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BUDDHISM:
WHAT IS ESSENTIAL?
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE HUMAN?
WEEK 4
ARHU 302: WORLD RELIGIONS
HISTORICAL FOUNDING
• 5th century (400s) BCE . . . Founder: Siddhartha Gautama
• The book by Herman Hesse “Siddhartha” (skinny little book)
• Geographical : Northern India
• Social Class of Siddhartha: Wealthy Kshatriya family
• Religious Context: Vedic - Brahmanical Hinduism
• Varnashrama Dharma
• Sacrificial Worship
• Ideas of samsara, moksha, karma, meditation, yoga, asceticism
ASKED: WHO ARE YOU?
• Are you a God? No
• Are you an angel? No
• Are you a human? No
• … then who are you?
I am awake
SIDDHARTHA’S AWAKENING TO REALITY
• “The Buddha” on Amazon Prime – great biography
• Little Siddhartha could not see reality for what it truly was
• He disobeyed his father and went out to see the world outside
of his “comfort zone” and had 4 Passing Sights
• Old man: reality of age
• Sick man: reality of disease
• Corpse: reality of death
• Sanyasin: renunciation as a path to peace
• “Life is subject to age and death. Where is the realm of life that is not subject to age and
death?”
6 YEARS OF QUESTIONING
• Siddhartha leaves his home, renouncing
his privilege and possessions, wife & son
• Seeks spiritual teachers (very common path)
• India abounded with lots of new teachers and philosophies
• Asceticism: the use of physical techniques and constraints
such as vigils, fasting, intentional poverty, sexual restraint,
and other austerities in order to cultivate inner, spiritual
and/or mental self-control, enlightenment, and/or freedom
from anxiety.
Iconography: fasting/emaciated Buddha
Gestures: seated, dhyana mudra (meditation gesture)
Date: late 1st - 3rd century, 50 CE - 299 CE
MAJOR QS:
• Why is there suffering?
• Why do humans die?
• Do the Gods exist?
• Is there a soul, and if so, what is its nature?
• How can we avoid suffering?
THE MIDDLE WAY  AWAKENING
• Neither indulgence nor denial
• Meditation under the Bodhi Tree
• I won’t get up until I know
• Perception of the “grand design” of the system of
rules governing reality.
• Basic Ideas:
• Karma
• Anitya - Change
• Anatman – “No-Self”
• Duhkha – Suffering
• All compounded things decay. Work out your own
salvation with diligence.
Copyright Holder: Huntington, John C. and Susan L.
Ohio State University, Huntington Archive
THE BUDDHIST COMMUNITY
• Buddha – an ideal human being whom
others should emulate; a great teacher.
• Sangha – an order of monks and nuns
which focuses on wandering, begging,
teaching.
• Lay people: from the Greek lavoV “people:”
members of a religious tradition who are
not “set apart” from the world in a special
way; one who is not ordained or a member
of the professional religious class.
• Dharma - the collected teachings of the
Buddha concerning how one should live
• Many tried to turn HIM into a God.
Allie Caulfield
Wikimedia Commons
A procession of Buddhist monks walks through downtown Luang Prabang in Laos.
September 2009
OVERNIGHT
• He died at 80: 45 years of teaching
• Overnight the religion of Buddhism arrives
• 6 aspects of the “typical” religion
• Authority
• Ritual
• Speculation
• Tradition
• Grace – reality is “on your side”
• Mystery
BUDDHA’S RELIGION
• No authority
• Devoid of ritual
• Skirted speculation
• Devoid of tradition
• Intense self effort
• Devoid of the supernatural
BUDDHIST THEORY BASICS
PRATĪTYASAMUTPĀDA: DEPENDENT ORIGINATION
Effort on the part of Buddhism or the Buddha to be
empirical rather than faith-based.
It is a practice.
“Arising on the ground of the preceding cause”:
All events, objects, ideas
depend for their existence on the conditions which preceded them.
This principle of “how everything works” provides the basis for all Buddhist
thought on the nature and origin of Suffering .
The fundamental precept of all Buddhism.
ALL other theories rest on this one!
A CAUSAL THEORY
How things happen; what conditions lead to other conditions
How to be free from suffering; “What is it that brings about the
cessation of death? The cessation of birth?”
Also a psychological mapping of the working of the human mind
Pragmatic
Psychological
Egalitarian
Directed at individuals
THE 12 LINKS OF
THE CHAIN OF
DEPENDENT
ORIGINATION
1. Ignorance
2. Karmic activities
3. Consciousness
4. Mind and matter
5. Six sense-doors
6. Contact
7. Sensation
8. Craving
9. Attachment
10. Becoming
11. Birth; rebirth
12. Old age, death
PAST
PRESENT
FUTURE
BOISVERT, MATHIEU. "Pratītyasamutpāda (Dependent Origination)." Encyclopedia of
Buddhism. Ed. Robert E. Buswell, Jr. Vol. 2. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2003.
669-670. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 25 Feb. 2014.
• Ignorance depends on Karma.
• Karma depends on consciousness.
• Consciousness depends on name and form.
• On name and form depend the 5 organs of sense.
• On the 5 organs of sense depends contact.
• On contact depends sensation.
• On sensation depends desire.
• On desire depends clutching.
• On clutching depends existence
• On existence depends birth.
• On birth depends old age and death, sorrow, and despair.
VIEWS OF THE SELF: ATMAN VS. ANATMAN
• ATMAN (Vedic and Puranic texts) – The permanent, unchanging,
immortal component of human personality which leaves body at death
• ANATMAN (Buddhism) – “Non-Self”
• The idea that ALL THINGS are conditioned, constructed, subject to
impermanence, including “the self”
• Humans seem more or less stable/consistent on the surface of things,
but this is only a sense-based construction of our imagination
• REBIRTH: NOT “transmigration” of an eternal soul, but merely a
“reconstituting” of your previous elements – the continued “working out”
of the karmic forces that produced “you” through time
THE SKANDHAS/KANDHAS – “AGGREGATES”
Skandha
Effect
Forms
Material Substance
Feeling
Sensual Experience of the World &
Emotional Attachments
Perception
Ideas, Desires, Sights & Sounds of
the World
Will
Our Intentions (Result: Karma)
Consciousness
States of Mind
END PRODUCT: YOU!
THE HUMAN CONDITION: SAMSARA & ANITYA
• Samsara – “Wandering” & Anitya – “Change”
• All beings are wandering through cycles of death & rebirth
• We are constituted and reconstituted as a collection of
aggregates (Skandhas) during our lifetimes, produced
by the chain of Dependent Origination (Pratityasamutpada)
• This cycle is characterized chiefly by the experience of
Duhkha – “Suffering”
DUKHA – SUFFERING CAUSED BY CRAVING
• Existence in Time leads to suffering, because
the essence of time is change
• We become attached to things that change,
hoping that they will be permanent
• We believe that our sensual pleasures will bring
lasting happiness.
• We grow attached to the illusion of our own
permanence, and so we fear death.
• We attempt to avoid change & suffering, so we
desire to avoid or end the suffering we experience.
Dorothea Lange
Migrant Mother series. Woman [Florence Thomson] with children in a tent. Nipomo, California. 1936.
Credits: Dorothea Lange; The Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division
LIFE AS IT IS TYPICALLY LIVED IS UNFULFILLING
AND FILLED WITH INSECURITIES
The trauma of birth
The pathology of sickness
The morbidity of decrepitude
The phobia of death
Being tied to what one dislikes
To be separated from what one loves
THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS
1. All Life is Suffering (Duhkha)
2. Suffering comes from Desire/Attachment
3. The way to end suffering is to cease desiring
4. The Eightfold Path (next slide) is the means to cease desiring
NIRVANA
• He wrote nothing
• He retired daily, annually to “noble silence”
• Nirvana means “to blow out” “to extinguish” … Deprived of fuel, the fire goes out. This is
Nirvana.
• What is extinguished? THE BOUNDARIES OF THE FINITE SELF.
• What remains? Incomprehensible, indescribable, inconceivable, unutterable
• IS NIRVANA GOD?
• Some conclude that since Buddhism professes no God, it cannot be a religion
• Others, that since Buddhism is obviously a religion, religion does not require God
WILL
• Throughout the causal sequence the WILL remains free
• To Buddha, the mind is more basic than matter
Regard this phantom world
As a star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp—a phantom—and a dream (p. 117)
THE 8-FOLD PATH
CHANGE
Right Concentration
TARGET
Right Intent
Right Effort
ASSEMBLE
Right Views
Right Mindfulness
OPERATE
Right Speech
Right Conduct
Right Livelihood
LIFE AFTER DEATH OF THE BODY?
• P. 118
• Some problems are posed so clumsily by our language as to preclude solution by their very formulation.
• Extinguish a fire – did it go north, south, east, or west?
THE GOAL OF BUDDHISM: NIRVANA
• “Extinguishment” /
“To Put Out”/ “Blow
Out”/ “Cool Down”
• The Extinction of
everything that defines
the person as subject
to birth, death, and
suffering (skandhas)
• Buddhist Definition:
Release from thirst
of unquenchable
desires and pain of
cycle of Samsara
(birth and rebirth)
• The elimination of
“thirst” upon Bodhi
(“awakening”) Thus
the cause for future
rebirth is destroyed
Reclining Buddha, 12th century ce, Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka.
Credit: Robert Harding Picture Library/Getty Images
Nirvana is “Total Death” – Release from the cycle;
one achieves Nirvana in life
and then departs from the cycle at the moment of death
SIMPLICITY OF BUDDHA  COMPLICATED
Buddhist community emerged out of the Buddha’s collection of
followers; councils and collections of commentaries developed
the Buddha’s ideas into a complex tradition, which fragmented
with opinions about interpretation and ritual practice
VARIOUS “BREAK OFFS” – CHART ON P. 126
• Mahayana – the Big Raft, the Great Souled. Ghandi. As if Buddha were great souled: a supreme sage
and then ELABORATE cosmologies replete with many-leveled heavens and hells
Korea, Japan, Tibet
• Hinayana – the little raft.
The way of the Elders. The Buddhism taught by Buddha
• Theravada – progress is up to the individual, his or her understanding and application. Humanity is “on
its own”: no Gods to help.
Self-reliance
Wisdom is profound insight into the nature of reality and the causes of suffering.
It is the very humanness of Buddha that is the foundation.
SOUTH ASIAN COUNTIRES (Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia)
• The Sangha -- community
• There is more from the book to come – but this is a good start
