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Talk:Buddhahood/renaming

< Talk:Buddhahood
Latest comment: 16 years ago by Larry Rosenfeld in topic Buddhahood in lead section

Renaming this article and moving current Gautama Buddha article here?

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Latest comment: 16 years ago77 comments14 people in discussion

There's currently a discussion at Talk:Gautama_Buddha#Name about renaming this article (e.g., to Buddhas or sammasambuddha or Buddhahood) and moving the current Gautama Buddha article here. It would be very much appreciated if anyone with sincere views on this tentative change (either for or against or otherwise inclined) added their ideas to Talk:Gautama_Buddha#Name. Thanks so much! With metta, Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 18:52, 9 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

As indicated above, for over a week there has been on-going discussion at Talk:Gautama Buddha#Name regarding the content of this current article, Buddha.
The main points have been:
  1. WP naming conventions (such as WP:Name and Wikipedia:Naming conflict) indicate that the naming of articles should be done according to the most common usage of the name.
  2. WP naming conventions provide a number of ways in which names disputes could be resolved (see, for instance, Wikipedia:Naming_conflict#Identification_of_common_names_using_external_references). The one that seems most pertinent and most transparent here was to reference other on-line scholastic, non-POV reference materials, particularly encyclopedias.
  3. Five reference sources were selected: the first was the on-line Encyclopedia Britannica; the remaining were found based on a generic Google search. Excerpts from these references can be found at Talk:Gautama Buddha#Other on-line encyclopedia's "Buddha" entries. Overwhelming, these other references indicate that "Buddha" primarily denotes "the founder of Buddhism." These references generally indicated that "Buddha" could also be applied to, secondarily, "those who have achieved perfect enlightenment" ("a buddha") and, thirdly, Buddha statues.
  4. Furthermore, it has been noted that this article's current Special:Whatlinkshere/Buddha list has a significant number (perhaps the majority of) links from other articles that (despite this article's current content and editors' past efforts to correctly pipe articles to Gautama Buddha) assume that this article is about the founder of Buddhism.
  5. In addition, if one were to do a Google search on "Buddha -Wikipedia," a simple scan of the first several pages of this search shows that the vast majority of non-commercial hits (e.g., skipping over items such as "Buddha Bar") assume that "Buddha" refers to the founder of Buddhism, not the general concept of Buddha or to other buddhas.
Therefore, to be consistent with WP naming conventions, it appears logical then that this namespace, Buddha, be used either:
(a) solely for an article regarding the founder of Buddhism (that is, the current Gautama Buddha article); or,
(b) a disambiguation page (the alternative for which there appears to be the most support at this time) such as:

Buddha usually refers to Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism.

"Buddha" may also refer to:

  • The general concept of buddhahood and those who have achieved it.
  • A statue of Gautama Buddha or another Buddha.
    (On-going discussion regarding this proposed dab page can be found at Talk:Gautama_Buddha#Proposed_Buddha_dab_page.)
The question now before us here is: What to rename this current Buddha article? Suggestions put forth on Talk:Gautama Buddha#Name include:
What title do you think is best?
With sincere appreciation for the many contributers participating in this on-going discussion, Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 21:31, 19 October 2007 (UTC)Reply
FWIW, one quick caveat about the above suggested tentative dab page, the wikified "buddhahood" is meant to link to whatever name will be used in the future for the content of this current Buddha article. (Before posting the above, I forgot that the estimable User:Nat Krause previously pointed out that buddhahood currently redirects to Bodhi.) Sorry for any confusion, Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 21:39, 19 October 2007 (UTC)Reply
It's been nearly a new week and no new names have been suggested, so I'm going to offer the aforementioned alternatives as the basis for a vote. Please identify the name you would most like to give this article (given that, as mentioned above and elsewhere, consistent with WP guidelines, this article's current name will be given to an article about "the founder of Buddhism"). Thanks for participating! Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 16:16, 25 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Renaming vote

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To what should this article be renamed?

Buddhas

Buddha (general)

Buddhahood

sammasambuddha

samyaksambuddha

Buddha (Buddhism)

Final results

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It's been over two weeks since this vote started and ten days since the last vote. So, I think we have a stable result. Given the double votes, I tally:

  • Buddha (general) - 3 unequivocal votes of support (Tony, Rudy, myself), two "split" no-preference votes (Nat, Peter), two "split" votes with a preference for Buddhahood (Sacca, Clay)
  • Buddhahood - two split votes with a preference for Buddhahood (Sacca, Clay); two split no-preference votes (Nat, Peter)

I believe that adds up to Buddha (general) being the first choice while Buddhahood will redirect to Buddha (general). I'll also move the current Buddha (disambiguation) page to Buddha (though given the prior page history it might require admin help). Assuming I don't mess up (which I have had a tendency to do with moves in the past), I'll try to implement this presently.

Tony, Rudy, Nat, Sacca, Peter and Clay, thanks so much for taking time to vote. I appreciate yours and everyone else's patience with this procedure. With metta, Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 08:16, 11 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

Late remark

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I'm sorry that I'm too late for the vote. I really would prefer Buddhahood for several reasons:

  1. I don't think any reader would enter the current title in a search.
  2. The word "general" is ambiguous.
  3. The word "general" is not the only word that could be added there. This means, even if a user thinks about adding parentheses, they still may not necessarily enter the right title. — Sebastian 06:15, 12 November 2007 (UTC)Reply
Hi Sebastian -
Frankly, I see your points. I would like to point out that the one advantage to "Buddha (general)" over "Buddhahood" (which, by the way, was a title I think I initially suggested) is that if the article were retitled "Buddhahood" then the introduction would have to be (significantly?) rewritten and the section on "Buddha statues," etc., should likely be moved elsewhere.
Nonetheless, if there is a process for a re-vote, I personally would be open to it (assuming someone else promotes it :-) ).
What do others think? Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 06:31, 12 November 2007 (UTC)Reply
Thank you for your nice reply! I see your point about the intro, too, now. But if we redirect from Buddhahood, then we need to add that term somehow in the intro, anyway. (Normally that would be in bold, but I would have to look up if that has to be that way.) I also just realized one more point for "Buddhahood": That's the term we use in the beautiful sidebar. The only thing I have to vehemently object to is your edit summary: It's not true that it's never too late. It's already half past midnight for me, and I have to go to bed.  ;-) — Sebastian 08:33, 12 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

I'm not a big fan of Buddha (general) either, it has a militaristic sound, but its probably the best choice so far. There's an unintended casualty of the change over, Sammasambuddha is suffering from a circular redirect. There is currently no way to find the article by typing in either Buddha or Sammasambuddha. Can someone who knows more fix this? Fixed thanks! lk 05:28, 14 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

Ha, ha! Circular redirect? Are you sure you didn't mean "Samsarabuddha"? Seriously, though, it seems to work for me. — Sebastian 05:50, 14 November 2007 (UTC)Reply
Disambiguation: I know that Buddhists don't tend to be easily offended, but just to be clear: I connected Samsara with "Buddha (article)", not with the actual person or concept. — Sebastian 18:44, 14 November 2007 (UTC)Reply
Sorry for being late, perhaps "(concept)" is better. I must say "general" makes me think of army officers. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:41, 14 November 2007 (UTC)Reply
I agree, I like "(concept)" better than "(general)" for the same reason. — Sebastian 05:57, 14 November 2007 (UTC)Reply
BInguyen - I regret not contacting you directly to participate in the above vote originally. Certainly your on-going contributions to WP Buddhism merited such a contact.
FWIW, I've redirected Sammasambuddha to Buddha (general), consistent with the initial redirect's target.
In addition, following up on LK's observation that there's no way to find this article from Buddha (or did I misunderstand what was being said?), I just changed Buddha (disambiguation) (which hopefully will rematerialize as Buddha in the next few days per WP:RM) from secondarily defining "Buddha" as "any person who has achieved buddhahood..." to "anyone who has become a Buddha..."
If I may throw out another possible title option (if people decide that they can stomach another vote), if Gautama Buddha is renamed The Buddha (as Arrow would like to see), perhaps this article could be changed to a Buddha. (Well, in my head this sounded better than it looks on paper :-( ).
Best regards, Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 05:52, 14 November 2007 (UTC)Reply
My favorite is still buddhahood, and I think the sentence Larry changed is an example for where "buddhahood" is just clearer. To someone who is already confused by the ambiguity, the sentence introduces a self reference: "X is anyone who has become an X". — Sebastian 18:49, 14 November 2007 (UTC)Reply
To float some other options with parentheses: how about "(being)" or "(term)"? — Sebastian 06:02, 14 November 2007 (UTC)Reply
I don't support Buddha (concept) or Buddha (term). Both are quite ambiguous, because "Buddha" is a concept regardless of whether it is referring to Siddhartha Gautama or to enlightened beings in general; it is also a term in both cases. Buddha (term) is additionally incorrect because this article is actually mostly about the concept, rather than the term (which is true of most Wikipedia articles; it is for this reason that articles begin "Foo is a type of bar", rather than "Foo is a term that refers to a type of bar.") I agree that Buddha (general) might cause some people to think of military officers. I would be fine, as I mentioned previously, with the option of Buddhahood.—Nat Krause(Talk!·What have I done?) —Preceding comment was added at 00:31, 15 November 2007 (UTC)Reply
I absolutely agree! What was I thinking? — Sebastian 09:05, 15 November 2007 (UTC)Reply
In Buddha (general) I inserted the Devanagari spelling of the word Buddha.
This query seems to remain: What is the best name for page Buddha (general)? (He was not an army general!!) Try Buddha (generic)? Buddhas? a Buddha? Anthony Appleyard (talk) 07:04, 18 November 2007 (UTC)Reply
I very much appreciate the efforts of both Anthony and Nat to bring to fruition our on-going discussion about where to move these Buddha-related pages. I am grateful to you both.
I'd also like to say that Sebastian's, BInguyen's, Nat's and Anthony's reservations about "(general)" are clear and, for me at this time, persuasive. Within the hour, I'll add posts to the talk pages of Tony and Rudy (who, like myself, voted for the "(general)" suffix previously) to see if they might be interested in discussing this further. I'll ask them to post here.
Best wishes, Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 07:34, 18 November 2007 (UTC)Reply
It's funny: my initial reaction to buddha (general) was also "hey, the Buddha's not a milit'ry man", but, after thinking about it more, I decided that "general" is simply a word that has two meanings and people will be able to figure out which one we mean. After all, there is no famous "Buddha" who is a general. However, if other people are tending to experience the same confusion, then I suppose Buddha (general) isn't a good idea after all.—Nat Krause(Talk!·What have I done?) 17:44, 18 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

General or Buddhahood - 9 days later

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(Intermediate headline inserted for easy navigation.)

Sebastian's prompted me for status so, if I may, in brief (just kidding, when have I ever been brief?):

  1. it appears that Tony (who responded on my talk page) has major (wonderful) real-world changes going on so he really has no time to participate further; nevertheless, he mentioned: 'I personally am happy with "Buddha (general)", but I can see possible problems with it. I would also be OK with "Buddhahood". But what about "Buddha (general term)"?? That is surely clear, no?'; and,
  2. Rudy stated (in a response on his talk page), in part, referring to this article's title's use of the word "general": "isn't this simply the 'general' use of the word in Wikipedia? :-) ." (FWIW, I followed with a belated request for additional information that it appears Rudy has yet to login and see.)

So, as I indicated to Sacca (on his talk page) recently, while I personally was still waiting for clarification from Rudy, nonetheless if others would like to proceed, please go ahead and do so. As always, I appreciate your past patience and consideration and can certainly understand the desire to move forward. In terms of how, given the above, to count Tony and Rudy's past votes, I'll leave that to the thoughtful and compassionate consideration of whomever does the revote. As an aside, I've started changing (perhaps, it seems, along with Nat at times?) some of the articles that point now to Buddha (about 5 to 10 articles every other day -- I should be done in 2009 or 2010, I hope). While the majority that I've come across thusfar intend to point to an article about Gautama Buddha (and thus I wikipipe them there), a few others seem to want to point to an article about "a Buddha" or Mahayana-type buddhas (Buddhas?). Frankly, unexpectedly, this has newly shaped my vote away from enthusiastically renaming this article, Buddha (general), to Buddhahood. Might there be other solutions? Perhaps should there be a Buddhas article separate from Buddhahood? Might it be worth the time of others to assess the Special:Whatlinkshere/Buddha queue to assess what other articles expect of this article and thus help us to decide how to name and/or restructure this article? Thanks again for your all's thoughtful patience and participation, however we proceed from here. With metta, Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 18:45, 27 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for your dedication! Would you have examples for instances that shaped your vote away from Buddhahood? — Sebastian 19:19, 27 November 2007 (UTC)Reply
Hi Sebastian -
Excellent question and I'll try to follow up appropriately later tonight. (Hope you don't mind but, at the moment, I'm in the process of following an obsession in my sandbox, etc.)
FWIW, Rudy's relayed: "please just go ahead whatever others think makes sense." Also, related to Rudy's and my conversation, I did a WP search of "(general)" and while the search engine unfortunately interpreted this as "general" (without the parentheses) and returned over 800 responses as such, I found in the first 400 returned article names ten with the suffix "_(general)": John Forbes (general), Gorgias (general), Charles Lee (general), Hsi Hsia (general), Demosthenes (general), Edward Johnson (general), William Grant (general), Timotheus (general), John Antill (general), and Pausanias (general). All of these are military generals. This certainly supports, based on WP precedence, the renaming of this article. (Maybe Buddha (doctor) ? Just kidding.)
I'll try to append a reasonable reply to Sebastian's query in an hour or so. With metta, Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 03:04, 28 November 2007 (UTC)Reply
No problem, take your time! It's not that the title "general" is an insult. — Sebastian 03:38, 28 November 2007 (UTC)Reply
Well, I appreciate the continued patience. With your understanding then, I'll make it my top priority for my afternoon break tomorrow (about 15 hours from now). Thanks again, with metta, Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 05:07, 28 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hi Sebastian and others -
Just to follow-up, here are some articles which appear to address "a Buddha" (or perhaps "Buddha statue") more than Buddhahood (if I may so abbreviate my twinge of a concern):

  • Chinese philosophy - in particular, see the second edit I made here regarding "a Buddha" (and feel free to change it if you desire): "When used in a generic sense, a Buddha is generally considered to be someone who discovers the true nature of reality." (Wikipiping this to Buddhahood would cause me some pause.)
  • Bodhisattva - for instance in the intro's 3rd para.'s ref to "a fully enlightened Buddha (Sanskrit: Samyaksambuddha)," changing this to Buddhahood just seems somehow awkward to me.
  • Bodhidharma - this is typical of a number of Zen-related pages that I've either left unchanged or (as in Kōan) only changed with significant hesitation: this article includes the statement (in the description of an image), “Chán points directly to the human heart, see into your nature and become Buddha." My questions: Does this refer to the historical Buddha or "a Buddha" ? Moreover, to say "become Buddhahood" – even through a wikipipe – simply seems non-intuitive to me.
  • Bengal - this comes up often: What do we do with articles that refer to Buddha statues? For instance, here an image's caption reads: "Buddha and Bodhisattvas." Does this refer to the historical Buddha? (My personal generally unacted-upon inclination is that a reference to a specific "Buddha" refers to Gautama Buddha but, when "bodhisattva" is added I think of the Mahayana tradition [although, yes, I am aware of the Theravada notion of "bodhisatta" but wouldn't Theravadins more likely represent arahants?].) If not, do we redirect it to Buddhahood or might we split off of this article a new article about Buddha statues or Buddha in art, etc.? What of the similar matter in Architecture of Cambodia where it mentions "Buddha or a bodhisattva." And, similarly, there's History of Afghanistan which captions an image with "Buddhas of Bamyan were the largest Buddha statues in the world, dating back to the first century CE" — which Buddha(s)? (No doubt, this all might just reflect my deep intellectual ignorance about Mahayana Buddhism and Buddhist history in general, and a solution might be real obvious to you all.)
  • Mahayana - the initial references to "Buddha" in this article actually appear to be about Gautama Buddha, but then it includes statements like, "Mahayana scriptures are based on the belief that Buddha is still teaching and, announced in the Lotus Sutra, that a Buddha is immortal." How do we wikify (if at all) these Buddhas? And, again, how intuitive is it to change (wikipipe) the latter "a Buddha" to Buddhahood?

I hope these quick examples might clarify some of my vague uneasiness. If not, I'm certainly willing to let this issue drop and follow your all's lead on proceeding with a re-vote, etc. Best wishes, Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 20:12, 28 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for your extensive response! I have to agree, it's awkward in many of these cases. I'll have to think about it some more. I have another idea - my apologies if this has been discussed already: Would it be an option to rename "Buddha" to "Buddha (disambiguation)" and then simply use "Buddha" for this article? I don't think Siddhārtha would have objected to that. Many links of the disambiguation page, such as Buddha (other religions) are not really ambiguous anyway, but rather "See also" links. — Sebastian 22:38, 30 November 2007 (UTC)Reply
I have second thoughts. Yes, "Buddhahood" is sometimes awkward, but isn't that still much better than any of the "Buddha (x)" names? None of them can ever be used without a pipe!
— Sebastian 04:34, 4 December 2007 (UTC)Reply
Good point! Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 17:51, 4 December 2007 (UTC)Reply
Hi Sebastian (and others!) -
FWIW, at the top of this thread is a summary with links to more extensive discussion regarding the reason for our having moved this article (now Buddha (general)) from Buddha. Basically, based on a review of readily accessible on-line encyclopedias (including the Encyclopedia Britannica), a review of WP articles linking to Buddha, and a Google search of "Buddha," it was found that the term "Buddha" most often refers to "the Buddha," that is Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism — vs. "a buddha" or "other buddhas," although this latter denotation, along with references to "Buddha statues," was mentioned secondarily in most if not all reference materials (on-line encyclopedias and dicitonaries). So, if an article, rather than a dab page, were to fill the Buddha name space then, based on WP policy (e.g., WP:Name, Wikipedia:Naming conflict), it would seem that Gautama Buddha should be moved there. After some discussion though (see Talk:Gautama_Buddha), it was expressed without long-lasting opposition that a dab page would be fairest and least likely to cause dissonance for the greatest number of WP readers.
So, while the title Buddha (general), as you and others have pointed out, now appears to be less desirable than initially envisioned by myself and others due to the military connotation and thus renaming this article to something else seems more desirable than when last voted upon, I nonetheless think that the basis for not calling this article "Buddha" remains valid.
Does this make sense? If not, please let me know. Thanks again for continuing your assessment and advocacy of this issue as I think you are very much doing the right thing. Best regards,
Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 04:56, 1 December 2007 (UTC)Reply
Thank you for your patience! Seeing that I overlooked an option right here at the top of the page, I think we need a table of all options. — Sebastian 04:34, 4 December 2007 (UTC)Reply
FWIW, I guess the other obvious solution that hasn't been discussed is to combine the current Gautama Buddha and Buddha (general) articles into one long Buddha article (placing information about Gautama Buddha first). This would actually more fully reflect what is evident in other discussed reference material, remove the need to change virtually all of the existing Special:Whatlinkshere/Buddha queue items, and provide all links and WP readers with a one-stop place to find information. The obvious downside is that the resultant article would be very long and, frankly, would then have to be maintained by a number of people with different and sometimes seemingly conflictual knowledge bases (or so I intuit, e.g., primarily Theravada and Indian specialists for the Gautama Buddha section and primarily Mahayanists for the so-called Buddha (general) section). I think this suggested merger is intuitively problemmatic but, on the other hand, it does solve a number of problems. (FWIW, I vaguely recall that the current Buddha (general) article once included a more significant section regarding the historical Buddha; this suggested merger would re-assert this prior effort.) Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 14:03, 1 December 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hi Larry, Going back to having a very big Buddha article which includes Buddha (general) would undo a lot of hard work and negotiation (including yours!). The old 2006 version of Buddha seems to have been altered with the renaming, but I did find the old version of the discussion page here In the new system “Buddha” links that should go to Gautama Buddha will just get the disambiguation page which has Gautama Buddha at the top. Solved! Dhammapal 12:18, 3 December 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hi Dhammapal - Honestly, I'm not sure I follow what you say. Frankly, if information regarding Gautama Buddha had been left at the top of this current article, the whole move might have been unnecessary. (That I didn't realize this until recently, after all the discussion, votes and moves is, frankly, pretty embarrassing to me, in my own mind at least :-( ) I sincerely appreciate your confidence in the current Buddha dab page being a worthwhile solution. I hope you are doing well, Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 17:51, 4 December 2007 (UTC)Reply
Hi Larry, I’m sorry I posted late at night and the issue is much more complex than I thought, and as usual I appreciate your work. The Simple English Wikipedia Buddha article simple:Buddha could be a model for combining ideas about the historical Buddha with broader uses of Buddha. Dhammapal (talk) 02:44, 5 December 2007 (UTC)Reply
Hi Dhammapal - thanks as always for the follow up. And, yes, I see your point, the simple:Buddha page incorporates both information about Gautama Buddha and all buddhas in a manner that would likely prevent in the simple-English WP world the current difficulties we are trying to sort out here. (As you probably know, the simple:Buddha page suffers from a number of inaccuracies or biases – early Buddhism identified 28 buddhas, there are 32 (not 36) marks and they were originally a brahmanic ideal that was applied to the Buddha but are meant to identify any great man (mahapurisa), there appear to be different interpretations about whether bodhisattvas are enlightened, to refer to the Buddha's "after life" is problemmatic at least from a Theravada perspective, etc. – but that's another matter.) Thanks so much for the pointer. With metta, Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 06:22, 5 December 2007 (UTC)Reply

Table of options

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Option Advantages Disadvantages Google #
Buddha (general) synthetic name; "general" is ambiguous (WP precedence is militaristic) 0
Buddhahood That's the term we already use in the sidebar refers to state, not being 561
Buddha nature that's different - see Buddha-nature irrelevant
Buddhas name does not conform to guideline 780
a Buddha name does not conform to guideline 339
Buddha; and rename disamb page does not need pipes Not the most common usage, thus would introduce need for pipes to Gautama irrelevant
Buddha (Buddhism) synthetic name; still ambiguous 0
Buddha (enlightened being) synthetic name 0
Buddha (general term) synthetic name 0
merge with Gautama Buddha no more hassle with disambiguation; many links are ambiguous already would involve a lot of hard work and negotiation; possible maintenance problems 8380
merge with Types of Buddha (see #Types of Buddha

Notes:

  • "synthetic name" means that a name will not occur naturally. This means
    • It always has to be used as a piped link such as [[Buddha (xyz)|Buddha]] in articles.
    • It will not be entered by readers in the search box.
  • "refers to state, not being" means that
    • Parts of article need to be reworded
    • When link is piped like "[[Buddhahood|Buddha]]" (or redirected), readers will have to mentally adjust to the different name of the article and that the introduction not immediately mentions "Buddha".

This is only a start, I'm sure I forgot some. Please do edit the table and the notes so they represent all considerations fairly. — Sebastian 04:34, 4 December 2007 (UTC)Reply

Sebastian - nice table! nice way to organize the information thus far. I've added some info — but please revert or reword if you feel the info I added is too wordy, bad English, misses the point or betrays an (unintentional) bias. Thanks again, Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 17:44, 4 December 2007 (UTC)Reply

I just noticed the merge request and entered it in the table. Also, this edit just gave me a new idea: Look at what other languages use: ca:Buda (il·luminat), es:Buda (concepto), lo:ພຣະພຸດທະເຈົ້າ, nl:Boeddha (verlichte), sv:Buddha (titel). All other seem to use just plain "Buddha". — Sebastian 03:10, 12 December 2007 (UTC)Reply

I don't think we should merge with Gautama Buddha as we will lose the distinction. I'm not sure what the name should be though. Secretlondon (talk) 20:24, 14 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

Whatlinkshere

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The table contained an entry in the "Buddhahood" row saying "non-intuitive link for existing Special:Whatlinkshere/Buddha". I assume this refers to Point 4 at the top of this thread. If my assumption is correct, then it probably would be Special:Whatlinkshere/Buddha (general) now, since that was written before the rename.

Do I understand the problem correctly as follows?:

We have two articles, this one here, and Gautama Buddha. Many links point to this article here that should point to Gautama Buddha.

Now, what I don't understand is: How does this problem change if we change the name of this article? I see only two ways to solve the problem of ambiguous links: Either (1) go through all links and fix them or (2) merge the articles.

I therefore am removing the entry from the "Buddhahood" row and add it as an advantage in the "Merge" row. Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding the problem. — Sebastian 19:25, 4 December 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hi Sebastian -
Simply in terms of my intentons (which honestly may be virtually worthless on this count): The phrase, "non-intuitive link for existing Special:Whatlinkshere/Buddha," correctly identified the list in question (although, as you perhaps suggest, we could add to it the links at Special:Whatlinkshere/Buddha (general)), did not refer to Point 4 at the top of this page, and did refer to my recent append about how pages that link to the current and former Buddha page expect the linked-to article to be about "a Buddha" (a being), not "Buddhahood" (an attained state). This is the underlying issue I was trying to convey and the changes you made have eliminated this intended distinction, although, frankly, I'm not sure anyone should care.
I'm not sure to what extent the move moved all the prior links to this article when it was called Buddha to here (Special:Whatlinkshere/Buddha (general)) because I see that this page has only about 600 links (many due to redirect-pages recently modified so that they link to this article) and the current Buddha (dab) page has about 1700 links to it.
Also, an aside, if I may, referring to the above table, while it is true that moving this page to Buddha would eliminate the need to pipe articles here, I think this is somewhat misleading. If our goal is to minimize piping then clearly we should move the Gautama Buddha article to Buddha since the number of articles linking to Buddha that refer to "Gautama Buddha" far out-number those that refer to "a Buddha."
So, let me try to restate the basis for my inserting "non-intuitive link for existing Special:Whatlinkshere/Buddha" where I did (and, FWIW, I haven't assessed the Special:Whatlinkshere/Buddha (general) queue and thus, for now, will not include it here): based on this queue, articles that would be wikipiped to this article expect to read about "a Buddha" or "Buddhas in general," not about the state attained by these buddhas which is "Buddhahood." Nonetheless, perhaps I am splitting hairs: after all, either way, there would have to be a wikipipe from the linking article to here, whether this article is called "Buddha (general)" or "Buddhahood." It might be interesting to try to assess what new potential name for this article might reduce the number of wikipipes. I think the top contenders for this include Buddhas and a Buddha; I initially thought Buddhahood would also be a contender in such an assessment but, based on my very, vey limited review of the Special:Whatlinkshere/Buddha queue, this does not appear to be so.
Clear as mud?
FWIW, I also think if we were to take a vote now, the vote would go with Buddhahood. I suspect there is little we can discuss to change this, unless people were to assess the Special:Whatlinkshere/Buddha queue as suggested above, and I don't see this happening.
So, noble Sebastian, I very much appreciate the intense thought, diligent effort and impressive skills you've put forth here. Perhaps it is time to let the polls open?
Best wishes, Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 07:02, 5 December 2007 (UTC)Reply
I apologize if my above append seems sulky, obscure and, perhaps, somewhat accusatory. (Boy, at my age, you'd think I'd be over myself.) I've added words to the table to try to more clearly reflect what I was initially intending. Again, I'm not sure my concern is worth our mulling over further; I regret if my persistence on this issue is simply wasting time and wiki-bytes. Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 13:32, 6 December 2007 (UTC)Reply
No, it didn't seem sulky or accusatory to me. It was only too complicated for me to reply off the cuff, and I didn't have the time to reread it more carefully. I think it's worth our while for two reasons: We're talking about hundreds of links that need to be changed. And if two well-meaning people like you and me can't understand each other, it really is dukkha for me. So it is appropriate to discuss this here.
So, here goes: While I agree with the statement that "most currently linking articles apparently would require a wikipipe", I disagree with adding this as a disadvantage to only this line. It is just the other way round: It is an advantage! "Buddhahood" is in the second best group in that regard! (Group 1 is just "Buddha", which clearly needs the fewest pipes. Group 2 consists "a Buddha", "Buddhas" and "Buddhahood", which work at least sometimes. Group 3 are the synthetic names, which need redirects for every link. Moreover, there are quite a few occurrences of "Buddhahood" on Wikipedia - Google finds 649. (Many of these are probably not really in the text, but in the sidebar. While those would be easy to fix since they are just transcluded from the template, piping them still would be as counterintuitive as any other piped link for the reader.) — Sebastian 09:03, 7 December 2007 (UTC)Reply
I removed the statement from the line for two reasons: (1) It would have to be added to "a Buddha" and "Buddhas", too. (2) It is so long that it looks much worse than the "synthetic name" statement, which actually is worse. — Sebastian 09:18, 7 December 2007 (UTC)Reply
I think I finally found why you feel uncomfortable with "Buddhahood". Is it that, after we reword the current article so it really starts with "Buddhahood", someone who sees a link like "[[Buddhahood|Buddha]]" would be a little bit taken aback by the fact that "Buddha" is not the first term in the article? That is indeed a disadvantage, although I think not a very big one. We have that case very often already, as e.g. currently in "[[Buddha (general)|Samyaksambuddha]]". I think this can be subsumed under the common text "refers to state, not being", and I'll explain the various implications of that in the notes. — Sebastian 08:43, 8 December 2007 (UTC)Reply
Hi Sebastian -
Sorry for not responding sooner: I'm on the road and only have intermittant and limited access to a computer and, frankly, am kind of rushed for time now.
You've done a tremendous job. I think you have more than sufficiently captured my minor concerns in the table and your associated narrative. I loudly applaud your fruitful efforts and very much appreciate your commitment to honest and thoughtful collaboration.
I also like what you have done with the Google counts. As an aside, if I may, if I understand correctly, it might be interesting to somehow reflect that the "Buddhahood" hits likely include hits solely due to the Template:Buddhism sidebar, etc. (Since I've not been able to readily replicate your initial results, I'm unsure how to go about this but, if you can show me what you did we can probably find a way to subtract out the sidebar-induced hits, or at least find a minimal range number that would reflect the lowest possible number of hits eliminating articles with the sidebar, etc.)
Good job Sebastian! Best wishes, Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 01:30, 11 December 2007 (UTC)Reply

(unindent) Thank you for your nice words! For the Google count, I entered site:en.wikipedia.org "a Buddha" in the search box. The template is transcluded in 541 articles (I found this by looking at whatlinkshere from the template, sorting by name, deleting all non-article pages, and then counting occurrences of the word "transcluded"), which means that there are 649-541=108 articles that contain the word "Buddhahood" without having the sidebar. To find out how many of the 541 articles have the word outside of the template, I will change the link in the template for a test. — Sebastian 04:51, 11 December 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hmm, that increased the count to 674! I guess we'll have to wait a couple of days till it gets propagated to Google. — Sebastian 04:55, 11 December 2007 (UTC)Reply

As of now, it's down to 561. — Sebastian 03:08, 14 December 2007 (UTC)Reply

So, the count for "Buddhahood" seems to falling already. In the meantime, I had another idea. It occurred to me that each instance of "Buddhahood" really only means Buddhahood, nothing else. That can't be said about "a Buddha" or "Buddhas". So I looked at the articles listed in the search results for "a Buddha"[1]. (I picked page 17, which should be pretty much in the middle of the field. In this case, I am also listing non-article pages to be complete.)

"Buddhas"[2] yields the following on page 17:

  • empty pillars that once held rows of smaller male Buddhas (Ghazni)
  • "Caves of the Thousand Buddhas." (Dunhuang)
  • "Caves of the Thousand Buddhas." (Diamond Sutra)
  • three bronze statues of the Buddhas of the Three Ages (Yonghe Temple )
  • "Caves of the Thousand Buddhas." (Timeline of clothing and textiles technology)
  • there's a tradition of asking the Buddhas and bodhisattvas to dedicate your accumulated merits to all sentient beings (Prayer wheel)
  • The name (Cheonbuldong) means 1000 Buddhas. (Seoraksan)
  • Three Golden Buddhas. The central sculpture is of Gautama Buddha, the left Amitabha and the right Bhaisajyaguru. (Jade Buddha Temple)
  • awakened eventually by Buddhas and entreated to develop bodhicitta (Bodhicitta)
  • There is a huge carved bell inscribed with images of Buddhas in the show room. (Tian Tan Buddha)

If each of these had a link, how many of them would you estimate would really point to this article? — Sebastian 05:32, 11 December 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hi Sebastian -
Excellent work! And I like your methodology. In addition, thanks for illustrating Google's "site:" parameter – I wasn't aware of it. Moreover, it looks like your initial stat re: Buddhahood is holding up, even given your thoughtful change to Template:Buddhism. (FWIW, I also did a random check of the resultant Google matches and they appear to be legitimate non-template hits.) So you've addressed and successfully allayed my most recent concern. Kudos! Well-done! I very much appreciate it.
In regards to your insightful and certainly worthwhile question about how many of the aforementioned quotes would have a link to this article if it were re-named either a Buddha or Buddhas, it appears to me that they would all point to this article — especially as long as this article included material both about "a buddha" and "buddha statues." (If such were material were separated into two articles, then it appears most would likely go to the "buddha statue" article?) Do you (or anyone else) read this differently. I regret that I'm a wee bit in a time crunch and am overly tired so I could simply be missing something (something big?) here.
Applause to you once again. (To paraphrase my Zen brethren, what is the sound of two hands clapping? Just listen :-) ) Best wishes, Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 03:25, 13 December 2007 (UTC)Reply
My pleasure! This conversation is a nice place to come home to and take refuge from some other more conflicted areas I'm involved in. Therefore, please don't feel under any pressure.
I see what my mistake was. I looked at the current Buddha redirection page and noticed it had an entry for "a statue of Gautama Buddha or of another buddha". That, however, links to section Depictions of the Buddha in art of this article. Now, in the interest of pushing "Buddhahood", let me ask you: Which one do you think is more likely: That at some time in the future "Buddhahood" gets split out into a separate article, or "Buddha in art"? (You can guess what I believe, but far be it from me to influence you ;-) — Sebastian 05:14, 13 December 2007 (UTC)Reply
Let's start this ball rolling :-) See #New article based on "Depictions of the Buddha in art" scion? below.
Intellectually, scholastically and soteriologically, I think the Buddhahood material is the more important. In terms of WP user and Google hits, the "Buddha art" material might get more hits simply given the consumeristic edge of those (including myself, of course) who use the Internet. (Personally, I've done a lot more searching on-line for a Buddha statue lately than for buddhahood :-) ) So, if you're asking should this article be primarily about buddhahood or primarily about buddha art, it's hard for me to definitively say rationally; but, intuitively, of course, it should be about buddhahood. Does this make sense? Does this address your question?
With metta, Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 19:53, 13 December 2007 (UTC)Reply
Yes, it does address my question. And, BTW, I'm sure you'll start searching for Buddhahood on the internet once you're close to Nirvana...  :-p — Sebastian 22:34, 13 December 2007 (UTC)Reply
No buddhahood; sotāpatti is just at the far end of my wildest [Theravadin] dreams ;-)
Should someone open the polls? Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 01:40, 14 December 2007 (UTC)Reply
Fine by me - if you feel the table covers all we could extract from the discussion. I can't think of anything else we would need to discuss. — Sebastian 03:08, 14 December 2007 (UTC)    (I stopped watching this page. If you would like to continue the talk, please do so here and ping me.)Reply

Final vote

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After talking some more with Larry about the modalities here we agreed to notify everyone, post it on WP:RM again, and put it up for voting here. So here goes:

  • move to Buddhahood per #Table of options and the rest of the discussion above. — Sebastian 05:38, 13 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
  • Newly recognizing the unintentional militaristic connotation of Buddha (general) (especially in light of the above-mentioned WP precedence in article naming), I withdraw my former support for that title and, at this time, support one of the following: Buddhahood, Buddhas or a Buddha. (Sebastian, thanks again for your excellent work on this!) — Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 06:11, 13 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
  • Rename to Buddhahood. I understand the problems with this title, but I think it's the best of the options. Buddhas and a Buddha are far too ambiguous, and go against naming conventions. In addition, I think if we keep the current wording, it will help to solve the problem of "readers will have to mentally adjust to the different name of the article and that the introduction does not immediately mention 'Buddha'." LordAmeth (talk) 13:10, 13 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
  • Still neutral between Buddha (general) or Buddhahood. Neither is perfect, but both get the job done. I think Buddhas and a Buddha are too far at odds with normal Wikipedia naming conventions.—Nat Krause(Talk!·What have I done?) 17:39, 13 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
  • I vote for Buddhahood. Greetings, Sacca 06:33, 14 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
  • Another problem occurs to me. Buddha is probably not a specifically Buddhist term. Similar titles occur across traditions. E.g. jina, the title after which Jainism is named, is often applied to the Buddha in the Pali Canon. Very likely the reverse is true. Similarly, both religions called their founders bhagavant, which also aoccurs in Bhagavadgita & Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. So I think Buddha (Buddhism) is the correct title. Peter jackson (talk) 10:31, 15 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
    Does this concern also apply to the term "Buddhahood"? — Sebastian 07:41, 18 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
    Buddha (Buddhism) does little to differentiate this article from the one about Gautama Buddha. I don't think it's necessary to be guided in this case by the possible uses of "buddha" outside of the Buddhist tradition. I'm sure there are some. But the Buddhist uses of the phrase (i.e. references to Shakyamuni + references to [other Buddhist buddhas and buddha-in-general]) are overwhelmingly the vast majority of references, especially in English. I suspect that even if "buddha" was once applied by Jain and Upanishadic or other Hindu writers, they would probably avoid it new writings in order to avoid conflation with Buddhism. That said, if we have any other Wikipedia articles about other senses of "buddha", we already have Buddha as a disambiguation page. We need not overspecify the title of this page.—Nat Krause(Talk!·What have I done?) 21:21, 19 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

Conclusion: After one week, 5 of 6 votes list "Buddhahood" among their preferred choices, and there is no objection to this term. I will therefore perform the move. — Sebastian 03:06, 20 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

I wanted to change the double redirects, too, but I just realize that this is not a good moment since template Template:Buddhism, which contained that link, transcludes in many pages, giving the false impression that they all contain that link. It will take some time for the system to realize that I changed the template, so I will continue with this tomorrow. — Sebastian 05:29, 20 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

Buddhahood in lead section

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Latest comment: 16 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I just realized that the term "buddhahood" doesn't even occur in the lead section. While I found this in the context of renaming the article to "buddhahood", where it is imperative that the title occur in the first sentence, it is a problem already regardless of the title, since Buddhahood redirects here. Can someone who is closer to buddhahood than me please insert the term? — Sebastian 04:38, 20 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

I took a swipe, just to get the ball rolling. Whatever the merit of the words I used (based in part on a PTS PED search), I'm sure it will be changed before I finish this append ;-) (Hey, no argument from me -- I was just trying to get closer to the mark Sebastian set before us :-) ) Sebastian, thanks again for all your hard, excellent work, Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 07:02, 20 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
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