Buddhism by Damien Keown (2013)


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Keown, Damien, Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction, 2nd edn, Very Short Introductions. Oxford UP, 2013.

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Some scholars have denied that Buddhism is a religion because Buddhists do not believe in a supreme being or a personal soul. 


According to Ninian Smart, religions have the following 'seven dimensions'. If Smart is correct, it seems justifiable to classify Buddhism as a religion.


Buddhism as a religion/philosophy/morality 

If someone wishes to see Buddhism as a rational philosophy free of religious superstition, then - by focusing on the doctrinal and philosophical dimension - it can be understood in this way. If another wishes to see it essentially as a quest for mystical experience, then - by making the experiential dimension central-that too is possible. Finally, someone who wishes to see Buddhism as a set of humanistic moral values will also find justification for that view by making the ethical and legal dimension primary. (15-16)


Four Noble Truths

Buddhists in Asia do not use the term 'Buddhism' to describe their religion and refer to it as either the Dharma ('Law') or the Buddha-sasana (teachings of the Buddha').


Doctrine = the systematic formulation of religious teachings in an intellectually coherent form.


The core doctrinal teachings are contained in a set of interlinked propositions known as the Four Noble Truths. (10) 


Rebirth

This process of repeated rebirth is known as samsara 'endless wandering, a term suggesting continuous movement lis the flow of a river. All living creatures are part of this cyclic movement and will continue to be reborn until they attain nirvana. (32)


Karma 

Karma (Pali: kamma) is of fundamental importance to Buddhist thought, and to understand it we must explore a cluster of related concepts concerning cosmology and time. (33) 


Five Elements 

Buddhist thought divides the universe into two categories: the physical universe, which is thought of as a receptacle or container (bhajana), and the beings (sattoa) or life forms which inhabit it. The physical universe is formed by the interaction of the five elements, namely earth, water, fire, air, and space (akäsa).


The last of these, space thought of as infinite, is regarded in Indian thought not simply as the absence of the other four but as an element in its own right. Through the interaction of the five elements, there evolve world systems (roughly equivalent to the modern concept of a solar system) which are found throughout the six directions of the universe (north, south, east, west, above, and below). (33)


Yin and Yang

Buddhism shared certain similarities with another Chinese philosophy, Taoism, a form of nature mysticism founded by the legendary sage Laozi (b. 604 Bc). The goal of Taoism is to live in harmony with nature by learning to balance the complementary forces of Yin and Yang which are believed to pervade the universe. (85) 


Yin is the female principle which finds expression in softness and passivity, while Yang is the male principle which manifests itself in hardness and strength. Both these qualities are present in individuals and all phenomena in varying degrees, and the interaction of these forces is what gives rise to change in the world. (86) 


In certain areas, Buddhism and Taoism overlapped, and Buddhist meditation seemed geared to the same goal of inner stillness and 'actionless action' (wu-wei) sought by the Taoist sage. A school of Chinese Buddhism known as Chan (the ancestor of Japanese Zen) was born from this interaction. Yet while Taoist teachings. were unsystematic and emphasized quietism and inspiration, Buddhism offered a systematic philosophical framework and a tradition of textual scholarship. (86)


The Four Noble Truths

These assert that (1) life is suffering, (2) suffering is caused by craving, (3) suffering can have an end. and (4) there is a path which leads to the end of suffering. (50)


[A.] The Truth of Suffering states that suffering (dukkha, Sanskrit: duhkha) is an intrinsic part of life, and it diagnoses the human condition as fundamentally one of 'dis-ease. It makes reference to suffering of many kinds, beginning with (1) physical or biological experiences such as birth, sickness, old age. and death. While these often involve physical pain, the deeper problem is the inevitability of repeated birth, sickness, ageing. and death in lifetime after lifetime, for both oneself and loved ones. (50) 


(2) emotional and psychological forms of distress such as 'grief, sorrow, lamentation, and despair.’ (51)


(3) Not to get what one wants is suffering. The kind of suffering envisaged here is the frustration, disappointment, and disillusionment experienced when life fails to live up to our expectations and things do not go as we wish. (51)


[T]he word duckha has a more abstract and pervasive Sense: it suggests that even when life is not painful it can be unsatisfactory and unfulfilling. In this and many other contexts ‘unsatisfactoriness' captures the meaning of dulkha (51) 


The statement 'the five factors of individuality are suffering' is a reference to a teaching expounded by the Buddha in his second sermon (Vin.i.13) which analyses human nature into five factors, namely the physical body (rüpa), sensations and feelings (vedana), cognitions (sañna), character traits and dispositions (sankhara), and consciousness or sentiency (viññana). (51)


The content of the Truth of Suffering is supplied in part from the Buddha's vision of the first three of the four signs--the old man, the sick man, and the corpse-- and his realization that life is shot through with suffering and unhappiness of all kinds. Many who encounter Buddhism find this assessment of the human condition pessimistic. To this, Buddhists tend to reply that their religion is neither pessimistic nor optimistic, but realistic, and. that the Truth of Suffering simply presents the facts of life in an objective way. (52) 


[B.] Granted that life is suffering, how does this suffering arise? The Second Noble Truth - the Truth of Arising (samudaya)-explains that suffering arises from craving or 'thirst (tanhã, Sanskrit: trsna). Craving fuels suffering in the way that wood fuels a fire: in a vivid metaphor in the Fire Sermon (S.iv.19) the Buddha, spoke of all human experience as being 'ablaze with desire. Fire is an appropriate metaphor for desire since it consumes what it feeds on without being satisfied. It spreads rapidly, becomes attached to new objects, and burns with the pain of unassuaged longing.

It is desire, in the form of a strong addiction to life and the pleasant experiences it offers, that causes rebirth. (53) 


The Truth of Arising states that craving or thirst manifests itselfin three main forms, the first of which is thirst for sensual pleasure. This takes the form of craving for gratification through the objects of the senses, such as the desire to experience pleasant tastes, sensations, odours, sights, and sounds. The second is thirst for existence. This refers to the deep instinctual will to be which drives us on to new lives and new experiences. The third way that craving manifests itself is as the desire not to possess, but to destroy. This is the shadow side of desire, manifested in the impulse to negate, deny, and reject that which is unpleasant or unwelcome. The desire to destroy can also lead to self-denying and self-negating behaviour. Low self-esteem and thoughts such as 'I'm no good' or 'I'm a failure are manifestations of this attitude when directed towards the self. (54) 


Cause and Effect

[E]very effect has a cause: in other words, everything which comes into being originates in dependence on something else (or on a number of other things). On this view, all phenomena arise as part of a causal series, and nothing exists independently in and for itself. The universe, therefore, comes to be seen not as a collection of more or less static objects but a dynamic network of interrelated causes and effects. (55) 


Everything which comes into being is said to bear three characteristics or 'marks, namely unsatisfactoriness (dukkha), impermanence (anicca), and the absence of self-essence (anatta). (55)


Things are unsatisfactory because they are impermanent (hence unstable and unreliable), and they are impermanent because they lack a self-nature which is independent of the universal causal process. (56)


It can be seen that the Buddhist universe is characterized primarily by cyclic change: at the psychological level in the endless process of craving and gratification; at the personal level in the sequence of death and rebirth; and at the cosmic level in the creation and destruction of universes. Underlying all of this is the principle of cause and effect set out in the doctrine of origination-in-dependence, (56)


[C.] The Third Noble Truth is the Truth of Cessation (nirodha). 

This Truth announces that when craving is removed suffering ceases howe and nirvana is attained. (56)


Nirvana' literally means 'quenching or blowing out, in the way that the flame of a candle is blown out. (56)


What is extinguished, in fact, is the triple fire of greed, hatred, and delusion which leads to rebirth. Indeed, the simplest definition of nirvana-in-this-life is as "the end of greed, hatred, and delusion' (S.38.1). (57) 


When the flame of craving is extinguished, rebirth ceases, and an enlightened person is not reborn. (57)


The image of the blowing out of the flame, however, should not be taken as suggesting that final nirvana is annihilation: the sources make quite clear that this would be a mistake, as would the conclusion that nirvana is the eternal existence of a personal soul. (57)


The Fourth Noble Truth, that of the Path or Way (magga, tivate Sanskrit: marga), explains how the transition from samsara to nirvana is to be made. (58)


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