Touching The Heart of Buddhas Teachings - Term Paper Example

of Touching The Heart of Buddha’s Teachings Perhaps the best way to approach the core of Buddhism is to ask, first of all, what the word Buddhism means. Buddhism comes from the word Buddha, whose root word, budh simply means awake. The Buddha, whose root word, budh simply means awake. The Buddha, therefore, is simply one who is awake. In the Anguttara Nikaya, one of the major collections of Buddhist texts, we are told that a Brahmin (a Hindu priest) once encountered the Buddha and asked him a series of questions: “The Brahmin Dona saw the Buddha sitting under a tree and was impressed by his peaceful air of alertness and his good looks. He asked the Buddha: Are you a God? No, Brahmin, I am not a God. Then an angel? No, indeed, Brahmin. A spirit, then? No, I am not a spirit. Then what are you? I am awake.” (Bancroft 8). When the Buddha said that he was awake, what he implied was that he was once, like most of us, asleep. To be asleep is to be ignorant of our true nature. It means that there is so much about ourselves and the world that we do not understand. If we could only open our eyes and be awake, then we, too, can be Buddhas. This, in fact, is one of the central teachings of Buddhism: that each of us is a potential Buddha, that each of us has the seed of enlightenment. All we need to do is to work at it. All we need to do is to nurture the seed of enlightenment. This brings us to the life story of Buddha. What are the key elements of Buddha’s life story? Why are they so important? What do these teachings tell us? These are among the questions that I shall address in this paper. The Buddha was born around 560 B.C. in what is now Southern Nepal (Zukeran 1). He was Indian, and was born a prince. His name was Siddhartha. The story of his life starts right after he was born, when an astrologer came to the kingdom and predicted that Siddhartha would either become a great king or a great spiritual leader. When Siddhartha’s father heard this, the king made sure that Siddhartha would not be exposed to the difficulties of life. So the king surrounded Prince Siddhartha with all the possible pleasures one could possibly imagine, and he was not exposed to any difficulties or suffering whatsoever. However, the prince developed a great curiosity about the world outside the palace walls. When Siddhartha left the palace walls with this charioteer named Chandaka, he first noticed a bent, wrinkled old man. This was something he had never seen before. On another trip outside the palace walls, Siddhartha saw a man suffering from some kind of disease. On a third occasion, Siddhartha encountered a funeral procession and saw a dead body inside a box followed by crying relatives. He was horrified. On a fourth occasion, Siddhartha encountered a wandering mock who seemed very happy, serene, and contented. When he asked Chandaka who this person was, Chandaka said: “this is a holy man who has renounced worldly life and entered upon a life of homelessness” (Kohn 11). These key events are what led Siddhartha to a deep realization: that everything is ravaged by time; that we don’t live forever; and that life, at its very root, is filled with suffering. These facts motivated Siddhartha to look for a cure for suffering. In doing so, he vowed to continue sitting in meditation until he found the solution to the problem of suffering. One day, Siddhartha attained enlightenment. During this enlightenment, he was finally able to discover the cure that he was seeking. At first, he thought that he could not teach what he had discovered, since what he had discovered seemed so profound. But he got up from under the tree, and met a few friends who had deserted him. It is to these friends that he gave his first sermon – the four noble truths. This is where Buddha’s life story becomes significant. The four noble truths are the foundational teachings of Buddhism. These teachings tell us that first, human existence is characterized by suffering. Second, that there is a cause for suffering. Third, that there is a way out of suffering through the elimination of its cause, and fourth, that there is a path leading to the cessation of suffering. In most Buddhist texts, it is said that the cause of suffering is trishna, which means desire. We suffer because we have too many wants and needs. We own a cell phone but soon grow dissatisfied with it as soon as a new model comes along; we own a car but soon get dissatisfied with it because we desire a better, faster, or more luxurious model; we have a perfectly good relationship with someone but then look for someone else because we want something new and more exciting. All these desires inevitably lead to suffering because we cannot possibly fulfill them all. In the end, we get utterly frustrated. The teachings of Buddha tell us that we need to understand that the mind plays a very big role in human suffering. For herein is where the solution to the problem of suffering lies. The importance of one’s attitude or state of mind is with reference to the experience of happiness and suffering. And if we think about it close enough, we should also come to the conclusion that our state of mind also affects other people’s happiness or suffering. Here is an example to illustrate the point. Suppose you have just received word that the knapsack, which you lost in school, was finally found with everything intact. Feeling relieved, you decide to walk leisurely to school, humming one of your favorite tunes. You pick up the papers along the way and realize that you’ve received a perfect grade in philosophy. You reach for your cell phone to call you best friend about the good news only to discover that you have a message waiting for you. You read it and find out that it’s an invitation to go out on a date from the person you’ve had a secret crush with in school. Now, as you’re feeling really high, someone accidentally steps on your toe and spills some coke on your pants. How would you react? This probably wouldn’t bother you. You’d probably just brush it off as a freak accident, and you probably wouldn’t get angry with the person who spilled coke on your pants. But consider the following circumstances: you have just found out that you failed in philosophy. Your lover has just dumped you for your best friend. You just lost your knapsack with important papers inside. To top it all, your computer just crashed, so you can’t retrieve the files where you saved your term papers, and the deadline is today. As you walk to school, someone steps on your toes and spills coke on your pants. How would you react this time? You would probably say something really nasty about that person’s mother. Your might even punch that person – and all because of the state of mind you were in while the incident happened. If you really think about it, you might conclude that happy persons do not need to be told to be good because they will be naturally forgiving, kind and helpful. It is easier to be kind, forgiving and helpful if you’re happy, and more difficult to be kind, forgiving and helpful if you’re miserable. For this reason, Buddhists emphasize the need to develop states of mind, which contribute to the feelings of happiness. For, a happy person needs no commandments. This is what Buddha was trying to teach us when he sat in the tree and meditated, when he came up to his friends that abandoned him and taught them his discovery. Indeed, in order to touch the heart of Buddha’s teachings, we must understand that Buddhism is really about training the mind. This means that one must take the time to cultivate positive states of mind, because these are what ultimately lead to the end of suffering, both for oneself and for others. Works Cited Bancroft, Anne. The Buddha Speaks:A Book of Guidance from the Buddhist Scriptures. Boston: Shambhala Publications, Inc., 2000. Print. Kohn, Sherab Chodzin. The Life of the Buddha. Entering the stream: An Introduction to The Buddha and His Teachings. London: Random House, 1994. Print. Zukeran, Pat. Buddhism. Richardson: Probe Ministries International, 2003. Print. Read More