Buddhism: A “Philosophical” Introduction

Buddhism: An Introduction• “The Buddha”• Buddha and 6th-Century Brahmanism• The Three Jewels• Four Noble Truths• Eightfold Path• Two (Main) Vehicles• The Bodhisattva• Zen• Tibetan Buddhism• Two Buddhist “Creeds”• Buddhism in America

“The Buddha”• Siddhartha Gautama of the Sakyas

• ca. 563-483 BCE

• Wife: Yasodhara; Son: Rahula

• “The Four Passing Sights”

• Six years of asceticism and seeking

• The Bodhi Tree

• The Temptation (Mara)

• Kama--the God of Desire

• Hurricanes, torrential rain, etc.

• What right do you have?

• Enlightenment

• One more question (from Mara)

• How can anyone understand?

• Dies from food poisoning?

Buddhism’s Challenge to 6th-cent. Brahmanism(as described by Huston Smith)

Authority Hereditary and exploitative (provenance of Brahmins)

Buddha preached a religion devoid of authority

Ritual Rituals became mechanical means of achieving miraculous results

Buddha preached a religion devoid of ritual

Speculation Lost its experiential basis; hairsplitting

Buddha preached a religion that skirted speculation

Tradition Dead weight; e.g., insistence on continued use of Sanskrit

Buddha preached a religion devoid of tradition

Grace Read in ways that undercut responsibility and/or led to fatalism

Buddha preached a religion of tremendous self-effort

Mystery Devolved into mystery-mongering, mystification, obsessions with the occult/fantastic

Buddha preached a religion devoid of the supernatural

“The Three Jewels”*

• Buddha (The Awakened One)

• Dharma (The Teachings)

• Sangha (The Community)

*also “The Three Refuges”

The Four Noble Truths

• Life is Duhkha (Suffering, dissatisfaction, wobbly wheel [for grocery cart]): pain, change, being

• Tanha/trishna (craving, desire) binds us to suffering

• There is a way out of this (“nirvana”)• This way is the Eightfold Path

The Eightfold Path

• Right View• Right Thought• Right Speech• Right Action

• Right Livelihood• Right Effort• Right Mindfulness• Right Concentration

samma = right,

Annatta/Anatta/Anatman

Skandhas:

•form/material composition

•sensing/feeling

•perception(s)

•mental formations/thought processes

•consciousness/Consciousness

Two Main “Vehicles”THERAVADA (HINAYANA)--ELDERS MAHAYANA (“Reformers”)

Human beings are emancipated by self-effort, without supernatural aid

Human aspirations are supported by divine powers and the grace they bestow

Key virtue is wisdom Key virtue is compassion

Attainment requires constant commitment, and is primarily for monks and nuns

Religious practice is relevant to life in the world, and therefore to lay people

Ideal: the Arhat who remains in nirvana after death

Ideal: the bodhisattva

Buddha a saint, supreme teacher, and inspirer

Buddha a savior

Minimizes metaphysics Elaborates metaphysics

Minimizes ritual Emphasizes ritual.

Practice centers on meditation. Includes petitionary prayer.

The Bodhisattva• In Theravada Buddhism, the bodhisattva is

seen as seeking enlightenment so that, once awakened, he or she may efficiently aid other beings with the expertise of supreme wisdom.

• Gautama Buddha’s previous life experience as a bodhisattva before Buddhahood are recorded in the texts of the jataka.

• Lay Buddhists of Theravada seek inspiration in Gautama's skill as a good layman in these texts, which account not only his historical life, but many previous lives.

• When Gautama Buddha referred to himself in his pre-Buddha existence, he spoke in terms of "when I was still a Bodhisattva".

• The only currently active bodhisattva described in the Pali Canon is the future Buddha Maitreya. The Theravada tradition, i.e., the Pali Canon, speaks of no other bodhisattvas than these.

The Bodhisattva (cont.)• In Mahayana Buddhism, a bodhisattva has the

compassionate determination to aid all beings on their quest for the highest state of development, full enlightenment of a Buddha.

• Remaining in this world of uncontrolled rebirth (samsara) this individual has taken the bodhisattva vows not to pass into nirvana until all other beings have likewise achieved enlightenment.

• In brief, simply imagine the Bodhisattva as saying, "If I know how to swim, and even one other being cannot, then I will remain behind in this world to assist them until they know how to save themselves from drowning".

• According to many traditions within Mahayana Buddhism, on his or her way to becoming a Buddha, the bodhisattva proceeds through ten, or sometimes fourteen, stages or bhumi.

• Various traditions within Buddhism believe in certain specific bodhisattvas. Some bodhisattvas appear across traditions, but due to language barriers may be seen as separate entities. For example, Tibetan Buddhists believe in Chenrezig, who is Avalokitesvara in India, Kuan Yin (other spellings: Guan Yin, Kwan Yin, Quan Yin) in China, and Kannon in Japan.

Zen (Ch’an) Buddhism

• Bodhidharma (ca. 500 C.E.)

• Zen characteristics are non-dualism, completeness, immediacy, authenticity,

• activeness, everydayness, selflessness, dedication, spontaneity

• zazen, koans, satori

satori (example?)

“Ztt! I entered. I lost the boundary of my physical body. I had my skin, of course, but I felt I was standing in the center of the cosmos. I saw people coming toward me, but all were the same man. all were myself. I had never known this world before. I had believed that I was created, but now I must change my opinion; I was never created; I was the cosmos. No individual existed.” (Zen Notes 1.5, p. 1)

zazen

koan

• “What is the sound of one hand (clapping)?• “What’s true meditation? It’s to make it all--

coughing, swallowing, gestures, motion, stillness, words, action, good and evil, success and shame, win and lose, right and wrong--into on single koan.” --Hakuin (1686-1769)

Koan:MUDDY ROAD: Tanzen and Ekido were once traveling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was still falling.Coming around the bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection.

"Come on girl", said Tanzen at once. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud.Ekido did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he no longer could restrain himself. "We monks don't go near females," he told Tanzen, "especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?”

"I left the girl there," said Tanzen. "Are you still carrying her?"

Koan:

A monk told Joshu, "I have just entered the monastery. Please teach me.”

Joshu asked, "Have you eaten your rice porridge?The monk replied, "I have eaten.”

Joshu said, "Then you had better wash your bowl.”

At that moment the monk was enlightened.

Koan:One day Akbar drew a line with his royal hand on the floor of the open court and told his wise men that if they wanted to keep their jobs they must make the line shorter without touching any part of it.

Wise man after wise man approached and stood staring at the puzzle, but they were unable to solve the problem.

Finally Birbal stepped forward and drew a longer line next to the first one, without touching the first line.Everyone in the court look at it and agreed. The first line was definitely shorter.

Koan:A university student asked Gasan, "have you ever read the Christian Bible?”

"No, read it to me," said Gasan.The student opened the Bible and read from St. Matthew: "And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these... Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.”

Gasan said: "Whoever uttered those words I consider an enlightened man.

"The student continued reading: "Ask and it shall be given to you, see and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened for you. For everyone that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened.”

Gasan remarked: "That is excellent. Whoever said that is not far from Buddhahood."

“Asked what Zen training leads to, a Western student who had been practicing for seven years in Kyoto answered, ‘No paranormal experiences that I can detect. but you wake up in the morning and the world seems so beautiful you can hardly stand it.” (Quoted in Smith, World Religions, p. 93)

Tibetan (Vajrayana) Buddhism• Distinctive practices that enable one to reach

nirvana in a single lifetime

• Tantric• Mantras, Mudras (hand gestures), Mandalas• Dalai Lama

A Sand Mandala

Mudras

“The Dalai Lama is not accurately likened to the pope, for it is not his prerogative to define doctrine. Even more misleading is the designation god-King, for though temporal and spiritual authority do converge in him, neither of those powers define his essential function. The function is to incarnate on earth the celestial principle of which compassion or mercy is the defining feature. The Dalai Lama is the bodhisattva who in India was known as Avalokiteshvara, in China as the Goddess of Mercy, Kwan Yin, and in Japan as Kannon. As Chenrezig (his Tibetan name) he has for the last several centuries incarnated himself for the empowerment and regeneration of the Tibetan tradition. Through his person--a single person who has thus far assumed fourteen successive incarnations--there flows an uninterrupted current of spiritual influence, characteristically compassionate in its flavor. . . The Dalai Lama is a receiving station toward which the compassion-principle of Buddhism in all its cosmic amplitude is continuously channeled, to radiate thence to the Tibetan people most directly, but by extension to all sentient beings.” (Smith, World Religions, pp. 143-44)

Buddhism in the West: “Fundamental Buddhistic Beliefs”

Colonel H.S. Olcott, Founding President of the Theosophical Society, 1891• Buddhists are taught to show the same tolerance, forbearance, and brotherly love to all

men, without distinction; and an unswerving kindness towards the members of the animal kingdom.

• The Universe was evolved, not created; and it functions according to law, not according to the caprice of any God.

• The truths upon which Buddhism is founded are natural. They have, we believe, been taught in successive kalpas, or world periods, by certain illuminated beings called Buddhas, the name Buddha meaning "enlightened.”

• The fourth teacher in the present kalpa was Sakya Muni, or Gautama Buddha, who was born in a royal family in India about 2,500 years ago. He is an historical personage and his name was Siddhartha Gautama.

• Sakya Muni taught that ignorance produces desire, unsatisfied desire is the cause of rebirth, and rebirth the cause of sorrow. To get rid of sorrow, therefore, it is necessary to escape rebirth; to escape rebirth, it is necessary to extinguish desire; and to extinguish desire, it is necessary to destroy ignorance.

• Ignorance fosters the belief that rebirth is a necessary thing. When ignorance is destroyed the worthlessness of every such rebirth, considered as an end in itself, is perceived, as well as the paramount need of adopting a course of life by which the necessity for such repeated births can be abolished. Ignorance also begets the illusive and illogical idea that there is only one existence for man, and the other illusion that this one life is followed by states of unchangeable pleasure or torment.

“Fundamental Buddhistic Beliefs”(cont.)

• The dispersion of all this ignorance can be attained by the persevering practice of an all-embracing altruism in conduct, development of intelligence, wisdom in thought, and destruction of desire for the lower personal pleasures.

• The desire to live being the cause of rebirth, when that is extinguished rebirths cease and the perfected individual attains by meditation that highest state of peace called nirvana.

• Sakya Muni taught that ignorance can be dispelled and sorrow removed by the knowledge of the four Nobel Truths, viz:1 . The miseries of existence;2. The cause productive of misery which is the desireever renewed of satisfying oneself without being able ever to secure that end;3.The destruction of that desire, or the estranging of oneself from it;4. The means of obtaining this destruction of desire. The means which he pointed out is called the Noble Eightfold Path, viz: Right Belief; Right Thought; Right Speech; Right Action; Right Means of Livelihood; Right Exertion; Right Remembrance;Right Meditation.

• Right Meditation leads to spiritual enlightenment, or the development of that Buddha-like faculty which is latent in every man.

“Fundamental Buddhistic Beliefs”(cont.)

• The essence of Buddhism summed up by the Tathagata (Buddha) himself is:To cease from all sin, To get virtue,To purify the heart

• The universe is subject to a natural causation known as "karma". The merits and demerits of a being in past existences determine his condition in the present one. Each man, therefore, has prepared the causes of the effects which he now experiences.

• The obstacles to the attainment of good karma may be removed by the observance of the following precepts, which are embraced in the moral code of Buddhism, viz: (1) Kill not; (2) Steal not; (3) Indulge in no forbidden sexual pleasure; (4) Lie not; (5) Take no intoxicating or stupefying drug or liquor. Five other precepts, which need not here be enumerated, should be observed by those who would attain more quickly than the average layman the release from misery and rebirth,

• Buddhism discourages superstitious credulity Gautama Buddha taught it to be the duty of a parent to have his child educated in science and literature. He also taught that no one should believe what is spoken by any sage, written in any book, or affirmed by a tradition, unless it accord with reason.

Buddhism in the West:Twelve Principles of

Buddhism(click here)

Buddhism in America

• An Architect and Zen

• Nen in Maryland

• Soka University

• Tibetan New Year

• Thich Nhat Hanh

Thanks