Basic Ideas of Buddhism

Buddha Grew Up in India The religion of his

birth was Hinduism However, he had

some difficulty with certain elements that by his time had become associated with Hinduism The Caste System Ritual

With The Caste System By Buddha’s time, the caste system

was hereditary Buddha did not feel it was wise to

reward based on birth (though he had been himself)

He also did not feel it was good to reject the talents of certain people simply because they had been born to a certain family

With Ritual Buddha felt it had

become too important; that Hindus cared about performing rituals properly more than they cared about honoring their gods

This is Often Extended To how Buddha feels

about organized religion in general

Buddhism is extremely tolerant of other faiths

However, it seems to value the individual practitioner more than it does the doctrine

The Problem with Religion According to the

Buddha, the problem comes when a given faith claims to have the Truth

Buddha says, “It is not proper for a man to say, ‘This alone is Truth, and everything else is false’”

Truth is Everywhere And deciding that you have the only

truth closes you off from receiving others

The church leader who says he knows the Truth is, according to Buddha, wrong

Church-goers who follow that faith as though it is the only Truth are also wrong

Buddha Compares This To a blind man

attempting to lead other blind men

They may, in fact, get where they are going

But none of them, not even the one in front, can truly “see”

To Avoid This We must not get too

attached to our ideas Attachment to a

given group of ideas leads one to think of other ideas as either inferior or blasphemy

This closes us off from what others can teach us

Buddha Even Feels This Way About himself He frequently tells

his followers that his way is ONE way, not THE way

To find Truth, each individual has to walk his own path

Buddha’s Teachings are a Raft

If a man is walking and comes to a river that is difficult to cross, he builds a raft

When he has crossed the river, he does not pick up his raft and take it with him

He leaves it behind, and perhaps others will use it

This is What Buddha Has Done His life and his

teachings provide us a way to follow

But you don’t have to come to Truth that way, just as a different man might find other ways to get himself across the river

Buddhism as Religion Much of what

might be called “Buddhism” is left over from Hinduism The gods Reincarnation

Or borrowed from/ merged with Taoism Respect for all

living things

But Buddha Doesn’t Really Care Buddhism is not that

concerned with a lot of elements of other faiths

Instead, Buddha’s life work and his teachings were all focused on one compound question: Why do people suffer,

and what can be done to stop suffering?

This Leads Us To Noble Truths

The Buddha’s central teachings are confined within an idea known as the Four Noble Truths

Again, these form a “raft” we can use to gain Enlightenment in our own lives

The First Noble Truth All of life is dukkha This Pali word is often translated as

“suffering” It is that, but it also can mean

emptiness or unsustainability or impermanence or imperfection

To call it “suffering” makes Buddhism seem far more pessimistic than it is

All Kinds of Joy in Buddhism Buddhism as a

faith is a very joyful religion

There is much to be happy about

And you should not deny yourself moments of happiness

But dukkha Suggests that

your moments of happiness are impermanent—they won’t last

That’s not pessimistic as much as it is realistic

All of Us Feel This The happiest among us can find ways

in which we feel we could be ‘more’ happy

We all are subject to change We all get sick from time to time All of us are going to die So this impermanence is merely a

part of the human condition

And That Can Cause Suffering Sooner or later, we

lose those things that are close to us

Our favorite shoes wear out, or our cool car breaks down, or our boy/girlfriend breaks up with us

Three Types of dukkha Dukkha as ordinary suffering

Those moments in life (birth, sickness, death, etc.) that merely happen and are unpleasant

Dukkha as change Those moments in life when we had

been happy, but something happens to take that happiness away

The Third Type Dukkha as conditioned states—this

one is a mindjob This suffering comes from the fact that

we perceive ourselves to be individual selves due to our consciousness

Buddha says we’re not—we’re merely a collection of our thoughts and perceptions, all of which constantly change

According to Buddha Part of what

causes ‘suffering’ is that we think things happen to us

They don’t—they just happen

If A Tree Falls in the Forest And no one is around

to hear it, does it make any sound?

Of course not Sound is a sense

perception of consciousness—if no conscious life form is in the vicinity, the tree is silent

Our Conscious Perception Tricks us into

believing that we have a Self or a Soul—some enduring part of us

We don’t Like everything else,

our conscious mind is impermanent, and will eventually fade away

This can take several lifetimes, however

According to Buddha There is no Unmoved

Mover behind the movement

There is no thinker behind the thought; thought itself is the thinker

Clinging to the idea of our ‘selves’ causes us pain

The Second Noble Truth The origin of

dukkha comes from our own desires

Desire itself is not bad; it is what we desire and the manner in which we desire it that leads to dukkha

Craving and Clinging According to Buddha, we crave

certain things that do not help us attain Enlightenment

The easiest example is money Buddha had grown up a rich prince He found Enlightenment as a

begging monk

This Can Be Especially True In the West A capitalist society

places great emphasis on whether its members have the right ‘things’

We worry about what car we drive, or phone we buy, or whether our computer is as cool as it can be, or what clothes we wear

But All of Those Things Don’t Last Again, the world

is impermanent, as are all things in it

We cling to things as though they will last forever

When they don’t, we suffer

Same is True of Relationships

Marriages don’t last; they end in divorce or they end in death, but either way they end

You can’t be BFF’s in Buddhism—this too will pass away

An Important Point The things we

desire are the very things that cause us suffering

Those things we value most are those things that hurt most when they disappear

The Third Noble Truth It is possible to

free ourselves from dukkha

We do this by eliminating our own craving and clinging to an object or person or idea

This One Gets Tricky The Third Noble Truth is often spoken

of as an attempt to cultivate dispassion That is, we can avoid suffering if we make

every attempt not to care about any given thing

That’s not what we mean After all, a person with no emotion toward

others isn’t a Buddhist; he’s a sociopath

So What Does This Mean? It means that we

recognize that all things are going to change or fall away

Doing so, we avoid suffering when we honor those things in the time that we have them

In the Film One of the experts spoke about a glass

I like this glass, it’s pretty, it hold water admirably, it has a nice tone, etc.

The glass will eventually be lost or break Ordinarily, that will cause suffering

To avoid suffering, think of the glass as already being broken Every time you use it will seem like a miracle

Think of a Loved One. . . We crave those we

love, and cling to them

When they are lost to us, this is one of the greatest causes of our suffering

But like all things, our great loves are not permanent

But Begin With Their Leaving…

And suddenly every moment spent with them is precious

When you know you’re going to lose someone, you’ll work harder to honor them while they are here

Then, When They Do Leave We suffer less because we honored

them more when they were here We’ll miss them, and their loss hurts But it had to happen, because all

things are impermanent Even when they are gone, it is better

to honor the time we had with them than lament their departure

How Do We Achieve This? We follow the steps along the

Fourth Noble Truth, which is known as the Noble Eightfold Path

But we’ll do that tomorrow