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 Buddha's Message

Suffering, impermanence, and no-self.

It may be said that the Buddha based his entire teaching on the fact of human suffering. Existence is painful. The conditions that make an individual are precisely those that also give rise to suffering. Individuality implies limitation; limitation gives rise to desire; and, inevitably, desire causes suffering, since what is desired is transitory, changing, and perishing.

It is the impermanence of the object of craving that causes disappointment and sorrow. Life is a stream of becoming, a series of manifestations and extinctions. There is nothing permanent, and, if only the permanent deserved to be called the self, or atman, then nothing is self. There can be no individuality without a putting together of components. This is becoming different, and there can be no way of becoming different without a dissolution, a passing away.

To make clear the concept of no-self (anatman), Buddhists set forth the theory of the five aggregates or constituents (khandhas) of human existence: (1) corporeality or physical forms (rupa), (2) feelings or sensations (vedana), (3) ideations (sañña), (4) mental formations or dispositions (sankhara), and (5) consciousness (viññana). Human existence is only a composite of the five aggregates, none of which is the self or soul. A person is in a process of continuous change, with no fixed underlying entity. (see also Index: vijñana-skandha

Karma.

According to the doctrine of karma, good conduct brings a pleasant and happy result and creates a tendency toward similar good acts, while bad conduct brings an evil result and creates a tendency toward repeated evil actions. This furnishes the basic context for the moral life of the individual. Some karmas bear fruit in the same life in which they are committed, others in the immediately succeeding one, and others in future lives that are more remote. The acceptance by Buddhists of the belief in karma and rebirth while holding to the doctrine of no-self gave rise to a difficult problem: how can rebirth take place without a permanent subject to be reborn? The relation between existences in rebirth has been explained by the analogy of fire, which maintains itself unchanged in appearance and yet is different in every moment--what may be called the continuity of an ever-changing identity.

The Four Noble Truths.

Awareness of these fundamental realities led the Buddha to formulate the Four Noble Truths: the truth of misery, the truth that misery originates within us from the craving for pleasure and for being or nonbeing, the truth that this craving can be eliminated, and the truth that this elimination is the result of a methodical way or path that must be followed. Thus, there must be an understanding of the mechanism by which a human being's psychophysical being evolves; otherwise, human beings would remain indefinitely in samsara, in the continual flow of transitory existence.

The law of dependent origination.

Hence, the Buddha formulated the law of dependent origination (paticca-samuppada), whereby one condition arises out of another, which in turn arises out of prior conditions. According to the classical rendering, the 12 links in the chain are ignorance (avijja), karmic predispositions (sankharas), consciousness (viññana), form and body (nama-rupa), the five sense organs and the mind (salayatana), contact (phassa), feeling-response (vedana), craving (tanha), grasping for an object (upadana), action toward life (bhava), birth (jati), and old age and death (jaramarana). The law of dependent origination of the various aspects of becoming remains invariable and fundamental in all schools of Buddhism.

The Eightfold Path. Given the awareness of this law, the question arises as to how one may escape the continually renewed cycle of birth, suffering, and death. Here ethical conduct enters in. It is not enough to know that misery pervades all existence and to know the way in which life evolves; there must also be a purification that leads to the overcoming of this process. Such a liberating purification is effected by following the Noble Eightfold Path constituted by right views, right aspirations, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right meditational attainment. The term right (true or correct) is used to distinguish sharply between the precepts of the Buddha and other teachings.

Nirvana. The aim of religious practice is to be rid of the delusion of ego, thus freeing oneself from the fetters of this mundane world. One who is successful in doing so is said to have overcome the round of rebirths and to have achieved enlightenment. This is the final goal--not a paradise or a heavenly world. Though nirvana is often presented negatively as "release from suffering," it is more accurate to describe it in a more positive fashion: as an ultimate goal to be sought and cherished.

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