|
- Selected Article - |
 |
Adie |
Topic: A Brief Introduction To Buddhism
Posted: 2004-08-12 @ 14:52:14
The Buddhist Concept of Ultimate Reality
Buddhism was founded by Siddhartha Gautama as a protest against the Brahmin caste of Hinduism. Like Hinduism, Buddhism shares the five common concepts of South Asian religions: reincarnation, karma, enlightenment, desire, and dharma. Unlike Hinduism, the ultimate figure in Buddhism is not Brahman but rather blissful nothingness, and the quest for spiritual enlightenment ends in the extinguishment of existence. Buddhists do not believe that beings contain souls, but rather bundles of karmic energy. The fundamental understanding behind Buddhism is that all life is suffering and contains disease, old age, and death. “The contention that all life is suffering is simply a statement about the way things are, not the result of a pessimistic outlook” (WR 144). There is an escape from the suffering, and that is through nirvana, which is enlightenment or “liberation from cyclic existence” (F&P 124).
There are two schools of Buddhism: Hinayana and Mahayana. Theravada Buddhism is the only surviving school in the Hinayana tradition, the traditional form of Buddhism. It is considered the “Lesser Vehicle” because its “ideal is the arhat, a being who overcomes all ties to the phenomenal world and so attains nirvana, which is said to be a state beyond birth and death” (F&P 74). This ideal is seen as “selfish and limited” by the Mahayana Buddhists, the “Greater Vehicle,” who hold an ideal of the bodhisattva “who seeks to attain the state of buddhahood in order to help others to find the path to final happiness” (F&P 74).
Both schools of Buddhism realize that the continual suffering that is life is caused by desire, and that to reach nirvana all desire must be forgotten. They follow a “middle way” between starvation and overindulgence. Buddhism is a functional atheistic religion, which “is not concerned about the question of the existence of gods” and believes that “they are irrelevant to human destiny” (WR 150).
How Ultimate Reality is Known in Buddhism
In Theravada Buddhism, the path to nirvana is laid out within the Four Noble Truths. The first Noble Truth is duhkha, which is the idea that all life and “cyclic existence is characterized by suffering” (F&P 124). This suffering comes under the guises of disease, old age, and death, and every living moment before nirvana is reached is clouded in duhkha. The second Noble Truth is the cause of suffering, which is craving and desire. Should humans wish to surround themselves with material possessions and wealth, nirvana will never be reached. Even the desires for spiritual enlightenment and knowledge of the ultimate push humans farther away from nirvana. The third Noble Truth, the notion that there is a way out of duhkha, can be done through the fourth Noble Truth, which is the Eightfold Path and explains what actions must be taken to achieve liberation.
The Eightfold Path is broken into three major segments- the right beliefs and intentions, morality, and final steps to help a person reach nirvana. The first two points in the Eightfold Path are “right belief” and “right aspiration” (WR 148) and require the student of Buddhism to hold “a correct view of the nature of reality” and free their “mind from sensual desires, greed, and malice” (WR 149). The next three points in the Eightfold Path are “right speech,” “right conduct” and “right means of livelihood” (WR 148). These points comprise the morality aspect of Buddhism, and require the student to refrain from “gossiping,” harming or “killing other living creatures” or making a living outside of “Buddhist ideals” (WR 149). The final three points in the Eightfold Path are “right endeavour,” “right mindfulness” and “right meditation” (WR 148) and force the student to concentrate on their actions and emotions in order to enter a state of samadhi, which in Buddhism is “a ‘one-pointedness’ in which all attachments have been broken” (WR 149). By following the Eightfold Path, nirvana can be reached.
It is important in Theravada Buddhism to realize that there is no soul, and that nirvana can only be reached through the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path.
(5)Comments
|
|
|
