The teachings of the Buddha spread across Asia in the centuries that followed his death, and Buddhism became a world religion—the only Indian religion to achieve that status and influence. Over the course of time many different schools and traditions of Buddhism developed, and these adjusted to the cultural distinctions of their new homelands. But no matter what form of Buddhism, Zen or Pure Land,
Hinayana or Mahayana, and no matter from where, Ceylon, China or Tibet, the essence of Buddhism is the same and is summarized in the Buddha's first teaching on the Four Noble Truths.
The first truth is the truth of suffering—the inherent frustrations of conditioned existence. Everything is compounded, impermanent, bound to pass away. There are four primary sufferings:
birth, sickness, old age, and death. Secondary sufferings are not getting what we want, not wanting what we get, being separated from whomever or whatever is dear to us, and being joined to people and things we dislike.
The second truth is the truth of the cause of suffering—craving, the craving for passion, the craving for existence, the craving for non
existence. Selfish craving tends to rebirth, produces samsara, and causes unhappiness to ourselves and others.
The third truth is the truth of the end of suffering—the cessation of craving, non-attachment, release, nirvana. The removal of craving allows one to go beyond—go to tranquility, to dwell in the absolute nature of stillness, unutterable blissful peace. This is not a negative state, not the cessation of awareness. Rather, it is the full awakening of awareness of reality unobscured by the deluded activity of thoughts and emotions.
The fourth truth is the truth of the path to the end of suffering—the eightfold path of right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. This path is summarized as the development of morality, meditation and wisdom.
There are two other basic doctrinal formulations that support this main teaching. One is the doctrine of no-self. There is no independent self-entity, no self either in ourselves or in the phenomenal world around us. There is only conditioned existence.
The sense of self which we experience is comprised of the five skandhas, the five aggregates or psycho-physical groupings. These are form, feeling, perception, concept, and consciousness. The first three are instinctual processes; the last two are volitional. It is the dynamic interplay of these five rather than a permanent ontological self that describes the ego-sense (and from a Buddhist point of view, one gets into trouble—strays into delusion—when this sense of self is grasped at as a solid entity rather than experienced as a changing expression of existential interaction). In terms of the world of matter and energy, the five interacting components of existence are described as the five elements: earth, fire, water, air, and space.
part i: tibeta\ buddiiistmedicise
Since there is no inherent self-existence either of self or phenomena, the world and its creatures should be known as an illusion:
As stars, a fault of vision, a lamp, A mock show, dewdrops, or a bubble, A dream, a lightning flash, or a cloud, so should we view what is conditioned.9 The other basic teaching is the doctrine of “ conditioned co
production" (interdependent origination). As stated in the Buddhist scriptures, this formulation is as follows:
Conditioned by Ignorance are the Karma-formations;
conditioned by the karma-formations is Consciousness;
conditioned by consciousness is Name and Form;
conditioned by name and form arc the Six Sense-fields;
conditioned by the six sense-fields is Contact;
conditioned by contact are Feelings;
conditioned by feelings is Craving;
conditioned by craving is Grasping;
conditioned by grasping is Becoming;
conditioned by becoming is Birth;
conditioned by birth arc Decay and Death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, sadness and despair.
Thus is the origination of all this mass of suffering.10 The reversal of the above stated links or process of conditioned co-production is the practice of Dharma leading to nirvana. The triple nature of Buddhist practice is the development of morality, concentration and wisdom, and the main support for all these practices is the cultivation of mindfulness.
The basis of Buddhist morality is the development of love, kindness, and compassion. The essence of it is to never bring harm or suffering to other beings and to try to help them and bring them happiness.
The basis of Buddhist concentration and meditation is the control of the mind. By gaining power of concentration and mindfulness we can control the wild thoughts and emotions that produce suffering and karma. The essence of this has been described as follows:
Medicine of Dhaema 19 The turmoil is caused in main by three agents: (1) the senses, (2) the passions, wants and desires, and (3) discursive thinking. In order to conquer these enemies of spiritual quietude it is therefore necessary to withdraw the senses from their objects, as the tortoise draws in all its limbs; to cease from wanting anything; and to cut off discursive thinking."
The development of wisdom is an intellectual and meditative understanding of the conditioned co-production and the reality of there being "no self.”
The explanation of these basic Buddhist doctrines from the Tibetan or Vajrayana point of view is as follows."
The source of all painful, conditioned phenomenal existence, samsara, is our acting in a state of not-sceing. It is caused by our basic ignorance or unawareness. The ground of all is actually void and luminous, beyond conception, beyond birth and death. Given a name, it is called the “ Essence of Enlightenment" or the “ Buddha-nature.”
Beings who do not recognize this primordial purity, the void luminous limitless space, fall into delusion through ignorance. Because of the karma of past tendencies, habits, and actions, the movement of mind arises in the voidness. In a fog of unawareness, holding on to the " I ” even though there is no such thing, one grasps at these movements, either with greed or hatred, and thus creates the illusion of their having a separate existence. From these two—the subtle karmic forces and the inner holding onto “ I " —the outer gross actions start to unfold as the five sense doors and the eight consciousnesses.
By not seeing that the movement of mind, the sense of “ I" and other, is insubstantial and shares in the nature of voidness, one grasps at it as something real and thereby creates the illusion of separateness and the duality of subject and object. In this way, with the three basic mental defilements of ignorance, desire, and hatred, the mind ensnares itself. And with our constant graspings and longings we fall into a state of dissatisfaction.
From the root of these negative emotions come all physical and mental disease and suffering. The source of disease and emotionality is the lack of control of one’s mind. The only way out of suffering is to uproot the basic ignorance, unawareness, that has caused our delusion and its resultant tortures. We do this through the practice of Dharma.
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Figure 5 A pictorial repreicntation of Buddhist teaching: the wheel of life, samsara, held in the grasp of the Lord of Death. At the hub are a pig, cock and snake, symbolizing the three mental poisons that generate the six realms of existence seen within the spokes of the wheel. Around the rim are Images of the twelve links of interdependent origination, the chain of causal factors that keep samsara spinning.
Tibetans say that liberation from this vicious cycle of suffering comes from the medicine of Dharma.
The Medicine of Dharrrua 21 In order to see how the painful state of existential frustration has come about, one of the initial Dharma practices is to examine where the “ I” is located. Through such analysis one discovers that the “ I” object grasping arising from basic unawareness that creates karma and perpetuates our delusion and suffering.
This experience helps to dissolve our tenacious grasping at ourselves and the rest of the world as solid, permanent, self-existing entities. By letting go of the ego sense, we can begin to penetrate more directly into the nature of mind and to experience stillness and voidness.
In such meditation, one simply watches the material that arises in the mind, without grasping at it or reacting to it. In this way neurotic mental patterns and emotions arc recognized but at the same time their hold on the meditator is lessened. One begins to free oneself from their affect. One begins to develop true concentration and control the mind. One also begins to become aware of the stillness that exists between the arising thoughts.
All actions of body, speech, and mind that we do in a state of unawareness have an effect in accordance with the law of karma, cause and effect. This is how the universe at large and our individual situations in particular are produced. We can never meet a situation that is not the result of past karma, good or bad. The awareness or lack of awareness with which we experience the condition of the present (caused by past karma) produces the new karma that determines our future. So, far from being a fatalistic situation, our present situation is highly creative. We are free to control the state of mind and motivation we possess in the present. But we tend to act and react in unawareness; thus the force of karma tends to perpetuate the mass of unconscious habits that propel us into the cycles of
The complete reversal or removal of our mental obscurations and the complete end of karma come with enlightenment. By dwelling in the absolute stillness and void that we discover between the thoughts, one comes to see that the movements of mind and the consciousness of these movements are not separate from the voidness.
In this meditation one is not involved with past thoughts or chasing