 | Buddhism: Encyclopedia II - Buddhism - Principles of Buddhism
Buddhism - Principles of Buddhism
Buddhism - The Three Marks of Existence
According to the Buddhist tradition, all phenomena (dharmas) are marked by three characteristics, sometimes referred to as the Dharma seals, that is anicca(impermanence), dukkha (suffering) and Anatta (no self)
Main Article: Anicca
(Pāli; Sanskrit: anitya): All compounded phenomena (things and experiences) are inconstant, unsteady, and impermanent. (Practically) everything is made up of parts, and is dependent on the right conditions for its existence. Everything is in constant flux, and so conditions and the thing itself is constantly changing. Things are constantly coming into being, and ceasing to be. Nothing lasts.
The important point here is that phenomena arise and cease according to (complex) conditions and not according to our whims and fancy. While we have limited ability to effect change to our possessions and surroundings, experience tells us that our feeble attempts are no guarantee that the results of our efforts will be to our likings. More often than not, the results fall short of our expectations.
In Mahayana Buddhism, a caveat is added: one should indeed always meditate on the impermanence and changefulness of compounded structures and phenomena, but one must guard against extending this to the realm of Nirvana, where impermanence holds no sway and eternity alone obtains. To see Nirvana or the Buddha (in his ultimate Dharmakaya nature) as impermanent would be to indulge in "perverted Dharma" and would be seriously to go astray, according to the Buddha's final Mahayana doctrines. Other schools of Buddhism, however, feel uneasy with such a teaching.
Main Article: Dukkha
(Pāli; Sanskrit: duḥkha): "Whatever is impermanent is subject to change. Whatever is subject to change is subject to suffering" - The Buddha.
Striving for what we desire, we may experience stress and suffering. Getting what we desired, we may find delight and happiness. Soon after, the novelty may wear out and we may get bored with it. Boredom is a form of dissatisfaction (or suffering) and to escape from it, we divert ourselves from such boredom by indulging in a pursuit of new forms of pleasure. Sometimes not willing to relinquish objects that we are already disinterested in, we start to collect and amass possessions instead of sharing with others who may have better use in it than we do. Boredom is a result of change. Change of our interest in that object of desire that so captivated us in the first place.
If we do not get bored already, then change may instead occur in the object of desire. Silverware may become tarnished, a new dress worn thin or a gadget gone obsolete. Or it may become broken, causing us to grieve. In some cases it may get lost or stolen. In some cases, we may worry about such losses even before it happens. Husbands and wives worry about losing their spouses even though their partners are faithful. Unfortunately, sometimes our very worry and fear drives us to act irrationally, resulting in distrust and breaking up of the very relationship that we cherished so much.
While we like changes like becoming an adult when we are in our teens, we dislike the change called aging. While we strive for change to become rich, we fear the change of retrenchment. We are selective in our attitude towards the transient nature of our very existence. Unfortunately, this transient nature is unselective. We can try to fight it, just as many have tried since beginningless time, only to have our efforts washed away through the passages of time. As a result, we continually experience dissatisfaction or suffering due to the very impermanence of compounded phenomena.
Only in the realm of Nirvana - so Mahayana Buddhism insists - can true and lasting happiness be found. Nirvana is the opposite of the conditoned, the transitory and the painful (dukkha), so it does not result in disappointment or deterioration of the state of bliss. Nirvana is the refuge from the otherwise universal tyranny of change and suffering.
Main Article: Anatta
(Pāli; Sanskrit: anātman): In Indian philosophy, the concept of a self is called ātman (that is, "soul" or metaphysical self), which refers to an unchanging, permanent essence conceived by virtue of existence. This concept and the related concept of Brahman, the Vedantic monistic ideal, which was regarded as an ultimate ātman for all beings, were indispensable for mainstream Indian metaphysics, logic, and science; for all apparent things there had to be an underlying and persistent reality, akin to a Platonic form. The Buddha rejected all concepts of ātman, emphasizing not permanence, but changeability. He taught that all concepts of a substantial personal self were incorrect, and formed in the realm of ignorance. However, in a number of major Mahayana sutras (e.g. the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, the Tathagatagarbha Sutra, the Srimala Sutra, among others), the Buddha is presented as clarifying this teaching by saying that, while the skandhas (constituents of the ordinary body and mind) are not the Self, there does truly exist an eternal, unchanging, blissful Buddha-essence in all sentient beings, which is the uncreated and deathless Buddha-nature ("Buddha-dhatu") or "True Self" of the Buddha himself. This immaculate Buddhic Self (atman) is in no way to be construed as a mundane, impermanent, suffering "ego", of which it is the diametrical opposite. On the other hand, this Buddha-essence or Buddha-nature is also often explained as the potential for achieving Buddhahood, rather than an existing phenomenon one can grasp onto as being me or self. It is the opposite of a personalised, samsaric "I" or "mine". The paradox is that as soon as the Buddhist practitioner tries to grasp at this inner Buddha potency and cling to it as though it were his or her ego writ large, it proves elusive. It does not "exist" in the time-space conditioned and finite mode in which mundane things are bodied forth. It is presented by the Buddha in the relevant sutras as ultimately inexplicable, primordially present Reality itself - the living potency for Buddhahood inside all beings. It is finally revealed (in the last of the Buddha's Mahayana sutras, the Nirvana Sutra) not as the circumscribed "non-self", the clinging ego (which is indeed anatta/anatman), but as the ever-enduring, egoless Great Self or Dharmakaya of the Buddha.
The scriptural evidence of the Nikāyas and Āgamas is ambivalent with regard to the Buddha's reported views on the existence or otherwise of a permanent self (ātman/atta). Though he is clearly reported to have criticized many of the heterodox concepts concerning an eternal personal self and to have denied the existence of an eternal self with regards to any of the constituent elements (skandha) of a being, he is nevertheless not reported to have explictly denied the existence of a non-personal, permanent self, contrary to the popular, orthodox view of the Buddha's teachings. Moreover, when the Buddha predicates "anātman" (anatta) with regards to the constituents of a being, there is a grammatical ambivalence in the use of the term. The most natural interpretation is that he is simply stating that "the constituents are not the self" rather than "the constituents are devoid of self". This ambivalence was to prove troublesome to Buddhists after the Buddha's passing. Some of the major schools of Buddhism that developed subsequently maintained the former interpretation, but other influential schools adopted the latter interpretation and took measures to establish their view as the orthodox Buddhist position. One such proponent of this hard-line "no self" position was the monk Nagasena, who appears in the Questions of King Milinda, composed during the period of the Hellenistic Indo-Greek kingdom of the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE. In this text, Nagasena demonstrates the concept of absolute 'no self' by likening human beings to a chariot and challenges the Greek king "Milinda" (Menander) to find the essence of the chariot. Nagasena states that just as a chariot is made up of a number of things, none of which are the essence of the chariot in isolation, without the other pieces, similarly no one part of a person is a permanent entity; we can be broken up into five constituents - body, sensations, ideation, mental formations and consciousness - the consciousness being closest to the permanent idea of 'self', but is ever-changing with each new thought according to this viewpoint.
According to some thinkers both in the East and the West, the doctrine of "non-Self", may imply that Buddhism is a form of nihilism or something similar. However, as thinkers like Nagarjuna have clearly pointed out, Buddhism is not simply a rejection of the concept of existence (or of meaning, etc.) but of the hard and fast distinction between existence and nonexistence, or rather between being and nothingness. Phenomena are not independent from causes and conditions, and do not exist as isolated things as we perceive them to be. Philosophers such as Nāgārjuna stress that the lack of a permanent, unchanging, substantial self in beings and things does not mean that they do not experience growth and decay on the relative level. But on the ultimate level of analysis, one cannot distinguish an object from its causes and conditions, or even object and subject. (This is an idea appearing relatively recently in Western science.) Buddhism thus has much more in common with Western empiricism, pragmatism, and anti-foundationalism than with nihilism.
In the Nikāyas, the Buddha and his disciples are commonly found to ask in question or declare "Is that which is impermanent, subject to change, subject to suffering fit to be considered thus: 'This I am, this is mine, this is my self'?" The question which the Buddha posts to his audience is whether compounded phenomena is fit to be considered as self, in which the audience agrees that it is unworthy to be considered so. And in relinquishing such an attachment to compounded phenomena, such a person gives up delight, desire and craving for compounded phenomena and is unbounded by its change. When completely free from attachments, craving or desire to the five aggregates, such a person experiences then transcends the very causes of suffering.
In this way, the insight wisdom or prajñā of non-self gives rise to cessation of suffering, and not an intellectual debate over whether a self exists or not.
It is by realizing (not merely understanding intellectually, but making real in one's experience) the three marks of conditioned existence that one develops prajñā, which is the antidote to the ignorance that lies at the root of all suffering. From the "tathagatagarbha-Mahayana" perspective (which diverges from the Theravadin understanding of Buddhism), however, a further step is requred if full Buddhahood is to be attained: not only seeing what is impermanent, suffering and non-Self in the samsaric sphere, but equally recognising that which is truly Eternal, Blissful, Self, and Pure in the transcendental realm - the realm of Mahaparinirvana.
See also: three marks of existence
Buddhism - The Four Noble Truths
The Buddha taught that life was dissatisfactory because of craving, but that this condition was curable by following the Eightfold Path. This teaching is called the Four Noble Truths:
- Dukkha: All worldly life is unsatisfactory, disjointed, containing suffering.
- Samudaya: There is a cause of suffering, which is attachment or desire (tanha) rooted in ignorance.
- Nirodha: There is an end of suffering, which is Nirvana.
- Magga: There is a path that leads out of suffering, known as the Noble Eightfold Path.
In Buddhism it teaches that suffering is caused by desire and want. The central theory of Buddhist philosophy that explains the cause of suffering is Pratītyasamutpāda (in Sanskrit). It is written in devanagari as प्रतीत्यसमुत्पाद and pronounced as "prətītyə səmυtpα:də". It means "the chain of causation", and further that everything in the world, including the soul, is only relative and momentary. The action is not independent but depends upon its cause, hence the famous Karma theory. The soul (not in the sense of an everlasting reality) goes through an eternal cycle of births and deaths because it undergoes through a series of following twelve :
- Ignorance or Avidyā
- Impressions or Samskāra
- Consciousness or Vijñāna
- Mind-Body Organism or Nāma Rūpa
- Six Senses or ŞaDāyatana
- Sense contact or Sparsha
- Sense Experience or Vedanā
- Craving or Tŗişhņa
- Mental Clinging or Upādāna
- Will to be born or Bhava
- Rebirth or Jāti
- Suffering or Jarā-maraņa.
Buddhism says that each of these causes gives effect to the next, until the twelfth gives rise to the first. This cycle of births and deaths cannot be severed until one attains Nirvana.
Note that the names are given in Sanskrit and their English meanings are only approximate.
Buddhism - The Noble Eightfold Path
Main article: Noble Eightfold Path
In order to fully understand the noble truths and investigate whether they were in fact true, Buddha recommended that a certain lifestyle or path be followed which consists of:
- Right Understanding
- Right Thought
- Right Speech
- Right Action
- Right Livelihood
- Right Effort
- Right Mindfulness
- Right Concentration
Sometimes in the Pāli Canon the Noble Eightfold Path is spoken of as being a progressive series of stages through which the practitioner moves, the culmination of one leading to the beginning of another, but it is more usual to view the stages of the 'Path' as requiring simultaneous development.
The Eightfold Path essentially consists of meditation, following the precepts, and cultivating the positive converse of the precepts (e.g. benefiting living beings is the converse of the first precept of harmlessness). The Path may also be thought of as a way of developing śīla, meaning mental and moral discipline.
Other related archives1200 CE, 1964, 1974, 1998, 1st century BCE, 334 BCE, 483, 500 CE, 527 BCE, 566, 566 BCE, 599, 708, "Three Jewels" of Buddhism, Abhidhamma, Adi Sankara, Advaita, Advaita Vedanta, Alan Watts, Alexander the Great, Ambedkar, Anagarika Dharmapala, Anatta, Anicca, Ashoka, Astika, Avataṃsaka, BCE, Bahá'í Faith, Benares, Bengal, Bodhi tree, Bodhisattvas, Brahma, Brahman, British Library, Buddha, Buddha Statues of Bamiyan, Buddha-nature, Buddhadharma, Buddhism, Buddhism by country, Buddhism in America, Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, Buddhist Society, London, Buddhist religious philosophy, Buddhist scripture, Buddhist terms and concepts, Buddhist texts, Buddhist vegetarianism, Buddhists, Burma, CE, Cambodia, Central Asia, Chan, China, Chinese, Christianity, Christmas Humphreys, Chögyam Trungpa, Confucianism, Cultural elements of Buddhism, D.T. Suzuki, Dalai Lama, Dead Sea scrolls, Devanagari, Dhammakaya, Dharma, Dharmakaya, Dhul-Kifl, Dogen, Dukkha, Eastern Asia, Eastern philosophy, Eighteen Schools, Eightfold Path, Enlightenment, Europe, Faith in Buddhism, Four Noble Truths, Four Passing Sights, Friends of the Western Buddhist Order, Gandhara, Gautama Buddha, God, God in Buddhism, Gordon Douglas, Greco-Bactrian, Greco-Buddhist art, Greco-Roman, Grove Press, H.P. Blavatsky, Hellenistic, Henry David Thoreau, Henry Steel Olcott, Hermann Hesse, Hindi, Hinduism, Hindus, History of Buddhism, History of Buddhist schools, India, Indian, Indian subcontinent, Indo-Greek, Indo-Greek kingdom, Indra, International Buddhist flag, Ishvara, Islam, Jack Kerouac, Jain, Jainism, Jainism and Buddhism, Japan, Japanese, Japanese Buddhism, Jesus, Jinul, Josaphat, Judaism, K. Sri Dhammananda, Kalmykia, Kami, Karma, Kashmir, Kilesa, Korea, Korean Buddhism, Ladakh, Lama Surya Das, Lankavatara Sutra, Laos, Linji, List of Buddhist topics, List of Buddhists, Lotus Sutra, Lumbini, Mahaparinirvana, Mahaparinirvana Sutra, Mahayana, Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra, Mahāvīra, Mahāyāna, Malaysia, Mauryan, Max Müller, Meditation, Menander, Milinda Panha, Mongolia, Muslims, Nagarjuna, Nagasena, Nastika, Neo-Confucianism, Nepal, Nikaya, Nirvana, Nirvana Sutra, Noble Eightfold Path, Nāgārjuna, Pakistan, Pali, Pali Canon, Pancasila, Perfection of Wisdom, Persian, Platform Sutra, Platonic form, Plutarch, Pāli, Pāli Canon, Pārśvanātha, Quaker, Questions of King Milinda, Qur'an, Rebirth, Refuge (Buddhism), Religious faiths, traditions, and movements, Roman Catholic, Sangha, Sangharakshita, Sanskrit, Schopenhauer, Seleucids, Shakyamuni, Shakyas, Shambhala, Shinto, Shintoism, Shobogenzo, Siberia, Siddhartha Gautama, Siddhārtha Gautama, Singapore, Southeast Asia, Sri Lanka, Srimala Sutra, Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment, Sutta Pitaka, Tantric, Taoism, Tathagatagarbha, Tathagatagarbha Sutra, Tenzin Gyatso, Thailand, The Dharma Bums, Theosophical Society, Theosophist, Theravada, Theravāda, Thich Nhat Hanh, Three Jewels, Thurman, Robert A. F., Tibet, Tibetan, Tipitaka, Tripitaka, United States, Vajrayana, Vajrayāna, Vedas, Vietnam, Vimalakīrti Sutra, Vinaya, Vishnu, Walpola Rahula, Yin Shun, Zen, abhidhamma, agamas, age, anapana, anatman, anatta, anicca, anti-foundationalism, ascetic, aspirated, atman, avatar, beat generation, bhakti, bhakti movement, birch bark, bodhi, caste, classical Chinese, compassion, dentals, dependent origination, devanagari, dharmas, dhyāna, dukkha, dynamism, ecumenical, empiricism, enlightenment, faith, first lay precept, hippie, history of Buddhism, karma, major world religion, meditating, meditation, mettā bhāvanā, monistic, monks, nearly extinct, nihilism, nirvana, nuns, oligarchic, omnipotent, omniscience, patimokkha, philosophy, pragmatism, prajñā, railroads, rebirth, refuge, religion, republic, roman-a-clef, samadhi, samatha, samsara, sangha, scripture, sex, sexual misconduct, sila, skandhas, soul, sutra, sutta, syncretic, sādhus, tanha, tantras, tathagatagarbha, three marks of existence, vinaya, vipaka, vipassana, vitalism, ātman, śīla
 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Principles of Buddhism", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
