Buddhism

Buddhism is based on the philosophies and teachings of Siddhartha-Gautama-Buddha. It is said he was a prince in India somewhere around 560 B.C.; who, around the age of 29 renounce his privileged life to seek the true understanding of his existence. It was through the effort of letting go of human based desires and earthly attachments that one can see the true way of life and achieve what they Buddhist call enlightment. He taught to accept all genders and casts as equals and welcomed all to his teachings. Uniquely, he left no written scripts to follow only his words of wisdom passed orally from teacher to student, and taught that everyone should seek their own path to enlightenment.

Buddhism is based on many practices and beliefs which some are, the Three Jewels, the Four Noble Truths, and the Eight Fold Path. The Three Jewels are the Buddha, the Dharma, which is the teaching of the Buddha, and the Sangha, which is the community who follow the teaching. The Four Noble Truths, the first truth is the observation that suffering or unhappiness, referred to as dukkha, is pervasive in life. . Dukkha has a broader meaning than suffering. It can be the feeling you experience when you encounter pain, old age, sickness, loss, or separation from loved ones, but it can also represent a general unsatisfied feeling. The second truth explains that the cause of dukkha is craving or clutching at life. Our unhappiness results from our desiring to make life fit our preconceptions of what should be or what we would like it to be. The third truth explains that ending the craving, which in turn, can be achieved by following the fourth truth, can end the dukkha, that if the desire ends, so too will the suffering. This is not intended to lead to a cancellation of the zest for life, but to an understanding of the nature of life and to controlling those desires, which come from that lack of understanding. The fourth noble truth shows the way to the ending of suffering is to follow the Eight Fold Path. The Eight Fold Path is Right Understanding, Right Intent, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration.

Upon his death there was many who through their personal understanding of their teachers lessons, that realized that they all did not agree on certain issues and the proper technique to practice and undertake the path to enlightment, so the result was a split of Buddhism into many groups including the Theravada, Mahayana, Ashoka, and Chan. They all seek the same goal but use different approaches on getting there. Maybe this is what Buddha intended, for he refused to nominate a leader in his absence and directed all to find their own spiritual path to enlightment.

With the death of Buddha and the split of Buddhism, there is a separation in thought and practices arising in the fore-mentioned groups. In this way, one finds many different forms of Buddhism throughout the world, but all have the same end desire. One of the better-known school of thought, at least to the westerners was Zen (Japanese) or Chan (Chinese) Buddhism In the fifth century Tsj'an-Buddhism developed in China out of a mixture of Buddhism and Taoism, and when later introduced in Japan was called Zen Buddhism. The founder of Zen in China was the legendary Bodhidharma, who came to China from India in the late fifth century. He taught the practice of “wall-gazing” and espoused the teachings of the Lanka-Vatara Sutra (whose chief doctrine is that of “consciousness-only”). Growing in popularity for its inception in feudal Japan, becoming a complement to the already practiced warring arts, it resulted in the many famous stories of the great master swordsmen and their almost magical seeming skills.

In general, Zen is different from other religious groups. Zen is not a religion in the sense that religion is generally understood. Zen has no God to worship, no ceremonial rights to observe, no "future abode" to which the dead are destined. Zen is free of all dogmatic principles that Christianity and other religions are tied to. Zen has no set doctrines which are imposed on its followers for acceptance. Zen teachings come out of one's own mind. It is addressed to the human heart. It is a living experience, a "creative impulse

. In the formative period of Ch’an in China, teachers tested the enlightenment of their students and of each other through statements and dialogue that expressed spiritual intuition in non-rational, paradoxical language. In later generations records of such conversations began to be used for teaching, and the first collections of subjects, or koans, were made in the 11th cent. A well-known koan is: “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” Koan practice was transmitted to Japan as part of Zen in the 13^th. We start see teachings applied in a manner of stories, riddles, and questions made to cause an individual to achieve a state of satori in which he could gained enlightment. One of the stories passed on was of two brother monks, who lived by themselves in an isolated region. The older brother was wiser and had reached a state of satire early in life, the younger hadn’t and was also missing one eye do to a childhood accident. Late one night a stranger ask if he could seek food and shelter there for the night, as customary in those times a visitor was welcomed to stay if he could out debate the owner on the meaning of enlightment; the elder brother was tired and decided to let the younger do the debating. A short time after lying down to take rest the older brother was awakened by the yelling and cursing of his younger brother. When he went to find him he came a crossed him and the visitor, the younger brother was furious and screaming at the stranger to leave, the stranger looked confused and was bleeding from the lip, the elder asked the stranger what had happened and he replied “ we sat down and I held up one finger to show we are all one, you brother then held up two fingers representing the one and Buddha, I in turn held up three to show the one, Buddha, and the way, he in turn held up his fist showing me that they all come from the one , so I smiled to show my respect for his knowledge at which time he struck me in the mouth and began screaming at me to leave”. The older brother looked to his younger and asked him what had happened, the younger replied “we sat down to debate when he held up one finger to show me that I had only one eye, so in turn I held up two to show him he had two eyes, then he held up three to show there was only three eyes among us, so I held up my fist to show him I would strike him, he smiled at it so I struck him and told him to leave”.