I BackgroundA. The Problem of Understanding Another World View.docxwilcockiris
I Background
A. The Problem of Understanding Another World View
1. Q: What is religion? Why do people adopt a religion?
B. The “World View” in the Indian subcontinent in 567 BCE.
1. People generally believed the world view of Brahmanism, the Vedic tradition, and the many different gods and goddesses who were the forces of life and death and. Today we call this Hinduism.
2. People of that time thought about the world differently than the modern materialistic view we are familiar with today.
a) The cyclical nature of time and life
b) Atman and rebirth
c) Karma and the social caste system; social and political power
C. How did people learn in those times? In all ancient cultures that long ago people learned through oral teaching – stories and repeated recitations. Written language and texts were rare and few people could read.
a) Myth and stories were living experiences
b) People had faith in sadhus and yogis as people with special insights and powers.
c) People also had devotional practices taught by the Brahman priests, sadhus and yogis
II The Story of the Buddha: his early life
A. Prince Siddhartha was born in Lumbini, in what is today Nepal, in approximately 567 BCE. Prince Siddhartha was born to a royal family in the Shakya clan.
B. Most likely the clan chose its leaders by consensus; it was probably more of a republic than an absolute monarchy.
C. At birth, a prophet predicted that Prince Siddhartha would become either a great king or great spiritual leader. His father, the local king, vowed that Prince Siddhartha would become a king.
D. The young prince was confined to the palace grounds and was surrounded by riches and pleasures. He was treated with kindness and deference by all and saw only healthy, happy people. He was trained as a prince in various arts and disciplines of his time.
E. Once as a child, standing under a tree and watching a garden being plowed, he became very quiet and had a deep sense of peace. This only lasted for a short period of time, but he remembered this moment later in life.
(Q. Have you had any similar experiences?)
F. As a young man he married Yasodhara, a princess, and had a son, Rahula. (Both become Buddhists later on.)
II Discovering Samsara (the cycle of suffering)
A. Out of curiosity and intuition, Siddhartha contrived to go outside the palace grounds. He had four experiences that changed his life: the first three occurred when he saw an old man, a sick man, and a corpse. He asked, “Why, when all people are destined to suffer old age, sickness, and death, none can escape these things, yet they look on the old age, sickness, and death of other people with fear and scorn.”[footnoteRef:0] [0: Diasaku Ikeda, The Living Buddha, p. 12]
B. The fourth experience occurred on his second visit outside. He saw a wandering yogi, a spiritual seeker and ascetic, one who was looking for spiritual meaning through self-denial and discipline.
C. Having seen the impermanence of life, Siddhartha resolve.
I BackgroundA. The Problem of Understanding Another World View.docxwilcockiris
I Background
A. The Problem of Understanding Another World View
1. Q: What is religion? Why do people adopt a religion?
B. The “World View” in the Indian subcontinent in 567 BCE.
1. People generally believed the world view of Brahmanism, the Vedic tradition, and the many different gods and goddesses who were the forces of life and death and. Today we call this Hinduism.
2. People of that time thought about the world differently than the modern materialistic view we are familiar with today.
a) The cyclical nature of time and life
b) Atman and rebirth
c) Karma and the social caste system; social and political power
C. How did people learn in those times? In all ancient cultures that long ago people learned through oral teaching – stories and repeated recitations. Written language and texts were rare and few people could read.
a) Myth and stories were living experiences
b) People had faith in sadhus and yogis as people with special insights and powers.
c) People also had devotional practices taught by the Brahman priests, sadhus and yogis
II The Story of the Buddha: his early life
A. Prince Siddhartha was born in Lumbini, in what is today Nepal, in approximately 567 BCE. Prince Siddhartha was born to a royal family in the Shakya clan.
B. Most likely the clan chose its leaders by consensus; it was probably more of a republic than an absolute monarchy.
C. At birth, a prophet predicted that Prince Siddhartha would become either a great king or great spiritual leader. His father, the local king, vowed that Prince Siddhartha would become a king.
D. The young prince was confined to the palace grounds and was surrounded by riches and pleasures. He was treated with kindness and deference by all and saw only healthy, happy people. He was trained as a prince in various arts and disciplines of his time.
E. Once as a child, standing under a tree and watching a garden being plowed, he became very quiet and had a deep sense of peace. This only lasted for a short period of time, but he remembered this moment later in life.
(Q. Have you had any similar experiences?)
F. As a young man he married Yasodhara, a princess, and had a son, Rahula. (Both become Buddhists later on.)
II Discovering Samsara (the cycle of suffering)
A. Out of curiosity and intuition, Siddhartha contrived to go outside the palace grounds. He had four experiences that changed his life: the first three occurred when he saw an old man, a sick man, and a corpse. He asked, “Why, when all people are destined to suffer old age, sickness, and death, none can escape these things, yet they look on the old age, sickness, and death of other people with fear and scorn.”[footnoteRef:0] [0: Diasaku Ikeda, The Living Buddha, p. 12]
B. The fourth experience occurred on his second visit outside. He saw a wandering yogi, a spiritual seeker and ascetic, one who was looking for spiritual meaning through self-denial and discipline.
C. Having seen the impermanence of life, Siddhartha resolve.
BuddhismWhat is BuddhismBuddhism is the religion of o.docxAASTHA76
Buddhism
What is Buddhism?
Buddhism is the religion of over 520 million people, primarily concentrated in East and Southeast Asia.
The religion began in the fifth century BCE in India and Nepal, growing out of the teachings of Gautama Buddha.
Buddhism does not center on a supreme deity. Many of its varieties do not imagine anything supernatural at all.
Is Buddhism a “religion”?
“Everything that arises also passes away, so strive for what has not arisen.”
At the heart of Buddhism are three “jewels”:
1. The Buddha
2. The Dharma (teachings)
3. the Sangha (community)
The First Gem: The Buddha
Around 500 BCE, a loosely defined kind of ascetic spirituality was flourishing in northern India.
Landowning castes – Brahmins and Kshatriyas
Ascetics (Sramana) rejected Brahmin practices of wealth accumulation and animal sacrifice.
The birth of Shakyamuni
Shakyamuni / Siddhartha was born between 488 and 624 BCE – the traditions differ.
Tradition says that his enlightenment was nearly perfected across hundreds of previous lives. In our world, he was born to a ruling family in southern Nepal.
His birth is accompanied by signs and omens. It takes place in a park – he is immaculately conceived.
The Four Sights
Siddhartha sees:
1. A sick man
2. A suffering old man
3. A dead man
…
…
4. An ascetic who is serene and detached from the world.
Siddhartha admires this man and gives away his princely possessions. He travels and masters yoga.
Siddhartha embarks on a path of extreme asceticism, starving and thirsty.
This does not give him the enlightenment he seeks.
Disillusioned with asceticism, Siddhartha moves to Bodh Gaya and re-enters the comforts of the world.
He begins to comfortably meditate under a large fig tree.
Just before dusk, Siddhartha resists the assaults of greed, boredom, and desire, and then fear and anger.
He meditates to move deeper into consciousness, rather than unconsciousness.
Enlightenment
Just before dawn, Siddartha achieves enlightenment.
“I had direct knowledge. Birth is exhausted, the Holy Life has been lived, what was to be done is done, there is no more of this to come.”
He has achieved nirvana. Nirvana means
Being beyond desires
Feeling transcendent happiness
He sets out to spread his message across India.
The wheel of Dharma turns again
He explains his doctrine to his former companions.
This explanation is called the first discourse or sutra, called “Instruction on the Middle Path”.
Buddha explains that enlightenment only came when he
1. renounced the luxury of his princely origins
2. renounced the extreme asceticism of his early spiritual seeking.
Progress only comes through moderation, the “Middle Path”.
Parinirvana
After 45 years of preaching, Buddha falls ill after eating a bad meal his host had served him.
As he weakens, he instructs his disciples not to follow a human successor, but only the dharma.
He reaches parinirvana – the final end of the cycle of deat ...
BuddhismWhat is BuddhismBuddhism is the religion of o.docxAASTHA76
Buddhism
What is Buddhism?
Buddhism is the religion of over 520 million people, primarily concentrated in East and Southeast Asia.
The religion began in the fifth century BCE in India and Nepal, growing out of the teachings of Gautama Buddha.
Buddhism does not center on a supreme deity. Many of its varieties do not imagine anything supernatural at all.
Is Buddhism a “religion”?
“Everything that arises also passes away, so strive for what has not arisen.”
At the heart of Buddhism are three “jewels”:
1. The Buddha
2. The Dharma (teachings)
3. the Sangha (community)
The First Gem: The Buddha
Around 500 BCE, a loosely defined kind of ascetic spirituality was flourishing in northern India.
Landowning castes – Brahmins and Kshatriyas
Ascetics (Sramana) rejected Brahmin practices of wealth accumulation and animal sacrifice.
The birth of Shakyamuni
Shakyamuni / Siddhartha was born between 488 and 624 BCE – the traditions differ.
Tradition says that his enlightenment was nearly perfected across hundreds of previous lives. In our world, he was born to a ruling family in southern Nepal.
His birth is accompanied by signs and omens. It takes place in a park – he is immaculately conceived.
The Four Sights
Siddhartha sees:
1. A sick man
2. A suffering old man
3. A dead man
…
…
4. An ascetic who is serene and detached from the world.
Siddhartha admires this man and gives away his princely possessions. He travels and masters yoga.
Siddhartha embarks on a path of extreme asceticism, starving and thirsty.
This does not give him the enlightenment he seeks.
Disillusioned with asceticism, Siddhartha moves to Bodh Gaya and re-enters the comforts of the world.
He begins to comfortably meditate under a large fig tree.
Just before dusk, Siddhartha resists the assaults of greed, boredom, and desire, and then fear and anger.
He meditates to move deeper into consciousness, rather than unconsciousness.
Enlightenment
Just before dawn, Siddartha achieves enlightenment.
“I had direct knowledge. Birth is exhausted, the Holy Life has been lived, what was to be done is done, there is no more of this to come.”
He has achieved nirvana. Nirvana means
Being beyond desires
Feeling transcendent happiness
He sets out to spread his message across India.
The wheel of Dharma turns again
He explains his doctrine to his former companions.
This explanation is called the first discourse or sutra, called “Instruction on the Middle Path”.
Buddha explains that enlightenment only came when he
1. renounced the luxury of his princely origins
2. renounced the extreme asceticism of his early spiritual seeking.
Progress only comes through moderation, the “Middle Path”.
Parinirvana
After 45 years of preaching, Buddha falls ill after eating a bad meal his host had served him.
As he weakens, he instructs his disciples not to follow a human successor, but only the dharma.
He reaches parinirvana – the final end of the cycle of deat ...
1. The Buddha also said…
By Katie Coleman
I started learning and experiencing Buddha’s teachings around four years ago through a
small meditation class I went to every Sunday; we’d spend two hours every week in
stillness, emptying out our clutter and connecting with a feeling and understanding that
went much deeper than ourselves.
I strayed away from meditation until my friend recently handed me his copy of Osho’s
The Diamond Sutra: The Buddha also said…, an interpretation of The Diamond Sutra,
the first surviving and recorded text of the Buddha’s discourse to a monk, Subhuti.
Printed in Chinese in 868 from carved wooden blocks on seven strips of paper, it was
pasted together to form a scroll. When China was threatened by a Northern kingdom
around the year 1000, this scroll was hidden in a cave near the city of Dunhuang and was
perfectly preserved from the dry, desert air until a monk found the sealed cave in 1900.
Born in 1931 as Chandra Mohan Jain in India and later known as Osho, he was a spiritual
teacher until his death in 1990. The Diamond Sutra: The Buddha also said… is a
transcription of different teachings he gave that were audio and video recorded
throughout his lifetime. Osho gives further understanding and insight into one of
Buddha’s most powerful teachings that can feel pretty mysterious and hard to understand.
Osho really struck me when he said that once you learn how to let go, you must then let
go of letting go- you cannot even hang on to that. I feel like I’ve learned and practiced
letting go for a while now, but I never really went further to release what I was doing.
What can be left after that but utter stillness? Osho’s book makes me feel ready to dig
deeper, and Buddha’s teachings have honestly lifted me out of a lot of suffering I
couldn’t get out of through other approaches. Osho makes it much easier to digest the
Buddha’s ancient wisdom.
Our world really values the ego, but I think that’s also why a lot of people struggle so
much with violence, anxiety, addiction, and other ways we ultimately suffer. The
Diamond Sutra is one of many medicines out there that can heal some of the destructive
effects of the human mind; it teaches us how to simplify and strengthen our existence,
allowing space to really embrace but not be absorbed by everything that comes our way.