Research Paper on:
Buddhism's Spread Throughout the East

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
be often introduce a religion into a society, or they further uphold the religion already in play. Sometimes we see the citizens of a society introduce a particular religion, thus  often rebelling against a government in order to make their beliefs be heard. There are, in all honesty, many reasons why some religions seem more powerful and more predominant than  others. And, from a historical standpoint, there are numerous reasons why one religion flourishes and another does not. Bearing this in mind we look at the history of Buddhism, as  well as the history of Islam. The paper examines how Buddhism seemed to flourish throughout East and Southeast Asia while Islam did not succeed in taking such a firm hold.  The paper first discusses some of the history of Buddhism and then introduces a brief history of Islam in the region. Buddhism The Buddha is believed to  have lived in the fourth century BCE. He was an individual who maintained a great deal of wisdom and after his death "the Sangha held several councils which standardized the  oral teachings which the Buddha had given during his lifetime into a collection of scriptures called sutras. The Sangha grew in size and, at the same time, gradually split into  several different schools" (Anonymous The History of Buddhism, 2002; history.html). From this we can perhaps understand that these humble, yet spiritual beginnings were not unlike those of Jesus whose life  and teachings were also put down into teachings. Interestingly enough, the traditionalists, who had developed the "complex set of philosophical ideas beyond those elucidated by Buddha," had inadvertently  perhaps, created teachings which actually "encouraged disagreements, so that one splinter group after another left the fold" (Boeree, 2002; buddhahist.html). In this simple examination we can perhaps begin to see