Buddhism

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Buddhism
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Buddhism A Statement

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The Major Expressions of Buddhism

• Theravada
• The Teaching of the Elders (The lesser vehicle)
• Sri Lanka
• Burma
• Thailand
• Cambodia
• Laos
• Monastic life and Meditation

• Mahayana
• The Greater Vehicle
• Nepal
• Tibet
• China
• Korea
• Mongolia
• Japan
• Compassion for other creatures

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The Other Expressions

• Zen
• Mystical
• mind to mind transmission
• Strong Meditation emphasis
• Koans
• Listen to the sound of one hand clapping
• Austere, Stark

• Tibetan
• Various indigenous pieces
• Chakras
• Sexual Union
• Colorful Ritualisim

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Sidhattha Gautama

• Born approximately 500 BCE
• In the warrior caste (Kshatriya)
• Brahminisim
• corrupt
• Left home with 5 companions
• meditation, mortification, enlightenment

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Enlightenment

• The cause of suffering in this world, and endless
  reincarnations, is selfish craving!
• Renunciation, renunciation, renunciation
• Known as the DUKKHA
• A teaching ministry begins, first with the 5,
  then throughout Asia

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Buddhist Monasticism

• Monkhood
• learn the disciplines
• observe older monks
• Monks NOT priests
• no vows, no rules of obedience
• Monastery is a refuge from the snares of the
  world
• The Saffron Robe
• simplicity

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The Middle Way

• High way
• asceticism, mortification, complete renunciation
  of ALL things worldly
• Low way
• eat, drink, be merry, if it feels good, DO IT!
• Middle Way
• takes the best of both ways

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Buddhism

• The Three Marks of Existence (of a soul)
• pain,
• impermanence
• egolessness

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The Four Noble Truths

• Life is frustrating and painful
• Suffering has a cause
• constantly struggling to survive
• The cause of suffering can be ended.
• The way, or path to end the cause of suffering
• meditation

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The Five Skandhas

• Form
• an identification with the panic and confusion
• Impulse/perception
• The way we feel about the experience
• Concept
• to identify, or label the experience
• Consciousness
• Ego begins to churn thoughts and emotions around
  and around
• samsara
• literally, to whirl about
• Feeling
• the way ego feels about its situation

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The Six Realms

• hungry ghost realm
• animal realm
• hell realm
• jealous god realm
• god realm
• human realm

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The Eightfold Path

• Right view
• Right intention
• Right speech
• Right discipline
• Right livelihood
• Right effort
• Right mindfulness
• Right concentration

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The Goal

• Nirvana
• It has become equated with a sort of eastern
  version of heaven
• cessation
• cessation of passion, aggression and ignorance
  the cessation of the struggle to prove our
  existence to the world, to survive

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Buddhist Ethics

• A skilled mind
• a mind that is skilful avoids actions that are
  likely to cause suffering or remorse
• Moral conduct for Buddhists differs according to
  whether it applies to the laity or to the clergy
  (Sangha)
• Avoiding any actions which are likely to be
  harmful

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Five Precepts

• A lay Buddhist should cultivate good conduct by
  training in what are known as the "Five
  Precepts".
• These are not like, say, the ten commandments,
  which, if broken, entail punishment by God. The
  five precepts are training rules
• if one were to break any of them, one should be
  aware of the breech and examine how such a breech
  may be avoided in the future.
• The resultant of an action (often refereed to as
  Karma) depends on the intention more than the
  action itself.
• It entails less feelings of guilt than its
  Judeo-Christian counterpart.
• Buddhism places a great emphasis on 'mind' and it
  is mental anguish such as remorse, anxiety, guilt
  etc. which is to be avoided in order to cultivate
  a calm and peaceful mind.

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The Five Precepts

• To undertake the training to avoid taking the
  life of beings
• To undertake the training to avoid taking things
  not given
• To undertake the training to avoid sensual
  misconduct
• To undertake the training to refrain from false
  speech
• To undertake the training to abstain from
  substances which cause intoxication and
  heedlessness

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And the Theravada tradition...

• To abstain from taking food at inappropriate
  times
• To abstain from dancing, singing, music and
  entertainment's as well as refraining from the
  use of perfumes, ornaments and other items used
  to adorn or beautify the person
• To undertake the training to abstain from using
  high or luxurious beds

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The Ten Realms of Being

• Buddha
• Bodhisattva
• (an enlightened being destined to be a Buddha,
  but purposely remaining on earth to teach others)
• Pratyeka Buddha
• (a Buddha for himself)
• Sravka
• (direct disciple of Buddha)
• heavenly beings
• (superhuman angels?)

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The Ten Realms of Being

• human beings
• Asura
• (fighting spirits)
• beasts
• Preta
• (hungry ghosts)
• depraved men
• (hellish beings).

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Living In the Ten Realms

• These ten realms may be viewed as unfixed,
  nonobjective worlds
• mental and spiritual states of mind.
• These states of mind are created by men's
  thoughts, actions, and words.
• In other words, psychological states.
• These ten realms are "mutually immanent and
  mutually inclusive
• each one having in it the remaining nine realms."

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What Is The Cause Of Karma?

• Ignorance (avijja)
• or not knowing things as they truly are
• Craving (tanha)
• the other root of Karma. Evil actions are
  conditioned by these two causes.

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The Role of Karma

• A doctrine of responsibility
• the continuing reverberation of ones actions
• one should ALWAYS be VERY careful to ONLY do good
• A doctrine of irresponsibility
• It is folly to attempt to better the lot of the
  miserable and the burdened. They are enduring
  the effects of their previous lives karma

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So.no choice?

• The Buddha said
• "So, then, according to this view, owing to
  previous action men will become murderers,
  thieves, unchaste, liars, slanderers, covetous,
  malicious and perverts. Thus, for those who fall
  back on the former deeds as the essential reason,
  there is neither the desire to do, nor effort to
  do, nor necessity to do this deed, or abstain
  from this deed."

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The choices we make NOW

• The belief that all physical circumstances and
  mental attitudes spring solely from past Karma
• Buddha contradicted. If the present life is
  totally conditioned or wholly controlled by our
  past actions, then certainly Karma is tantamount
  to fatalism or determinism or predestination.
• If this were true, free will would be an
  absurdity. Life would be purely mechanistic, not
  much different from a machine.

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God and Karma

• Being created by an Almighty God who controls our
  destinies and predetermines our future, or being
  produced by an irresistible Karma that completely
  determines our fate and controls our lifes
  course, independent of any free action on our
  part, is essentially the same.
• The only difference lies in the two words God and
  Karma. One could easily be substituted for the
  other, because the ultimate operation of both
  forces would be identical.

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Buddhist Five orders or processes (niyama)

• Utu Niyama
• Bija Niyama
• Karma Niyama
• Dhamma Niyama
• Citta Niyama

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Physical Laws

• Utu Niyama - physical inorganic order, e.g.
  seasonal phenomena of winds and rains. The
  unerring order of seasons, characteristic
  seasonal changes and events, causes of winds and
  rains, nature of heat, etc., all belong to this
  group.

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Organic Laws

• Bija Niyama - order of germs and seeds (physical
  organic order), e.g. rice produced from
  rice-seed, sugary taste from sugar-cane or honey,
  peculiar characteristics of certain fruits, etc.
  The scientific theory of cells and genes and the
  physical similarity of twins may be ascribed to
  this order.

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Spiritual Law

• Karma Niyama - order of act and result, e.g.,
  desirable and undesirable acts produce
  corresponding good and bad results. As surely as
  water seeks its own level so does Karma, given
  opportunity, produce its inevitable result, not
  in the form of a reward or punishment but as an
  innate sequence. This sequence of deed and effect
  is as natural and necessary as the way of the sun
  and the moon.

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Rational Laws

• Dhamma Niyama - order of the norm, e.g., the
  natural phenomena occurring at the advent of a
  Bodhisattva in his last birth. Gravitation and
  other similar laws of nature. The natural reason
  for being good and so forth, my be included in
  this group.

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Metaphysics

• Citta Niyama - order or mind or psychic law,
  e.g., processes of consciousness, arising and
  perishing of consciousness, constituents of
  consciousness, power of mind, etc., including
  telepathy, telaesthesia, retro-cognition,
  premonition, clairvoyance, clairaudience,
  thought-reading and such other psychic phenomena
  which are inexplicable to modern science.

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Reincarnation

• Powered by
• desire
• ignorance
• being asleep

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The Arhat

• Wholly enlightened
• all worldly attachments severed
• ANYONE may be come an Arhat

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Bodhisattva

• Enlightenment, on hold
• working to ease the suffering of the world
• Mahayana Buddhism
• enlightenment through the compassion for other
  creatures

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Nirvana

• The ultimate state of quietude
• cessation of
• becoming
• reincarnation
• desires
• this is what powers the wheel of rebirth

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For More Information...

• http//www.buddhanet.net