The Way of The Buddha
The Buddhist Society,
U.K.
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The Life and
Teachings of the Buddha
Gautama the Buddha was born in northern
India about 2,500 years ago. The exact place of his birth is understood to
be the Lumbini Garden, which nowadays lies just inside the border of the
little Himalayan kingdom of Nepal.
Gautama's father, Suddhodana, was the ruler
of the tiny kingdom of the Sakyas. Naturally, he was delighted to have an
heir who could follow him on to the throne. Naturally he was not very
pleased when a wise man predicted, upon seeing the new arrival, that if he
did not become a great world ruler he would become a great religious
teacher.
King Suddhodana knew that it would be
experience of the hard, painful things of life that would turn Gautama's
mind in the direction of religion, so he did everything in his power to
keep them out of the young prince's life. Gautama was thus brought up in a
sealed world of security and luxury. He lived in beautiful palaces, wore
clothes of the most splendid materials, ate only the finest foods, and was
generally entertained and waited upon in the best style.
Gautama grew up and eventually married a
young princess, Yasodhara, who bore him a son, Rahula. One day, however,
he persuaded his groom, Channa, to drive him down to the nearby town,
where he had not been till then. In all, he was to make four trips to the
town which were to totally change his life. On the first trip, he met an
old man, on the second a sick man, and on the third he met a party of
people carrying a corpse to the cremation ground. Not having seen old age,
sickness and death before, he was naturally deeply shocked. In fact so
shocked that palace life was no longer pleasant or even bearable for him.
He became very concerned with the fact of suffering and with finding a way
of ending it. On a fourth trip to the town, he came upon a possible way of
finding an answer to his problem. He met an ascetic, a holy man: one who
had given up everything to follow the religious life. Despite having
nothing, this man radiated a calmness that suggested to Gautama that he
had somehow come to terms with the unpleasant fact of suffering.
So Gautama decided to follow the example of
the ascetic. He slipped out of the palace in the dead of night, exchanged
his splendid silken robe for the simple orange one of a holy man, and cut
off all his beautiful black hair. Then, carrying nothing but an alms bowl
for people to put food in, he set off on his great search. Gautama went to
all the most famous religious teachers of his day and learned all they had
to teach. In the process, he subjected his body to great hardship and
torment. He lived in terrifying forests, burning in the heat of the midday
sun and freezing at night; he slept on beds of thorns; sometimes he lived
in cemeteries; he starved himself until he became so thin that if he
touched his stomach he could feel his backbone. But still he could not
find an answer to his fundamental problem and he realised that if he kept
on that way he would probably die before finding one.
He therefore decided on a Middle Way between
luxury and austerity. He took a little food much to the disgust of his
fellow ascetics, who promptly left him. Then he sat himself on the
immovable spot under a great Bo tree at a place nowadays called Bodh Gaya.
He was determined to sit there until he found an answer or die trying.
During the night of the full moon of May,
Gautama passed into deep meditation and gained various kinds of new
knowledge. He saw into his past lives; he saw how karma works (karma means
volitional action: action done by choice or conscious decision; it has
inevitable effects - good actions produce good results, bad actions
produce bad results); he also saw how to overcome desire, attachment to
existence and clinging to false or fixed views. Finally, as the morning
star rose, he awakened as from a dream and could declare: 'It is liberated
. . . birth is exhausted, the Holy Life has been lived out, what was to be
done has been done, there is no more to come . . .' He was Gautama no more
but The Buddha The Awakened One. He had seen things as they really are.
Sometimes he is spoken of as having attained Nirvana. Nirvana is - the
extinction of greed, the extinction of hate, the extinction of delusion.
Its true nature cannot be put into words; a person must know it for
himself in his own heart.
At first the Buddha was reluctant to tell
other people about what he had discovered. He felt they would not
understand. He was persuaded, however, that there were some 'with but a
little dust in their eyes' who might benefit from being told. He therefore
went to Isipatana (modern Sarnath, near Benares) where he delivered his
first sermon in a deer park. Thus began a forty-five year teaching career.
The Buddha taught all classes, conditions
and types of men and women, and, indeed, all beings. The way that he
taught is often called The Middle Way, because it teaches that we should
try and keep to a middle path between all extremes. Soon the Buddha
gathered around himself a following ready to give up everything to hear
his teachings and put them into practice. Thus was born the Sangha: the
community of Buddhist monks and nuns, which from the start was supported
by a large lay community.
As a man, the Buddha's life had eventually
to end. He passed away when he was about 80 at Kushinara. Naturally, his
followers were deeply grieved. His final words to them were: 'Impermanent
are all compounded things. Strive on heedfully.' Afterwards, he passed
into what Buddhists call his parinirvana or Full nirvana, a state that can
no more be conveyed in words than his first Nirvana.
Fundamental
Buddhist Teachings
Gautama was not a god, a prophet or any kind
of supernatural being. He was, as we have seen, one who was born, lived
and died a human being. But a remarkable human being, who discovered a way
of achieving true wisdom, compassion and freedom from suffering. Rather he
rediscovered a very old way that had always existed.
The Buddha did not teach that a God created
the Universe. Rather he pointed to a great Law or Dharma running through
everything that exists. It is by living in accordance with this Law that
true Wisdom and compassion and hence freedom from suffering may be
achieved. Suffering may only be overcome, however, by being met and
endured. In the Buddha's words: 'Suffering I teach and the way out of
suffering.' Fundamental Buddhist doctrines include the following:
The Three Signs of
Being
(1) Change,
(2) Suffering,
(3) No "I "
The first, Change, points out the basic fact
that nothing in the world is fixed or permanent. We ourselves are not the
same people, either physically, emotionally or mentally, that we were 10
years - or even 10 minutes ago! Living as we do, then, as shifting beings
upon shifting sands, it is not possible for us to find lasting security.
As regards the second Sign, we have already
seen how it was Suffering that sent the Buddha off on his great spiritual
quest, though suffering is not a very good translation of the original
word, dukkha. Dukkha implies the generally unsatisfactory and imperfect
nature of life. Please do not think, though, that Buddhists believe that
life is all suffering. They believe that there is joy in life, but know
that life can't be all joy; even in the most fortunate of lives there must
be suffering.
No-I, the third Sign, is a little more
difficult. Buddhists do not believe that there is anything everlasting or
unchangeable in human beings, no soul or self in which a stable sense of
'I' might anchor itself. The whole idea of 'I' is in fact a basically
false one that tries to set itself up in an unstable and temporary
collection of elements.
Take the analogy of a cart. A cart may be
broken down into its basic components -axle, wheels, shafts, sides, etc.
Then the cart is no more; all we have is a pile of components. In the same
way 'I' am made up of various elements or aggregates (skandhas): form
(body), perception, conception, volition and consciousness (mind). Upon
death these elements do not vanish from the face of the universe, they
form new combinations elsewhere. Thus the whole universe is a great,
ever-changing orchestration of interconnected movements without beginning
or end.
The Four Noble
Truths
(1) Suffering and unsatisfactoriness exist.
(2) The cause of Suffering and unsatisfactoriness exists.
(3) The cause may be brought to an end.
(4) The means whereby this may be achieved: The Noble Eightfold Path.
As we have seen, Buddhism begins with the
fundamental fact of suffering. But before we can do anything about it, we
must know its cause, which is the deeply-rooted sense of 'I' that we all
have. Because of this we are always struggling to get things that are
pleasurable and avoid things that are painful to find ease and security,
and generally to manipulate people and situations to be the way I want
them. And because the rest of the world does not necessarily fit in with
what I want, we often find ourselves cutting against the general flow of
things, and getting hurt and disappointed in the process. Suffering may be
therefore brought to an end by transcending this strong sense of 'I' so
that we come into greater harmony with things in general. The means of
doing this is The Noble Eightfold Path.
The Noble
Eightfold Path
(1) Right Seeing.
(2) Right Thought.
(3) Right Speech.
(4) Right Action.
(5) Right Livelihood.
(6) Right Effort
(7) Right Mindfulness.
(8) Right Contemplation.
Right Seeing is important at the start
because if we cannot see the truth of the Four Noble Truths then we can't
make any sort of beginning. Right Thought follows naturally from this.
'Right' here means in accordance with the facts: with the way things are -
which may be different from how I would like them to be. Right Thought,
Right Speech, Right Action and Right Livelihood involve moral restraint
refraining from lying, stealing, committing violent acts, earning one's
living in a way harmful to others, and things like that. Moral restraint
not only helps bring about general social harmony but also helps us
control and diminish the sense of 'I'. Like a greedy child, 'I' grows big
and unruly the more we let it have its own way. Next, Right Effort is
important because 'I' thrives on idleness, and in any case if we are not
prepared to exert ourselves we cannot hope to achieve anything at all. The
last two steps of the Path, Right Mindfulness and Right Contemplation,
represent the first footholds on the shore of No-I. They involve
meditation. In the most basic form of Buddhist meditation, a person sits
upright in a chair or cross-legged on a cushion on the floor. He quietly
watches the rise and fall of the breath. If thoughts, emotions or impulses
arise, he just observes them come up and go like clouds in a blue sky,
without rejecting them on the one hand or being carried away into
daydreaming or restlessness on the other.
The Three Fires
'Your house is a fire, burns with the Three
Fires; there is no dwelling in it' - thus spoke the Buddha in his great
Fire Sermon. The house he speaks of here is the human body; the three
fires that burn it are Desire/Wanting, Anger and Delusion. They are all
kinds of energy and are called 'fires' because, untamed, they can rage
through us and hurt us and other people too! Properly gentled through
spiritual training, however, they can be transformed into the genuine
warmth of real humanity.
In General
'Not to do any evil; to cultivate
good; to purify one's heart - this is the teaching of the Buddha.'
Although Buddhists value highly such virtues
as loving kindness, humanity, patience and giving, perhaps they value
compassion most of all. The idea of ahimsa or harmlessness is very closely
connected with compassion. The compassionate desire to cause no harm to
other beings (Buddhists would include animals, plants, inanimate objects
and even the world in general in this) has caused many Buddhists to become
pacifists or vegetarians, although they are not obliged to do so. In all
things Buddhism places great stress on self-reliance and the Buddha
himself told his followers not to believe a thing because he told it but
to test it for themselves.
Buddhism is also a very practical religion
and aims at helping people to live their lives; it is as much if not more
concerned with giving people things to do as with giving them things to
believe. Doing things like chanting a simple formula, visiting a temple to
make an offering or to perform prostrations - such simple acts help to
reduce a person's sense of 'I.'
Buddhists also try to practice the Buddhist
virtues actively in their everyday lives. The final goal of all Buddhist
practice is to bring about that same awakening that the Buddha himself
achieved.
The Spread of
Buddhism
Buddhists follow three main traditions.
There are those who adhere to the Theravada or Southern tradition, those
who adhere to the Mahayana or Northern tradition and those who adhere to
the Vajrayana or Tibetan tradition.
Long ago, Buddhism began to spread
southwards from its place of origin in northern India to Sri Lanka, Burma,
Thailand, Indo-China and other South East Asian countries. It also moved
northwards into the Himalayan kingdoms (Sikkim, Bhutan, Nepal), Tibet,
Mongolia and other parts of Central Asia, and also into China, Korea and
Japan.
This was a fortunate development because
Buddhism all but died out in India after the Moslem incursions of the 11th
Century ce. In more modern times, the spread of Communism has also
virtually obliterated Buddhism from various other countries where it was
once strongly established (e.g. China, Vietnam, Tibet, etc.). There is now
a resurgence of Buddhism in these countries. Nowadays, however, Buddhism
is attracting an increasing following in Europe and the Americas. In Asia,
it is thriving in countries like Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Korea and
Japan.
The Sangha
In Theravada (southern) Buddhist countries,
the monks (bhikkhus) are easily recognized because they wear the
characteristic orange robe, have their heads shaven, and go about
barefoot. They are given a new name and the robe, and will have to live
according to a code of 227 rules (the Vinaya). A monk may decide to
disrobe (cease being a monk) at any time.
Bhikkhus live a strict, simple life of
meditation, study and work, with very short hours of sleep and only one
meal a day. They do not own money or any possessions to speak of. They
help with the important task of teaching and assisting lay people, and
conducting ceremonies.
In Mahayana (northern) Buddhist countries
there are two main branches, the Tibetan with monks wearing the
characteristic maroon robe, and the Far Eastern, which also has an
unbroken line of nuns, where the robes are black or grey.
Buddhist Festivals
and Ceremonies
Buddhism has tended to merge into the
everyday life of the countries where it has taken root. Buddhist festivals
have religious, social and historical dimensions, and in some countries
(e.g. Nepal) these are numerous and very colourful. The highpoint of the
Buddhist calendar in Theravada countries is WESAK, when the birth,
Enlightenment and passing away of the Buddha are celebrated. This
generally falls on the full moon day of the month of May each year. In
Mahayana (northern) Buddhist countries, there are regional and sectarian
differences as to how these great events are celebrated.
There are no universal Buddhist birth,
marriage and death ceremonies (rites of passage). These also vary from
country to country and from traditition to traditition. In many places,
however, monks or priests will participate in some way, by chanting from
the scriptures (sutras), giving blessings, delivering a sermon and so on:
also the people involved may go to a Buddhist monastery or temple for some
kind of ceremony.
Suggested
further reading:
Introducing
Buddhism, Irmgard Schloegl
(The Zen Centre)
What the Buddha Taught,
Ven. Dr Walpola Rahula (Wisdom Books)
Buddhism,
Christmas Humphreys (Pelican)
A Short History of Buddhism,
Edward Conze (Allen & Unwin)
The Life of the Buddha, Ven. Dr.
Saddhatissa (Allen & Unwin)
An Introduction to Buddhism, Ven.
Dr. Saddhatissa (The Buddhist Society)
Buddhism for Schools and Colleges Papers,
Anil D Goonewardene (The Buddhist Society)
The Dhammapada,
(The Buddhist Society)
Buddhist Scriptures, ed. Edward
Conze (Penguin)
The Buddhist Handbook, John
Snelling (Rider/Century Paperbacks)
The Buddhist Directory, (The
Buddhist Society)
The above books are normally available from
the Buddhist Society U.K.. Send for Introductory Book List, adrress:
The Buddhist Society,
58 Eccleston Square, London SW1V 1PH
U.K.
tel: 0171 834 5858
fax: 0171 976 5238
Source: The Buddhist
Society U.K.,
http://www.buddsoc.org.uk/
Update : 01-05-2002
