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On Buddha and Buddhism Buddha, the man, is perhaps the best example of a mere human being who lived up to his highest divine potentials. Born a Hindu in 563 B.C. in what is now Nepal, his given name was Siddhartha, and his family name was Gautama. Legend has it that when Siddhartha Gautama was born, a prophesy reached his father’s ears that he would either become a great world conqueror or a great spiritual leader. His father, who ruled a small kingdom in what was then India, wanted none of the latter for his son, and set out to make sure that the gifted and handsome boy was raised in such a way that the his destiny would fulfill his father’s dreams for earthly power. Siddhartha’s upbringing is said to have been luxurious, and all efforts were taken to see that his every desire was indulged. But despite his sequestered youth, it was inevitable that he would ultimately become aware of the realities of suffering in the world. And sure enough, when one day Siddhartha escaped the attention of his attendants and the confines of the palace, he discovered as he wandered the streets f a nearby town the realities of poverty, disease, old age, and death. And when this knowledge took root in the heart of the thoughtful boy, so did the many other paths he might take through life. With this revelation, Siddhartha lost his appetite for the pleasures and indulgences he had enjoyed throughout his early life, and renounced the external riches that had nearly spoiled his character, and turned him into a person even he could not respect. Siddhartha remembered having had an experience as a boy during which he achieved an uncommon level of absorption, one which he recognized as the first step on “the way to enlightenment.” It was as much out of nostalgia for more of this deep experience, as it was disillusionment with the overindulgence of life as he knew it, that put him on the path of spiritual growth…not merely toward a new philosophy, but a ”change into a different kind of creature.”(Smith, 75) He desired to change himself from one with a poorly focused mind into one that sees clearly by “direct perception,” to be free of the “three poisons” of “’extirpation of delusion, craving, and hostility.’”(Smith, 75) Siddhartha Gautama was twenty-nine when he bid his wife and child silent goodbye in the night, and went out into the world in search of truth. He shed his fine clothes and set out first to learn what he could from his elders, the Hindu masters. He joined a band of ascetics, and for six years outdid his teachers in austerity. But eventually Gautama grew weak, and came to see the wisdom of what he would call ‘The Middle Way’ between the extremes of self-sacrifice and indulgence. [*golden mean…] Sidharths’s final enlightenment story is “reminiscent of Jesus in the desert.”(Smith, 63) Sensing that a breakthrough was at hand, Gautama sat down one evening under what came to be known as the Bodhi (enlightenment) tree, and faced the final temptations of Mara, the evil one. These included sexual temptation and all manner of human pleasures, as well as shame for the audacity of his quest. But Gautama was not discouraged. When tempted finally to give up his mission on the grounds that mere human beings would never get his message, Buddha resolved that, “There will be some who will understand.”(Smith, 63) And so his temptations were ended, and with this Gautama became Buddha, the enlightened one. For the next 45 years, Buddha “maintained an interminable schedule of public preaching and private counseling.”(Smith, 63) His life “was powered by a strong sense of mission,” for “he saw in his mind’s eye the whole of humanity – people milling and lost, desperately in need of help and guidance.”(Smith, 64) Buddha practiced a “pattern of withdrawal and return,” in which he moved between his work with others and his work on himself. Each day, month, and year was divided up into portions, and just as “each year was…divided between nine months of teaching and three months in retreat,” so “His daily cycle, too, followed this mold. Three times each day he withdrew from his duties to meditate.”(Smith, 63) Like Socrates, “Buddha was gifted with preternatural insight into character,” and while “surface distinctions meant so little to him that he often failed to notice them,” he was able to see, where he found it, “the marks of sainthood” in others too -- ‘shining within [them] like a lamp in a jar.”(Smith, 64) He was “[A]ble to size up, almost at sight, the people who approached him, he seemed never to be taken in by appearances but would move at once to what was essential.”(Smith, 64) Like Socrates, Buddha did not put himself above others, and “made no attempt to conceal his temptations and weaknesses – how difficult it had been to attain enlightenment, how narrow the margin by which he had won through, how fallible he still remained.”(Smith, 64) “It is perhaps inaccurate to speak of the Buddha as modest, for he knew he had risen to a plane of understanding above others.”(Smith, 64) But he was humble in knowing this was not out of the reach of all, and lived to set an example. In his self-regulating humility, he was not above asking his students, “I summon you, disciples, to tell me: have you any fault to find with me in word or in deed?”(Smith, 64) No one was ever more human, but even still, “there was constant pressure during his lifetime to turn him into a god.”(Smith, 64) He was often asked, ‘What are you?’ ‘Are you a god? An angel? A saint? Buddha answered, ‘I am awake.’(Smith, 60) And so Buddha got his name from “The Sanskrit root budh,” which “ means to awake and to know.”(Smith, 60) Buddha, like sages before him, “saw ignorance, not sin, but as life’s prime adversary.”(Smith, 75) “All we are is the result of what we have thought.’”(Smith, 75, from The Dhammapada) Feelings, moods, and emotions are “not permanent parts of us,”(Smith, 75) and while it is wise to understand and even enjoy them, it is unwise to react to them in such a way as to give them power over our actions. To “keep the mind in control of the senses and impulses, rather than being driven by them,”(Smith, 75) is necessary to overcome ignorance, because “freedom – liberation from unconscious, mechanical existence – is the product of self-awareness.”(Smith, 75) Buddha was a rationalist, to be sure, and indeed, “Every problem that came his way was subjected to cool, dispassionate analysis,” but it was “balanced by a Franciscan tenderness…and infinite compassion.”(Smith, 64) Buddha refused to speculate on what cannot be known in this life. Buddha’s teachings were “devoid of the supernatural” elements that so many religions are founded on. Buddha did not adhere to the idea of a personal God, but did seem to think that something like it (what one follower likened to the wind) does exist, but defies expression, and indeed is “incomprehensible, indescribable, inconceivable and unutterable.’”(Smith, 77) Like Aristotle, he distinguished between “the formed, the made, the compounded” (Smith, 77), and the “Unborn, neither become nor created nor formed,” putting the Godhead, Brahman, and nirvana in this camp of that which is unconditioned, “permanent, stable, imperishable, immovable, ageless, deathless, unborn, and unbecome.” (Smith, 77) He also abhorred the apparent fatalism of the reincarnation cycle that suggested there was nothing could be done to advance the process but endure it. By his lights, the body has no soul, per se (atta in Pali, atman in Sanskrit) that moves and survives it. The spirit’s existence after death is neither of the extremes we tend to wonder about, not a continuation of consciousness, nor an end to it. “Authentic child of India, he did not doubt that reincarnation was a fact, but he disagreed with the way his Brahamic contemporaries conceived of it – as some sort of psychic pellet that migrated from body to body. Rather, his alternative view is captured by the image of a wave.”(Smith, 78) “Verb rather than nouns fit his world view, for everything is in process, everything is in change… everything is impermanent, transitory, and yes, dying.”(Smith, 78) “’Waves follow one another in eternal pursuit.’” “It is a single wave, and “Yet at no two moments are its molecules identical.”(Smith, 78) Likewise, ’Life is a journey; death is a return to earth. The universe is an inn; the passing years are like dust.’”(Smith, 78) “We cannot say much with certainty [about life after death, but…” while identification with one’s historical experience may disappear, experience itself may continue and be enhanced. “Nothing that is in my next incarnation will be identical with what is in me now, but I will still be ‘me’ in the way the wave retained its identity while moving through it successive stages… What continues from life to life and unites them is…a causal chain of karmic propensities. Causal connection…but no entity…passes from life to life…subject always, never object.”(Smith, 78) “As an inconsequential dream vanishes completely on awakening, as the stars go out in deference to the morning sun, so individual awareness will be eclipsed in the blazing light of total realization.”(Smith, 79) Buddha postulated Four Nobel Truths. They include: 1. Recognizing that “life as it is normally lived,”(Smith, 70) is suffering, or dukkha, which “restricts movement (blocks creativity), and causes undue friction (interpersonal conflict).”(Smith, 71) This is worst when “life’s shoe pinches” most during disease, trauma, old age and approaching death. (Smith, 71) But “There is a path to the end of suffering,” he insisted. “Tread it!”(Smith, 68) 2. Recognizing that life can be regenerated, as we come to understand tanha, the cause of dukkha, that is, the desire for private good, “selfish inclinations that make demands for oneself at the expense, if necessary, of others.”(Smith, 71) In this sense, “tis the self by which we suffer.”(Smith, 71); 3. Recognizing that tanha, the cause of suffering, which is selfishness and narrow self-interest, can be overcome; 4. As Buddha was a physician of the spirit, Buddhism treats the symptoms that cause suffering, conflict, and diminish creativity as “life’s crippling disability.”(Smith, 72) Diagnosis of the cause is tanha, or ego, “the devouring cancer that causes sorrow.”(Smith, 71) Thus, it is the craving for that which isn’t actually good for us that makes us unhappy. But we can remove the cause by understanding and pursuing what is actually good for us -- and the cure involves a course of treatment that is the Eightfold Path.(Smith, 72) The Eightfold Path includes: 1. Right knowledge, which is to say, begin with the lay of the land, things “as they really are,” which is knowledge of the Four Nobel Truths, the fourth of which is the Eightfold Path; 2. Right aspiration, notice what it is we really want, not merely the means, but the ends, rising above distracting wants, rising above toward liberation; 3. Right speech, one of three “switches that control our destiny,”(Smith, 74) little do most of us realize how often we deviate from truth, let alone use language to mean-spirited ends; 4. Right behavior, means do not overindulge in that which corrupts the spirit. Some take this to mean abstinence, but as balance is a key value in the Buddhist way, it is more likely that the Golden Mean should govern our desires; 5. Right livelihood, as work occupies so much of our waking attention, one must choose an occupation that does not conflict with or pull against our spiritual progress, such as various form so of profiteering.(Smith, 75); 6. Right effort, meaning “moral exertion” of the will. Buddha said, “Those who follow the Way might well follow the example of an ox that marches through the deep mire carrying a heavy load. He is tired, but his steady, forward-looking gaze will not relax until he comes out of the mire. Only then does he relax. …remember that…you can escape misery only by earnestly and steadfastly preserving in the Way.”(Smith, 75); 7. Right mindfulness, meaning continuous self-examination so “to see everything ‘as it really is.’”(Smith, 75) 8. Right absorption, not unlike raja yoga in its goal.(Smith, 75) “Unlike Hinduism, which emerged by slow, spiritual accretion, the religion of the Buddha appeared overnight. In large measure it was a reaction to Hindu perversions.”(Smith, 67) Buddha “ridiculed the Brahamic rites” as mere superstitions, mere “trappings – irrelevant to the hard, demanding job of ego-reduction.”(Smith) Indeed, Buddhism, as a religion, “arose out of celebration and its opposite, bereavement, both of which cry out for collective expression. When tragedy strikes or we all but explode with joy, we want to be with other people.”(Smith, 67) All the same, Buddha rejected the six features of religion that Hinduism and most other organized forms since have championed, including authority, ritual, explanations, traditions, grace, and mystery. In Buddha’s day, the authority of religion “had become hereditary and exploitative,” rituals “had become mechanical,” explanations “had lost their experiential base,” tradition “had become dead weight,” grace “was being misread in ways that undercut human responsibility,” and mystery had led to a “perverse obsession with miracles.”(Smith, 67) Buddhism emerged in the beginning as “a religion almost entirely devoid of each” of these. Buddha rejected authority and tradition, “challenged individuals to take responsibility for their lives,”(Smith 68) He denied that mere grace can save us, and though that “mystery was confused with mystification.”(Smith, 67) He taught, rather, that “’This our worldly life is an activity of nirvana itself. Not the slightest distinction exists between them.’”(Smith, 96) “’This earth on which we stand, is the promised Lotus Land, And this very body is the body of the Buddha.’”(Smith, 96) So “Do not go by what is handed down, nor by the authority of your traditional teachings,” he said. “When you know of yourselves, ‘These teachings are good or not good,’ only then accept or reject them.”(Smith, 69) Rather than follow the directions of a priesthood, he said, “Do not accept what you hear by report, Be lamps unto yourselves.”(Smith, 68) 68) And like Socrates and other who have taken this position, Buddha “accepted in return the resentment, queries, and bewilderment his stance provoked.”(Smith, 63) Buddha “did not commit his teaching to writing,”(Smith, 77) but within a century and a half a plethora of writers poured forth ideas that were “consistent enough to permit us to think that they came from the Buddha himself.”(Smith, 77) (Examples of Buddhism’s culminating texts include the Perfection of Wisdom sutras, Pali Canon, and The Dhammapada.) Different forms of Buddhism share a common metaphor in understanding the path to spiritual growth as being a voyage across life’s river from the bank of ignorance to the shore of wisdom and enlightenment. The two shores of this river of ignorance…are one human, one divine, and crossing it, one sees that the practices of Buddhism (e.g. the Eightfold Path) “are vitally important to the individual while he is making the crossing, but they lose their relevance for those who have arrived.”(Smith, 95) “Travel…erases lines of division, the [traveler] now sees in his original world [what] he had to travel to first discover.”(Smith, 96) “The realm of the gods is no distinct place; it is where the traveler now stands. And if he returns to his original home, he sees it from the perspective his travels have imparted.”(Smith, 96) “Where to eagle vision the river can still be seen, it is seen as connecting the two banks, rather than separating them.”(Smith, 96) “Insight has dissolved the opposites that reason pushed apart.”(Smith, 96) “The noisy disjunction between acceptance and rejection having been stilled, every moment is affirmed for what it actually it. It is Indra’s cosmic net, laced with jewels at every intersection; each jewel reflects the others, together with the reflections in the others.”(Smith, 96) Thus, the basic differences in forms of Buddhism are understood to be merely different kinds of ferryboats or rafts (yanas), 1. the little raft, 2. the big raft, and 3. the diamond raft…each a different way of traveling in the hero’s spiritual process. At first, the bank underfoot seems solid, and the far away bank seems beyond reality, and it will seem this way until something prompts us to want to learn what’s on the other side. If we decide to make the journey, we may travel as individuals in a boat we build ourselves, and this is the ‘little raft,’ called Hinayana (hina=little). This raft if for “those who, relying upon themselves only, not looking for assistance to anyone besides themselves.” According to Hinayana Buddhists, “it is they who will reach the topmost height.”(Smith, 68) “’No on saves us but ourselves; no one can and no one may. We ourselves must tread the Path; Buddha only shows the way.’”(Smith, 82) Hinayana Buddhist hold that “progress [comes] through wisdom, not grace,”(Smith, 81) and so we must, “’Work out your own salvation with diligence.’”(Smith, 81) In the original texts of the Pali Canon (Smith, 81), the little way is conservative, more monastic. They saw Buddha as a teacher and sage, and saw Buddhism “as a full-time job.”(Smith, 81) It is practiced in this form in Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, and Cambodia. By contrast, Mahayana means ‘great raft’ (maha=great), but such Buddhists prefer the term Theravadic, meaning The Way of the Elders. This vessel is a bigger boat that takes an entire group “the great way.” It tends to be more liberal, to hold a higher opinion of women and laity, and to see Buddha as a savior, the bodhisattva, who “works on our behalf.”(Smith, 82) Such a bodhisattva is “a person who vows not to enter nirvana ‘until the grass itself is enlightened.’”(Smith, 84-85) Buddhism was also manifest in a third form, called the diamond raft, considered first by its proponents because a diamond cuts other substances, but cannot be cut itself. Called Vajrayana Buddhism, it symbolizes power, interrelatedness, and interwoven lives during which developing the strength to realize compassion and wisdom is thought to be able to advance one to nirvana in a single lifetime. This is accomplished, not by denying the senses, but by using them all to their fullest. Hence the adherence of some of its devotes to Tantric sex, that is, “sexual love [which] is the divine’s clearest epiphany. At the moment of mutual climax, where what each most wants is what the other most wants to give, it is impossible to say whether the experience is more physical or spiritual, or whether the lovers sense themselves to be two or one.”(*) This much is understood about sexuality in most religions, but what Zen and raja yoga try to rise above, the Tantric Buddhists celebrate and aim to master the art of. “What distinguishes Tantra is the way it wholeheartedly espouses sex as a spiritual ally, working with it intentionally and explicitly…” Indeed, “Only one of the four Tibetan…orders is celibate.” (Smith, 92) This includes Tibetan Buddhism, of which the Dalai Lama is considered the leader. He is said to have been incarnated thirteen times in the last several centuries “for the purpose empowerment and regeneration of the Tibetan tradition,” who consider themselves to be the souls of this planet “as rain forests are to the earth’s atmosphere.”(Smith, 93) Vajrayana Buddhist hold that one can be accelerated to nirvana in a single life Zen Buddhism was profoundly influenced by Taoism. Followers of Zen “discerned in (Gautama’s) message a higher, subtler teaching”(Smith, 87) that “cannot be impounded in words.”(Smith, 88) This is the same reason Buddha was called “Sakyamuni, ‘silent sage (muni) of the Sakya clan,’” for he was a “symbol of something that could not be described.”(Smith, 65) Keenly aware of the limitations of language, Zen Buddhism – which came some time later -- is profoundly experiential. “From the Zen perspective, reason is too short a ladder to reach to truth’s full height.”(Smith, 89) For words are not meaning, in the same way that a menu is not a meal and a map is not that which it describes.(Smith, 89) “The mind has other ways of working than its normal, rational way, Zen is convinced; and it is these latent ways that zazen is designed to call into action.”(Smith, 89) So practitioners of Zen supplement them with koans, which means problems or riddles that aim to illuminate by insight what is beyond words. “By paradox and non sequitur [the use of koans] provokes, excites, exasperates and eventually exhausts the rational mind until it sees that thinking is never more than thinking about.” Instead, “it counts on a flash of insight to bridge the gap between secondhand and firsthand life.”(Smith, 89) “Though its preparation may take years, the experience itself comes in a flash, exploding like a silent rocket in the unconscious mind to throw new light on everything.” (Smith, 90) Satori, like gnosis, is “an intuitive experience,”(Smith, 90) what the jnana yogi might consider “an intuitive discernment that transforms the knower into the likeness of what it knows,”(Smith, 27) which is, in a sense, “the culmination of the religious quest.”(Smith, 90) It “brings joy, at-one-ment, and a sense of reality that defies ordinary language.”(Smith, 90) “Wisdom (bodhi),” is understood as “profound insight into the nature of reality, the causes of anxiety and suffering, and the absence of a separate, selfexistent core of selfhood.”(Smith, 82) The arhat is said to be the ideal, and nirvana is the goal of life. The root of the word nirvana is “to extinguish” or “to blow out” those private desires that blur vision and restrict life, but nirvana itself is an experience so far beyond the power of words that Buddhism is nearly silent on it, except to say, “’Bliss, yes bliss, my friends, is nirvana.’”(Smith, 77) Simply put, Zen facilitates “a sense of life’s goodness,”(Smith, 91) “’you wake up in the morning and the world seems so beautiful you can hardly stand it.’” Second, it habituates “an objective outlook on ones relation to others; their welfare seems as important as one’s own.”(Smith, 91) “Dualisms dissolve, and one feels grateful to the past and responsible to the present and future.”(Smith, 91) Zen breeds “determination to fuse the temporal and the eternal; to widen the doors of perception so the wonder of the satori experience can flood everyday life.”(Smith, 90) Zen returns to “a world newly perceived,”(Smith, 91) able to see the divinely extraordinary in the ordinary, and to “discovery of the infinite in the finite.”(Smith, 91) It keeps us in harmony with daily activities, as “’Drawing water, carrying firewood, This is supernatural power, this the marvelous activity.’”(Smith, 91) “If you cannot find the meaning of life in an act as simple as that of doing the dishes, you will find it nowhere.”(Smith, 91) “What is the most miraculous of all miracles? That I sit quietly by myself.”(Smith, 91) Zen breeds “a spirit of utter tranquility combine to epitomize the harmony, respect, clarity, and calm that characterize Zen at its best.”(Smith, 91) It helps us “to pass beyond the opposites of preference and rejection,” to an attitude of acceptance and agreeableness, to take things as they come.(Smith, 91) A king once remarked, on observing an assembly of perfectly disciplined monks, “Would that my son might have such calm.”(Smith, 64) Smith emphasizes that Buddhism was originally (and at heart, still is) unique and instructive in just these ways: First, it is empirical, meaning it asks us not to take anyone’s word for anything. Rather, “A true disciple must know for himself.”(Smith, 68) Secondly, it is scientific, meaning it asks us to see for ourselves by testing it in “the quality of [our] lived experience.”(Smith, 68) Thirdly, it is pragmatic, in that “Buddha likened his teachings to tools whose value is in their usefulness; as a “raft that help people cross rivers, but are burdens thereafter.”(Smith, 68) “We nevertheless remember our gratitude for the splendid ship and crew who have brought us safely to what promises to be a rewarding land.”(Smith, 95) Forth, it is therapeutic, as Buddha put it – there is “One thing I teach, suffering and the end of suffering. It is only ill and the ceasing of ill that I proclaim.”(Smith, 68) “There is a path to the end of suffering,” he said; “tread it!”(*) Fifth, it is psychological, in that “Buddha began with the human predicament and the solution it called for.”(Smith, 69) Sixth, it is egalitarian, in that “Buddha rejected both the inequalities of the Hindu caste system and the traditional prejudice against women.”(Smith, 69) “He insisted that women were as capable of enlightenment as men. And he rejected the caste system’s assumption that aptitudes were hereditary.”(Smith, 69). And lastly, ancient Buddhism was directed to individuals, in that Buddha “appealed to the secret workings of the inward heart.”(Smith, 69) In keeping with his observation, that “All compounds grow old,”(Smith 63) Buddha ultimately died after eating poisoned mushrooms. And despite all his efforts during his lifetime to keep his a faith of the individual human spirit, “all the accouterments that he had labored to protect his religion from came tumbling into it” after his death, “but as long as he lived he kept them at bay.”(Smith, 68) Buddhism was ultimately vanquished in India, the land of its birth, but Buddha’s teaching “was not so much defeated by Hinduism as accommodated within it.”(Smith, 97) As Mahayana organization set in, “Buddhist teachings came to sound increasingly like Hindu ones.”(Smith, 97) Indeed, “almost all of Buddhism’s affirmative doctrines found their place or parallel” in Hinduism, including “its strong ethical emphasis generally”…its “stress on kindness to all creatures, on non-killing of animals, on the elimination [or reduction] of caster-barriers.”(Smith, 97) Paradoxically, a wisdom tradition that began by denying authority, ritual, speculation, grace, mystery, and a personal God, ended up embracing them. “Thus in the end the wheel comes full circle. The religion that began as a revolt against rites, speculation, grace, and the supernatural, ends with all of them back in force and its founder (who was an atheist as far as a personal God was concerned) transformed into such a God himself.”(Smith, 85) Three questions are left for us to ponder, Smith says: 1. Should individuality or mutuality predominate? 2. Is the universe friendly, indifferent, or hostile? 3. And should reason or compassion, mind or heart, lead us? Which is the better part of humanity? He puts these to us, along with the added question -- would the ancients themselves even consider such questions relevant? Isn’t the real challenge not either/or, not to choose between compliments, but to reconcile them? Isn’t that how the universe is rendered friendly, rather than hostile? Perhaps Confucius and his Taoists compliment can help us either answer these questions, or dismiss them. As Buddha said, “insight dissolves divisions,” until “what each most wants is what the other most wants to give.”(*)