Rituals

The Buddha's teachings and the practices he laid down, especially for monks in the Vinaya. Later variations emerged in different schools.

The monastic rule laid down for the sangha. Buddhist ritual grew out of it, which is why the rites entering the sangha are the fullest.

Recitation of the Three Jewels, following the Five Precepts, puja (daily devotion), meditation, pilgrimage, funeral rites and punya/punna merit-transfer ceremonies.

Birth and marriage ceremonies. The absence shows that Buddhist ritual grew out of a monastic rule rather than out of household life.

Merit — accumulated by lay Buddhists through giving, keeping the precepts and attending festivals, and transferable, above all to the dead.

Veneration: living the Five Precepts, reciting the Three Jewels, puja, and following the Noble Eightfold Path.

The monks meditate, but most Buddhists do not — they venerate the Buddha.

A choreographed symbolic hand position, used to assist meditation and shown on Buddha statues.

Mudras, thangkas (Tibetan religious cloth paintings) and mandalas (sand paintings and diagrams). Also the Tibetan wheel of life.

Pabbajja is initiation into the sangha, often as a novice for a short period; upasampada is full ordination as a bhikkhu, from which the Vinaya governs the whole of life.

Wesak (Vaisakhi), Asala, Kathina, Vassa, Obon Matsuri in Japan, and a Mahayana New Year festival in spring.

In Theravada practice, the Buddha's birth, enlightenment and death — all on one full-moon day in May.

The Buddha's conception, renunciation and first sermon — the setting in motion of the dhamma.

Vassa is the three-month rain retreat during which monastics stay in one place; Kathina is the giving of robes to monks at its close, one of the largest merit-making occasions of the year.

Homage to the dead, kept in Japan. It shows Buddhism taking the shape of the culture it entered — ancestor observance woven into a Mahayana setting.

Bhikkhus (monks) are traditionally ranked above bhikkhunis (nuns), and change is occurring in contemporary modern society.

A lay community of both genders and female bodhisattvas, the Taras; and humans seen as exemplifying both feminine and masculine principles, so given identical meditation exercises.

That females have an essential role in rituals involving sex, understood within the tradition as leading to liberation through the union of wisdom and compassion.

Individual meditation at home or collectively at a temple; festivals involve puja at home and attendance at a temple. Pilgrimage is present in both Theravada and Mahayana.