rekordy: Sangha

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

Saṅgha or saṃgha (IPA: [sɐŋɡʱɐ]) is a term meaning "association", "assembly", "company" or "community". In a political context, it was historically used to denote a governing assembly in a republic or a kingdom, and for a long time, it has been used by religious associations, including Buddhists, Jains, Hindus and Sikhs. Given this history, some Buddhists have stated that the tradition of the sangha represents humanity's oldest surviving democratic institution. In Buddhism, sangha refers to the monastic communities of bhikkhu (monks) and bhikkhuni (nuns). These communities are traditionally referred to as the bhikkhu-sangha or the bhikkhuni-sangha. As a separate category, those Buddhists wh…

Evidence: 47 • authority: 88

The Sangha as an Institution. Abstract Along with the buddha and the dharma, the sangha is one of the “three jewels,” the core aspects of Buddhism in which a Buddhist “takes refuge.” The sangha is responsible for taking care of and propagating the dharma, the teachings of the buddha. It can also be considered more broadly as the Buddhist community, which in turn can be thought of as the group of people who either take refuge in the three jewels or follow the teachings of the buddha. Given this, the sangha has generally been conceptualized in two ways. Most often, it refers to the community of men and women who have been ordained as monks and nuns under the auspices of Buddhist disciplinary…

Evidence: 39 • authority: 88

Community/SANGHA. In this chapter, I also introduce the readers to the particular transnational Tibetan Buddhist community working to build the Maitreya Statue. This chapter provides an overview of Global Buddhism today with special attention to issues of community and identity for FPMTers. In the literature on Global Buddhism, disparate communities of practice are often differentiated with imprecise or careless terminology: 1) for example, Jan Nattier’s use of “ethnic” vs. “elite,” which overstates racial and class factors; or, by using the term “convert,” which is anathema to some people labelled thusly. This chapter makes a substantive contribution to the issue of properly naming dispara…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Buddhism is the largest-religion in Thailand, followed by around 92.5% of the country's population as per 2021. By sheer numbers, it has the world's largest Buddhist population followed by China and Myanmar, with more than 67 million Buddhists. The Theravada branch is practiced by most Buddhists and shares many similarities with Sri Lankan Buddhism. Buddhism in Thailand has also become integrated with Hinduism from millennia of Indian influence, and Chinese religions from the large Thai Chinese population. Buddhist temples in Thailand are characterized by tall golden stupas, and the Buddhist architecture of Thailand is similar to that in other Southeast Asian countries, particularly Cambodi…