BUDDHISM

BUDDHA

Buddhism arose as a reformist sect of Hinduism

Buddhism originated with Siddhartha Gautama (448 BCE – 368 BCE)

Siddhartha Gautama was born into a noble family in modern-day Nepal

According to Buddhist mythology, Gautama’s mother, queen Maha Maya, dreamed that a white elephant had entered her womb. Ten lunar months later a child appeared under her right arm. The child was immediately able to walk and talk. Maha Maya died seven days after Gautama’s birth.

The prince enjoyed an opulent life in the palace, was married at 16, and fathered a child, Rahula at 28.

Gautama became disenchanted with palace life and became a wandering, ascetic monk for six years.

When he was 35 Gautama reported having experienced a spiritual breakthrough while meditating under a Bodhi tree. He began teaching what he had learned, and became referred to by the honorific title, the “Buddha” (the one who has awakened).

Buddha is understood to have discovered the true nature of the universe and the path to freedom through his enlightenment.

The teachings were not written down until several centuries later.

Buddha did not nominate a successor.

There are other Buddhas in other times and realms.

BUDDHIST TEACHINGS

Buddhism is understood not a set of doctrines but a set of observations about life.

Buddha taught that humans are successively born into various realms of existence.

Karma determines whether subsequent rebirths will be desirable or undesirable outcomes.

Karma is described as the force generated by a person's actions to perpetuate transmigration (into the next incarnation) and in its ethical consequences to determine the nature of the person's next existence.

The goal of Buddhism is to escape the cycle of death and rebirth through mental perfection that allows one to understand the true nature of reality and hence prevent producing additional karma.

Those able to achieve mental perfection live in a permanent state of nirvana.

Among the most central teachings of Buddhism are the Four Noble Truths, which analyze the causes of the existence of suffering and provide a means to eliminate suffering.
• Life is pain, suffering, sorrowful, out of joint. No one is able to escape birth, illness, old age, and death.
• Suffering, pain is caused by desire, our tendency to desire, grasp, cling, hold on.
• The source of greed is clinging to a process that is constantly changing, transitory, and impermanent rather than accepting and opening to our experience.
• There is a path of ethics and practices that leads to freedom from suffering, desire, and illusion - the Eightfold Noble Path.

The Eightfold Noble Path is
• Right View - to see and to understand things as they really are.
• Right intention - a commitment to ethical and mental self-improvement. There are three types of right intentions: resistance to the pull of desire (renunciation), resistance to feelings of anger and aversion (good will), and avoiding thinking or acting cruelly, violently, or aggressively, and developing compassion (harmlessness).
• Right Speech - to abstain from false, deceitful speech; to abstain from malicious and slanderous speech, to abstain from harsh, offensive words; and to abstain from speech that lacks purpose or depth.
• Right Action - right action means to abstain from harming sentient beings (intentionally or delinquently), especially to abstain from taking life (including suicide); to abstain from taking what is not given, which includes stealing, robbery, fraud, deceitfulness, and dishonesty; and to abstain from sexual misconduct. To engage in right action therefore means to act kindly and compassionately, to be honest, to respect the belongings of others, and to keep sexual relationships harmless to others.
• Right Livelihood – right livelihood means to avoid dealing in living beings (including raising animals for slaughter as well as slave trade and prostitution), working in meat production and butchery, and selling intoxicants and poisons, such as alcohol and drugs.
• Right Effort - Right effort involves four levels of movement toward perfection: to prevent the arising of unarisen unwholesome states, to abandon unwholesome states that have already arisen, to arouse wholesome states that have not yet arisen, and to maintain and perfect wholesome states already arisen.
• Right Mindfulness – Right mindfulness involves the mental ability to see things as they are, with clear consciousness. The four foundations of mindfulness are contemplation of the body, contemplation of feeling (repulsive, attractive, or neutral), contemplation of the state of mind, and contemplation of the phenomena.
• Right Concentration - Right concentration involves concentration on wholesome thoughts and actions. This is achieved through the practice of meditation.

THE BROAD STRANDS OF BUDDHISM

Theravada (Teaching of the Elders) Buddhism

Theravada Buddhism is the more conservative branch of the Buddhist tradition.

In Theravada Buddhism there is a strong focus on the life of Buddha and his immediate disciples.

Theravada Buddhism favors imitating the monk’s lifestyle as the ideal to follow.

Theravada Buddhism teaches that there are three planes of existence – plane of desire, material plane, plane of immateriality. Meditation permits the abandonment of desire.

Theravada Buddhism focuses on helping practitioners move beyond desire to a state of worthiness (arhat)]

Theravada Buddhism emphasizes the importance of purifying one’s mind in order to live in harmony with nature and gain ultimate peace happiness, and freedom.

Ritual practice involves observation, focusing on the comings and goings of thoughts, emotions, sensations. The objective is awareness without judgment.

Theravada Buddhism was first popularized for lay people in Burma and emphasized being aware and present with physical and mental experiences as they are happening so as to see things clearly as they are.

Theravada Buddhism in America

Immigrants primarily from Thailand, Sri Lanka, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Bengal, Vietnam.

Temples are formed by first-generation immigrants, American converts, both immigrants and Americans.

Between 500,000 and 1,000,000 individuals in the U.S. could be called Theravada. Buddhists

The first Theravada Buddhist organization in the U.S. was founded in 1965, the Washington Buddhist Vihara.

One of the most prominent Insight Meditation groups is the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA, which was founded in 1975.

1980 – A lay association, the Theravada Buddhist Society of America, was formed.

Examples of Theravada Buddhism in the U.S.:
Washington Buddhist Vihara (Theravada Buddhism from Sri Lanka)
Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA (Vipassana)

Mahayana (Great Vehicle) Buddhism 

The founders of the Mahayna tradition regarded Theravada as too narrow, and they incorporated elements of Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Shintoism.

In the Mahayana tradition there is greater concern with alleviation of suffering than with ultimate liberation from the cycle of life.

The Mahayana tradition emphasizes the person who aspires to Buddahood, the bodhisattva, who seeks to attain wisdom or supreme enlightenment with compassion.

Bodhisattvas are enlightened beings who are qualified for Nirvana but who continue serve in this world until all beings realize their true nature.

Mahayana Buddhism in the U.S.

Most immigrants to the U.S. come from Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, China, Taiwan, Malaysia

The Mahayana tradition includes both Zen Buddhism and Pure Land Buddhism.

Examples of the Mahayana tradition in the U.S.:
Buddhist Churches of America (Pure Land)
San Francisco Zen Center (Soto Zen)