Buddhism

QUICK FACTS:


Founder: Siddhartha Gautama
Founded in: 520 BC in NE India
Adherents Worldwide: over 360 million
Adherents in US: over 1 million
God(s) and Universe: Many atheistic but a few followers are polytheistic. Buddha taught nothing is permanent.
Human Situation and Life's Purpose: Purpose is to avoid suffering and gain enlightenment and release from cycle of rebirth, or at least attain a better rebirth by gaining merit.
Afterlife: Reincarnation (understood differently than in Hinduism, with no surviving soul) until gain enlightenment
Practices: Meditation, mantras (spiritual poems), devotion to deities (in some sects), mandalas (Tibetan)
Texts: Tripitaka (Pali Canon); Mahayana sutras like the Lotus Sutra and others.

SUMMARY:


A Buddhist is one who takes refuge in The Three Jewels: the Buddha (the Awakened One), the Dharma (the Teaching of the Buddha) and the Sangha (the Community of Buddhists). Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as "The Buddha,” was a prince of the Sakya tribe of Nepal who lived in the northeastern region of the Indian subcontinent. When he was twenty-nine years old, he left his home to seek the meaning of the suffering he saw around him. After six years, he abandoned the way of self-mortification and instead sat in meditation beneath a bodhi tree where he developed enlightenment and became the Buddha. Now, Buddhists recognize him as an awakened teacher who shared his insights to help teaching the path to liberation from suffering and establishing a community of monks (the Sangha). The Buddha’s basic teachings:


The FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS


  1. Life is suffering: Suffering (Sanskrit word duhkha) which can also be translated as imperfect, stressful, or filled with anguish. Contributing to the anguish is anitya -- the fact that all things are impermanent, including living things like ourselves. Furthermore, there is the concept of anatman -- literally, "no soul". Anatman means that all things are interconnected and interdependent, so that no thing -- including ourselves -- has a separate existence. In other words, every aspect of existence is ultimately fleeting and unfulfilling, subject to birth, decay, disease, and death.
  2. Suffering is due to attachment: Attachment translation is trishna, which literally means thirst and is also translated as desire, clinging, greed, craving, or lust. Because we and the world are imperfect, impermanent, and not separate, we are forever "clinging" to things, each other, and ourselves, in a mistaken effort at permanence. Besides trishna, there is dvesha, which means avoidance or hatred. Hatred is its own kind of clinging. And finally there is avidya, ignorance or the refusal to see. Not fully understanding the impermanence of things is what leads us to cling in the first place.
  3. Attachment can be overcome: Perhaps the most misunderstood term in Buddhism is the one which refers to the overcoming of attachment: nirvana. It literally means "blowing out," but is often thought to refer to either a Buddhist heaven or complete nothingness. Actually, it refers to the letting go of clinging, hatred, and ignorance, and the full acceptance of imperfection, impermanence, and interconnectedness.
  4. There is a path for accomplishing this: And then there is the path, called dharma. Buddha called it the middle way, which is understood as meaning the middle way between such competing philosophies as materialism and idealism, or hedonism and asceticism.  This path, this middle way, is elaborated as the eightfold path

The EIGHTFOLD PATH:

Each step on the path propels the seeker to the next step and perfection of each quality reinforces the others.


(First two known as prajña, or wisdom.)


  1. Perfect Understanding (Sammā Ditthi): the right view is the true understanding of the nature of the world through the Four Noble Truths
  2. Perfect Thought (Sammā Sankappa): the right aspiration is the true desire to free oneself from attachment, ignorance, and hatefulness. Avoid cultivation of jealous or angry thoughts and cultivate thoughts of goodwill and renunciation.

    3. (3-5 are referred to as shila, or morality)

  3. Perfect Speech (Sammā Vācā): the right speech involves abstaining from lying, gossiping, hurtful talk, or mindless chatter.
  4. Perfect Action (Sammā Kammanta): the right action involves abstaining from hurtful behaviors, such as killing, stealing, and careless sex. Conduct should be peaceful, honest, and pure; includes observations of the Five Precepts.
  5. Perfect Livelihood (Sammā Ājiva): the right livelihood means making your living in such a way as to avoid dishonesty and hurting others, including animals. (The last three are known as Samadhi, or meditation)
  6. Perfect Effort (Sammā Vāyāma): the right effort is a matter of exerting oneself in regards to the content of one's mind: Bad qualities should be abandoned and prevented from arising again; Good qualities should be enacted and nurtured. Discipline on the cultivation of the mind.
  7. Perfect Mindfulness (Sammā Sati): The right mindfulness is the focusing of one's attention on one's body, feelings, thoughts, and consciousness in such a way as to overcome craving, hatred, and ignorance. It is the true awareness of one’s own actions, words and thoughts (true nature of reality).
  8. Perfect Concentration (Sammā Samādhi): The right concentration is meditating in such a way as to progressively realize a true understanding of imperfection, impermanence, and non-separateness. One develops the ability to become absorbed in one point or object, leading to higher states of consciousness.

BUDDHIST PRECEPTS:

there are five precepts commonly observed by Buddhists:

  1. To avoid killing or harming any living being.
  2. To avoid taking that which has not been given.
  3. To avoid committing sexual misconduct.
  4. To avoid using false words.
  5. To avoid taking alcohol and other intoxicants.

(Additional precepts apply to monks and nuns and may be taken by laypeople on special occasions)

  1. To eat moderately and only at the appropriate time
  2. To avoid dancing, singing, music, and bodily adornments.
  3. To abstain from sleeping in luxurious beds.

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