Buddhism began as a reform of Hinduism conceptualized by Siddhartha Gautama, known as the Buddha ("enlightened one") or Sakyamuni Buddha (Buddha of the Sakya clan) to his followers. He was born near the border of present-day India and Nepal, lived sometime during the 625-480 b.c. period (his followers disagree on the dates), and is said to have received enlightenment while sitting under a Bodhi tree. The wisdom he plucked from India's tree of knowledge he summarized as the Four Noble Truths: Life is suffering; suffering is caused by our attachments to the world and people around us; we can end suffering by developing nonattachment; and we can advance our consciousness by following an eightfold path.

In essence, the Buddha developed a positivist faith that we can turn ourselves into wise beings without needing a God who probably does not exist. Hinduism was filled with sacrifices and ritual; early Buddhism stripped away glitz and emphasized mind-control through meditation. Such a faith has appealed to hundreds of millions, including in the U.S. members of "the beat generation" during the 1950s. In recent years Hollywood stars like Richard Gere and Sharon Stone, as well as Bible-haters like Oliver Stone, haved signed up; Mr. Stone complained that "Christ was all about pain and suffering," and said Buddhism helped him "get out from under the monstrously oppressive God the Father."

It's hard, though, to know what in Buddhist teaching authentically came from the Buddha. He had many disciples and a large following by the time of his death in his early 80s, but his words were not written down until about 250 years after his death. Then, priests wrote down more and more: The scriptures of one of the two main divisions of Buddhism, Theravada, are 11 times longer than the Bible. The scriptures of the other main division, Mahayana, are more numerous still, encompassing over 5,000 volumes. (A third, Tibetan division, Vajrayana, has many scriptures as well.)

This means that no one can carry all of Buddhist scripture to temple worship as many Christians carry the Bible. Sects typically emphasize favorite sutras (writings) and forget about others. Moreover, various Buddhist leaders quarrel about even the core teachings of their faith. Individual teachers have great latitude to shape their particular kind of Buddhism. Disciples tend to cluster around particular teachers, and Buddhist leaders sometimes become heated in criticizing other Buddhists.

Many Buddhists do not believe in any kind of God or gods. Some Buddhists hold that there is a spirit world with gods in the heavens, but gods are not supreme: Their hero is the Buddha, the man who became fully enlightened, and told his followers to go and do likewise. Buddhists are not supposed to spend their time contemplating creation, since all matter is illusion or manifestation of the Ultimate Reality. Their standard goal is to concentrate on individual enlightenment and to break out of the cycle of transmigration that Buddhists call samsara, or "endless wandering."

Buddhism, born and developed in a culture of great poverty and suffering, emphasizes the greed, hatred, and ignorance that naturally envelopes us. It then loads that realistic sense of human nature onto a Hindu truck that runs on karmic transmigration, the doctrine that after death the essence of a person is reborn in another body. People can be reborn into five or six realms: The top three are gods, titans, and humans, and the bottom three are ghosts, animals, and hell. Rebirth depends on actions in this life and past ones: Negative emotions lead to negative actions which lead to negative karma which can result in rebirth as a fish, dog, or cockroach.

The cycle can continue for eternity and ends only when a person attains nirvana, the extinction of individuality and entrance into the cosmic all. (Buddhism denies the existence of self as an object that is distinct from other selves.) The cycle takes at least seven lives but might take millions. In the classic Buddhist understanding, individuals progress by dropping all worldly attachments and emphasizing extensive meditation, strenuous physical exercises, and other means of turning off our egos. Buddhism wins support on those grounds from people tired of being consumed by consumerism, but it's important to note that it's not only attachments to houses and cars that Buddhism condemns: We also have foolish attachment to our own lives and to others. The Buddha himself named his son Rahula, which means "obstacle," and then abandoned his wife and son to seek enlightenment.

Two Buddhist parables illustrate the sweeping nature of the nonattachment principle. One concerns a man, fleeing a tiger, who comes to the edge of a cliff, finds a vine, and climbs down it. When almost down he discovers that a second tiger awaits him at the bottom, while mice chew the vine above him. Instead of trying to concoct a means of escape, he notices a wild strawberry growing on the face of the cliff and eats it. Then the vine breaks, and the tiger gobbles up the man. End of story. Non-Buddhists might see this tale as one of horror, or might wonder why the man didn't desperately try to distract the tiger by tossing the strawberry to him. But the primary point is that as strawberry is to man, so man is to tiger; we should not be attached to our own lives. Furthermore, we are all part of the Whole, and if we have the right understanding we will not fear death because we cannot die.

The second Buddhist story concerns a monk, Katayana, who walked through a forest, saw a man, a woman, and a baby joyfully eating lunch, and burst out laughing at the deluded family values of the diners: Katayana told his disciples, "They're eating a fish that they caught from the lake. That fish was the grandfather in a former life. The dog who is now barking and begging for the fish was the grandmother. The baby the mother is holding to her breast was the husband's enemy, a man he had killed for assaulting his wife." Early Buddhist wisdom says our attachments are foolish, and that if we get rid of them we will control our emotions and avoid creating additional suffering for us in this life and future ones.

Some Buddhist handbooks teach the principle of nonattachment (to anyone as well as to anything) by recounting the life of the Buddha himself: He "renounced his family, wealth, and power and fled to the mountains to meditate upon the way of truth." They stress that the way to beat attachment is through meditation. For example, a strong attachment to a girlfriend's appearance can be beaten by looking deeper into her body, into what it's made of. Buddhists are to look past the skin and visualize the veins, organs, bacteria, and so on. Similarly, a Thai abbot stated, "Lust should be balanced by contemplation of loathsomeness.... Examine the body as a corpse and see the process of decay or think of the parts of the body such as the lungs, spleen, fat, feces, and so forth."

That animosity toward the body is frequent in Buddhism. One popular webpage asks, "What is the body really? What more is it than a skin bag filled with bones, flesh, disgusting organs, and fluids?" That view doesn't note that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, but much of Buddhism misses trees and emphasizes gloom about the forest. One of Christianity's most famous catechism answers is Westminster No. 1, which notes that man's chief purpose is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. The Buddha's "noble truths" have nothing about accentuating that positive; they are about suffering and how to eliminate the negative.

The Noble Eightfold Path apparently laid out by Buddha as a way to eliminate suffering includes some wonderful elements: Right Speech (telling the truth in love), Right Action (saying no to wrong behavior such as killing, stealing, or fornicating), Right Livelihood (saying no to work that causes harm to others), and Right Mindfulness (being aware of surroundings). But its other aspects suggest an escape from reason: Right Meditation (developing deep mental calm through techniques that concentrate the mind), Right View (accepting the Buddhist worldview), Right Resolve (committing to total attitude adjustment), and Right Effort (the activities designed to bring about personality change).

Since early Buddhism does not hold that people need to be changed by God, it is full of tips on the effort needed to change ourselves. Breathing exercises can settle the mind-I've seen them work during the delivery of three of my children-and that's where Buddhists often begin. Many claim this can lead to great things: "Feel the air coming in and going out. Visualize the air as a sort of bluish incense smoke. You are creating a diversion, turning the attraction or attention of your mind to something other than" attachment to life-such as constructing in your mind a bridge.

Many would-be Buddhists find such techniques do not work, but Buddhist leaders emphasize perseverance: "If doing it once doesn't work, you can do it 21 times. You can build 21 bridges. And if you have all the time in the world, build 100 bridges." Serious Buddhists realize they must build thousands of bridges, and may make time by dropping out of other activities. The pursuit of tranquility can become agitated, because the individual's destiny is entirely his own responsibility.

If the individual does stabilize his emotions through such breathing exercises, analytical meditation can begin: Each person in a sense argues himself into believing that the ego is the enemy. Such meditation for conventional Buddhists is parallel to Bible reading for Jews and Christians, except that the process in Buddhism is internal, while for Bible readers it involves having an external message act upon the individual. Many Buddhists turn inward by repeating mantras-combinations of sounds and words-that they believe raise good vibrations within a person and open up his deeper consciousness. They say that reciting the same chants day after day produces not boredom but wholesome karma.