A Brief Introduction to Buddhism

Christopher Partridge, Tim Dowley, Christopher Partridge, Tim Dowley

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781506450308
• eBook ISBN:
  9781506450315
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Buddhism

This brief introduction to Buddhism is designed to help readers understand this important religious tradition. With both nuance and balance, this text provides broad coverage of various forms of Buddhism with an arresting layout with rich colors. It offers both historical overviews and modern perspectives on Buddhist beliefs and practices. The user-friendly content is enhanced by charts of religious festivals, historic timelines, updated maps, and a useful glossary.

It is ideal for courses on Buddhism and Asian religions and will be a useful, concise reference for all readers eager to know more about this important religious tradition and its place in our contemporary world.

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BUDDHISM

SUMMARY

Buddhism, it is now generally believed, emerged into the world sometime around the fifth century BCE, in northern India, and is derived from the teachings of one man – Siddhartha Gautama – known to his followers by the title Buddha. Central to the Buddha’s teachings was the idea that one had to experience dissatisfaction or suffering in order to understand that these have a cause: the egocentric desire for satisfaction, pleasure, or even life itself. Once this understanding is reached, followers of the Dharma, ‘the teaching’, can begin their quest for enlightenment, nirvana, by following the Buddhist moral code, and by meditating in order to purify the mind. As a non-theistic religion, Buddhism does not concern itself with the existence of a creator, in the Western sense at least, teaching that attainment of nirvana is a person’s route out of the endless cycle of death and rebirth.

A variety of different schools and monastic traditions emerged within Buddhism, from Theravada, the earliest surviving monastic school, to Tantra, which advocates the use of ritual magic to control hidden forces or aid the path to nirvana. One of the most important traditions is Mahayana, through which some seek not only to achieve nirvana but actually to become a Buddha. Regional variations also emerged, as Buddhism spread outward from India across much of eastern Asia. In many cases, these variations are closely related to local religious traditions, or are even the product of wider syncretism, such as the Cao Dai in Vietnam, which has roots not only in Buddhism but also Catholic Christianity, Confucianism, and Taoism. In recent decades, Buddhism has faced suppression in many Asian countries, perhaps most notably in Tibet, where rule by Maoist China led to severe repression of the local traditions. Alongside this, though, Buddhism has experienced growth elsewhere, buoyed both by migration and Western interest in the religion.

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A Historical Overview

Buddhism is the ‘-ism’ that is named after the Buddha. ‘Buddha’ is not a personal name, but a title meaning ‘the one who has awakened’. The Buddha was a historical individual who lived and died some centuries BCE, although it is difficult to be precise about his exact dates. The common traditional date for the Buddha’s birth is 563 BCE, and the sources agree he lived in North India for eighty years. However, modern scholarship questions the reliability of this date, and most historians place his birth eighty to a hundred years later, and his death around 400 BCE. The Buddha’s clan-name was Gautama, but later tradition called him Siddhartha in Sanskrit, or Siddhattha in the Pali language, in which many early Buddhist works were written.

‘Buddhism’ is an English name for a religion that its followers often simply refer to as the Dharma (Pali, Dhamma), which can be taken here as meaning both ‘the teaching’ and ‘the way things are’. It was discovering this, and teaching it, that made Siddhartha Gautama ‘the Buddha’. Whereas Western discussions tend to stress the importance of its founder (Buddha + ism, no doubt on the model of Christ + ianity), Buddhists prefer to emphasize not him, but rather what he taught; for them the obvious place to start is the teaching. This teaching, they say, leads people to understand how things truly are, and thence to a radical reassessment of their lives. The Buddha simply awakened to this truth and taught it. In this he was not unique, for – it is said – others had awakened before him, and there will be many, many after him too.

Hatred is never quenched by hatred; by non-hatred alone is hatred quenched. This is an Eternal Law. Dhammapada, v. 5

WHO WAS THE BUDDHA?

To start with the life story of the Buddha is the Western tradition. Even if we start with it here too, this life story should not be read as historical fact, though we can reasonably take it that Siddhartha Gautama lived and died. He was considered by his followers to have achieved the fullest possible understanding of reality, an understanding that is true freedom. The historicity of the rest is difficult to assess. Some of it we know is very unlikely to have happened, but Buddhism has always been more interested in the ways in which the life story illustrates Buddhist teachings than in its literal historical truth.

The legendary account of the Buddha’s life developed gradually in the centuries after his demise. In that account, he is a prince who is protected from all knowledge of the nasty things of life. However, in the Pali sources he is simply a highborn Shakyan who had little awareness of suffering as he grew up, but the shock of discovering old age, sickness, and death led him to renounce worldly pursuits. He had married and had a son, but left his family and took to the life – not uncommon in India then as now – of a wandering seeker. He sought the final truth that would lead to complete freedom from suffering – a harsh life of meditation, study, and asceticism. Food – and very little of it – came from asking for alms. But eventually Siddhartha, looking within, in deep meditation, reached the truth he sought. He came to ‘see it the way it really is’, and this truth set him free. He was now the awakened one, the Buddha. The Buddha gathered around him a group of disciples and wandered northern India, teaching all who would listen. Eventually, in old age, the Buddha died. But for him death was nothing; for he was now free from death, as he was free from all other forms of unpleasantness, imperfection, and frustration. After death, there is nothing more to say.

Chinese Buddha figurine.

WHAT DID HE TEACH?

The life story of the Buddha is all about things appearing one way and really being another. The Buddha taught that ‘seeing things the way they really are’ is the way to overcome every sort of unpleasantness, imperfection, and frustration. These are all classed under the expression dukkha (Pali), a term which in the everyday context of the time meant literally ‘pain’ or ‘suffering’. He taught that, when we look deeply, we can see that all our lives are, one way or another, at root simply dukkha. The Buddha was uninterested in the question of God; and Buddhist tradition has been unanimous that a creator-God, in the sense in which he is thought to exist by Christians, for example, simply does not exist. Suffering, for Buddhists, is the result of our ignorance, not understanding the way things really are, and we all live our lives in the light of that failure in understanding. The central dimension of such misunderstanding lies in our not appreciating that everything in our experience is by its very nature impermanent. Alongside impermanence – in fact, logically and doctrinally prior to it – is conditionality: the teaching that things arise and pass away in dependence upon conditions. Suffering results from holding on, trying in our experiences and in our lives to ‘fix things’ so they do not break up and cease to be. Clearly we are doomed to failure. We need to learn to let go let go of attachment and a fixed sense of selfhood; but this letting go has to occur at a very deep level indeed, since we have been confused and suffering in this manner for infinite lifetimes.

For Buddhists, human experience consists of a flow of consciousness, with associated mental contents such as feelings and intentions, and a body that is ever changing too. Any further unchanging element, called a ‘self’ (Pali, atta; Sanskrit, atman), would appear to be unnecessary. Indeed, it could lead to a dangerous form of self-grasping, the very opposite of letting go. Rather, Buddhist tradition teaches ‘not-self’ (Pali, anatta; Sanskrit, anatman). At death the body ceases, but the ever-flowing continuum of consciousness and its mental accompaniments continues and ‘spins’, as it were, another body in accordance with one’s good or bad deeds (karma). Such ‘rebirth’ means that one is yet again subject to suffering – old age, sickness, death and so on. This process ceases only with letting go at the deepest possible level, attained through meditation. It is a letting go that springs from seeing things as they truly are, and completely reversing one’s almost instinctive and frantic patterns of grasping after things. This cessation Buddhists call ‘enlightenment’ (Pali, nibbana; Sanskrit, nirvana).

MONASTIC TRADITIONS AND DOCTRINAL SCHOOLS

Central to the Buddha’s vision of the way forward was an order of monks and nuns – known as the Sangha – living on alms, and expressing in their state of renunciation their commitment to the radical transformation we all need. In time, monasteries were established, together with a monastic rule, to regulate the conduct of the Sangha, and promote the peace and harmony necessary in order to follow the Buddha’s path. The Buddha did not appoint a successor, reportedly declaring that the teaching – the Dharma – should be his successor. But after his death, with time, disagreements occurred, initially over the monastic rules. Where disputes over the rule could not be reconciled, monks in the minority were required to depart, forming their own groups based on variants of the monastic rule. Eventually, a number of different monastic traditions were formed. The best known of these – and the only one of the early Indian Buddhist monastic traditions to survive to the present day – is the ‘Way of the Elders’ (Theravada), found nowadays in, for example, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, and Myanmar (Burma).

In Buddhism, ‘schism’ (sanghabheda) technically concerns monastic rule, not doctrinal disagreement, which is relatively less serious. Nevertheless, as time passed, different doctrinal positions also evolved, sometimes followed by identifiable schools – for example the school known as Pudgalavada (‘Teaching the pudgala’). The point of contention here was that of the ‘person’ (pudgala). Advocates urged that, although the Buddha taught ‘not-self’, there still exists something – albeit difficult to specify what – called the pudgala, as something in some sense really there ‘in’ us. Others viewed this pudgala as just a self in disguise, and an abandonment of a central part of the Buddha’s teaching. Further issues of debate involved who or what the Buddha himself was. Some urged that a Buddha is really much more extraordinary than people realize. For example, although he seems to teach, really he is permanently in meditation. He has no need to sleep, to defecate, or even to eat, but only does these things...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table Of Contents
• Consulting editors
• Contributors
• List of Maps
• List of Time Charts
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• UNDERSTANDING RELIGION
• BUDDHISM
• Gallery
• Rapid Fact-Finder
• Index
• Picture Acknowledgments