buddhism

The Buddha

"Buddha" is not a name, it is a title meaning the "enlightened one," "awakened one".
Who was the Buddha?The man who would become The Buddha was born Siddhartha Gautama of the Sakya clan of the Kshatriya caste in NE India. He was born a Hindu, a prince of Noble lineage. He is also called Sakyamuni - ("Sage of the Sakya Clan") and Gautama Buddha.
When and where did he live?Born in 563 BCE, died 483 BCE during the Upanishadic transitional period of Hinduism (a contemporary of Mahavira [founder of Jainism]).

The texts of the religion tell of a miraculous conception (he was conceived in a dream) and accounts of wonders attending his birth (he walked and talked immediately after the painless birth in a beautiful garden).

His early life:Two possible destinies were predicted for the child by a seer who came to visit shortly after he was born: Siddhartha was to become either a great teacher or a great ruler.
His father was determined to raise Siddhartha to follow in his father’s footsteps and be a great ruler. As such, Siddhartha was sheltered from the evils of the world and raised in great luxury.
The "Four Sights":But Siddhartha saw the famous "four sights" which left him wondering about life:
· an old man, withered with age
· a sick man, in pain and misery
· a dead man
· and a Monk, who seemed contented

The first three were suffering but the monk was not suffering. These sights were to make a deep impact on the prince.

The householder:As a young man, Siddhartha married and had a son, as expected of him.
Renunciation and yogic practice:But at the age of 29 he took vows of renunciation, left his home and his family to become a wandering monk in search of enlightenment and contentment.
For six years Siddhartha went from one guru to another, learning different philosophies, practicing various yogic techniques including extreme asceticism (which came to be associated with Jainism which was also developing at this same time in NE India).

But none of these paths satisfied his spiritual quest and so, after six years he took off on his own, rejecting both the life of luxury he'd been raised in as well as ascetic withdrawal and self-denial. His was to be the "Middle Way".

Enlightenment - A Buddha is born . . .:As the story goes, Siddhartha sat under a tree, refusing to move or do anything until he achieved the enlightenment he sought. He sat thusly in meditation, resisted tempting visions of beautiful women and delectable foods, until, after (some stories say) 40 days, he became enlightened, seeing and understanding the truth of all existence.
He had thus become the Buddha - the "Awakened One" and the tree become known as the "Bodhi Tree". Bodhi (the root word of "Buddha") means wisdom.
. . . and becomes a teacher:Gautama Buddha spent the remaining 45 years of his life teaching to others the Truth he’d found.

Buddhism is called the "Middle Way" of compassion and wisdom.
It began in India some 2500 years ago, spread to East Asia and ultimately disappeared from India by 1000 CE

A number of recent commercial movies have focused on Buddhism, most notably: Little Buddha and Kundun (you might want to view these videos as you learn about this religion)
There are three basic components to Buddhism known as the "Three Refuges" (or the "Three Jewels"):
· Buddha (teacher): like the doctor who diagnoses the problem and prescribes the cure (medicine)
· Dharma (teaching): like the medicine which cures the problem (most important - more so than the "doctor" himself)
· Sangha (community): like the nurses who assist us in using the medicine correctly for the greatest benefit (includes monks and heavenly beings).

The Dharma
In his first sermon, the "Deer Park Sermon" in Banares, the Buddha summed up the Truth of existence in what is known as the "Four Noble Truths":
· Life is suffering (dukkha)
In a perfect world we would get everything we want and want everything we get. But this is not a perfect world.
· The cause of suffering is self-centered desire and attachments (ego), personal preferences and rejections, cravings and repulsion, likes and dislikes
What makes this life problematic is that our wants (desires) are out of alignment with our life experience.
· There is a state of no desire and no suffering (Nirvana) a non-possessive, dispassionate, carefree mental state
We cannot change the world but we can change ourselves. "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need" (can want what you get).
· The way to achieve this is the "Eight-Fold Path" (the life of morality, concentration and wisdom)

The "Eight-Fold Path" consists of three parts:
· Wisdom (dharma):
1. Right understanding, views, knowledge (of the Four Noble Truths)
2. Right motivation, intention, aspiration, thought (dispassionate benevolence) (think good thoughts)
· Morality (outer, ethical discipline):
3. Right speech (no lying, no gossip, no slander, no idle talk) (speak good words)
4. Right action, behavior (no stealing, no killing, no illicit sex, no intoxicants) (do good deeds)
5. Right livelihood (earn a living so as not to commit wrong speech or action) (live a good life)
· Concentration (inner, mental discipline):
6. Right effort (avoid arousing evil thoughts, cut off unwholesome states of past, present and future [change old, bad habits])
7. Right mindfulness, awareness (full awareness in every moment)
8. Right meditation, concentration, absorption (quieting the mind, do not be distracted in one’s meditation practice, be centered and still. Undistracted concentration on a particular object or image, e.g. a statue of the Buddha or a Tanka or mandala)

By "right" Buddha meant "complete", "proper", or "perfected". The path is about aspiring to such perfection.

The Five Precepts: (see right speech and right action, above)
The basic ethical guidelines for a Buddhist life:
· Do not kill or harm other living beings
· Do not steal or take what has not been given to you
· Do not participate in illicit or improper sexual relations (i.e., outside of marriage)
· Do not lie
· Do not ingest intoxicants (alcohol) or illicit drugs (which confuse the mind)