Siddhartha was born about 583 BC near Nepal. His father, King Suddhodana, was head of the Shakya clan. His mother, Queen Maya, died shortly after his birth. Suddhodana wanted his son to become a great warrior. He raised Siddhartha in great luxury and shielded him from knowledge of death and human suffering. Till his twenty ninth year, Siddhartha knew little of life outside the palace walls.
One day, overcome by curiosity Siddhartha made several trips in a chariot through the countryside. In these trips, he met with disturbing sights of an aged man, a sick man, and a corpse. The grim pictures of old age, disease, and death upset him greatly. Later, he saw a wandering ascetic who had renounced the world and sought release from fear of death and suffering.
He returned to palace life for a while, but found little pleasure in it. The news of his son’s birth also did not cheer him. One night he wandered in the palace alone, and was seized by a sense of futility of his luxurious life. He left the palace, shaved his head, changed his prince’s clothes for a beggar’s robe, and began his search for enlightenment.
Siddhartha held discourses with renowned teachers, and learnt religious doctrines and meditation. Still, he found no answers to his doubts and questions. He and five disciples then began looking for enlightenment on their own. They sought freedom from suffering through physical discipline, enduring pain, holding their breath, fasting nearly to starvation. Finding no release, Siddhartha tried the Middle Way. He realised that the path of liberation was through discipline of mind. He found enlightenment while meditating beneath a sacred fig, known later as the Bodhi Tree. His spiritual struggle was mythologized as a great battle with Mara, a demon whose name means “destruction” and who represents the human passions.
Conceptual framework of Buddhist thought
Four Noble Truths
The essence of Buddha’s teaching is contained in the Four Noble Truths. He enunciated them in the first sermon which he gave to his five old ascetic colleagues at Sarnath. The Four Noble truths set out the path for an individual’s enlightenment.
The four truths are:
¤ The truth of dukkha
¤ The truth of the origin of the dukkha
¤ The truth of cessation of dukkha
¤ The truth of the path leading to the cessation of dukkha
Truth of Dukkha
Three Types of Dukkha
The meaning of dukkha is suffering, anxiety and dissatisfaction. This Pali term has wider connotation than its Sanskrit counterpart which means ‘suffering’. Buddhist thought refers to three types of dukkha.
Dukkha-dukkha means the dukkha of ordinary suffering. This is the pain associated with giving birth, growing old, physical illness and the process of dying.
Viparinama dukkha is the dukkha produced by change. It denotes the anxiety or stress in trying to hold on to things that are continuously changing.
Samkhara dukkha is the dukkha of conditioned states. It arises from a realisation that all forms of life are characterised by impermanence and flux. In this sense, dukkha indicates a lack of satisfaction which arises from feeling that things never measure up to our expectations or standards.
The focus on dukkha is not pessimistic. The purpose is to understand the nature of dukkha with a view to transcend it. Buddha recognised that that the world offers both happiness and unhappiness. However, the states of happiness are transitory and changing. Hence, whatever we experience in the world leaves us with a sense of dissatisfaction. Unless we gain an insight into what gives us happiness and what is unable to do so, we will continue in a state of unhappiness. We look for happiness in external things rather than in our internal feelings and attitudes. As all sources of happiness are transient, any feeling of happiness is accompanied by dissatisfaction. We have to recognise this to start looking for real happiness.
The origin of dukkha is traced to craving (tanha) conditioned by ignorance (avijia). Hankering runs along three tracks:
¤ Craving for sense pleasure which is craving for sense objects that give pleasant sensations or carving for sensory pleasures.
¤ Craving consists in the desire to be something, to unite with an experience. It includes craving for continuity, to be a being that has a past and a future, and the desire to prevail and dominate others.
¤ ‘Craving not to be’ signifies a desire not to experience the world, and to be nothing, a wish to be separated from painful feelings.
¤ Ignorance can be interpreted as ignorance of the meaning and implications of the four noble truths. It implies a misunderstanding of the self and reality.
The third noble truth is cessation of all the unsatisfactory experiences and their causes in a manner that they cannot recur. It refers to final absence or non-arising of things that cause suffering. Cessation of dukkha is the objective of Buddhist spiritual practices. Having eradicated the sources of suffering
i.e. craving and ignorance, one feels liberated. This is also the state of nirvana. By removing causes of suffering from the mind, one can experience temporary nirvana. The more serene the mind, the greater the nirvana it experiences.
Path Leading to the Cessation of Dukkha
Eightfold Path
The fourth noble path is the way to end dukkha. It is called the eightfold path. It consists of: Right Understanding; Right Thought: Right Speech; Right Action; Right livelihood; Right Effort; Right mindfulness; and Right concentration. The first three paths help in understanding the nature of dukkha. The fourth path is a practical means of overcoming dukkha. The paths are interconnected and constitute a way of living. The wheel of Dharma pictorially depicts the eightfold path.
Right view is the intellectual aspect of wisdom. It implies penetrating the outward aspect of things, understanding the transient and imperfect nature of worldly objects and ideas, and understanding the law of karma and karmic conditioning.
Right intention refers to the type of psychic energy which controls human actions. It is commitment to moral and mental self-improvement. There are three kinds of right intention (i) resisting the pull of craving; (ii) resisting feelings of anger and aversion; and (iii) avoiding thoughts and actions which involve violence, cruelty and aggression and cultivating compassion.
Right speech is route to moral discipline which sustains other virtues. Right speech consists of the following:
¤ To abstain from telling lies and speakingdeceitfully
¤ To avoid malicious or slanderous speech
¤ To refrain from using harsh words which hurt others
¤ To abstain from idle chatter that lacks purpose or depth
Right action includes: acting kindly and compassionately; to be honest; to respect the belongings of others; and to avoid sexual misconduct.
Right livelihood implies that one should follow righteous means of earning bread and that wealth has to be earned only through legal and nonviolent ways. Buddha suggests that the following occupations should be avoided:
¤ Dealing in weapons
¤ Dealing in living things such as slave trade or rearing animals for slaughter
¤ Working in meat production or butchery
¤ Selling intoxicants or poisons
Right effort refers to psychic energy which produces either wholesome or unwholesome mental states. It can lead, for example, to aggression, envy, desire and violence. But the same energy can lead to self-discipline, honesty, altruism and compassion. One has to control mind through right efforts. These are:
¤ To prevent any unwholesome states from arising in the mind
¤ To banish unwholesome states which have arisen in the mind
¤ To arouse wholesome states in the mind
¤ To sustain the wholesome states present in the mind
Right mindfulness refers to the cognitive processes through which we understand things. We receive sense impressions through perception. Our cognitive processes act on the bare impressions and interpret those using concepts and our earlier experiences. In this way, we end up creating complex interpretive schemes. The original impressions and associated thoughts can get distorted in this process. Buddha says that we should perceive clearly and should not get carried away by the working of intellectual processes. For this purpose, he recommends four foundations of mindfulness:
¤ Contemplation of the body
¤ Contemplation of feeling (repulsive, attractive or neutral)
¤ Contemplation of the state of the mind
¤ Contemplation of the phenomena
Right concentration signifies single-pointedness of the mind in which all mental faculties are unified and directed towards a single object. The right concentration has to be on wholesome thoughts and actions. Buddhists try to achieve right concentration through practising meditation. This leads to a mental state without passions, with self-control and tranquillity.
Buddhists believe that to concentrate on complete self-realisation, men need to follow three golden rules:
(i) Taking refuge in Buddha
(ii) Taking refuge in Dharma
(iii) Taking refuge in Sanga (company of enlightened)
Prescriptions for Family and Society
Buddhism prescribes various morals for harmonious family and social life. Parents are enjoined to provide intellectual education to children and bequeath property to them. Children should take care of their aged parents. Disciples have to respect their teachers. Teachers have to instruct pupils in arts, sciences and virtues. It is a husband’s duty to treat his wife affectionately, provide her needs, and observe marital fidelity. The wife has to manage the household wisely and frugally, be faithful and loving towards her husband. The master should treat his servants well, pay adequate wages and give periods of rest. The servants should be faithful, contented and serve their masters cheerfully. People should acquire qualities of liberality, courtesy, kindness and selflessness.
In the end, we may note the important features of Buddhist morals. Buddha preached that everyone should cultivable happiness and serenity; and that no one should despise or injure another. Men should overcome hatred with love, and evil with good. Otherwise, hatred and evil will only grow. Returning good for good is great, but returning good for evil is greater. Buddha anticipates the injunction of Christ that violence should not be met with violence.
A man who imposes his view on others violently is unjust. A man who distinguishes between right and wrong, and who leads men not through violence, but by law, righteousness and equity is just. An Arya is cultured not because he kills animals but because he does not injure them. Only a person who refrains from injuring others by word or deed deserves the title of ‘Brahmin’. Barbarism is characterised by violence and culture by compassion and non-violence.
Buddhism emphasises the need for purity of heart; mere externally decent conduct is of no avail. Men should free themselves from malice, greed and delusion. Anger, jealousy, and evil emotions have to be eschewed.
Buddhism steers a middle course between extreme self-denial and excessive pursuit of material pleasures. Selfishness creates cravings which become a source of suffering; it is only by regulating such cravings through self-discipline that men can enter the path to enlightenment. At the same time, Buddha does not advocate rigorous asceticism, and mortifying the body. Physiological needs of body like food, clothing, and minimum comforts of existence are necessary. Otherwise, the mind will fail to reach the composure necessary for meditation. We can compare Buddha’s approach to that of Aristotle’s golden mean which avoids extremes of human conduct.
Buddha preferred the life of a monk to that of a householder. He strikes a balance between hedonism and asceticism. It does not lead to quietism or passive withdrawal from social life. He recommends an active and good life in the service of humanity.
Buddhism has a strong streak of altruism. It advocates universal compassion, benevolence and kindness to all life forms. It reacted against cruel animal sacrifices, rigid occupational classification of society, and religious metaphysics. Buddha did not discuss God and soul in detail as Hindu scriptures do. He moved away from mere ceremonialism to ways of reducing human misery and increasing human happiness. Many writers regard Buddhism as informed by moral rationalism.
Buddhist approach also relies on a rational outlook. Men need to be self-conscious and live in the present in a calm frame of mind. They have to avoid activities which cause suffering. They need to shun activities which result in remorse and anxiety.