Buddhism
Historical Background
1. Our first enlightened one (or Buddha - “awakened one”) was Siddhartha Gautama (4th/5th century BC). He was a prince who was given a life of luxury to keep him from pain and suffering. A prophetic word was uttered over him which incited his father to protect him from suffering.
2. But wait! Remember time is cyclical in the Eastern mind. Gautama is “our first” Buddha. There have been many Buddhas, but their teachings end up being rejected and forgotten. Previously, a Buddha was walking along and a person threw his hair over a puddle the Buddha was about to step in. The Buddha saw the compassion of this man and predicted that he would become Siddhartha and attain enlightenment. After thousands of years of rebirth and good karma he was reincarnated as the above mentioned prince.
3. At an early age Siddhartha escaped from his watchmen and saw people suffering (age, disease, corpse). That led him to reject his life of ease and become an ascetic (i.e. a person who rejects personal comfort and leads a life of austere self-discipline). He not only left behind his luxuries, he left behind his wife and child. He went on to live a life of extreme self denial, eating only grass, seeds, rice, & even dung. Slept with corpses, slept on thorns, gave up bathing (dirt would fall off due to its own weight).
4. Approximately 6 years later he rejected the ascetic life. Sought the “middle way.”
5. Around the age of 35 he went out to meditate under a tree and did so for 40 days. He sought to consider the hidden meaning of his mind, the universe, and life. He ended up having a vision about liberation from samsara (ie. suffering) and became the “enlightened one.” In so doing, he attained nirvana (release from the cycle of reincarnation; lit. “the blowing out of suffering”). During this time he developed the 4 Noble Truths & 8 Fold Path to show how to escape the cycle of rebirth and suffering.
Four Noble Truths
1.Dukkah -
Life is full of sorrow (dukkha - a bone twisted out of joint). Unfortunately, people do not accept this truth. They choose to think there is happiness in life. But happiness is an illusion because it is fleeting. The first step to be released from the cycle of pain through reincarnation is to accept that life is just one long experience of suffering and happiness is an illusion.
2. Tanah - Attachment / desire.
Suffering is due to false desires of the senses that have been deceived into clinging to the impermanent (or changing) world. Ignorance (avidya) is a major obstacle that you must overcome if you are to gain freedom from reincarnation. Everything is fleeting because it is passing away (family, desires, institutions, nations), but we ignorantly attribute reality to such things. In doing so we give them a degree of significance / permanence and attach ourselves to them, which in turn causes us pain.
For example, we watch a movie which causes us to be sad or scared. It causes us pain even though it is not real (we think it is real though).
This delusion (false desire) comes out in things like hatred & greed. We hate because we desire things. We feel pain because we are greedy and want what we cannot have. We must recognize that all things are connected and interdependent. If we do so we will become wise, compassionate, & generous, and, as a result, you may someday reach enlightenment and be free from desire/pain.
3. Nirodha - Cessation (suffering can be ended).
The way out of suffering lies in the ability to disengage oneself from the false desires of the temporary self; this is accomplished by reaching nirvana.
Illustration seen in a monk named Sangamaji: S’s wife came to him and laid their son before him, asking that he would nourish them both. S remained quite in meditation. She eventually picked up the child and left. “S feels no pleasure when she comes, no sorrow when she goes; a true Brahman released from passion.”
Perfect detachment is gained by the Noble Eight-fold Path
4.The Noble 8 fold Path - The means to getting rid of pain and suffering.
Following these 4 noble truths will lead one to break free from desire and the dissatisfaction associated with it. If you achieve this, you enter into nirvana, the state of awakening.
Types of Buddhism
1.Theravada Buddhism - Oldest school, doesn’t have a lot of worship ritual; reading the Pali Canon is important. They believe there was only one Buddha (who was human).
2.Mahayana Buddhism - More spiritual in that they believe that many Bohdi have existed (people who have reached enlightenment, but stay around to teach others how to become enlightened). They can be prayed to and sought for help in life.
Basic Beliefs
1. Karma -
Like Hinduism, karma is the good or bad that you do which comes back upon you. You will have bad karma, but you can accumulate more good karma and so dilute the bad (much like you can dissolve salt in a sea). To get good karma we eliminate self and remember that we are connected. This produces charity and generosity (my deed to you is a deed to me).
2. Reincarnation -
One does not have an immortal soul that is reborn (contra Hinduism). The soul is an illusion that causes dissatisfaction. So the soul is not reincarnated. It is only “karmic matter” or our consciousness that is redistributed. “There is only a transfer into another as a candle transfers its flame to another candle.”
3. Monks -
Becoming a Buddhist monk is the only way to reach nirvana. One can only reach nirvana by leaving family, friends, occupation, and joining a sangha (an alms dependent order of Buddhist monks). Average people can follow the Buddhist teachings, but won’t reach nirvana or gain inner tranquility. The best they can hope for is to be reborn as a Buddhist monk. (Sorry ladies, you’re even further from the reaches of nirvana as you must become a man first.) Monks are supported by the generosity of others, which is a form of charity that brings good karma.
4. Illusion -
Illusion refers to the idea that our perception of the world is not an accurate representation of the way things truly are. This illusion of reality leads to suffering. We must get past these illusions to the real nature of reality.
For instance, our perception of reality causes us to become attached to certain beliefs and views, and to resist those that are different. We tend to see the world in terms of dualities – good vs. bad, right vs. wrong, us vs. them – and this can lead to conflict, ignorance and suffering.
“There is a big difference between the world of appearances that our minds create and the world of reality that the laws of cause and effect give rise to. When we mistake the former for the latter and believe that how things appear to us correspond to reality, we create problems and suffering for ourselves and others. But no one wants to be unhappy and suffer; everyone wants to be happy. This is the aim of all life, and, in this regard, we all are the same – humans and animals alike.” - studybuddhism.com
Our conception of a friend will hurt us if someone who we consider to be a friend lets us down (our idea of a friend includes dependability, but this does not fit the reality of a friend because he let us down). If we have cancer, we will be sad because we think we are the only ones who have such problems. If we join a support group, we find that we are not the only ones and we can have more compassion. The breakdown of the illusion allows us to transcend the sorrow.
5.Nirvana -
The state of enlightenment where one breaks free from desire and the cycle of samsara. You can enter into nirvana without dying. You become enlightened and are able to teach others about how to attain nirvana.
What happens after death is not altogether clear though. Some seem to say that you cease to exist, some imply that you are in a deathless state, others indicate that you become a part of the greater consciousness (keep in mind that there is no individual self or soul; everything is one, everything is interdependent).
Notice what is missing: Buddhism is something of a god-less religion. Some say that Buddhism is not a religion because it does not have a deity it worships - though some forms of Buddhism tend to worship the Buddhas. Some call it a philosophy or a therapy because it seeks to deal with the pain of sorrow and dissatisfaction. (Also note that some forms of psychiatry like to use meditation and “mindfulness” as techniques to gain relief from so called mental/emotional problems).
This is not to say that Buddhism does have gods. There are many gods in the sense that there are higher beings. But these gods are actually stuck in the cycle of samsara as well. You can be reborn as one of these gods if you have good karma.
Buddhism may be said to be an atheistic or agnostic religion. If asked about god, they tend to speak in practical matters. The “god question” isn’t helpful because it just gets you in trouble. Rather than focusing on the mystical, Buddhism seeks to focus on the ever present moment. It is about the present, personal experience. The religion is highly moralistic and oriented towards self-discipline.
Critique
1. The Catch 22 of Desire:
Does one desire to break free from desire? The way of salvation is to be free from desire, but to gain salvation you have to desire it.
2. Right conduct -
What is it? Contrast the “right conduct” of the 8 fold path with the third Noble Truth (Nirodha), where the guy was okay with letting his wife and kid starve. He was the true Brahman who had no pity on them. There’s a contradiction of what constitutes “rightness.” One’s right action can be horribly painful to another. While they have principles of morality (greed, jealousy, no harm etc), these do not seem to be absolute.
3. A denial, a denial, a denial - (sorry for the Nirvana reference)
The goal of life is to reach nirvana, but the lack of clarity of what nirvana is should be something that gives one pause.
4. It’s all just an illusion -
“We live in illusion and the appearance of things. There is a reality. We are that reality. When you understand this, you see that you are nothing, and being nothing."- Buddha
• Everything is an illusion.
• Everything includes the Buddha himself.
• The Buddha is just an illusion.
(science is impossible, logic is impossible, life is impossible)
5. Humans do not have real individual worth. The self is the cause of suffering and one must rid oneself of himself. One must reach nirvana, which is the blowing out of the self and an entrance into ?? (nothing?).
Christianity gives incredible value to the individual person as one who is made in the image of God, and possesses a divinely created body and immortal soul. While we deny ourselves in regards to selfishness and recognize that sinful cravings are to be avoided, other cravings and desires are deemed good, valid, and valuable.
6. Unself thyself: A self cannot rid oneself of his self. That is using the thing to get rid of the thing. A screw cannot unscrew itself. Freedom from self is not actually possible.
7. We have the question of authority:
Who made the Buddha the authority? He is the self-authorized “enlightened one.” What makes his experience more authoritative than my experience? What if I say that I reached enlightenment and found that Jelly donuts are the way to nirvana.
If it does not come from God who is the Lord and law giver, then how can it be authoritative?
8. Salvation is the experience of nirvana.
You must climb an infinite number of levels to get released from the cycle of samsara. But one wonders how you came to be trapped in this system and came to possess these desires/illusions from which you must be freed.
Christianity says that suffering is a result of the fall. Sin produces death and misery. But Christ brings freedom from it to new and eternal life.
1. Our first enlightened one (or Buddha - “awakened one”) was Siddhartha Gautama (4th/5th century BC). He was a prince who was given a life of luxury to keep him from pain and suffering. A prophetic word was uttered over him which incited his father to protect him from suffering.
2. But wait! Remember time is cyclical in the Eastern mind. Gautama is “our first” Buddha. There have been many Buddhas, but their teachings end up being rejected and forgotten. Previously, a Buddha was walking along and a person threw his hair over a puddle the Buddha was about to step in. The Buddha saw the compassion of this man and predicted that he would become Siddhartha and attain enlightenment. After thousands of years of rebirth and good karma he was reincarnated as the above mentioned prince.
3. At an early age Siddhartha escaped from his watchmen and saw people suffering (age, disease, corpse). That led him to reject his life of ease and become an ascetic (i.e. a person who rejects personal comfort and leads a life of austere self-discipline). He not only left behind his luxuries, he left behind his wife and child. He went on to live a life of extreme self denial, eating only grass, seeds, rice, & even dung. Slept with corpses, slept on thorns, gave up bathing (dirt would fall off due to its own weight).
4. Approximately 6 years later he rejected the ascetic life. Sought the “middle way.”
5. Around the age of 35 he went out to meditate under a tree and did so for 40 days. He sought to consider the hidden meaning of his mind, the universe, and life. He ended up having a vision about liberation from samsara (ie. suffering) and became the “enlightened one.” In so doing, he attained nirvana (release from the cycle of reincarnation; lit. “the blowing out of suffering”). During this time he developed the 4 Noble Truths & 8 Fold Path to show how to escape the cycle of rebirth and suffering.
Four Noble Truths
1.Dukkah -
Life is full of sorrow (dukkha - a bone twisted out of joint). Unfortunately, people do not accept this truth. They choose to think there is happiness in life. But happiness is an illusion because it is fleeting. The first step to be released from the cycle of pain through reincarnation is to accept that life is just one long experience of suffering and happiness is an illusion.
2. Tanah - Attachment / desire.
Suffering is due to false desires of the senses that have been deceived into clinging to the impermanent (or changing) world. Ignorance (avidya) is a major obstacle that you must overcome if you are to gain freedom from reincarnation. Everything is fleeting because it is passing away (family, desires, institutions, nations), but we ignorantly attribute reality to such things. In doing so we give them a degree of significance / permanence and attach ourselves to them, which in turn causes us pain.
For example, we watch a movie which causes us to be sad or scared. It causes us pain even though it is not real (we think it is real though).
This delusion (false desire) comes out in things like hatred & greed. We hate because we desire things. We feel pain because we are greedy and want what we cannot have. We must recognize that all things are connected and interdependent. If we do so we will become wise, compassionate, & generous, and, as a result, you may someday reach enlightenment and be free from desire/pain.
3. Nirodha - Cessation (suffering can be ended).
The way out of suffering lies in the ability to disengage oneself from the false desires of the temporary self; this is accomplished by reaching nirvana.
Illustration seen in a monk named Sangamaji: S’s wife came to him and laid their son before him, asking that he would nourish them both. S remained quite in meditation. She eventually picked up the child and left. “S feels no pleasure when she comes, no sorrow when she goes; a true Brahman released from passion.”
Perfect detachment is gained by the Noble Eight-fold Path
4.The Noble 8 fold Path - The means to getting rid of pain and suffering.
- Right views - belief that the 4 noble truths are true and reliable.
- Right aspirations - commitment to extricating oneself from the human predicament, maintaining thoughts free from lust, ill will, or untruthfulness and renouncing self & pleasure.
- Right speech - charitable, free from egocentricity; no gossiping, lying, tattling, harsh language, vain talk.
- Right Conduct - A beneficent behavior extended universally to all living things
- Right Livelihood - A proper means of support without inflicting pain on another.
- Right Effort - a willingness to reach within and draw upon all the energy one possesses.
- Right Mindfulness - paying close attention to one’s mood/feelings.
- Right Concentration - A form of meditation to annihilate thought & make the mind rest.
Following these 4 noble truths will lead one to break free from desire and the dissatisfaction associated with it. If you achieve this, you enter into nirvana, the state of awakening.
Types of Buddhism
1.Theravada Buddhism - Oldest school, doesn’t have a lot of worship ritual; reading the Pali Canon is important. They believe there was only one Buddha (who was human).
2.Mahayana Buddhism - More spiritual in that they believe that many Bohdi have existed (people who have reached enlightenment, but stay around to teach others how to become enlightened). They can be prayed to and sought for help in life.
Basic Beliefs
1. Karma -
Like Hinduism, karma is the good or bad that you do which comes back upon you. You will have bad karma, but you can accumulate more good karma and so dilute the bad (much like you can dissolve salt in a sea). To get good karma we eliminate self and remember that we are connected. This produces charity and generosity (my deed to you is a deed to me).
2. Reincarnation -
One does not have an immortal soul that is reborn (contra Hinduism). The soul is an illusion that causes dissatisfaction. So the soul is not reincarnated. It is only “karmic matter” or our consciousness that is redistributed. “There is only a transfer into another as a candle transfers its flame to another candle.”
3. Monks -
Becoming a Buddhist monk is the only way to reach nirvana. One can only reach nirvana by leaving family, friends, occupation, and joining a sangha (an alms dependent order of Buddhist monks). Average people can follow the Buddhist teachings, but won’t reach nirvana or gain inner tranquility. The best they can hope for is to be reborn as a Buddhist monk. (Sorry ladies, you’re even further from the reaches of nirvana as you must become a man first.) Monks are supported by the generosity of others, which is a form of charity that brings good karma.
4. Illusion -
Illusion refers to the idea that our perception of the world is not an accurate representation of the way things truly are. This illusion of reality leads to suffering. We must get past these illusions to the real nature of reality.
For instance, our perception of reality causes us to become attached to certain beliefs and views, and to resist those that are different. We tend to see the world in terms of dualities – good vs. bad, right vs. wrong, us vs. them – and this can lead to conflict, ignorance and suffering.
“There is a big difference between the world of appearances that our minds create and the world of reality that the laws of cause and effect give rise to. When we mistake the former for the latter and believe that how things appear to us correspond to reality, we create problems and suffering for ourselves and others. But no one wants to be unhappy and suffer; everyone wants to be happy. This is the aim of all life, and, in this regard, we all are the same – humans and animals alike.” - studybuddhism.com
Our conception of a friend will hurt us if someone who we consider to be a friend lets us down (our idea of a friend includes dependability, but this does not fit the reality of a friend because he let us down). If we have cancer, we will be sad because we think we are the only ones who have such problems. If we join a support group, we find that we are not the only ones and we can have more compassion. The breakdown of the illusion allows us to transcend the sorrow.
5.Nirvana -
The state of enlightenment where one breaks free from desire and the cycle of samsara. You can enter into nirvana without dying. You become enlightened and are able to teach others about how to attain nirvana.
What happens after death is not altogether clear though. Some seem to say that you cease to exist, some imply that you are in a deathless state, others indicate that you become a part of the greater consciousness (keep in mind that there is no individual self or soul; everything is one, everything is interdependent).
Notice what is missing: Buddhism is something of a god-less religion. Some say that Buddhism is not a religion because it does not have a deity it worships - though some forms of Buddhism tend to worship the Buddhas. Some call it a philosophy or a therapy because it seeks to deal with the pain of sorrow and dissatisfaction. (Also note that some forms of psychiatry like to use meditation and “mindfulness” as techniques to gain relief from so called mental/emotional problems).
This is not to say that Buddhism does have gods. There are many gods in the sense that there are higher beings. But these gods are actually stuck in the cycle of samsara as well. You can be reborn as one of these gods if you have good karma.
Buddhism may be said to be an atheistic or agnostic religion. If asked about god, they tend to speak in practical matters. The “god question” isn’t helpful because it just gets you in trouble. Rather than focusing on the mystical, Buddhism seeks to focus on the ever present moment. It is about the present, personal experience. The religion is highly moralistic and oriented towards self-discipline.
Critique
1. The Catch 22 of Desire:
Does one desire to break free from desire? The way of salvation is to be free from desire, but to gain salvation you have to desire it.
2. Right conduct -
What is it? Contrast the “right conduct” of the 8 fold path with the third Noble Truth (Nirodha), where the guy was okay with letting his wife and kid starve. He was the true Brahman who had no pity on them. There’s a contradiction of what constitutes “rightness.” One’s right action can be horribly painful to another. While they have principles of morality (greed, jealousy, no harm etc), these do not seem to be absolute.
3. A denial, a denial, a denial - (sorry for the Nirvana reference)
The goal of life is to reach nirvana, but the lack of clarity of what nirvana is should be something that gives one pause.
4. It’s all just an illusion -
“We live in illusion and the appearance of things. There is a reality. We are that reality. When you understand this, you see that you are nothing, and being nothing."- Buddha
• Everything is an illusion.
• Everything includes the Buddha himself.
• The Buddha is just an illusion.
(science is impossible, logic is impossible, life is impossible)
5. Humans do not have real individual worth. The self is the cause of suffering and one must rid oneself of himself. One must reach nirvana, which is the blowing out of the self and an entrance into ?? (nothing?).
Christianity gives incredible value to the individual person as one who is made in the image of God, and possesses a divinely created body and immortal soul. While we deny ourselves in regards to selfishness and recognize that sinful cravings are to be avoided, other cravings and desires are deemed good, valid, and valuable.
6. Unself thyself: A self cannot rid oneself of his self. That is using the thing to get rid of the thing. A screw cannot unscrew itself. Freedom from self is not actually possible.
7. We have the question of authority:
Who made the Buddha the authority? He is the self-authorized “enlightened one.” What makes his experience more authoritative than my experience? What if I say that I reached enlightenment and found that Jelly donuts are the way to nirvana.
If it does not come from God who is the Lord and law giver, then how can it be authoritative?
8. Salvation is the experience of nirvana.
You must climb an infinite number of levels to get released from the cycle of samsara. But one wonders how you came to be trapped in this system and came to possess these desires/illusions from which you must be freed.
Christianity says that suffering is a result of the fall. Sin produces death and misery. But Christ brings freedom from it to new and eternal life.