Buddhism

This is based on Encyclopaedia Britannica articles. For more detail, please find Encyclopaedia Britanica on the web at www.eb.com. Very many thanks to Anthony Murphy for ediiting various sections.

Introduction

Life of Buddha

Message

Doctrines

Foundations

The major doctrines

Theravada (Sthaviravada)

Adherents of Theravada accept as authoritative the Pali canon of ancient Indian Buddhism and trace their lineage back to the Sthaviras (Pali: Theras; "Elders"), who followed in the tradition of the senior monks of the first Buddhist sangha.

Beliefs, doctrines, and practices.

Cosmology. In the Theravada view there is a plurality of universes surrounded by water and mountain chains. Every universe has three planes: the sphere of desire (kama-dhatu), the sphere of material form (rupa-dhatu), which is associated with meditational states in which sensuous desire is reduced to a minimum, and the sphere of immateriality or formlessness ( arupa-dhatu), which is associated with meditational states that are even more exalted and vacuous. On the plane of desire, creatures are divided into five or six species: hell beings; pretas, a species of wandering, famished ghosts; animals; human beings; gods; and a sixth group not universally acknowledged, the asuras (demigods). The matter of the world is made up of four elements: earth, water, fire, and air, held together in various combinations. Time moves in cycles (kalpas), involving a period of involution (destruction by fire, water, air), a period of stability, a period of renewal, and a period of duration, at the end of which the destruction comes again and the cycle continues. Human existence is a privileged state because only as a human being can a bodhisattva become a buddha. All these capacities and activities are accounted for in terms of a series of dhammas (Sanskrit: dharmas), instant points in continual motion or changing states, subject to appearing, aging, and disappearing.

Classification of dhammas. The essential Dhammas ones that concern the psychophysical person are the five components (skandhas; Pali: khandhas), the 12 bases (ayatana), and the 18 sensory elements (dhatu). The lists converge and overlap because the teaching was codified in different ways. The five components, or skandhas, are:

rupa, materiality, or form;
vedana, feelings of pleasure or pain or the absence of either one;
sañña, cognitive perception;
sankhara, the forces that cooperate to condition the psychic activity of an individual;
viññana (Sanskrit: vijñana), consciousness.

The 12 bases, or ayatanas, include the five sense organs and the mind ( manas), as well as the five related sense fields and a cognizable object--that is, not an object as such but, rather, an object as it is reflected in mental perception. The 18 elements, or dhatus, comprise the five sense organs and the mano-dhatu (mind element), their six correlated objects, and the six consciousnesses (viññana) of the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and manas. Through the classification of dhammas a person comes to be seen as an aggregate of many elements working together, ruled in his becoming by the law of karma, whether good or bad, and thus destined to suffer good or bad consequences.
The stages leading to arhatship. The Theravadins maintained that the ideal Buddhist is the arhat, the accomplished ascetic who attains nirvana through self-effort. According to the Theravadins, one who gains true Buddhist insight passes through four stages. The first stage is that of the stream winner or stream enterer--i.e., the one who has seen the truth, who has experienced the first real intimations of nirvana, and who will not undergo more than seven additional rebirths. The second stage is that of the once-returner--i.e., the one who has moved further toward the goal so that no more than one additional rebirth will be required to attain it fully. The third stage is that of the non-returner, who will achieve complete release in the present life, or, at the very least, before another rebirth occurs. One who has reached this stage has broken free from the lower bonds: belief in a permanent self, doubt, faith in the results generated by rituals, sensual passion, and malice. The fourth and final stage is that of the arhat, who has attained complete freedom by completing all that has to be done. The arhat is free from all bonds including the desire for existence in the formed or formless worlds, as well as ignorance, excitability, and ambition.

The Buddha. The state of the Buddha, the perfectly Enlightened One, is nirvana (Pali: nibbana)--an attainment from which one does not return. It is beyond death, not caused, not born, not produced; it is beyond all becoming and devoid of all that makes up a human person. There are two kinds of nirvana. One is achieved by the Buddha while still alive, but he remains alive only until the last and most tenuous remains of karma have been expended. When these disappear, the Buddha dies and then enters the nirvana that is not burdened by any karmic residue at all.

Meditation. In the Theravada tradition two basic forms of meditation have been practiced in various forms and combinations. The first of these is closely related to a Hindu tradition of yoga practice involving a process of moral and intellectual purification associated with four stages of jhanic attainment In the second stage, intellectual activities are abated to a complete inner serenity; the mind is in a state of "one-pointedness" or concentration, joy, and pleasantness. In the third stage, every emotion, including joy, has disappeared, leaving the meditator indifferent to everything while remaining completely conscious. The fourth stage is the abandoning of any sense of satisfaction, pain, or serenity because any inclination to a good or bad state of mind has disappeared. The second form of Theravada meditation is called vipassana, or insight meditation. This kind of meditation requires concentration (produced by exercises such as concentrating on one's breathing), which lead to one-pointedness of mind. This one-pointedness of mind is then used to attain--directly--Buddhist insight into the saving truth that all reality is without self and impermanent and is filled with suffering, even the exalted jhanic states of consciousness.

Mahayana

Arising in India, the Mahayana version of Buddhism spread to Central Asia, China, Japan, mainland Southeast Asia, Java, Sumatra, and even Sri Lanka (Abhayagiri monastery). In Mahayana, love for creatures is exalted to the highest; a bodhisattva is encouraged to offer the merit he derives from good deeds for the good of others. The tension between morality and mysticism that agitated India also entered the Mahayana.

Nature and characteristics. Mahayana is not merely a metaphysics, dealing with the basic structure and principles of reality. It is also and primarily a theoretical propaedeutic to the achievement of a desired state or condition. Thus there is a coexistence of theoretical investigation and supreme experience: the former, the premise; the latter, the consequence. The convergence of meditative exercises leads to an emptying of thought to reach a point in which one proceeds from voidness to voidness and finally to the ultimate where even the most attenuated thought vanishes.

The Buddha: divinization and multiplicity. In the Mahayana tradition, the Buddha is viewed not merely as a human master and model but also as a supramundane being. He multiplies himself and is reflected in a pentad of buddhas: Vairocana, Aksobhya, Ratnasambhava, Amitabha, and Amoghasiddhi. The teaching is viewed not as merely of one kind but as on various levels, each adapted to the intellectual capacity and karmic propensities of those who hear it. The Buddha is no longer simply the historical sage of the Shakyas but is now supramundane (lokottara). Even the sangha is of two types: that of this world and that beyond it.

The bodhisattva ideal. The essential premise of the bodhisattva ideal is to generate in one's own self the thought of enlightenment and to fulfill the vow to become a buddha, foregoing entrance into nirvana in order to remain in the world as long as there are creatures to be saved from suffering. With that vow the aspirant begins the career of a bodhisattva, which traverses 10 stages or spiritual levels (bhumi) and achieves purification through the practice of the 10 perfections (paramitas). These levels, which become progressively higher, elevate the bodhisattva to the condition of a buddha.

The three Buddha bodies. The three bodies (tri-kaya; i.e., modes of being) of the Buddha, which became a subject of major discussion in the Mahayana, are rooted in the Theravada teachings concerning the physical body (which consists of four elements), the mental body, and the body of the law. It is with the Mahayana, however, that the theory of the three bodies enters into the salvation process and assumes central significance in the doctrine. The phenomenal body (nirmana-kaya) is a manifestation of the Buddha among creatures to teach them the path to liberation. The enjoyment (or bliss) body (sambhoga-kaya) is the body to which contemplation can ascend. The unmanifested body of the law (dharma-kaya) already appears in the Saddharmapundarika, or Lotus Sutra, a transitional text that became central in many Mahayana devotional schools. In many Mahayana texts buddhas are infinite, and all partake of an identical nature--the dharma-kaya. All is in the dharma-kaya; nothing is outside of it, just as nothing is outside of space; transcendence and immanence come together.

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