Buddhism

Group Talk!!!!​

​

​Have you ever had something bad happen to you, but felt like you gained wisdom and knowledge from the experience?  If so, how?

​Buddhism developed out of the same period of religious questioning that shaped modern Hinduism.  The founder of Buddhism, Siddhartha Gautama, was born into a noble family in the foothills of the Himalayas, in Nepal.  According to legend, as a baby, he exhibited the marks of a great man.  A prophecy indicated that if he were to stay home, he would become a world ruler.  If he were to leave the palace, he would become a great spiritual leader.

​At the age of 29, Siddhartha ventured out of the palace.  On four journeys, he saw an old man, a sick man, a dead man, and a holy man who seemed to be at peace with himself.  He took this to mean that every living thing experiences old age, sickness, and death, and that only a religious life offers refuge from these things.

Eventually, he would wander for six years seeking enlightenment, or wisdom.  He tried many different ways to reach an enlightened state.  First, he debated with other religious seekers.  Then he tried fasting, eating only six grains of rice per day.  None of this brought him to the truth, and he continued to suffer.  Finally, he sat in meditation under a large fig tree.  After 49 days of meditation, he achieved an understanding of the causes of suffering in the world.  From then on, he was known as the Buddha, meaning “the Enlightened One”.

​The Buddha preached his first sermon to his five companions who wandered with him. The first sermon became his landmark teachings on the 4 noble truths.

​

First noble truth: Life is filled with sorrow and suffering.

Second noble truth: The cause of all suffering is people's selfish desire​ for the temporary pleasures of the world.

Third noble truth: ​The way to end all suffering is to end all desires.

Fourth noble truth: The way to overcome such desires and to reach enlightenment is to follow the eight fold path, which is called the middle way between desires and self-denial. ​

​The Eightfold Path, a guide to behavior, was like a staircase. For the Buddha, those who were seeking enlightenment had to master them one step at a time. This could take many lifetimes.

​

T​he Eightfold Path is Right Views, Right Resolve, Right Speech, Right Conduct, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration.

​As in Hinduism, the Buddha accepts the idea of reincarnation. He also accept a cyclical view of history, in which the world is destroyed and remade over again. However Buddha rejects the idea of multiple gods. Instead he teaches the way of enlightenment. Like many any his time, he rejected the idea set forth by the Brahmin caste system. The final goals for both religions are similar, Moksha for Hindus and Nirvana for Buddhist. Both center around a perfect state of understanding and break the reincarnation cycle.

​The five disciples who followed Buddha were also the first five monks inducted into the sangha, or first Buddhist religious order. The sangha was once just the monks and priestess who were apart of the order but eventually sangha became every Buddhist disciples. The sangha, dharma and Buddha make the three jewels of Buddhism.

​Somewhat ironically, Buddhism does not have a large following in India today.  Over time, Buddha came to be identified as one of the ten incarnations (reappearances on earth) of the Hindu god Vishnu.  Hindus, therefore, felt no need to convert to Buddhism.

Despite its relatively small following in India (the land of its origin), trade and missionaries enabled it to spread throughout Asia.  Along trade routes and the Silk Road, Buddhism spread to Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Sumatra, and then to China.  From China, Buddhism spread to Korea to Japan.  To this day, Buddhism is a major religion in all of these places, with over 500 million followers worldwide.