About Buddhism

I was reading the entire chapter on Buddhism on the Oxford book the other day.
I knew that Buddhism originated from India, but it still very fascinating to think although it began in India, it is the main religion in China and Japan and Korea. Ironically, the main religion in India is not Buddhism but Hinduism.
My family's basically Buddhists. I'm from Chinese heritage after all. I remember that I used go to Chinese temples with my family every year and burned incense until my eyes water by the strong smell. I was a little kid back then, so I didn't really get the point of kneeling down in front of a giant, scary-looking sculpture and bow for it. I mainly did it because I thought it was fun and sometimes I would mumble out random wishes like "I wish I can have candy for dinner" or something like that. For me, going to the Buddhist temples is like a festival.
My grandmother on my mother's side is Buddhist. She is fully dedicated to the religion and she is a vegetarian. She used to tell me all kinds of stories that reveals to me explicitly about her faith towards Buddha. She told me about the reincarnations, the Noble Eighth Fold Path, and Nirvana. I loved to listen to her and listen to the repeated chanting in her recorder. I loved to watch her sitting in the same place on her bed for two hours everyday, legs crossed, either meditating or praying. I liked seeing her fingers moving through the beads one by one.
She still does it right now. But I've grown to know that I'm not supposed to interrupt her meditation time anymore. But sometimes I still go into her room and watch her quietly.

So, I kinda digress.
Anyways, I think the true Buddhism is still in India. See, the Buddhism in China as well as in Japan have a twist to match their own culture. The actual Buddhism is the one with Sanskrit and no Bodhisattva. Bodhisattavas are something that the Chinese people added later on to blend with their own myths. So in the Chinese culture, there is mortals, immortals, king of the immortals, Guanyin and the Bodhisattvas, and finally Buddha. It's like a pyramid. For example, the Chinese legendary Yi who shot off 9 of the suns belongs to the immortals, who look up to Buddha and his enlightenment. If the immortals meditate, they will eventually become one of the Bodhisattavas, and if they don't behave well, they sometimes get back into the life cycle and become human again. The religion itself is perfected in the way of the Chinese, but Buddhists in India and Japan are somewhat different too, I believe.

And I am also quite intrigued by the way Buddhist perfected the ancient Chinese culture. It's because of the Buddhist religion that China was able to write one of the four most famous novels in Chinese history.

I don't know much about the Japanese (except for Zen) or Korean Buddhism......and the book is talking about the architecture so....
I'll talk about the Japanese things next time :D