A person now known as the Buddha, ‘the Enlightened One’, is believed to have lived in India in the latter part of the sixth and the early part of the fifth centuries BCE. The example of his life and teaching generated Buddhism, a tradition of beliefs and practices which, during two and a half thousand years, has spread peaceably through many parts of Asia. Buddhism has developed or been interpreted from the central tenets of the Buddha’s teaching in a variety of ways. Although it has no god it is widely regarded as a religion. Any person may endeavour to achieve the buddhic condition of enlightenment: by eschewing extremes and following the Middle Way; by transcending the self of everyday life.
Buddhism is essentially a practical doctrine, dedicated primarily to the negation of suffering and only secondarily to the elucidation of philosophical issues. But of course, the two realms, the practical and the philosophical, are not unconnected and the Buddha’s metaphysical conception of the impermanence and interdependence of all things profoundly influences his teaching about the conduct of daily life and the nature of human salvation.
There are no entirely reliable sources either for the facts of the Buddha’s life or for his teaching (dharma), but there are numerous accounts compiled by his followers. Written records began to be put together about four centuries after his death and were taken largely from the recitings of monks and from the oral pronouncements passed down from the Buddha’s original disciples. Although unverifiable and often conflicting, these accounts, taken as a whole, provide a rich and detailed picture of the Buddha’s world and of the ideas that informed his thought.
Sidhartha Gautama, later to be called the Buddha, was probably born near Nepal in northeastern India. Early Buddhist scriptures relate that his birth took place beneath a tree in the lowland countryside near Lambini and that his mother died seven days later. His family was undoubtedly a prosperous one, occupying a position of power within a Hindu community structured by a well-defined hierarchy of estates. This hierarchy separated people into those who prayed, those who fought and those who laboured. The Brahmins, who were the priests and scholars, constituted the highest estate. Next came the warriors who ruled and defended society, and among these were the Sakyas of whom Sidhartha was one. The third and fourth estates consisted of commoners and servants respectively. Mobility between the ranks of the estates was not easy. It has been remarked that ‘It was as if the estates were different species. In this conception there were no human beings, only Brahmins, Warriors, Husbandmen and servants.’1
Sidhartha was brought up in the Hindu tradition, living in princely style and marrying at 16. When he was 29 his life changed as the result of four experiences that brought him to a realization of mortality and the pain of human existence. It is related that he encountered, first, an old man, then a mortally sick man, then a corpse and then a man with a shaven head and a threadbare yellow robe – a monk in search of spiritual truth. Sidhartha brooded deeply on the significance of these encounters and when night came he quietly left his sleeping wife and child and began a new life as a beggar. His aims were spiritual and practical ones: to discover the cause of suffering (duhkha) and to effect its cure. He wandered the Ganges plains, seeking out the yogis (see yoga) and subjecting himself to a regime of extreme frugality and discipline.
After six years of such practices Sidhartha seems to have achieved nothing of what he sought, but he resolved to persist in his endeavour. He bathed, ate a light meal and then began a prolonged meditation on suffering and rebirth, progressing through four stages of meditation and at last achieving the awakening he sought: first, by means of the realization that all desire is productive of pain, and then by experiencing release from every craving. In this way, at the age of 35, he achieved buddhahood. Buddhist scriptures relate that he described his joy in these words:
I have overcome all foes; I am all-wise; I am free from stains in every way; I have left everything; and have obtained emancipation by the destruction of desire . . . I have gained coolness . . . and have obtained Nirvana.2
Nirvana is primarily a Hindu concept. It is sometimes spoken of as a state of bliss and peace that is secure because it is irreversible. It is also described as a state of ‘unbecoming’, or non-being, a condition thought to precede individual existence and which takes on the character of a far place to which the existing individual might return. Perhaps it is best thought of as something that is beyond ordinary comprehension, as experienceable rather than describable. Since it involves the disappearance of the desirous and suffering individual it is difficult, except in moments of imaginative insight, to conceive of such a state. It is the falling away of all the pains and uncertainties that characterize carnal existence, leaving a peace that is unassailable and without sensation. It is sometimes referred to in wholly negative terms as
a condition where there is neither ‘earth’, nor ‘water’, nor ‘fire’, nor ‘air’, nor the sphere of infinite space, nor the sphere of infinite consciousness, nor the sphere of the void . . . neither a coming nor a going nor a standing still, nor a falling away nor a rising up; but it is without fixity, without mobility, without basis. It is the end of woe.3
Commentators have sometimes objected that there is a contradiction in speaking of nirvana as, on the one hand, a kind of negation and, on the other, a state of bliss. The reply to that objection must surely be that if the descriptive account borders on contradiction then the resulting incoherence has to be understood as an indication of the inexpressibility and otherness of nirvana.
Nirvana is not something attained only at death. A released person may continue, as the Buddha did, in physical existence, undergoing all the processes of ageing and bodily decay although invulnerable to spiritual regression. When he achieved enlightenment Sidhartha was ready to enter fully into nirvana, but he paused to reflect on whether he should do so at once or should embark instead on a teaching mission. He chose to teach. When he had prepared himself he delivered his first discourse, now known as the Benares Sermon, to the five men who had accompanied him on many of his wanderings. These followers were at first sceptical and disapproving. In their eyes, when he washed and ate before his long meditation, Sidhartha had lapsed from the extreme asceticism they deemed necessary for true enlightenment. But what he had found through that new approach was a path between the two extremes of worldly indulgence and punishing self-denial. His sermon marked the beginning of a teaching ministry dedicated to the exposition and exemplification of the undogmatic thinking of the Middle Way. That ministry continued until he died, forty-five years later. Most historians place his death in 483 BCE, recounting that it occurred as the result of eating food that contained a tainted ingredient. His body was cremated and its ashes distributed among eight groups of his followers.
The Buddha’s teaching is largely about human conduct and salvation and its central concern is with the abolition of suffering. However, it has to be understood in relation to the Hindu doctrine of reincarnation, or transmigration of souls. In Hinduism this doctrine rests on the general belief that all living things are besouled and that souls become incarnate in a succession of different types of bodies. Which body a particular soul migrates into depends on the kind of life lived through its previous body and this conditioning or determining of its next incarnation is karma, the universal law that governs the distinctions between embodied souls and also their particular deeds. Reincarnation is thought of as a more or less perpetual bondage to samsara, the wheel of life, a bondage maintained by the individual’s passions and cravings. But release is possible and may be achieved by a gradual bettering of one’s karma, so that migration to bodies capable of more ascetic and spiritual living and, eventually, entry into nirvana can take place.
In Hinduism the bliss of nirvana is broadly conceived of as a state of total union with Brahman, the ultimate and absolute Reality of the universe, in which individuality is completely abolished. Buddhistic doctrine differs from this in some important respects. For one thing, it does not assert the existence of Brahman as the unifying and ultimate power of the universe. It also rejects the concept of the individual immortal soul. It maintains that the empirical personality consists of five kinds of entities, or skandha – body, feelings, desires, mental conceptions and pure consciousness – but that none of these is permanent and so cannot constitute anything that could be understood as soul. Accordingly, Buddhism concludes that there is an empirical personality that has a psychic or mental aspect, but it finds no reason to affirm the existence of an enduring soul capable of finding eternal salvation through absorption into a Brahmanic absolute.
This view has implications for the doctrine of reincarnation, since its argument, if accepted, renders incoherent the idea of a persisting soul that migrates through a series of incarnations. Thus the buddhistic view is not that there is an eternal soul that migrates, but that the cumulative disposition, or karma, of a life that is ending leaps forward into a fresh incarnation and conditions its development. Buddhist scriptures describe the karma of a dying person as finding a new embodiment, one that is appropriate to its past, in the embryo of a pregnant woman’s womb. In this way, the whole disposition of a former life takes up habitation in and begins to influence a new one. A new ego is formed, but with a disposition shaped by a previous one. Confronted with the question whether a released being continues to exist in some way after death, the answer given by Buddhism is: ‘Neither yes nor no’.
Sidhartha did not hold that the development of a life is rigidly and wholly determined by the physical events that are the consequences of karma. Instead he taught that it is intentions, motives and volitions that are decisive for the karma of a future life. The painful consequences of the bad intentions of a previous life are inevitable and unavoidable, but good intentions or volitions, even those relating to a deed that fails to turn out well, can lead only towards moksa, the condition of release. Accordingly, it is not pointless, in Buddhism, to seek a virtuous way of life.
In the Benares Sermon the Buddha’s teaching begins with the listing of the Four Noble Truths: the fact of suffering, its cause, the requirement that it shall cease, and the method of its cessation. These truths clearly coincide with the insights that came to him in the four encounters that set him on the path to buddhahood. Their discussion is followed by an exposition of what it is to tread the Noble Eightfold Path, the course of conduct that can end suffering. The path requires one to live a life based on right beliefs, right thought, right speech, right conduct, right vocation, right effort, right attention and right concentration. The details of Buddhist practice are to be derived from this framework and worked out by reference to the principle of seeking the Middle Way in all things. In following the Middle Way, extremes are repudiated since they constitute the kinds of ties and attachments that impede progress towards release. A person on the Middle Way
neither constructs in his mind, nor wills in order to produce, any state of mind or body, or the destruction of any such state. By not so willing anything in the world, he grasps after nothing; by not grasping, he is not anxious; he is therefore fully calmed within.4
The literature of Buddhism is abundant and various. It falls into two main parts that correspond with the division of Buddhist doctrine into its two main schools, the Theravada (or Hinayana) and the Mahayana. The Theravada scriptures are written in Pali and are generally known either as the Pali Canon or the Tipitaka, usually translated as ‘The Three Baskets’. The ‘baskets’ respectively contain a collection of the Buddha’s reported sayings and sermons, the rules of conduct, and discussions of philosophical issues in Buddhism. These central works of the Pali Canon generated numerous commentaries and disquisitions. Mahayana literature is even more copious and has a somewhat different character that was imposed on it during the wider dissemination it received over several centuries in the early development of Buddhism. It was originally written in Sanskrit but many of those originals were lost after their transmission to China and Tibet. This has meant that, in more recent times, Chinese and Tibetan versions have had to be translated back into Sanskrit.5
It is not surprising that the central beliefs and doctrines attributed to the Buddha have endured, developed and flourished. They have a practical aspect that is readily absorbed into daily life. At the same time they deal with certain large questions that have always fascinated humankind: questions concerning the soul, the self, free will, death, God, reality and the meaning of life. Buddhism is sensitively agnostic concerning these ultimate questions and so allows for the human sense of mystery and transcendence and the propensity to speculate and reason that are part of human consciousness in general. But it is also down-to-earth and forthright in its conclusions derived from empirical fact and it offers clear guidance on how to realize spiritual aspirations. The Buddha taught an attitude of non-violence and an awareness of community and relatedness among all things. He condemned the rigid hierarchy of the Hindu estates, maintaining that inner virtue rather than birth or rank is to be valued, and he welcomed followers, both men and women, from all walks of life. He did not think of himself either as an innovator or as the maker of a philosophy, for he saw his teaching as deriving largely from the distillations of perennial human wisdom and practices. Nevertheless, his thinking is analytical and systematic and it has an independence and vigour that impart originality to it. It possesses, too, a broad coherence that knits it into a system of ideas embracing important philosophical issues.
After the Buddha’s death his doctrine survived and spread in various forms. The monks who survived him did their best to preserve his ideas exactly as he had expressed them, reciting and promulgating the wisdom contained in the Three Baskets of the Pali Canon. In the first four or five centuries after Sidhartha’s death Buddhism remained almost exclusively Indian. It then began to move eastwards through Asia and then to China as well, influencing and being influenced by all it encountered. Today, the Doctrine of the Elders (Theravada) prevails in the southern part of the Buddhist world and is the national religion of Sri Lanka, Burma and Thailand. In the northern parts of the Buddhist world, the Mahayana doctrines that developed at the time of the rise of Christianity are dominant in Nepal, Korea, China, Japan and Tibet. In the late twentieth century it is only in Sri Lanka that Buddhism has been largely unfettered and has worked in conjunction with the state.
The Buddha’s teaching has not escaped criticism. Many have pointed out that it advocates a withdrawal from life and is suitable only for those who are willing to live in cloistered retirement, evading the abrasions and difficulties encountered in the wider world. But such a charge is no more relevant or damaging to Buddhism than it is to most other religions. Just as Judaism and Christianity, for example, are capable of sustaining a wide variety of lifestyles, ranging from those of monastic seclusion to those of full engagement with the political and economic business of the world, so is Buddhism able to do so. Its scope and temper are aptly summarized by Michael Carrithers in his remark that ‘Buddhism is quintessentially tolerant, cosmopolitan and portable’.6
1 In Michael Carrithers, The Buddha, Oxford, Oxford University Press, Past Masters series, 1983, p. 15.
2 See M. Muller (ed.), Mahavaga, Vol. XIII, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1881, p. 90.
3 Quoted in Christmas Humphreys, Buddhism, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1952, p. 127.
4 Majjhima Nikaya, Vol. III, Pali Text Society edition, Oxford, Oxford University Press, p. 244.
5 The most renowned commentator on early Theravada doctrine is Buddhaghosa. See pp. 65–8 in this book for his work on the translation and interpretation of its literature in the fifth century CE.
6 Carrithers, op. cit., p. 80.
After the Buddha’s death his words and doctrines were regularly recited by monks in an attempt to preserve them accurately. Versions of these recitings were discussed at meetings held at intervals in the ensuing century and it was as the result of disagreements in these discussions that the two main schools of Buddhism, the Theravada and the Mahayana, developed. Numerous texts of Theravada Buddhism are published in scholarly editions by the Pali Text Society through Oxford University Press.
Nagarjuna, Buddhaghosa, Padma-Sambhava, Milarepa, Hui-neng, Dogen, Nichiren, Bankei, Hakuin, Nishida, Suzuki
Carrithers, Michael, The Buddha, Oxford, Oxford University Press, Past Masters series, 1983
Conze, Edward, A Short History of Buddhism, London, Unwin Paperbacks, 1986
Humphreys, Christmas, Buddhism, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1952
Murti, T.R.V., The Central Philosophy of Buddhism, London, Allen & Unwin, 1955
Thomas, Edward J., The History of Buddhist Thought, 3rd edn, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1949