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- An outlook of Buddhism
- John C. Huntington
I. Religion
Buddhism is one of the world's
great religions. There are six major religious systems in the world. Each has many
subdivisions and methods of practice. They are:
- Judeo-Christian-Islamic complex
- Hinduism (practiced by 800,000,000 people in India)
1. Shaivism
2. Vaishnavism
3. Shakta
- Taoism (practiced in China)
- Confucianism (practiced in China)
- Shamanism (practiced around the Pacific Basin from Burma and Thailand, north to Siberia,
all through Alaska and the northwest of Canada and the U.S. into Mexico and on to Central
and South America.)
- Buddhism (which originated in India and was, and in many cases still is, practiced in
most of the countries in Asia.)
B. Characteristics that identify a major religion
- A religion is concerned with certain specific topics
1. a theory of existence (ontology)
2. a theory of the end of the being/world/universe (eschatology)
3. a theory of personal salvation (soteriology)
a) faith
b) practice
c) ethical/moral behavior/well being
- Founder
- Teachings (dogma and doctrine)
1. As taught by the founder
2. As explained by the teachers who followed the founder
- The community of followers
C. The idea of God versus god versus "non-theistic"
- Those systems that believe in a single all powerful God (monotheistic). These are:
1. The Abrahamic comples of Judiasm, Christianity and Islam.
- Hinduism (there appear to be many gods in Hinduism but each of the major forms of
Hinduism believe that the many gods emerge from and are simply aspects of a single god.)
- Those that do not believe in a God (non-theistic). These are:
1. Buddhism (believes in the dharma or the laws of order). The Buddha is always and only a
teacher Never a God or a god.
2. Taoism (believes in the dao or way of nature) A Daoist practitioner is an
"Adept," one who is skilled at the practices.
3. Confucianism (believes in the li or rites of conduct)
- Some believe in many Gods (polytheistic). The one major one is:
1. Shamanism which is a from of animism
II. Buddhism
A. What are the major components of
Buddhism?
- Every religion has a set of ideas that serve as the basis for the teachings that it
offers. These are called presuppositions. These are concepts about the nature of existence
that are the basis for the teachings of the religion. For example, the major
Judeo-Christian-Islamic presupposition is that there is a universal creator God who can
affect our day to day existence. The Buddhist presuppositions originated in early
philosophical and religious speculation that took place in India between 4500 and 2500
years ago. They are as follows:
1. The Buddhist theory of existence (ontology)
*All physical existence is in a cycle much like the "big Bang" theory of modern
astro-physics where all matter come together in a big ball and then explodes. It expands
for billions of years and then collapses back into a ball for billions of years until it
and explodes again. This the Buddhist system this cycle is called a kalpa and these cycles
will repeat infinitely. The physical form of the world is a Vast mountain in the center of
the universe, with all of the continents around it. In a traditional drawing, it looks
like this:
At the top are 28 heaven worlds, next, below them there are the five
realms of Mount Meru itself, after that there are alternating rings of mountains and seas
and after that there is a great sea with the continents in it. Various heavenly beings
live in the heaven worlds, humans animals and ghosts live on the continents, and beings
who have been reborn in the hells live in six realms that are under the continents. They
are not shown in this drawing.
All life emerges from disturbances in the dharma. Life is also eternal and any individual
may be reborn an infinite number of times. He or she can be reborn as anything from a
bacteria to a heavenly being in the highest heaven. The cycle of lives of an individual
continues so often and in so many ways that some Buddhists have developed a saying.
"Every being now alive has been your mother at some time in the past," and they
really do mean to count all of the insects, and even earthworms.
The Buddhist theory of the end of the being/world/universe (eschatology) states that the
universe will go on for all infinite time. World cycles, or kalpas, will repeat over and
over and the life cycle of individual beings will repeat over and over- infinitely!
The Buddhist view of personal salvation (soteriology) is that the individual may escape
the endless cycle of rebirths by attaining enlightenment. Enlightenment is essentially
knowledge of how the system works and how the individual is literally identical with the
totality of the universe. This knowledge is called enlightenment. It may be attained
through:
1) faith
2) practice
3) ethical/moral behavior/well being
--All of these beliefs were in existence before the lifetime of the person we call the
Buddha.
Its founder was Gotama Siddhartha who became known as the Buddha or "Enlightened
One." He lived about 2500 years ago in a small kingdom in the Indian-Nepalese border
region. There are four main events in his life.
1) The first was his birth which was accompanied by many good omens and
events. After his birth, he grew up as a well educated prince of his kingdom and married a
young woman who gave birth to their son. However, he tired of the princely life and,
feeling dissatisfied, soon left home to become a wandering ascetic, a beggar. He joined a
band of such beggars and wandered about from place to place seeking teaching from great
masters. What he sought from these teachers was a special kind of knowledge that would
allow him to understand the nature of the universe. For six years the young prince lived a
beggar's life. During this time he nearly starved to death through deliberately depriving
himself of food.
2) The second great event is his enlightenment in which he attained that special
knowledge. There is a very long story of this event. Essentially it is as follows. Prince
Gotama, having nearly starved to death from his ascetic practices, resolved to eat again
and to then meditate (essentially sitting quietly and thinking about it) until he attained
the knowledge that he was seeking. To gain this knowledge, he sat down under a big tree
and begin to meditate. At one point in his meditations, an evil being, named Mara attacked
the prince with an army of evil warriors representing hate, lust and greed. A great battle
followed in which the weapons of the evil army turned into flowers and Mara, the evil
being, was defeated. At the defeat of Mara, Prince Gotama had won the right to the
knowledge he sought. That knowledge is called enlightenment or bodhi. Once he attained
that knowledge, Gotama became known as the Buddha which means the "enlightened
one." The name is actually the word bodhi combined with the verb ta, "to
be," combined into one word, i.e. bodhi+ta = Buddha. So when we say Gotama the Buddha
we are actually saying "Gotama the Enlightened One."
3) The third great event is the first sermon. After he had attained his special knowledge,
Gotama the Buddha decided to teach his special way of attaining this knowledge to others.
He went to a place known as the deer park where the ascetics who had been his former
companions were living. They quickly realized that Gotama the Buddha had attained the
special knowledge and asked him to teach them how to attain it. What he taught them will
be talked about later. The act of teaching it to his former fellow ascetics is called the
first sermon. From this first teaching arose all future teachings by Gotama the Buddha and
his followers. He would teach for over forty years.
4) The fourth event is his last death, which is called the parinirvana.
The word parinirvana means something quite different than just death. The Buddhists
believe that an individual life force would live forever. It does this by being born and
dying over and over again. If one has been good, he or she will be reborn in the higher
levels of birth such as in the human realms or in the worlds of the heavenly beings.
However, if one has been bad, he or she will be reborn in the lower levels of birth, as an
animal, a ghost or even in one of many hells. To die to be reborn is ordinary death to the
Buddhists. However the Buddha was not to be reborn again. Thus his death was like the
flame of a candle going out. It was the cessation of all rebirths. Gotama the Buddha had
attained his final release. What would happen to his individual being? He would reunite
with the totality of the universe- like a drop of water falling into the ocean.
The founder's teachings
Based on the presuppositions we have just
learned, Gotama Buddha taught that others could also attain the special knowledge and
thereby attain release from the cycle of rebirth by fully realizing the following.
The four noble truths:
1) All life is unsatisfactory
2) Unsatisfactoriness is caused by desire
3) The solution is to stop having desire
4) The way to stop desire is to follow the eight-fold path
The eight fold path:
1) Right views
2) Right intentions
3) Right speech
4) Right conduct
5) Right livelihood
6) Right effort
7) Right mindfulness
8) Right concentration
The whole of Buddhist literature is aimed at defining what is meant by "right."
and the whole of Buddhist practice is aimed placing that understanding into operation. In
a very simple sense, the practitioner will gain "merit" towards a better rebirth
or even towards attaining his or her own Buddhahood by doing the following:
1) Having complete, unselfish compas-sion for others and acting on that
compassion.
2) Seeking through concentration and mindfulness the various types of knowledge that led
to the Buddhist attainment
3) Making continuous effort to seek advancement and to aid others
4) Becoming a beggar or an ascetic in order to detach oneself from all desires.
The teachings of the Buddha as explained by the teachers who followed him is a truly vast
subject. This covers thousands of volumes of literature and more than a hundred different
approaches or sects of Buddhism. There are three divisions of major approaches and each of
those major sub-schools is divided into many sub-schools. One can spend a lifetime
learning about them.
Some believe that there will be very few Buddhas while others believe that there can be
many Buddhas; others believe that to attain Buddhahood takes many thousands of lifetimes
while others believe that one can attain Buddhahood in this lifetime; some believe in
detailed and secret rituals while others believe in totally unstructured individual
approaches. Yet others believe in rebirth in a kind of Buddhist paradise while some
believe that the final attainment is to be made right here and now in this very life time.
By Buddhist definition all these approaches are valid and each is free to follow the
teachings of his or her own choosing.
In addition, as Buddhism was spread into countries near India and throughout the rest of
Asia, adaptations to local concerns were made in the teachings. Thus a Thai Buddhist may
believe one thing, a Tibetan Buddhist another and a Chinese yet another. All of this
adaptation was done by the teachers who followed the original teachings of Gotama Buddha.
The community of followers is divided into four categories:
1) the male beggars or, as they are usually called, "monks."
2) the female beggars, or nuns
3) the male lay followers
4) the female lay followers
*Each order has its own rules, essentially defining right, views, intentions, speech,
conduct and livelihood.
*The lay community is, as with all lay populations, deeply concerned with the problems of
daily life and they have many rituals and ceremonies concerned with:
1) good health
2) prosperity
3) well being
4) death
III. Closing
This system of individual salvation had
great appeal in India and soon became a state relition under the Emperor Ashoka of the
Mauryan dynasty. At Ashoka's urging and whth his patronabe the Buddhist monks began to
spread the Buddhist religion across India and then to countries beyond the Indic realms.
During the first five centuries of the Christian era Buddhism continued its spread
throughout the northern and eastern parts of Asia and became one of the major religions of
the world. To the benefit of the religion, Buddhism's teachings are not exclusive, you may
belong to another religion while you are a Buddhist. Thus, while many people in Asia
became buddhists they did not give up their native religions. Even today, many people are
essentially part time Buddhists in the sense that one or another aspect of their lives is
strongly affected by Buddhist beliefs. In this way Buddhism directly affects some one
third to two fifths of the world's population.
Sincere thanks to
Dr. Nguyen Dinh for providing us with this electronic edition
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