by adherents as an awakened teacher who shared his insights to help sentient beings end suffering, achieve nirvana, and escape what is seen as a cycle of suffering and rebirth.
Two major branches of Buddhism are recognized: Theravada ("The School of the Elders") and Mahayana ("The Great Vehicle").
While Buddhism remains most popular within Asia, both branches are now found throughout the world. Various sources put the number of Buddhists in the world at between 230 million and 500 million, making it the world's fourth-largest religion.
Buddhist schools vary significantly in the exact nature of the path of liberation, the importance and canonicity of various teachings and scriptures, and especially their respective practices.
The foundations of Buddhist tradition and practice are the Three Jewels: the Buddha, the Dharma (the teachings), and the Sangha (the community).
Taking "refuge in the triple gem" has traditionally been a declaration and commitment to being on the Buddhist path and in general distinguishes a Buddhist from a non-Buddhist.
Other practices may include renouncing conventional living and becoming a monastic, support of the monastic community, meditation, cultivation of wisdom, study of scriptures, physical exercises, devotion and ceremonies, or invocation of bodhisattvas.
Buddhism is now again gaining strength in India and elsewhere. Most scholars classify similar numbers of people under a category they call "Chinese folk" or "traditional" religion, an amalgam of various traditions that includes Buddhism.
Historically, Buddhism was incorporated into Russian lands as early as the late 15th century, when Russian explorers travelled to and settled inSiberia and what is now the Russian Far East. It is also believed that Indian King Ashoka had sent monks to spread Buddhism all over the world including Siberia.
Afterwards, it began to spread into the geographically and culturally adjacent Russian constituent regions known today as: Amur Oblast,Buryatia, Chita Oblast, Tuva Republic, and Khabarovsk Krai. There is also Kalmykia, another constituent republic of Russia that is in fact the only Buddhist region in Europe, perhaps paradoxically located to the north of the Caucasus.
Tibetan Buddhism is primarily practiced by the indigenous peoples in these various regions of central and eastern Russia, except for a few Russian converts based mainly in the larger cities such as St. Petersburg or Moscow, where there is greater access to urban Buddhist centers or facilities of the like.
The Russian Federation, and perhaps strangely, Austria are the only two European states today that recognize Buddhism as an "official", though not necessarily "state religion" in their respective countries. On top of that, Russia also recognizes it, along with Islam, Judaism, and of course Orthodox Christianity, as native to Russian soil in the 1993 Constitution of the Russian Federation.
There are a few dozen Buddhist university-monasteries throughout Russia, but concentrated in the Russian Far East and Siberia, known in Russian as Datsans. The central body of Russian Buddhism is the Karma Kagyu Buddhist Association of the Russian Federation.
Adherents to Buddhism account for approximately 700,000 in the Russian Federation, about 0.5% of the total population.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_in_Russia
Exercises