The academic study of Buddhism

Buddhism was founded in the 6th century BCE by Siddharta, better known as the Buddha, in Northern India

There are 2 broad streams of Buddhism: In the Southern (Theravada) and the Northern (Mahayana) traditions

Ever since the Middle Ages, the western world had been aware that in the East there were people whose religion centred around the figure of Chagyamoni Bourkhan ( a bad mispronunciation of Shakyamuni Buddha)

It was only in the mid-18th century that scholarship started to isolate the various strains of beliefs and practice and realised that these were all part of the same religion

In the 19th century, German linguists who studied Sanskrit, their British counterparts who studied the Pali language, and French colonial administrators who wanted to understand the religion of their subjects in French Indo-China all contributed to the creation of a new academic understanding that there was a single religion, all traceable to a single individual

By the early 20th century this was enriched even further by info about Chinese and Japanese Buddhism, and from 1950 onwards the world gained accurate information about Tibet and its unique form of the religion

American scholars are today at the forefront of this academic discipline

Beliefs

Buddhism and the god issue

The existence (or non-existence) of god has been a central issue in the issue in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic world for centuries

All Buddhist traditions agree that there are states of existence more refined and longer lived than the merely human gods.

The amount of attention paid to these gods, and the amount of info about them, varies from one tradition to the next

One class of gods that have survived are the gods that were worshipped in India in the Buddha’s time

Nowhere in the Buddhist texts do we see the slightest attempt being made to deny their existence

As Buddhism moved into new territories, it encountered local gods that had been worshipped there

Their existence was not seriously questioned either, but the same could be said for their importance

Buddhism teaches that we live more than once, that we pass from one body to the next

Those bodies need to be human

A bad rebirth could be in the form of an animal

The human form is sort of a neutral default state

A really fortunate rebirth could see you come back as a god

Buddhists have one drawback: they are not immortal

No matter how powerful a god may be, without immortality his ability to threaten or reward does stretch into infinity

If even a god will one day die and be reborn as something more humble, then it stands to reason that the Buddha’s message of something beyond this endless cycle of life and death becomes much more attractive than worship of the gods

Gods, whether Indian or local, were dominated and brought into the larger Buddhist scheme of things

A local god who had once been feared and respected over a wide are of Tibet suddenly found himself still respected, but not feared any more, as a divine protector of the Buddhist teachings

Gods may be longer-lived, happier and more powerful than us, Buddhist say

That does not mean that they are wiser as they are just as caught up in the messy business of existence as everybody else

That is why Buddha was called the teacher of men and gods

The Four Noble Truths

The Four Noble Truths are the very core of Buddhism

It was one of the 1st things that the Buddha taught his disciples, and every school Buddhism agrees that it is the most accurate way to describe the human condition

First Noble Truth

Buddhism does not deny that there are moments of happiness, even bliss

It does deny that these moments can last

A core insight of Buddhism is that everything, without exception, is impermanent

No exception is made for God or the human soul

Things that please us change

When they have changed enough, they are no longer pleasing to us

Second Noble Truth

According to Buddhism, humans are uniquely dissatisfied with the way things are

Some people seem to lead charmed lives, never encountering unhappiness

According to Buddhism, this is a result of Karma

Ethical. Well-intentioned action will result in happiness

Unethical, evil actions will result in unhappiness

Karma stretches across more than one life: Buddhism believes in rebirth

What kind of creature you are born as depends on the actions committed in a former life

Buddhism insists that there is no such thing that moves from one body to the next

Not a soul, or mind, or even consciousness can be pinned down to be essence that connects one life to another

This has always made it difficult for Buddhists to explain how the process work

Third Noble Truth: If we remove the desire, the unhappiness will also disappear

Enlightenment - to learn to stop wanting things to be different, we could live out lives in full acceptance of the fact of impermanence

Another word for this state of mind is nirvana

An enlightened person no longer tried to improve future rebirths by being ethical

Such a person will still be ethical, but not in order to achieve anything, just because it is the correct way to behave

When actions are done without any thought of self or self-interest, no further karma is generated

The Enlightened person is reborn no further

That process simply stops

To a non-Buddhist, this may sound like a complicated way to commit suicide, bur Buddhists regard this as the highest possible goal

Fourth Noble Truth: There is a practical 8-step way to remove desire and unhappiness

The 8 steps to take are as follows:

1. Right understanding2. Right Thought3. Right Speech4. Right Action5. Right Livelihood6. Right Effort7. Right Mindfulness8. Right Concentration

Behaviour - the Buddhist is expected to control his or her speech and actions to present a calm, ethical person. Certain professions, such as butchering animals, are discouraged. Many Buddhists are vegetarians

Meditation - Buddhists are taught specific exercises to calm the mind

Insight - with a calm mind, the Buddhist attempts to examine the world. Soon, he or she realises that the world is just as the Buddha described it: Impermanent, ever-changing and full of unhappiness. This realisation feeds back into the behaviour and meditation and the next time around, the Buddhist’s practice will be a little stronger and more complete

Practices

The vast majority of Buddhists do not meditate

That is something left to the monks, nuns and a small number of especially dedicated laypeople

For the average Buddhist in Asia, religious practice consists of supporting the monks in the local monastery with food and clothing, making pilgrimages to famous places from Buddhist history, and visiting the monastery to chant stories from the life of the Buddha and observe the monks performing ceremonies

There is no single Buddhist calendar of festivals

Each Buddhists society has its own day designated as Wesak (the day that celebrates the birth, enlightenment and death of the Buddha), and uses its own calendar to determine when it will occur

You can celebrate Wesak in Sri Lanka in March, then go to Thailand and celebrate it again a month later

In Japan, the festival usually falls in October

Institutions

Becoming a Buddhists

If you say you are a Buddhist, you are

The result of this is that if you claim to be a Buddhists, then no person can claim that you are not

Therefore to become a Buddhist you simply declare yourself as such

Most Buddhist do end up joining a Buddhist organisation, and there is some sort of ceremony involved

In most cases this takes form of “Taking refuge”

The aspiring Buddhist publicly declares that he or she takes refuge in Buddha, in the Dharma (the Buddha’s teaching) and the Sangha (the Buddhist community)

This is usually repeated 3 times; if you take the 3 refuges 3 times, it seals your status as a Buddhist

Despite this, the ceremony is secondary

By the time it takes place, you are, in fact, already a Buddhist

The ceremony only indicates your acceptance into a particular school of Buddhism

Becoming a monk

Southern monks tend to shave their heads much more frequently than their Northern colleagues

In some Chinese schools, the ordination ceremony involves burning small heaps of incense on top of the freshly shaven head

The scars this form are proof that one was once ordained

You have to give up sex to be a monk, not just pre or extramarital sex, any kind.

However, there are Japanese organisations where the officials are married and should properly be called priests rather than monks

Prior to the Chinese takeover in Tibet in 1950, an estimated one third of the male population of that country were officially monks

In the Southern tradition, there are counties like Thailand where tradition demands that all men should spend their lives as monks

In the same countries you will also see some surprisingly young boys wearing monastic robes

For them, it’s their best shot at getting an education, and they are not expected to cut all ties to their families, nor do they take vows for life

In the Southern tradition, monks survive purely on the charity of the surrounding community

Every morning, they will go off on their alms-round, and , and the local people will give them of their own food

In Southern Buddhist culture, this is not regarded as begging

In fact, to feed the local monks is regarded as a great honour, an opportunity for the lay Buddhists to improve their karma

Custom demands that all the food must be eaten by mid-day

This arrangement did not work out in Northern Buddhism: not eating after noon put too great a strain on the human body in the colder climates of the north, and the majority of Northern schools ended up instituting a modest late meal, usually called a “medicine meal” to emphasise that they were eating it out of necessity

The alms-rounds also did not take root very well in the northern countries, for a variety of complicated reasons

Monks still needed to support themselves somehow, and some order took to farming either doing it themselves or renting out land to small farmers

Becoming a nun

The southern school had nuns long ago, but that lineage was allowed to die out and only in the 20th century have women started to fight for the right to ordain in their chosen form of Buddhism

Their struggle remains unresolved

Northern Buddhism never did lose its nuns, and there are Tibetan, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Japanese nuns to this day

In most of these societies, nuns are less highly regarded than monks and it is difficult for a nun to rise to a position of prominence

Monasteries and retreat centres

Historically, the monastery has been the centre of Buddhists life

Monks and nuns need to be housed somewhere, and the monastery has been the place where Buddhism has grown and developed throughout Asia

Monasteries became the local schools, community centres, places of refuge and more

In ancient India, there were at one stage so many of them that the modern-day Indian state of Bihar takes its name from the Sanskrit for monastery (vihara)

Buddhists meet in small groups in people’s houses, especially in times and places where there are few Buddhists

The retreat centre is a new development, though, developed by western Buddhists in the 20th century

This is a place set aside for Buddhist practice where people come and become something like a monk, for an evening, a weekend, or a month

Sex is banned, vegetarian food is commonly served and the schedule of meditation sessions and instructional talks approaches that of a monastery

The archetypal retreat centre is set in a beautiful countryside, and there are quite a few such, but there are quite a few other kinds

There are retreat centres in shopfronts in Europe, in warehouse districts in the USA, and many other places

The distinction between monasteries and retreat centres is not absolute, and hybrid forms can be found

A monastery can open its doors and lay people for a period

A retreat centre can house a group of monks and become a monastery for a while

Scriptures

The best preserved, most studied, and therefore most quoted set of Buddhists scripture is the Pali Canon, also known as the Tipitaka

This is the scripture of the Southern School called the Theravada and it is written in a language called Pali

After the death of the Buddha, his teachings were at first not written down

Instead, individual monks would each memorise a section of the teachings, and would then teach it in turn to their followers

When the teachings were finally put down on paper (strips of wood, bamboo or dried palm leaves) several hundred years later, they were divided into three collections , which were kept in separate baskets, from which we get the name Tipitaka

Vinaya Pitaka - concerned entirely with the rules of conduct to be obeyed by Buddhist mons, over 200 of them. It also gives many of the back-stories telling us why a specific rule was instituted by the Buddha

Sutta Pitaka - contains stories from the life of the Buddha, contained in smaller packages called suttas in the Pali language

Abhidhamma Pitaka - contains philosophical works on the higher reaches of Buddhist thought

The full set of the Tipitaka, with all its commentaries and sub-commentaries, is more like a small library than a single book

Estimates put it at around 13 times the size of the Christian Bible Northern Buddhism also has sacred texts

Some of these are very similar to the Tipitaka, while others are unique to the northerners

These were not written in Pali, but in a language that scholars now call Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit

Later on, new texts were written directly in Tibetan, Chinese and other language

The Tipitaka has one distinct advantage for scholars of Buddhism: at a certain stage of its development, it was closed off

Important and influential books would still be written by Southern scholars, but they would never rise to the status of Canon

No new writing should ever be dignified with the term sutta

That term was reserved for texts attributed to the Buddha or his immediate disciples

This was not the case with the Northern scripture, for the Northern School never closed its canon.

Northern scriptures kept appearing on the scene throughout Buddhist

Northern texts are divided into:

Sutras - texts supposedly pronounced by Buddha himself, few modern scholars accept this as the literal truth. This term is directly equivalent to the Pali word sutta

Shastras - commentaries on the sutras

Tantras - esoteric manuals of meditation techniques

In some cases, these were supposed to have been hidden by legendary masters shortly after the Buddha’s time and rediscovered when the time had come when their message could be appreciated

One of the most famous books in the Zen tradition is the Platform Sutra, by the patriarch Hui Neng

The result is that nobody can stay with any certainty just how large the northern Buddhist canon is

This enormous amount of textual material has led to 2 distinct tendencies among some Northern schools

One is to limit the number of texts that are recognised and studied, even to the extent of using just a single text

The other response is to deny the importance of any text, mainly found in Zen schools

Zen offers a return to the direct experience of reality found in meditation, and finds it necessary to radically question any and all scriptures to do this

If Enlightenment is to be found within, then we only postpone it by burying our noses in books they say

Zen Buddhists have written and published a lot of books themselves, ever since the days of Hui Neng

History

The life of Buddha

The founder of Buddhism was Siddharta Gautama

Siddharta was born to the aristocratic Shakya clan around 563 BCE

His birth had been prophesised: His greatness could be expressed in two possible ways

One possibility was that he could become a wheel turning monarch, that is, emperor of the entire known world

The other option was that he might renounce worldly power, leave the palace and become a famous religious teacher

According to the king’s soothsayer, if young Siddharta were ever to become aware of the reality of sickness, suffering and death he would renounce his throne

Suddhodana, like fathers throughout history, had a vested interest in having a son follow in his footsteps

He therefore arranged things so that his son would never know the realities of sickness, pain, deprivation and death

Siddharta grew up in a series of palaces, where he was raised by an aunt since his mother had died soon after his birth

Every effort was made to make his life as pleasant as possible

When servants grew sick or old, they were banished from the palace

Siddharta grew up in glorious ignorance of the realities of existence

One day in his late 20s, Siddharta had his chariot prepared and rode out through the palace gates

He saw an old man, leaning on a stick. The next day he went out riding again and this time he saw a sick man, covered with sores

On the fourth day he saw a traveling ascetic and the charioteer told him about this class of men who had abandoned their homes and all worldly affairs in order to figure out if there was a way out of the cycle of birth, suffering and death

That night, Siddharta abandoned his home, wife and young son, resolving not to return until he had found a way out of the cycle of life and death

He rode his horse across 7 kingdoms that night in his haste to get away

In the morning, he cut off his long hair, abandoned his aristocratic robes in favour of a wanderers rags and set off into the forest alone

The 1st thing he did was to study philosophy and meditation

He joined an ashram where he studied under one of the most eminent religious thinkers of the time

He did well: the teacher offered to retire and let Siddharta take over the school

In India at the time there was a theory that if one could beat the body into submission by sheer willpower, the spirit would triumph over its imprisonment in the flesh

This is called ascetism and forms of it remain current in some kinds of Hinduism to this day

Siddharta decided that he would, and the end result was, nothing…

Asceticism had been just as useless as the life of luxury he had grown up with

After taking some food he found a space beneath a giant fig tree where he sat down

Something happened to Siddharta that night. When the sun came up, he was a different person, with a radical insight into human nature

From that point onwards he was known as the Buddha, the Enlightened One

According to Buddhism, this was not the first time this had happened

There had been other who had sat down under a tree and reached the same insights

Most of them had been content to pass away without sharing their insights

The Buddha was sorely tempted to do the same

Despite his misgivings, despite his belief that what he had find could never be explained adequately, he resolved to try

He travelled to the Deer Park near Varanasi, where he found the ascetics he had lived with before. They became the first Buddhist monks

For the next 40 years the Buddha travelled widely in northern India, making a number of converts

Many stayed in normal life and supported the Buddhist order financially, but others became monks and at a later stage, nuns

One of these monks was his son Rahula, whom he ordained when he visited his old hometown of Kapilavastu

Another was the serial killer Angulimala.

The Buddha did not discriminate: among his lay followers were kings and prostitutes

The Buddha was never persecuted by the authorities but was under threat from a cousin called Devadatta who wanted to take control of the Buddhist order himself

At the ripe old age of 80, the Buddha contracted a serious case of food poisoning

On his deathbed, he forgave the blacksmith who had given him the tainted food, took care of routine administration and them summed up his life teachings

The Buddha has always been pessimistic about the future of the movement he founded

The Life of the Buddha revisited

Suddhodana was not king of Kapilavastu and Siddharta was not the crown prince

Kapilavastu was am oligarchy, a small state run by the rich, powerful and well-connected

Suddhodana was probably a leading citizen

The traditions are somewhat self-contradictory

Some texts state that he was never allowed to leave his palaces, others tell of a time when he was present at a public sod-breaking ceremony

In his early 20s he entered into a new phase of his life

He became more sensitive to suffering and injustice

Read pages 139-140

In the past, Northern Buddhism was much more widely distributed

Large parts of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Central Asia were dominated by Northern Buddhism, while Cambodia, Malaysia and Indonesia developed their own complex mixtures of Northern Buddhism and Hindu ideas and practices

Instead of Southern and Northern terms are referred to as Theravada and Mahayana

By the late 19th century, a new phase in the historical development of Buddhism took place: People in Europe and former European colonies started to adopt Buddhism

At the same time, existing Buddhists has become a distinct sub-field within Buddhist Studies over the last 2 decades, and our department has been deeply involved in it

This is not the Buddha (picture on page 143)

Somewhere around the end of the 10th century CE, there lived in China an eccentric monk called Budai who wandered the country carrying nothing but his walking stick and a sack with his few belongings

In time his good humour made him famous across China and from there his fame spread to Korea and Japan, his friendly laugh had invaded the western world to the extent that he has the take pace in the minds of westerners

When Buddhists finally decided to make paintings and sculptures of the Buddha, they had no idea what the founder of the religion had looked like

Read pages 144 and 145 (Just before the heading “Buddhism in the world today”)

Buddhism in the world today

In the late 20th century, Buddhism came in to contact with other religions and other culture

In India, Buddhism had started out as an offshoot of early forms of Hinduism, and it has always cohabited with Hinduism and Jainism in that area

In China, Taoism and Confucianism had existed long before Buddhism entered that civilisation

In Japan, Shinto was added into the mix

What was different was that the new religions with which Buddhism now came into contact had a strong tradition of social activism

Judaism, Christianity and Islam all, in their different ways, are concerned with communal life

Even Marxism, a secular alternative to the Abrahamic religions, is concerned with the relations between human beings in ways that Eastern religions, with the possible exception of Confucianism, are not

Read pages 146-147