Buddhism February 25, 2009
Posted by crescenti2011 in Religion.add a comment
Buddha Skakyamuni was the founder of Buddhism and he lived in India about two thousand years ago. Millions of people now follow his path of peace and love. Their way of life is of wisdom, love and peace. The roots of the religion are still as strong as they were when Buddha first created it. Buddha explained that all problems come from negative states of mind and confusion. All good things come from a serene state of mind. Buddha educated people on how to overcome negative minds such as jealousy, anger and ignorance. These methods work for anyone and anywhere.
Mediation is the core of Buddhist life. It is the foundation in which all is achieved. Mediation is used to understand one’s mind and to better apply it. You develop more constructive actions and our experience of life is more satisfying. Apparently, anybody can learn the basics of mediation, but only those who believe in the Three Jewels can progress to advanced mediation and its benefits. Buddha revealed a step by step guide to achieve happiness. If anyone were to follow this path, they could transform their mind into a delightful Buddha-like mind. In Geshe Kelsang’s popular book, “The Eight Steps to Happiness”, he creatively describes the path “Just as the thickest clouds eventually disperse, so too even the heaviest delusions can be removed from our mind. Delusions such as hatred, greed, and ignorance are not an intrinsic part of the mind. If we apply the appropriate methods they can be completely eliminated, and we shall experience the supreme happiness of full enlightenment.”
Buddha Skakyamini was born a royal prince in about 624 BCE in a village called Lumbini. Today, Lumbini is renowned for its history regarding Buddhism and many followers come here just to see where the god-like Buddha grew up. Lumbini was located in northern India but it’s now a part of Nepal. His royal family hat Buddha was born into, the “Shakya” gave him the name Siddhartha. Many predictions were made about his future and all of them showed that he had a promising life. For twenty nine years, he lived as a prince in his palace, but then he moved to a forest where he became very spiritual person. Buddha’s father learned that Siddhartha was to become either a king of something or if he saw the truths of the world, a spiritual person. Well Siddhartha did venture outside the palace walls, even though his father did not want him to. And once outside, he discovered four unpleasant sights. Siddhartha found a decaying body, an old man, and an ascetic. These sights became known as “The Four Sights” and what is believed to be what pushed Buddha to continue on his spiritual path. Eventually after six years, he acquired enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree in India. After achieving enlightenment, Buddha went out and taught his first lesson; the four noble truths: Life as we know it ultimately is or leads to suffering in one way or another. 
Suffering is caused by craving or attachments to worldly pleasures of all kinds. This is often expressed as a deluded clinging to a certain sense of existence, to selfhood, or to the things or people that we consider the cause of happiness or unhappiness.
Suffering ends when craving ends, when one is freed from desire. This is achieved by eliminating all delusion, thereby reaching a liberated state of Enlightenment;
Reaching this liberated state is achieved by following the path laid out by the Buddha.
All actions we perform leave a mark, and each mark can either benefit you or hurt you later in life or even other lives. The understanding of karma is another core value that is needed to understand Buddhist morality. Here is another interesting quote from the Book, “The Eight Steps to Happiness”. “The mind is neither physical, nor a by-product of purely physical processes, but a formless continuum that is a separate entity from the body. When the body disintegrates at death, the mind does not cease. Although our superficial conscious mind ceases, it does so by dissolving into a deeper level of consciousness, call ‘the very subtle mind’. The continuum of our very subtle mind has no beginning and no end, and it is this mind which, when completely purified, transforms into the omniscient mind of a Buddha.” According to Buddhists beliefs, rebirth is a very real and understood thing. When the Buddhist mentions rebirth, they are talking about the process where people have to go through lives, each time trying to do better and attain better karma to have a better life the next go. Strangely, Buddhist does not believe in the soul, which means that we are someone new every time we are reborn. There is no permanent person. So, when you die, you go to one of these five realms, where you have to live for the rest of your life. There are the Naraka people, who live in very different Narakas, or hells, you can be reborn as an animal where you share space with humans but you are a different kind of life, then there are the Preta’s, they are invisible and share space with humans. Another name for these are “Hungry Ghost”, next there are the human beings, which may not sound as interesting as the other states of rebirth but its one of the few realms where you can achieve Nirvana, the Asuras are the next realm where you can be taken to. This consists of demons, antigods, titans, ECT. The final realm is the Devas. This is the highest realm you can attain and you are a god, spirit or angel if you are in this realm.
Because we are from the west, we do not understand the depth of Buddhism. In reality, there were 28 different Buddha’s! The term Buddha to us, means god or god-like where there is only one supreme leader. Very far from the truth, Buddha just means that the person is in the state of “perfect enlightenment.” Another definition that would be even easier to understand is to say that a Buddha is one that has been introduced to the truth. Before the most famous Buddha, Siddhartha there was no “Four Noble Truths” or the “Eightfold Path” so no one knew exactly how to go about getting all enlightened. On another note, the “Eightfold Path” is the instructions used to stop suffering, here they are:
Prajna is the knowledge that purifies the mind, making it possible to obtain spirtitual information about the true objective of all things. It includes:
1. drsti: viewing the world like is it but a deeper understanding.
2. samkalpa: wanting no harm to be done and for everything to be free.
Sila is the will to do the right things and to stay away from unproductive things. It includes:
3. vac: talking honestly and not hurting anyone.
4. karman: behaving in unharmful way
5. ajivana: a unharmful lifestyle
Samadhi is the mind training needed to master your mind, and includes:
6. vyayama: trying hard to do things better.
7. smrti: being able to see something for what it is and not wanting everything.
8. samadhi: proper training and mind set.
People who practiced Buddhism before Siddhartha had to learn as they went. Adding on to the knowledge that there we more than one Buddha, one can also assume that there were more than one kind of Buddha, and this is true. There are three kinds of Buddha’s and their differences are merely how they attain nirvana. Sammasambuddhas are Buddha’s who have been awakened and then teach others their knowledge. Siddhartha Gautama would fall under this category. Paccekabuddhas is the second kind of Buddha. These, like the Sammasambuddhas aquire nirvana, but they can not teach what they have learned for whatever reason. These are considered to be behind the Sammasambuddhas in the spiritual growth. Lastly there is the Savakabuddhas. These guys attain their enlightenment by listening or learning from a sammasambuddha. Savaka literally means “follower”, so they are “follower-Buddha”. When it’s all done and settled, they earn the name Arahant, which is basically Buddha.
Theravada is a Buddhist school. In fact, it is the oldest out of all the other schools. Theravada means “the Teaching of the Elders”. Founded in India, the school is based on the knowledge of the early Buddhist ideas, which mean they do not change much. In the world today, there are about 100 million Theravada Buddhist people. It is gaining popularity in many parts of the world including Singapore and the even the west. It seems that in the west, the most popular form of Buddhism seems be to be the Theravada route. In Theravada, the fundamentals are the same for the most part. There still are “The Four Noble Truths” and mediation is still a very important part of their daily lives. But, something different is that there are actually different levels of enlightenment, with each having to do with you getting rid of a trait that would otherwise cause trouble.
References
http://www.aboutbuddhism.org/buddhism-beliefs.php/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism
http://www.aboutmeditation.org/meditation-posture.php/
http://aboutdharma.org/index.php/
