Buddhism can be very confusing to the novice due to the different schools and their varied teachings.
In this is introduction because I am skipping all the mythology, exaggerations, and all the things that don’t make sense to the modern mind, to leave you with a straightforward explanation of what this great discipline is all about.
Buddhism is considered the fifth largest religion of the world because most of its practitioners worship the ideals of the Buddha, but it is not a theistic a religion. It is a psychology, the study of your own mind.
This discussion is based on the original teachings of Siddhattha Gotama (Siddhartha Gautama in Sanskrit) as preserved in Theravada Buddhist tradition. The doctrines of the Buddha were faithfully and accurately passed on orally until they were written two to three hundred years after his death (circa 400 BCE).
Around 100 CE, a split occurred into two major schools, the Theravada and Mahayana, due to adaptations to different cultures and ideology of practice. Each of these have since then greatly subdivided, but they all share some aspect of the fundamental teaching: The Four Noble Truths.
There is abundant literature about the life of the original Buddha (meaning the one who knows), mostly in the style of legend, folklore, and myth, but there are basic facts that may be derived from these.
First, the Buddha was a man who lived in India around 500-400 BCE. He was from an elite background and became concerned with finding the cause of suffering (psychological/existential) for himself and humanity. He lived about 80 years, throughout which he taught extensively and stablished a monastic order to preserve his teachings.
Like many religious seekers of his time, he became an ascetic and exerted himself to the extreme until he had a breakthrough, an Enlightenment, and formulated a way, or path, to achieve this. After his epiphany, he gave his first discourse on the Four Noble Truths which are referred to as the setting of the wheel of Dhamma in motion (Dhamma ultimate truth of existence).
- There is suffering: human life is suffering.
- There is a cause: craving
- There is a release: detachment
- There is a method: the Eightfold Path
- Right view
- Right intention
- Right speech
- Right action
- Right livelihood
- Right effort
- Right mindfulness
- Right concentration
Following the Eightfold Path also leads to the Middle Way, or the practice of moderation, avoiding the extremes of indulgence or self-abuse.
We will discuss each of these factors in detail in other blogs.
The second discourse of the Buddha was about the Not-self Doctrine. It is this teaching which sets apart Buddhism from other religious teachings. It is related to the concept of Emptiness, or sunyata, which is central to the Mahayana tradition.
What is critical to understand is that Buddhism is a practical method for understanding the mind and developing wholesome ways of living.
The Buddha did not intend his teachings as an argument on the origin or nature of consciousness or the self. It is not metaphysics. He clearly explained this with the story of a warrior that is critically injured by a poisoned arrow: If he did not want the arrow removed until he knew who shot it or what it is made of, he would die (MN 63). This is the human condition.
Furthermore, when asked directly, the Gotama the Buddha never answered the question whether there exists a true self or not. Because, to answer the question would cause confusion and interfere with the true Enlightenment. Likewise, the philosopher Emmanuel Kant (b.1724, d.1804) elaborated in his masterpiece, Critic of Pure Reason, on why the questions about the nature of consciousness, or the soul, cannot be proved.
This misunderstanding about the intent of Buddhism has caused much confusion throughout its 2000-year history, making the practice and Enlightenment unnecessarily obscure and difficult to achieve.
It is for this particular reason that I have integrated Existentialism with Buddhism, as it clarifies the purpose and aim of Buddhism.
Another fundamental insight of the Buddha is the principle of Dependent Origination.
The people of his day were very preoccupied with reincarnation as result of their Kamma (karma in Sanskrit). Kamma is considered the result of volition, or willed action driven by intention, with positive of negative consequences.
The Buddha realized that the consequences were driven by a psychological law of cause and effect. The basic problem is that our consciousness becomes whatever it comes in contact with. It is a complex phenomenon but much easier to understand with the insights from the existential philosopher Jean Paul Sartre (b.1905, d.1980). The problem is that consciousness is a Nothingness, or not anything, and therefore becomes whatever it comes in contact with; it is a grasping.
The result of this, as elaborated by Sartre in his masterwork Being and Nothingness, is that it affects, not only who we think we are, (the empirical self), but also who we become. In other words, you don’t have to wait until your death for the effects of kamma, it is immediate and long lasting.
The Nothingness of consciousness also conditions our relationships. This will also need to be discussed in the blog “Nothingness, Self, and Not-self.”
It should be clear now how existential philosophy and Buddhism complement, and complete, each other. With Existential philosophy we better understand Buddhism, and Buddhism makes Existential philosophy pragmatic.