Transcript Chapter 5 Buddhism

Living Religions
8th Edition
Mary Pat Fisher
©2011 PRENTICE HALL | Pearson Education, Inc. | Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458
Chapter 5
Buddhism
The life and legend of the Buddha
The Dharma
Buddhism spreads abroad
Buddhism in the West
Socially engaged Buddhism
©2011 PRENTICE HALL | Pearson Education, Inc. | Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458
Key terms
anatman (Pali: anatta)
anitya (Pali: anicca)
arhant (Pali: arhat)
bhikshu (Pali: bhikkhu;
feminine: bhikshuni, bhikkhuni)
bodhisattva
deity yoga
Dharma (Pali: Dhamma)
dukkha
karma
kensho
koan
lama
Mahayana
nirvana
Pali Canon
samsara
Sangha
stupa
sunyata
Theravada
Triple Gem
Vajrayana
vipassana
zazen
Zen
©2011 PRENTICE HALL | Pearson Education, Inc. | Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458
“When you open your mind to the truth, then you realize there
is nothing to fear. What arises passes away, what is born
dies, and is not self--so that our sense of being caught in an
identity with this human body fades out. We don’t see
ourselves as some isolated, alienated entity lost in a
mysterious and frightening universe. We don’t feel
overwhelmed by it, trying to find a little piece of it that we can
grasp and feel safe with, because we feel at peace with it.
Then we have merged with the Truth.
Ajahn Sumedho, Buddhist monk
©2011 PRENTICE HALL | Pearson Education, Inc. | Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458
Beings are infinite in number,
I vow to save them all;
The obstructive passions are endless in number,
I vow to end them all;
The teachings for saving others are countless,
I vow to learn them all;
Buddhahood is the supreme achievement,
I vow to attain it.
Tiantai Zhiyi
The 4 Great Bodhisattva Vows
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Timeline
c. 5th century BCE
c. 258 BCE
c. 200 BCE-200 CE
c. 100 BCE-300 CE
c. 80 BCE
c. 50 CE
1st century CE
c. 150-250
c. 550
c. 609-650
845
1222-1282
c. 1200-1500
1959-
Life of Siddhartha Gautama Buddha
Ashoka spreads Buddhism outside India
Theravada develops
Perfection of Wisdom books develop
Pali Canon written down in Sri Lanka
Buddhism spreads to China, SE Asia
Mahayana develops
Life of Nagarjuna
Buddhism enters Japan
Songtsan establishes Tibetan Buddhism
Chinese persecute Buddhism
Life of Nichiren
Buddhism declines in India
China represses Tibetan Buddhism
©2011 PRENTICE HALL | Pearson Education, Inc. | Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458
The Life and legend of the Buddha
• What we know about him has been
passed down through his followers
• Prolific teachings passed down orally;
written down hundreds of years after his
death
• Followers have recalled his life in
sacred biographies
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The life and legend of the Buddha
(continued)
• Siddhartha led a sheltered life of luxury
• Saw the Four Sights: a bent aged man,
a sick person, a corpse, and a monk
• Left home at 29 to wander as an ascetic
• Found extreme lifestyles did not answer
his questions—led to the Middle Way:
neither self-indulgence or self-denial
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The life and legend of the Buddha
(continued)
• Vowed to sit under tree at Gaya until
enlightenment
• Experienced 4 states of contemplation
and had 3 realizations, he could
– Recall all his past lives
– See the entire cycle of life and death
– See the cause of suffering and the means
of ending it
• Siddhartha became the Buddha, the
Awaken One
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The life and legend of the Buddha
(continued)
• Spent the next 45 years teaching
• His teaching (dharma) included Four Noble Truths,
the Noble Eightfold Path, the Three Characteristics of
Existence
• Some followers became monks (bhikshus); women
were allowed to become nuns if they followed the 8
special rules
• Disciples (the Sangha) accepted people from all
castes and levels of society
• Before the Buddha died, he told his followers to take
the Dhamma (his teaching) as a refuge and guideline
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The Dharma
• Buddhism often described as
nontheistic
• No personal God; worship the Buddha
as a great teacher
• Revere the Buddha’s teachings—a raft
to take followers to the farther shore,
nirvana
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The Four Noble Truths
• Life inevitably involves suffering, is
imperfect and unsatisfactory
• Suffering originates in our desires
• Suffering will cease if all desires cease
• There is a way to realize this state: the
Noble Eightfold Path
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The Noble Eightfold Path
to Liberation
1. Right Understanding: realize and understand the
Four Noble Truths
2. Right Thought or Motives: uncover any
unwholesome roots in one’s thinking, eliminate selfcenteredness
3. Right Speech: abstain from lying, gossiping,
speaking harshly, divisive speech (useless speech)
4. Right Action: observe the Five Precepts, namely to
avoid destroying life, stealing, sexual misconduct,
lying, and intoxicants
©2011 PRENTICE HALL | Pearson Education, Inc. | Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458
The Noble Eightfold Path
to Liberation (continued)
5. Right Livelihood: make a living without violating the
Five Precepts
6. Right Effort: eliminate impurities of the mind and
cultivate wholesome actions
7. Right Mindfulness: be aware in every moment,
discipline the mind
8. Right Meditation: quiet the mind through mental
discipline
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The Wheel of Birth and Death
• No eternal, independently existing soul
to be reborn
• Central cause is karma
• 3 root afflictions: greed, hatred, and
delusion
• Cultivating non-greed, non-hatred, and
non-delusion act as causes to leave the
circle of birth and death
©2011 PRENTICE HALL | Pearson Education, Inc. | Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458
Mandalas are pictures of the
mind and of the universe.
Moving out from the center,
this wheel of samsara
includes animals representing
lust, hatred, and delusion, the
fates of beings with good
karma (left) and bad karma
(right), the six kinds of birth
from heaven to hell, the chain
of cause and effect, and a
monster grasping the wheel
representing death and
impermanence.
©2011 PRENTICE HALL | Pearson Education, Inc. | Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458
Branches of Buddhism
• Theraveda: way of the elders
– Prevalent in Sri Lanka, Myanmar (Burma),
Thailand, Cambodia, Laos
• Mayahana: great vehicle
– Prevalent in China, Korea, Mongolia,
Vietnam, Japan, Nepal, Tibet
• Both agree on basic concepts of Four
Noble Truths, karma, samsara, nirvana
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Approximate distribution of Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism.
©2011 PRENTICE HALL | Pearson Education, Inc. | Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458
Theraveda: The path of
mindfulness
•
•
•
•
Devotional practices dominate
Central text is the Pali Canon
More individualistic
Triple Gems
– The Buddha
– The Dharma
– The Sangha
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Mahayana: The path of
compassion and wisdom
• Focus on liberation of all beings
• Many Buddhas and bodhisattvas
• Buddha is an immanent presence in the
universe
• Three bodies of Buddha consist of Dharmakaya (Truth body), Sambhoga-kaya
(Enjoyment body), and Nirmana-kaya
(Manifestation body)
• Emptiness (sunyata)
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Our word “zero”
comes from the Arabic
translation of the
Sanskrit sunya, which
means “empty.”
Buddhists represented
sunyata, “emptiness,”
by a circle.
©2011 PRENTICE HALL | Pearson Education, Inc. | Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458
Other Branches
• Chan or Zen: the sudden way of
enlightenment
• Pure Land: devotion to Amitabha
Buddha
• Nichiren: salvation through the Lotus
Sutra
• Vajrayana: the indestructible path
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In this 18th-century painting,
Amida Buddha descends to
welcome the faithful to his
Western Paradise. Pure Land
Buddhism taught that Amida
saved all who called on his
name.
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Tibetan prostrates herself with wooden pads and canvas shield.
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Buddhism in the West
• Various forms of Buddhism have spread to
the West
– Exodus of thousands of Tibetans
– Efforts of Zen teachers
– Establishment of Theravada vipassana meditation
centers
• Difficult to replicate the monastic traditions in
a Western setting
• For immigrants maintaining Buddhist
practices means maintaining cultural and
ethnic traditions
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Socially Engaged Buddhism
• Emerging focus on the relevance of
Buddhism to social problems i.e.
vegetarianism, prostitution
©2011 PRENTICE HALL | Pearson Education, Inc. | Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458