Religious Studies 232: Introduction to Buddhism

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Religious Studies 232 Introduction to
Buddhism
Week 6 Inc Mon of Wk 7

• Instructor
• Justin Whitaker

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Announcements 10/2

• Graded Exams (inc DSS) available in hallway after
  class
• Second Exam Wed. Oct 11 --- next week!!
• Available on the Website by Friday morning
• (updated) Study Guide for the 2nd Exam
• Lecture Slides for this week (including next
  Monday)

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• First Exam Results
• As Bs Cs Ds Fs Total
• Fall 00 21 43 46 14 12 136
• Fall 01 23 47 44 21 14 149
• Fall 02 29 57 56 16 11 169
• Fall 03 26 59 55 18 7 165
• Fall 04 39 70 53 19 13 194
• Fall 06 44 50 28 20 11 153
• Exams available after class --- outside in the
  hallway
• Second Exam Oct. 11th, next week!!

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Threefold Path Ethics
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Ethics Five precepts
Cultivation of
I undertake the training principle of abstention
from

• Love (Metta)
• Generosity
• Contentment
• Truthfulness
• Awareness

• 1. Taking life
• 2. Taking the not- given
• 3. Sexual Misconduct
• 4. False Speech
• 5. Intoxication

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Threefold Path Ethics Meditation
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Two Dimensions of Buddhist Meditation

• Samatha Calming or Centering
• Buddhas Meditation teachers
• Cultivates dhyana / jhana
  (meditative absorptions)
• Vipassana Insight into reality
• Specific to Buddhist tradition
• Uses dhyana-infused mind to discern nature of
  reality

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Concentration

• Undistracted or focused mind
• Not constricted or blank
• Alert, Supple, Expansive, Poised, Open
• Four Dhyanas / Jhanas or meditative
  absorptions
• Five Dhyana factors or qualities
• Arises from Samatha practice
• Necessary for Vipassana practice

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Samatha or Calming Practices

• Mindfulness of Breathing
• Mindfulness
• Concentration
• Walking meditation
• Metta Bhavana
• Metta
• related to Compassion, Sympathetic Joy, and
  Equanimity ( Four Brahma Viharas)
• Devotional Practice (Puja)

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Vipassana or Insight Practices

• Mindful awareness of impermanence
• Reflection on the Six Elements
• Decomposition of a corpse
• Contemplation of the Buddha

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Religious Studies 232 Introduction to
Buddhism
Week 6 Inc Mon of Wk 7

• Instructor
• Justin Whitaker

12
Announcements 10/04

• Left-over First Exams available in the hall after
  class
• Second Exam Next Wednesday!!
• Available on the Website
• Up-dated Study Guide for the 2nd Exam
• Lecture Slides Week 6 (plus today)----
• Expect 5 Fill in the Blank (20) and 5 Multiple
  choice (10) along with one broad question (70)
  that will require you to focus carefully the
  details you have learned. Read carefully the
  suggestions for how to do better on these exams
  included in the Exam 2 Study Guide.

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Announcements 10/04

• Extra Credit Ashes and Snow Tomorrow. GBB
  L13, 7pm (just over 1 hour). See website for
  guidelines on the paper to write
• Another Option Write a 3 page (approx. 750
  words) paper on the relevance of the Buddhas
  Advice to the Kalamans to contemporary life.
  Details also on the Course Website.

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Five Dhyana Factors

• The way we think when we are Calm
• Physical and emotional Integration
• Concentration focus

1. Initial thought 2. Sustained thought 3.
Rapture 4. Bliss 5. One-pointedness
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Four and Eight Dhyanas

• Formless Dhyanas
• 1. Infinite Space
• 2. Infinite Consciousness
• 3. Nothingness
• 4. Neither perception nor non-perception

1st Four Dhyanas 1. One-pointedness 2. Beyond
thought 3. Beyond rapture 4. Total equanimity
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Threefold Path Ethics Meditation
Wisdom
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What is Wisdom?

• Four Noble Truths
• Principle of Conditionality
• Wheel of Samsaric Existence
• 12-path leading away from the Wheel
• Three Marks of Existence
• Impermanence (anitya/anicca)
• Non-substantiality of the self
  (anatman/anatta)
• Unsatisfactoriness (duhkha/dukkha)

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Buddhist View of Personal Identity--- What is
the self?

• Buddhaghosa (6th Century CE)
• Mere suffering exists, but no sufferer is found
• The deeds are, but no doer is found.
• Nirvana exists, but not he who is in Nirvana
• And there is a path of access, but nobody going
  along it.

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Content of the Buddhas Enlightenment

• What he realized under the Bodhi Tree
• Communicated Conceptually
• Principle of Universal Conditionality (Pratitya-
  samutpada / paticca-samupada)
• Conditioned Co-production
• Conditioned Genesis
• Dependent Origination or Dependent
  Co- arising
• Communicated Symbolically
• the Wheel and the Path

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The Principle of Conditionality

• imasmim sati, idam hoti
• imass' uppada, idam uppajjati
• imasmim asati, idam na hoti
• imassa nirodha, idam nirujjhati. MN II.32
  SN II.28, etc
• This being, that becomes,
• from the arising of this, that arises
• this not becoming, that does not become
• from the ceasing of this, that ceases.

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The Principle of Conditionality

• Affirms reality of change
• seeing
• Our response to change as source of the
  unsatisfactoriness we experience
• But asserts that
• Change is not random / chance
• Governed by conditionality
• Everything is an on-going process of cause and
  condition
• Two possible directions or orders

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Two Orders of Conditionality

• The same process of conditionality can move in
  either of two different directions
• Cyclical or Reiterative Order--
• Symbolized by the Wheel
• the vicious circle of samsaric existence
• Developmental or Augmentative Order
• Symbolized by the spiral Path
• the developmental progression leading from
  Suffering to Liberation

Sangharakshita reactive mind
Sangharakshita creative mind
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Religious Studies 232 Introduction to
Buddhism
Week 6 Inc Mon of Wk 7

• Instructor
• Justin Whitaker

24
Announcements 10/06

• Left-over First Exams available after class
• Second Exam Next Wednesday!!
• Available on the Website (now)
• Up-dated Study Guide for the 2nd Exam
• Lecture Slides Week 6 (plus next Monday) ----
• Expect 5 Fill in the Blank (20) and 5 Multiple
  choice (10) along with one broad question (70)
  that will require you to focus carefully the
  details you have learned. Read carefully the
  suggestions for how to do better on these exams
  included in the Exam 2 Study Guide.

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The Threefold Way Wisdom
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The Gates of Heaven Hell

• Story of a Medieval Japanese monk and warlord
• Whats all this crap about heaven and hell?
• There open the gates of hell.
• There open the gates of heaven.

Is the monk speaking literally or
metaphorically? Both-----Distinction has no
meaning
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The Wheel of Life

• A mirror viewed in four ways, four aspects of
  existence
• The Three Poisons
• greed the rooster
• hatred the snake
• delusion the pig
• Two orders of conditionality
• ascending
• descending
• Six Realms of Existence
• Twelve-fold Chain of Cause and Condition

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The Wheel of Life

• Six Realms of Existence
• Gods
• Titans (warring gods)

• Humans
• Animals
• Hungry ghosts
• Denizens of the hell realms

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The Wheel of Life

• Six Realms of Existence
• Hierarchy of life-forms or forms of existence
• Interpermeable levels of existence
• Form is incidental, not essential to ones being
  (becoming)
• Human form best suited to gain enlightenment
• Understood in two ways
• Options for future re-birth
• Options for experiencing present human existence

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What is Wisdom?

• Four Noble Truths
• Three Marks of Existence
• Impermanence (anitya/anicca)
• Non-substantiality of the self
  (anatman/anatta)
• Unsatisfactoriness
  (duhkha/dukkha)
• Principle of Conditionality
• Wheel of Samsaric Existence
• 12-path leading away from the Wheel
• How to
• Stop the Wheel
• Traverse the Path

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The Wheel The Vicious Circle of Samsara

• Old Age Death
• Becoming (desire for continued existence)
• Grasping
• Contact
• Name-and-form
• Predispositions (karma formations)

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WheelofSamsara
1. Ignorance
2. Predispositions
12. Old Age Death
11. (re)-Birth
3. Consciousness
10. Becoming
4 Name-and-Form
9.Grasping
5. Six sensory faculties
8. Craving
6. Contact
7. Feeling
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The Wheel The Vicious Circle of Samsara

• All of this represents the recurrent cycle of
  Suffering
• With no awareness it will loop back round to
  re-iterate itself SR mind reactive
• With awareness the option of the Path opens
  SR mind creative

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Religious Studies 232 Introduction to
Buddhism
Week 6 Inc Mon of Wk 7

• Instructor
• Justin Whitaker

35
Announcements 10/09

• Left-over First Exams available after class
• Second Exam Wednesday
• Available on the Website (now)
• Up-dated Study Guide for the 2nd Exam
• Lecture Slides Week 6 (plus next Monday) ----
• Study groups (both on Tuesday, see the Course
  Website)
• 1 _at_ Bears Brew (discussion-based)
• 2 _at_ Liquid Planet (study-based)
• Extra credit (see website) no plans to re-show
  Ashes and Snow. Many thanks to Colin (our
  grader) for loaning it to us!

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The Spiral Path to Liberation

• 12. Extinction of the mental poisons or biases
  and knowledge that they have been extinguished
• 11. Freedom
• 10. Dispassion or Separation from craving greed
• 9. Withdrawal
• 8. Knowledge and Vision of things as they
  really are
• 7. Concentration
• 6. Bliss complete integration of all emotional
  energies
• 5.Calm or Serenity
• 4. Rapture or Ecstasy
• 3. Joy
• 2. Faith / Confidence / Inspiration a lifting
  up of the heart"
• 1. Suffering understood for what it is

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WheelofSamsara
1. Ignorance
2. Predispositions
12. Old Age Death
11. (re)-Birth
3. Consciousness
10. Becoming
4 Name-and-Form
9.Grasping
5. Six sensory faculties
8. Craving
6. Contact
7. Feeling
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Wheel to Path How to break out of the vicious
circle of dukkha?

• Conditionality
• Buddhist model of the self (anatman)
• Samskaras (karma formations)
• Weak Link
• Role of Mindfulness
• Why the Path begins with Dukkha

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WheelofSamsara
1. Ignorance
Past
Future
2. Predispositions
12. Old Age Death
3. Consciousness
11. (re)-Birth
4 Name-and-Form
10. Becoming
5. Six sensory faculties
9.Grasping
8. Craving
Present (as cause)
6. Contact
Present (as result)
7. Feeling
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Stopping the Wheel Three Junctures

• Past as the Cause for Present
• 1-2 ignorance samskaras (karma formations /
  pre- dispositions / inclinations)
• Present as the Result of Past Causes
• 3-7 consciousness, psychophysical organism, six
  senses, contact feeling
• Present as the Cause for Future
• 8-10 craving, grasping, and becoming
• Future as the Result of Present
• 11-12 (re)-birth and decay-and-death

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Personal Identity in Buddhism

• Karmic Continuity rather than an Unchanging
  Essence
• anatman vs atman
• Dynamic rather than Static model of personal
  identity
• The self is an ever-changing combination of
  karmically conditioned tendencies or patterns of
  habituation karma formations (samskaras
  Wheel 2)
• All beings are simply a dynamic flow of actions
  and the residue of those actions (habit or
  tendency), which means that beings are actually
  becomings

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Why no Atman is necessary

• Permanence vs Continuity
• Nagasena to King Menander
• Personal Continuity is sufficient for karma to
  work

bcdef
cdefg
defgh
efghij
fghij
abc de.
Personal Continuity over time
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Karmic Continuity? --- patterns of habituation

• Three Components

Action (karma)
Karma-formation (samskara)
Result or Fruition (karma-vipaka)

• Karma a specific action
• Samskara the karma-formation--- the tendency
  or disposition to act in that same way again
• Karma-vipaka the future fruition of that
  tendency or karma-formation

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Personal Identity in Buddhism

• Analogy of the River
• Heraclitus You cant put your foot in the
  same river twice. ----- to which
• the Buddha (would have replied) You cant
  even put the same foot in the same river
  twice
• What is the water in the flow of the self?
• karma-formations (samskaras) karmic
  conditioning

mindfulness
karma-formation
A
R
/A'
A Action R Result / Fruition A'
(re-)Action
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EXAM INSTRUCTIONS

• Put your Name and Student ID on the blue book
  (front cover) and on the exam sheet
• Subject RELS 232 Buddhism
• Instructor Whitaker ----- Date
  10/11/06
• Read the instructions on the exam - carefully
• When you finish, put your exam in the blue book
  and bring both up here file according to exam