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Buddhism
The Story
• There once was a prince
living in a palace who had the
distinct sense that something
was wrong.
• His name was Siddhartha
Gautama.
• He probably lived sometime
in the 6th century B.C.
The Story
• His father went to great
lengths to shield his son from
anything that might upset
him.
• Gautama lived as a coddled
prince enjoying what, by all
appearances, is a life of
champagne and caviar.
• He had a beautiful house,
wife and son.
The Story
• But in the midst of all this
beauty Gautama could not
stop the questions from
bubbling up.
• “How did I get here?”
The Story
• And so he informed his father
that he wanted to go outside
the palace to see the real
world.
• Reluctantly his father agreed
to send him on a tour outside
the confines of the palace,
with the accompaniment of a
guide.
The Story
• On his 1st trip he saw a sick person and asked
his guide, “What is that?”
• His guide answered, “A sick person. Each of
us falls ill. You and I alike. No one is exempt
from sickness.”
The Story
• On his 2nd trip he saw an old man and asked
his guide, “What is that?”
• His guide answers, “An old person. Each of us
gets old. You and I alike. No one is exempt
from old age.”
The Story
• On his 3rd trip he saw a corpse and asked his
guide, “What is that?”
• His guide answered, “A dead person. Each of
us dies. You and I alike. No one is exempt
from death.”
The Story
• On his 4th trip he saw a
wandering holy man and
asked his guide, “What is
that?”
• His guide answered, “A
wandering ascetic who has
left behind spouse, family,
job and home in search of
spiritual liberation.”
The Story
• For Siddhartha these sights brought on a “midlife
crisis” as he decided there must be more to life
than profit, power, pleasure, prestige and the
endless cycle of old age, birth, disease, and death.
• So, at the age of 29, he vowed to go search that
out.
• The event is call the “Great Departure.”
The Story
• Siddhartha left his father, wife and son, walked
out of his palace, rode to the border of what
would have been his vast inheritance, shaved
his head, took off his fine clothes, and took on
the life of a wandering holy man.
The Story
• For years he meandered around North India,
studying with various yogis/holy men
philosophical Hinduism) searching for a
solution to the problem of human suffering
as he whittled his body down to skin and
bones.
The Story
• But the more he disciplined his body, the
more it desperately it cried out for food and
sleep.
• He decided to strike out on his own forging a
“Middle Path.”
The Story
• At the age of 35, after 6
years as a “renouncer”
he sat crossed-legged
under a tree in Bodhgaya
in North India and vowed
not to get up until he had
found the secret of
everlasting wandering
from rebirth to rebirth.
The Story
• After 49 days, awakening
came upon him.
• From that moment on he
was “the Buddha.”
• “Buddha” is a title (like
“Christ”) and it means
“Awakened One.”
The Story
• “The Buddha” then returned to his itinerant
life, wandering in silence for days.
• He then decided he needed to help others
see what he had seen and experience what
he had experienced so that they could also
escape from “this sorrow-piled mountainwall of old age, birth, disease, and death.”
• So he delivered his sermon in which he stated
“The Four Noble Truths” of Buddhism.
The Four Noble Truths
1. Life is marked by suffering/anxiety.
• All temporary things and states are
unsatisfying.
2. Suffering’s origin is desire.
• We crave and cling to things and states;
thereby, we're continuously reborn.
The Four Noble Truths
3. Suffering can be eliminated by eliminating
desire.
• If we stop craving and clinging, we won't be
reborn.
4. The path to the elimination of suffering is the
Noble Eightfold Path.
• Behaving decently, not acting on impulses, and
practicing mindfulness and meditation, which
help with this self-control.
The First Noble Truth
• Human existence is characterized by
suffering/anxiety.
• Reincarnation is an unending wheel of
friction and frustration.
• Each of us, no matter how rich or poor/strong
or weak, is going to get sick, grow old and
die.
• Because nothing is permanent, nothing can
permanently satisfy us.
The First Noble Truth
• Because things change and pass away,
everything and everyone we love will
someday be no more.
• The happiness we experience is fleeting.
The Second Noble Truth
• Suffering’s origin is desire.
• Everything in this world is interdependent,
linked in a great chain of cause and effect
(karma).
• We suffer because we close our eyes to the
way the world really is.
• We pretend we are independent when we
are really interdependent.
The Second Noble Truth
• We pretend that changing things are
unchanging.
• We suffer because we grasp after people,
places and things as if they can redeem us
from suffering.
• We suffer because we cling to beliefs and
judgments.
• In Buddhism “you have changed” is a
description of what is happening every
moment of every day.
The Third Noble Truth
• Suffering can be eliminated by eliminating
desire.
• We must stop clinging to things that are
constantly changing in order to achieve nirvana.
• By extinguishing thirst, grasping, suffering,
greed, hate, delusion and rebirth we can reach
bliss that is beyond description and peace.
• Nirvana is not simply a static place you go to
after death, but can be achieved in this lifetime.
The Forth Noble Truth
• The path to the elimination of suffering and
to nirvana is the Noble Eightfold Path.
• It is the “Middle Path” that steers clear of the
extremes of self-indulgence and selfmortification.
The Eightfold Path
The Eightfold Path
Buddhism
• After Buddha’s sermon on the “Four Noble
Truths” and the “Eightfold Path” those who
decided to join Buddha’s community started
the Buddhist mission.
• For the next 45 years Buddha wandered
around the Indian subcontinent, turning the
wheel of dharma (teaching) and gathering
monks and nuns into a motley crew of
wandering beggars.
Buddhism
• Buddha died at the age of 80.
• Just before passing into what Buddhists refer
to as the “final nirvana” he asked his
followers not to grieve for him.
Buddhism
• People can solve the human problem on their
own, without god(s) or divine revelation.
• Buddhism is the most psychological of all the
great religions.
• Buddhist tradition places its emphasis on
experience over belief.
The four Sacred Places of Buddhism
•
•
•
•
Lumbini where Buddha was born.
Bodh Gaya where Buddha was enlightened.
Sarnath where Buddha gave his first sermon.
Kusinagara where Buddha died.
The four Sacred Places of Buddhism
• Devout Buddhists make the circuit of going
on pilgrimage to these sacred places.
Buddhism
• Buddhism became the first of the great
religions to develop the institution of
monasticism.
• Buddhism spread across the Indian
subcontinent, and places like Central Asia,
China, Korea, Japan, Sri Lanka, Tibet.
• It rejected the caste system, was indifferent
to the (Hindu) scriptures, ceremonies and
status of high caste Brahmins.
Buddhism
• Buddhism spread because it had a story of
someone woke out from this world of illusion
and had solved the problem of human
suffering and the cycle of life, death, rebirth,
life, death…..
• Today about 7% of the world’s population are
Buddhists, making it the world’s 4th largest
religion behind Christianity, Islam, and
Hinduism.
Buddhist Beliefs
• Like Hindus, Buddhists trace the human
problem to the karma fueled cycle of life,
death and rebirth.
• Rebirth is undesirable because life is marked
by suffering.
• The problem Buddhism seeks to overcome is
suffering.
• The goal is nirvana, which literally means
“blowing out” – to extinguish suffering.
Buddhist Beliefs
• Some Buddhists are deeply engaged in
questions of rebirth and the afterlife, but
most focus on the here and now.
• Suffering is the problem and nirvana is the
solution.
• We suffer by “ignorant cravings” by mistaking
changing things for unchanging ones.
• We then cling desperately to these
supposedly unchanging forms and experience
suffering.
Buddhist Beliefs
• Suffering arises from wanting something other
than what is.
• Even that which seems most certain – the self –
is actually a figment of the imagination.
• Where Descartes said, “I think therefore I am.”
• The Buddhist says – “If you think carefully
enough you will see that you are not.”
• According to Buddhists “the self” does not exist,
and the sooner we “wake-up” and stop clinging
to the illusionary “self”, the sooner we will
escape suffering.
Buddhist Beliefs
• We have no soul/self.
• There is no “I” or “you” as if it were some unchanging
essence.
• I/You is nothing more than a conventional name attached
to an ever-changing combination of separate parts.
• i.e. A car is composed of its frame and wheels and axles.
• The term car is an agreed-upon names for the coming
together of various objects, but no car exists.
Buddhist Beliefs
• In the same way “I” is a conventional
designation for the coming together of hair,
head, hands, ideas and emotions.
• Outside of these no essence of “me” is to found.
• The false belief that “I” am some permanent
unchanging, independent essence unleashes all
sorts of untold suffering.
• We put an end to ignorance and grasping and
suffering by realizing the lie of the false self.
How to Achieve Nirvana
• Buddhists use a variety of techniques to
achieve this goal.
• Some chant.
• Some use visualization.
• Some puzzle over mind benders.
• Buddhists are best known for their practice of
meditation.
• Of all the styles of Buddhist meditation, the
simplest is following your breath.
How to Achieve Nirvana
• Another popular Buddhist practice is
“mindfulness” meditation.
• Here, instead of your breath, you follow your
feelings or thoughts or sensations.
• Simply be mindful of things as they are, to
observe how conditions arise and pass away.
• “No feeling is final” and no thought or
sensation either.
How to Achieve Nirvana
• Metta is another form of Buddhist meditation.
• It means unconditional love or love without
attachment or expectation of return.
• You begin to feel unattached love for yourself.
• You move on to cultivate it for a friend.
• Then you feel it for someone you neither like or
dislike.
• Then for someone you dislike or even hate.
• Finally, you extend unattached love to all beings
everywhere in the world and beyond.
Buddha, Dharma, Sangha
Three Jewels
– I take refuge in the Buddha (awakening).
– I take refuge in the Dharma (teaching).
– I take refuge in the Sangha (community).
– The Buddha is a human being in the
earliest forms of awakening.
– In Hinduism, dharma means duty. In
Buddhism it refers primarily to teaching:
“To know things as they are.”
The Evolution of Buddhism
• The earliest forms of Buddhism did not speak
of god(s) or stress the supernatural. They saw
the Buddha as a human being.
• Buddhism later incorporated many of the
ideas of Hinduism, creating an elaborate
pantheon of Buddhas and other spiritual
beings with supernatural powers.
The Main Schools of Buddhism
Theravadins
The only way to achieve nirvana was to
withdraw from the worlds of family, work, sex,
and money into the celibate life of a monk or
nun. For this reason, some refer to the
Theravada path as “Monastic Buddhism.”
The Main Schools of Buddhism
Mahayana
The Mahayana branch also has its monastics,
but renunciation is optional. Ordinary
husbands and wives, employees and bosses
express their devotion to new Buddhas by
visiting temples and reading new scriptures.
Today this is the most popular Buddhist school.
Mahayana Buddhists Today
• Believe they can win nirvana
through the grace of a
Buddha of their choosing.
• The most popular Buddha
(other than the first one) is
the Buddha of Infinite Light
who can create, out of his
immeasurable storehouse of
good karma, a celestial
abode of bliss.
The Main Schools of Buddhism
Zen Buddhism
The word Zen means meditation.
In this deceptively difficult practice, you just sit.
You don’t try to follow your breath or to see
into the nature of reality. You just sit idle for a
time without thinking.
Zen Buddhism
• “The Koan” – a second Zen practice.
• A Zen master will pose a puzzle to a student:
“What is the sound of one hand clapping?”;
“What was your face before your mother or
father was born?”; “What would the Buddha
have said if there was no one to hear and no
opportunity to teach?”
• Students will then try to offer a response that
is genuine, spontaneous and unrehearsed.
The Koan
Emptiness Teaching
• Things appear to have permanent,
unchanging essences. But as much
as we hate to admit it, nothing is
really permanent, and everything
is constantly changing.
• From the perspective of Absolute
Truth, everything is empty.
Ultimately, there is no distinction
between you and your best friend.
Emptiness Teaching
• There is no unchanging essence to
you or me.
• In this branch of Buddhism you
don’t actually ‘become’ a Buddha,
you simply cease to be deluded of
what you already are.
• Being a Buddha is not being a
spiritual superman, but becoming
a true human being.
Emptiness Teaching
• Emptiness frees us from
enslavement to people,
judgements, objects and ideas.
• It even frees us from the
person of the Buddha and the
institutions of Buddhism itself.
Emptiness Teaching
• Why should clinging to the
Buddha cause us less
suffering than clinging to
god(s) or self or boyfriend
or political party or
ideology or nation?
• Trust only what you
yourself have seen to be
true in your own
experiences.
Emptiness
• The Four Noble Truths and the
Eightfold Path and
Buddhahood itself are also
empty.
• We should abandon
attachment to every teaching
and every practice.
Emptiness
• To experience bliss all we need
to do is open the heart to
emptiness.
• What the experience of
emptiness teaches us is that
there is nowhere to go, nothing
to wait for.
• This is it.
• The emptiness of emptiness –
emptiness is empty too.