Posthumous name of
D
gen
.
Busso
(Jap., ‘patriarchs’). The
Buddha
and the patriarchs (
soshigata
), from whom
Zen Buddhism
is derived. Busso may also refer to the Buddha
kyamuni.
Bu-ston
(1290–1364).
Tibetan teacher, translator, and historian of Buddhism belonging to the Bkah-brgyud-pa ('ka-ju-pa') sect. By the age of 30 he had studied under all the great teachers of his day and began to compose treatises in his own name and to translate and edit the canon. By the age of 32, he completed his
History of Buddhism in Tibet
to which he appended a theoretical classification of the canon based on a distinction between the direct teachings of the
Buddha
or
Bkah-
gyur
(‘Kan-jur’), and the treatises of commentary thereon or
Bstan-
gyur
(‘Ten-jur’). This became the accepted form of classification for the Tibetan canon.
Butler, Joseph
(1692–1752).
Anglican
bishop
and philosopher. From 1718 to 1726 he was preacher at the Rolls Chapel, where his sermons won him fame. He then became a parish priest in Co. Durham, where he wrote his
Analogy of Religion
(1736). He was consecrated bishop of Bristol in 1738 and became bishop of Durham in 1750. His own mistrust of the irrational and of appeal to the praeternatural in religion is contained in his remark, ‘The pretending to extraordinary revelations and gifts of the Holy Ghost is a horrid thing, a very horrid thing.’