Buddhism

[Potential]

Buddhism is a journey into the depths of one's heart and mind, the inner reality of one's essence, an exploration of who we are and what we are. This spiritual journey is nothing more and nothing less than discovering this inner reality.

Buddhist spiritual teachings present a genuine science of mind that allows one to uncover this inner reality, the nature of the mind and the phenomena that our mind experience. When we say that Buddhism is a "science," we do not mean the dry science of analyzing material things. We are talking about something much deeper. We are talking about going into the depths of the reality of our inner world, which is the most powerful world.

The teachings of Lord Buddha Shakyamuni, which we often refer to by the Sanskrit term buddhadharma, set forth a path that frees one from disturbing emotions and fundamental ignorance. This dharma frees us from existence in samsara, defined by samsaric fear, and leads us towards the fruition of independence, the fruition of the state of complete freedom, the state of fearlessness, going beyond fear.

By closely looking at buddhadharma, or Buddhism, we thus find that it is a pure path, pure teachings, a pure science, a science of mind. In this sense, Buddhist spirituality is not what is ordinarily meant by the term "religion." It is rather closer to a humanistic science, a pure and genuine philosophy of humanity and science which works with the two sides of our samsaric mind, the negative aspect and the positive aspect of our mind. Fundamentally it is the science of working with the very basic nature of our mind.

"Nangpa" - Insider

The Tibetan term for Buddhism illustrates the nature of this inner science. What we call Buddhism in Tibetan is nang pa, which means insiders. It's an interesting term, insiders; it can have two meanings. Literally, it means someone who is within a certain boundary, within a certain fence, but another meaning of this word insider is the sense that we are working with our inside, our mind, our fundamental confusion, ignorance. Therefore we can see what Buddhism is fundamentally, from this term, insider: it is a science, working with our mind, a philosophy of humanity, a human science.

Is Buddhism A Religion?

Buddhadharma is not a religion in the everyday connotation of the word. We are not talking here about the sophisticated ways of explaining religion used by university Departments of Religion. Rather, the ordinary use of the word religion, our regular mundane understanding of religion, is somewhat simple: it's a belief, a dogma that we have about some superhuman beings outside our self, some supernatural energy outside one's being which has power, control, over our universe and over sentient beings. This mundane understanding of religion is a theistic view.

In this usual meaning of religion, it is as if a particular external being or external energy is holding our computer keyboard and is doing the programming for us; we don't have any power, we don't have any energy, we don't have any choice. We ourselves have to work with it; we have to wait and see what comes up on the screen.

Holding The Keyboard To Enlightenment

In Buddhism, however, we are holding the keyboard; we ourselves are the programmer. We program our software and we press the command keys on our keyboard. So depending on our own skill, our own energy and our own knowledge, we get what we want on the screen.

The reason why Buddha taught the dharma is to teach us the command keys. The Tripitaka is the manual, teaching us how to program, how to use the right command keys, and depending on this knowledge, we can have a successful progression of programs. Therefore there is no external energy or external being holding our keyboards in Buddhism; even Buddha himself does not hold our keyboard.

Buddha is a teacher, a human being with great knowledge, great wisdom, who can teach us the right keyboard, who can teach us how to work with it, who has the great compassion to share his knowledge, the great compassion to hand over the keyboard to us. Even though he has all this knowledge, he does not guard the copyright, saying: "Nobody can use it except me." So we can see his great compassion, his great knowledge, which he shares with us, giving us the keyboard, giving us the knowledge, giving us everything.

This path of buddhadharma is totally free from any theistic view and is totally free from any shape or color. It's like pure water; it has no shape, it has no color. Depending on the container that we pour the water into, the water adopts that particular shape. If you want to freeze this pure water, you can do it by putting the water into the freezer, but as soon as you take the ice out of the freezer, it will return to its natural state of pure water having no shape and no color.

[Potential]

All of the Dharma is based on Buddha's discovery that suffering is unnecessary: Like a disease, once we really face the fact that suffering exists, we can look more deeply and discover it's cause; and when we discover that the cause is dependent on certain conditions, we can explore the possibility of removing those conditions.

Buddha taught many very different methods for removing the cause of suffering, methods appropriate for the very different types and conditions and aptitudes of suffering beings. For those who had the capacity to understand it, he taught the most powerful method of all, a method based on the practice of compassion. It is known as the Mahayana, or Great Vehicle, because practicing it benefits all beings, without partiality. It is likened to a vast boat that carries all the beings in the universe across the sea of suffering.

Within the Mahayana the Buddha revealed the possibility of very quickly benefiting all beings, including oneself, by entering directly into the awakened state of mind, or Buddhahood, without delay. Again, there are different ways of accomplishing this, but the most powerful, and at the same time the most accessible, is to link ones own mind with the mind of a Buddha.

In visualization practice we imagine ourselves to be a Buddha, in this case the Buddha of Compassion, Chenrezig. By replacing the thought of yourself as you with the thought of yourself as Chenrezig, you gradually reduce and eventually remove the fixation on your personal self, which expands your loving kindness and compassion, toward yourself and toward others, and your intelligence and wisdom becomes enhanced, allowing you to see clearly what someone really needs and to communicate with them clearly and accurately.

In most religious traditions one prays to the deities of the tradition in the hopes of receiving their blessing, which will benefit one in some way. In the vajrayana Buddhist tradition, however, the blessing and the power and the superlative qualities of the enlightened beings are not considered as coming from an outside source, but are believed to be innate, to be aspects of our own true nature. Chenrezig and his love and compassion are within us.

Chenrezig or Avalokiteshvara or Kuan Yin: The Embodiment of Compassion

In doing the visualization practice we connect with the body and voice and mind of the Buddha by the three aspects of the practice. By our posture and certain gestures we connect with the body, by reciting the words of the liturgy and by repeating the mantra we connect with the voice, and by imagining the visual form of the Buddha we connect with the mind.

[Potential]

All living beings wish to be happy, but again and again they find their attainment of happiness frustrated by obstacles or hindrances – both external and internal.

External hindrances can arise from animate objects such as malevolent humans and wild animals; or from inanimate objects such as the four external elements of earth, water, fire, and wind, which can give rise to earthquakes, floods, destructive fires, and hurricanes.

Internal hindrances arise from causes within our body and mind. If the four internal elements are in a state of harmonious equilibrium, our body is healthy, but when they are out of balance our body experiences a variety of problems and diseases. If our mind is filled with negative thoughts and delusions, such as desirous attachment, anger, and ignorance, we experience great harm and suffering as a result. They prevent us from maintaining a peaceful mind, and also destroy whatever happiness we may have gained.

The main obstacles that hinder our progress to liberation and enlightenment can be summarized as the four maras, 'mara' being a Sanskrit word meaning 'demon'. These are: the mara of the delusions, the mara of the aggregates, the mara of the Lord of Death, and Devaputra mara(children of god demons). Anyone who conquers these four maras completely is a Buddha, or a 'Conqueror'.

All the suffering that we experience arises as a result of our delusions and the actions we create under their influence. As well as disrupting our temporary happiness and peace, delusions also hinder our progress towards the ultimate happiness of liberation and enlightenment.

Our contaminated aggregates are the very nature of samsara and the basis of all our suffering. For as long as we have these aggregates, we shall be unable to attain liberation.

The mara of the Lord of Death refers to ordinary, uncontrolled death, which deprives us of the chance to complete our spiritual practice. Unless we have thoroughly purified our negative actions and gained firm control over our body, speech, and mind, we cannot be confident that, after death, we shall not fall into a lower rebirth, where spiritual practice is impossible and escape is very difficult.

The Devaputra(Son of God) maras are actual beings, such as Black Ishvara, who interfere with our spiritual progress to liberation and enlightenment. For example, when Buddha Shakyamuni was about to demonstrate the attainment of enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree, it was the Devaputra maras who tried to disturb him.

[Potential]

Buddhist Beliefs
Since some background knowledge of rebirth and karma is useful for understanding Buddhism, there now follows a brief introduction to these topics taken from Geshe Kelsang's book, Eight Steps to Happiness:

The mind is neither physical, nor a by-product of purely physical processes, but a formless continuum that is a separate entity from the body. When the body disintegrates at death, the mind does not cease. Although our superficial conscious mind ceases, it does so by dissolving into a deeper level of consciousness, call 'the very subtle mind'.

The continuum of our very subtle mind has no beginning and no end, and it is this mind which, when completely purified, transforms into the omniscient mind of a Buddha.

Every action we perform leaves an imprint, or potential, on our very subtle mind, and each karmic potential eventually gives rise to its own effect. Our mind is like a field, and performing actions is like sowing seeds in that field. Positive or virtuous actions sow the seeds of future happiness, and negative or non-virtuous actions sow the seeds of future suffering.

This definite relationship between actions and their effects - virtue causing happiness and non-virtue causing suffering - is know as the 'law of karma'. An understanding of the law of karma is the basis of Buddhist morality.

After we die our very subtle mind leaves our body and enters the intermediate state, or 'bardo' in Tibetan. In this subtle dream-like state we experience many different visions that arise from the karmic potentials that were activated at the time of our death. These visions may be pleasant or terrifying depending on the karma that ripens. Once these karmic seeds have fully ripened they impel us to take rebirth without choice.

It is important to understand that as ordinary samsaric beings we do not choose our rebirth but are reborn solely in accordance with our karma. If good karma ripens we are reborn in a fortunate state, either as a human or a god, but if negative karma ripens we are reborn in a lower state, as an animal, a hungry ghost, or a hell being.

It is as if we are blown to our future lives by the winds of our karma, sometimes ending up in higher rebirths, sometimes in lower rebirths.

This uninterrupted cycle of death and rebirth without choice is called 'cyclic existence', or 'samsara' in Sanskrit. Samsara is like a Ferris wheel, sometimes taking us up into the three fortunate realms, sometimes down into the three lower realms.

The driving force of the wheel of samsara is our contaminated actions motivated by delusions, and the hub of the wheel is self-grasping ignorance. For as long as we remain on this wheel we shall experience an unceasing cycle of suffering and dissatisfaction, and we shall have no opportunity to experience pure, lasting happiness.

By practicing the Buddhist path to liberation and enlightenment, however, we can destroy self-grasping, thereby liberating ourself from the cycle of uncontrolled rebirth and attaining a state of perfect peace and freedom. We shall then be in a position to help others to do the same.