|
THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS 1. There is suffering
2. There is a reason and pattern
to suffering
3. There is a way out of suffering
4. The eightfold path can relieve and stop suffering *
The Kalamas Sutra: Come, people of Kalamas, do
not be satisfied with hearsay or with tradition or with legendary lore or with what has come down in your scriptures or conjecture
or with logical inference or with weighing evidence or with liking for a view after pondering it over or with someone else's
ability or with the thought "The monk is our teacher" When you know in your selves " These ideas are unprofitable.
liable to censure, condemned by the wise, being adopted and put into effect they lead to harm and suffering," then you
should abandon them...( And conversely:) When you know in yourselves " These things are profitable..." then you
should practice them and abide in them.
#1. Freedom From Dogma And Finding The Truth For Oneself: Buddhism
does not demand that anyone accept it's teaching on trust. The pratitioner is instead invited to try them out, to experiment
with them. If they find that they work in practice, then by all means they can take them to heart. But there is no compulsion;
and if they happen to find the truth elsewhere or otherwise, all well and good.
|
 |
|
|
*The Eightfold Path 1. Right
view
2. Right thinking
3.
Right speech
4. Right action
5. Right livelihood
6. Right
effort
7. Right mindfulness
8.
Right concentration
"All created things are impermanent. Strive on with awareness" -The Buddha's last words
Karma and Reincarnation On the other hand, the Buddha
rejected the Upanishadic concept of the Atman, or individual soul,
that seeks to realize its oneness with Brahman, the Hindu name for
the Godhead. The Buddha conceived of individuals as dynamic aggregates of various states, or skandas -- the constituents of personality including the body-mind, feelings,
ideas, subconscious predispositions, and conscious awareness -- which dissolve and are reconfigured constantly (much the way
medical science now tells us that every cell of our body dies and is recreated over a span of several years). He believed
that one has no permanent, identifiable soul, a doctrine known as anatta or
anatman. For the Buddha the mistaken identification
of humanity with an individual, unchanging identity fixed in time is the root cause of all suffering and, ultimately, of death.
This teaching along with its corollary, compassion for all sentient beings, make up the core of Buddhist Dharma, or collective teachings. Its numerous texts -- perhaps more than any other religious
tradition -- and extremely complex spiritual practices and psychological analyses are all predicated on this basic insight.
The Buddha accepted the notion of karmic transfer from one form of existence to the next, but he saw each of these
successive forms of existence as a continuity of moral development toward completeness rather than as an individual "personality"
or soul -- today we might call this conditioning. Different philosophical schools offer various explanations of how the law
of karma functions while still maintaining the cardinal Buddhist position of no permanent, intrinsic identity. One way of
stating Buddhist teaching might be to say that certain tendencies are created in the subtle structure of our being by all
of our past actions, and those tendencies -- as constantly changing and impermanent as the cells of our physical body -- are
what are transferred across limitless lifetimes. But the Buddha found no useful purpose
in such speculation since it would not lead to release from suffering. As one scholar put it, Buddha never taught that there is no "self," only that such a self cannot
be understood. Since he didn't find theological disputation helpful in achieving liberation, the Buddha maintained a "noble
silence" about metaphysical questions as to whether the universe is eternal or infinite, whether an enlightened being
continues to exist in some form after death, and whether there is a Supreme Being on the order of the Hindu Brahman. The Buddha
was preoccupied with much more tangible problems, chief among them the suffering caused by the illusion of the separate ego,
and the rampant violence of the age into which he was born, violence that he believed to be a direct outgrowth of the separation
between the individual and the rest of society. His solution to the problem of human suffering is contained in what he called
the Four Noble Truths.
|
|
|
|
|
THE BUDDHIST PRECEPTS 1. Refrain
from killing
2. Refrain from
taking what is not given
3.
Refrain from wrong conduct in sexual
relations
4. Refrain from false
speech
5. Refrain from intoxicants
THE THREE REFUGES I take refuge in
Buddha
I take refuge in Dharma
I take refuge in Sangha
#2. Practial Methods: If the Buddhist emphasis
is on finding out for oneself, this necessarily places primary emphasis upon direct religious experience, as opposed to belief
or "blind faith".
So Buddhism does not so much offer things to believe as things to do: a vast array of spiritual
practices , ranging from moral precepts that one can apply in everyday life and virtues that one can culivate , to meditative
practices which help develop untapped spiritual ressources: faculties like profound wisdom or clear - seeing and all - embracing,
selfless compassion.
Put in Western terms , the ultimate aim of Buddhist practice is to engineer mystical experience:
to penetrate the great mystery at the heart of life and find the answers to the knotty problems that have perennially engaged
the most developed minds of the human race.
From THE BUDDHIST HANDBOOK by JOHN SNELLING
"The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend a
personal God and avoid dogmas and theology. Convering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religous
sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description..."
"If there is any religion that would cope with modern scientific needs, it would be Buddhism."-Albert Einstein
|
|
|
|
|
