SOLUTION: DPU Religion Glues Society Research Paper

Written Lecture 1
What is religion?
Introduction
It is often said, “Never discuss religion and politics,” with the idea that everyone
has unique and potentially contradictory ideas about both. Many, it seems, prefer
to “broadcast” on these subjects rather than “receive.”
While many may share – one might even say “bestow” – religious and political
views onto others, some may be less tolerant of others doing the same to them –
unless, of course, their views are more or less the same as those being heard!
Why the discomfort?
Those who have a belief system or a religion may sometimes be uncomfortable
when those beliefs or religion appear to be challenged. Indeed, for some, that
may come across as being ridiculed. For many, “religion” and “belief” are
considered virtually synonymous.
Often those who seem to criticize or ridicule someone else’s religious faith may
be searching for themselves. They may be curious about how someone who
identifies as “religious” might deal with cynicism toward something that is so
important to someone who is religious. Often, if it as if they are saying, “I’m from
Missouri: show me.”
So, let’s start with some terms.
Problems with defining religion
Religion is a term we’ve been throwing around, so what does it mean?
There are two internet articles that are part of the assigned readings that will help
to answer that question: “What does the word ‘religion’ mean?” at
http://www.religioustolerance.org/rel_defn.htm and Thomas A. Idinopulos, “What
is Religion?” at http://www.crosscurrents.org/whatisreligion.htm . Read these,
and we’ll pick up from there.
Does it surprise you that the issue of how to define religion is so complicated?
The very word definition – literally in Latin, definitum, to define or divide – is to
say what something is, and therefore, what something is not.
How do you determine what something is not with a concept as allencompassing as religion? Is there anything that we would want to say is
excluded from religion? Thus, making the “divide” that a definition calls for is
challenging in the case of religion.
Further, many cultures do not even have such a concept and many languages do
not have a word for “religion.” That is not, as a cynic must suppose, because
those cultures don’t have religion or because they don’t consider what we would
call religion to be important. Quite the contrary! Because religion pervades
anything and everything within those cultures and as a result, “religion” cannot be
separated out from anything else!
Think of the Islamic countries, for instance, where there is no separation of
church and state. The Shari’ah, or Islamic law, operates, and is the law of the
land. Additionally, being another religion apart from Islam is virtually unheard of
and everyone practices Islam. How useful then, is the term “religion” here?
“Religion” as opposed to what? There is nothing else to separate religion from.
The same was once true of entire neighborhoods in Chicago, which were once
so Catholic that they would be called by their parish names. You can still hear
even non-Catholics refer to some neighborhoods as “Old St. Pat’s” and such,
reflective of the Catholic church associated with that area. Does the word
“Catholic” have much relevance when you are a Catholic and you live in an area
that is entirely made up of Catholics?
God vs. godless religions
Those who practice a monotheistic religion (i.e., a religion that believes in one
God, such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam) tend to want to define religion as
having something to do with God (literally in Greek, theos, where we get our
words theology, theist, et al). That works as long as our definition isn’t applied
very widely and as long as we limit our definition to Western religions. But it is
problematic if we want to define religion in a global sense.
There are religions, for instance, that are polytheistic, i.e., that believe in
multiple gods. These would include most ancient religions, including the “Greek
Mythology” that many of us studied in middle school or high school; most forms
of Hinduism; some forms of Taoism, Confucianism and Shinto. In some of these
cases, gods are not even a central tenet of that religion as we shall see.
There are also religions that are atheistic, literally from the Greek, without God
or gods, i.e., that don’t believe in any type of personal kind of God or gods at all.
The most obvious example of an atheistic religious tradition is Buddhism. There
is, however, one major form of Hinduism that is atheistic. Chinese Religion,
which actually consists of Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism as a single
practice, is largely atheistic, as is Japanese Religion, which consists of Shinto
and Buddhism. Yet, these are still considered religions.
Protestant theologian Paul Tillich recognized these problems in the middle of the
20th century and began defining religion as a human response to an Ultimate
Reality.
Notice what an all-encompassing and inclusive definition of religion this is as it
favors no particular Ultimate Reality (such as “God”) nor a particular religious
tradition.
Notice that the word response is used, which implies that there is “something”
behind all that is religious.
That “something” may be “someone” and may be personalized and called God,
the common Western designation for Ultimate Reality. It might be called YHWH,
the Hebrew word for God, although Jews consider that name so sacred that
other words such as Elohim or Adonai are used to address God.
God might be called Theos, the Greek word for God such as Greek Orthodox still
use, or Deum, the Latin word for God that Roman Catholics still use. Or al-Lah,
the Arabic word for God that Muslims use which literally means, the God.
For Hindus, God might be Visnu, a god who is equivalent to God in most Hindu
traditions, complicated by the fact that as God, Visnu has regularly taken on
various human forms at different points in history (Rama, Krishna, et al).
But there is also the possibility that an Ultimate Reality might not be personalized
at all, but experienced as an abstract force that humans can tap into. Examples
of this would be Brahman, or cosmic soul, in Indian thought, or the Tao, or the
Way, in Chinese thought.
For a Buddhist, Ultimate Reality would be Enlightenment or its post-death state
of Nirvana, but the point is that in all of these cases, the believer puts his/her
faith in something beyond him/herself, in something that transcends the believer.
For Tillich, this “beyond” would be an Ultimate Reality (although in some Eastern
examples, Ultimate Non-reality could also be accurate to describe this) or
Transcendence.
As such, Ultimate Reality is a more global-inclusive term than specifically
applying the Ultimate Reality of a particular religion or religions, i.e., such as
“God,” to all religions.
Thus, defining religion as Tillich does, i.e., “A human response to an Ultimate
Reality” or that which is Transcendent (capital “T”) may be as close to a definition
as we are going to get that adequately takes into account these issues.
Dancing With Divinity
There is a presupposition to Tillich using the term “response,” namely, that there
is something – or someone – to respond to.
Notice also that “human” is a vital part of the equation in Tillich’s definition.
Religion is never an Ultimate Reality or something Transcendent on its own, in
and of itself or for its own sake.
Rather, as I have come to call it in my own work, religion is always a dance, if
you will, between humanity and Divinity.
This in part may help explain why there are such a seemingly bewildering variety
of religious responses across various cultures and time periods.
This also may help explain why most religions die out over time only to be
replaced by something else “religious” that usually more effectively adapts to a
specific time, culture and place.
All religions can be seen as having a Divine component and a human
component, even if from the perspective of those practicing a particular religion, it
can be challenging to tell the difference. Many things that are cultural can be so
intertwined with religion that separating the human from the Divine can be
difficult.
For instance, the three great monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and
Islam often use masculine pronouns and images to reflect God: Father, son, He,
at al. Yet at the same time, all three of these religions have always recognized
that God is the ultimate source for both male and female and is beyond either of
these.
But how do you express that what is inexpressible? As human beings, we take
the familiar and metaphorically apply it the unfamiliar, in this case, God, and
apply masculine language to something that all agree is neither male nor female.
Using the dance metaphor, religions tend to be most true to themselves when
they have allowed Divinity or an Ultimate Reality to lead when it comes to that
dance, rather than pushing ahead and have human beings lead the dance. It is
precisely when human beings start making judgments speaking for Divinity that
historically speaking, conflicts arise.
Longtime Harvard historian of religions and one of our textbook authors Wilfred
Cantwell Smith claims that historically, human beings are by and large
predisposed to faith and are therefore religious (homo religiosus). Some,
however, have faith that is of a less than ideal type (homo religiosus
perversus) that leads to extremism that loses sight of the larger picture of what
their religious tradition is all about (the Transcendent or Divine component, if you
will).
This is obviously what we saw going on back on 9-11, what we see with ISIL and
what we see with religious fanatics on both sides of the current Israeli-Palestinian
crisis in the Middle East, the Hindu-Muslim crisis in Kashmir, the CatholicProtestant crisis in Northern Ireland, to name just a few. It is also the perverse
spirit behind the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust: in short, any
and every form of religious intolerance, chauvinism and persecution.
As Smith so eloquently puts it, “Some have faith that is large, rich, strong,
serene, and that renders them generous, courageous, compassionate, patient,
noble, creative. Others have a version of faith that is meager, spasmodic, or
stunted, rendering them narrow-minded or distracted, unimaginative or bitter,
self-righteous or hypocritical. Both extremes of faith, and every graduation
between, are to be found, we can see now, in every community across the
globe.”
Martin E. Marty, longtime historian of Christianity at the University of Chicago,
once off-handedly explained it to me this way: “If I am an S.O.B. to begin with,
and I become born again, what you will end up is: S.O.B., born again!”
Philosophy (theodicy) vs. religion (theology)
Let’s play devil’s advocate for the moment, and let’s agree for argument’s sake to
limit our definition of religion as having to have something to do with “God.” Have
we solved the problem by so narrowing focusing our definition?
Not really.
Think of the “Profession of Faith” or the Nicene Creed that is said every Sunday
by millions of Christians. It is the one that begins, “I believe in one God, the
Father Almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth,” et al.
That is actually a misleading translation of a Latin part of the Mass that was
originally called the Credo and which began with the words, Credo in unum
Deum. When Vatican II put the Mass in the vernacular in the late 1960s, the
phrase was translated into English as “I believe in one God.”
Unfortunately, as Wilfred Cantwell Smith has pointed out, that was – and remains
– a rather poor translation and conveys little sense of what the phrase originally
meant.
We tend to take “I believe in one God” as a declaration of belief in God. Saying it
out loud makes clear one’s personal commitment to the idea of God, and saying
it along with others in worship makes clear that faith community’s stance on the
idea of God.
In a post-millennial milieu, it declares something along the lines of, “Given the
modern uncertainly about whether or not there is a God, I choose to side with
those who say there is a God.” It reduces “God” or an Ultimate Reality to an idea
that one chooses to accept or reject.
But in ancient Rome, the Latin phrase Credo in unum Deum originally meant
something quite different. In unum Deum is Latin for “in one God,” but there is no
modern equivalent to what the word Credo meant in the Roman Empire.
Think of “Credo” much like an oath or a promise. As a Roman subject, one took a
Credo to the Empire and to the emperor. A Roman soldier would also take a
Credo to his commanding officer and to his legion. It basically promised an
alignment of one’s thoughts and deeds, body and soul — one’s very life, if
necessary — to the object of the Credo.
Transposed to an Ultimate Reality, in this case, God, it is not a mere declaration
of one’s acceptance of the idea of God. Credo merely presumes that the object
of our allegiance is real.
What Credo indicated was the proximity of the one taking the oath to the one the
oath is being sworn to. It meant, “Given the fact of Almighty God [i.e., God’s
existence is merely presumed], I choose to align my very life, soul, thought and
deed to that Reality.”
In the modern translation, it is the believer who makes the choice, and the choice
is to whether or not God exists. In the original, God already IS, period, but the
believer chooses to position him/herself in close proximity to the Divine.
That, as Smith so eloquently reminds us, is the difference between God as an
idea, or a “piece of furniture in my mind,” vs. God as a Reality, or experience;
God as an actual living, breathing presence in one’s life.
In the West, this is the difference between philosophy and religion. The
difference isn’t the subject, per se, but rather, how the subject is treated.
Think of how often God, as a subject, comes up among the great philosophers.
When God is talked about as an abstract concept or idea that can be argued for
or against one way or another, that is philosophy. When God, or another
Ultimate Reality, is a given through religious experience, that is religion.
In philosophy, it is human beings are who doing the inquiry, human beings who
are making (e.g., controlling) the arguments. In other words, human beings are in
control and “God,” not as a living, breathing reality, but rather as an abstract idea
or concept along the lines of Smith’s designation as “a piece of furniture in our
mind,” tags along as an afterthought.
It’s a great speculative pastime, and civilization’s greatest philosophers have
argued effectively on both sides of the question as to whether or not there is a
God for centuries!
In philosophy, this area of inquiry is traditionally called theodicy (again, the
Greek root theos, God) and in contemporary thought, it is called philosophy of
religion.
Compare that to religion, where “God” (or another Ultimate Reality) is viewed as
initiating the inquiry, where “God” begins the dialogue, and human beings
respond. In that scenario, “God” is the starting point and in control, and human
beings are the ones who tag along trying to understand what has happened.
In religion, when “God” or another Ultimate Reality is presumed but is critically
examined via arguments and reason, that is theology.
Theology becomes a form of psychotherapy, if you will, where those who have
experienced an Ultimate Reality try to use reason to come to terms with, and to
try and explain, an actual “close encounter” of the “God” kind.
Aristotle vs. Paul
To illustrate the difference between philosophy employing theodicy and religion
making use of theology, let’s compare two ancient thinkers who both talked
considerably about God, Aristotle and Paul.
When Aristotle talks about God, one of his favorite subjects, he is doing so
without any religious presuppositions.
Aristotle sees God as an organic extension of his fundamental dogma that is
basis for all Aristotelian metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, et al, namely that
“Everything has and acts for an end.”
“End” in this case means purpose, that nothing happens by chance, that
everything has a reason, a purpose, for existing.
When Aristotle makes the argument that there is one God, he does this on the
basis of reason, not religious experience. He is arguing, “There is a design out
there, a purpose for everything. Something, or someone, had to bring all of that
into being. Ergo, God.”
God, for Aristotle, most logically explains the way that things are. Design implies
designer, architecture implies architect. Think of everything as a series of
dominos along an endless row. A finger, or a prime mover, as Aristotle calls it,
had to inevitably begin the process of setting them in motion.
Cause and effect imply a beginning to such a process, or a First Cause. That
First Cause, for Aristotle, has to be God.
This was such a brilliant and simple argument that Thomas Aquinas will simply
baptize it into Christianity and turn Aristotle’s philosophy into theology centuries
later!
Yet it is easy for us to forget what a dangerous argument this was in 6 th century
B.C.E. Athens. In proposing the idea that there was only one God, Aristotle was
committing heresy because the ancient Greek religion of his day (what we teach
in our public schools today as “Greek mythology!”) was polytheistic and had a
large pantheon of gods.
It was a daring and radical idea, but it was, an idea, i.e, it stood or fell on its own
merits and arguments and had nothing to do with an actual experience of God.
Paul, on the other hand, or Paul of Tarsus, the earliest urban Christian
missionary and earliest writer in the New Testament, makes all kinds of
arguments about God in the New Testament letters that he originally wrote to
various early churches that he founded throughout the then-expanding GrecoRoman world.
But there is a huge difference: Paul will appeal to revelation, to his experience of
God via the Risen Christ.
Having been a former persecutor of Christians, Paul ends up having a religious
experience that changes all of that and makes him spend the rest of his life
spreading the message of Christianity and encouraging others to do the same.
The Acts of the Apostles will go so far as to have Saul, as he was then called, be
knocked off his horse by a blinding light and has an accusatory voice to portray
this experience.
Paul himself is less cinematic in relating his own details of this experience in his
letter to the Galatians. But he does admit that the experience was so disturbing
that he initially sought out years of isolation, and later, guidance.
The point is the same in Acts and Galatians: Paul was minding his own business
and a religious experience turned his life upside-down, as it were (or right-side
up, depending on your point of view).
From then on, everything that Paul will say about God will be rooted in this
experience and in the Apostleship that Paul claims (and his churches accept)
that this experience afforded him.
Yes, Paul will use reason, as Aristotle did, to talk about God. But the difference
is, Paul is basing those arguments in his initial experience of God – or Anslem’s
definition of “faith seeking understanding,” i.e., theology.
Or, if you will, Aristotle is philosophizing about God, Paul is theologizing about
God.
The same is true for any of us. If we think or talk about God or God-related
subjects or about an Ultimate Reality without the presupposition of religious faith
or religious experience, we are philosophizing.
If, on the other hand, we think or talk about God or God-related subjects or about
an Ultimate Reality with the presupposition of religious faith or religious
experience, we are theologizing.
Does it matter if we actually practice a religious tradition? Surprisingly, it need
not.
There are those who go through the motions of practicing a religion even though
they have no emotional investment in doing so. Sometimes it is because of
culture, sometimes family, sometime social pressure, sometimes habit.
On the other hand, could someone have had a religious experience and not ever
tell anyone, or ever express such an experience publicly, either in worship or
conversation? Perhaps such a person has never formally practiced a religion?
Yes, that happens. I compare to this to the experience of falling in love vs.
getting married. Ideally, of course, people fall in love and then get married. But
can someone be in love and not be married? By the same token, can someone
be married and not be in love?
The same is true of religion. Someone could be a regular church-goer, as an
example, and never have had a religious experience. Conversely, someone
could experience an Ultimate Reality on a regular basis and never have been in
a church or a house of worship.
In the same way that some may read this and think, “There is no such thing as
religious experience because I have never had one,” are there people who would
also claim that love does not exist because of never having been in love?
What do we mean by religious experience? We don’t need to think in terms of
classic theophanies such as visions, voices, et al, which may, after all, have
other causes! Often theophonies are far more quiet, more tranquil, yet no less
impactful, as we saw with Paul.
Even if religious experience is not a comfortable phrase or concept, think of it
as getting lost in — and even being transformed by — anything that is larger than
we are that reveals that we are something small in the vastness of things.
It might be a piece of music, a painting or sculpture or work of art, a novel that
transports us, being overwhelmed by the vastness and beauty of the Grand
Canyon, a truly dark night sky out on the ocean, the “other”ness of walking into a
thousand year-old Gothic cathedral, taking in the Pyramids at Giza,
It could also be an experience of illness or loss, the death of someone dear to us,
a romance, a relationship, a friendship, the birth of a child, a stint in the military, a
mentorship, a journey: something that happened to us for better or worse that
changed everything and after which our perspective was vastly changed.
Christians sometimes use the phrase “born again” to describe a similar
experience, Jesus himself called this the Kingdom of God. The Buddha called
this Enlightenment. There is debate in various Buddhist schools as to whether or
not such an experience happens right away all of a sudden, or happens
gradually.
Notice that the same debate occurs about falling in love: many have romanticized
the idea of “love at first sight,” but in reality, is it usually a more gradual process
that only in retrospect looks to have been immediate?
Faith vs. belief
Faith and belief are often viewed as virtual synonyms, with faith often defined as
“trusting” and “believing” an extraordinary claim to be true without explicit proof.
As we have already alluded to, Wilfred Cantwell Smith suggests that faith is “a
fundamental way of being human.” Smith clearly distinguishes between faith and
belief as distinct entities.
For Smith, belief concerns the specific dogmas, creeds, rituals, Scriptures, et al,
of a religious tradition that are visible and tangible (e.g., an African tribal dance, a
Muslim reading the Qur’an, et al).
Faith, however, is the outlook on the world that a religious person maintains (e.g.,
what happens to an African while dancing, what happens to a Muslim reading the
Qu’ran, etc.), and transcends the boundaries of a specific religious tradition.
That is to say, a faithful Buddhist and a faithful Christian indeed hold to a different
set of beliefs, but the quality of faith within both may have the same
characteristics that transcend the particularity of being Buddhist or Christian.
Faith then, for Smith, is a universal human quality that transcends religious
traditions and boundaries; Faith as a basic human quality is the same
experience, regardless of the tradition.
Belief, however, is the particular ideas (dogmas, creeds, practices) that are
present within a given religious tradition are which are therefore variable and
diverse from tradition to tradition.
Do you find this distinction helpful? Is it true of your own experience of religion or
lack thereof? Could a Christian have more “religiousness,” if you will, in common
with a Buddhist or a Muslim than with another Christian?
A Muslim fundamentalist and a Christian fundamentalist, for instance, though
each might well condemn the other as an “infidel” or “pagan,” actually share the
same – albeit narrow – sacred view of the world!
Copyright Dennis Polkow
Written Lecture 2
Families of Religions
This week, let’s start by reading an article that I wrote some years back about
attempting to introduce Eastern thought to Western minds. You’ll find it as the
first document under “Handouts.”
That piece was commissioned as the introductory article for a special issue of the
Journal of Religion and Education on World Religions.
What I attempted to do I have not seen done before or since: try to briefly spell
out the key differences between the two major types of religions found in the
world, East and West.
East vs. West
You might well ask, why not North and South? Why are East and West the two
major religious dividing points? And are we talking about geography, ethnicity?
What is it that constitutes “East” vs. “West?”
Technically speaking, all of the major living religions of the world originated in
Asia, so geographically, it could be said that all major current religions are
Eastern religions!
But again, if we think in terms of a dance between Divinity and humanity, that
only tells us part of the story.
Some religions begin within a geographical area and more or less stay within that
area, or at least stay centered in that area. Hinduism, for instance, originated in
India and to this day, remains the axis mundi of Hinduism.
Of course, wherever Indians go, Hinduism goes, so there are Hindu temples
throughout the world much as there are Indian restaurants throughout the world.
One surprise I encountered was when I discovered that the Indian restaurant that
many Indian friends consider to be the best Indian restaurant in the world is not
in Bombay, New Delhi, or the like, but in Giza near the pyramids on the outskirts
of Cairo, Egypt in Africa!
But let’s take the example of another religion that originated in India, namely
Buddhism.
Siddhartha Gautama was a Hindu by birth and during the decades that he
preached, he never left India.
Over the centuries, however, Buddhism was taken by missionaries into various
parts of Asia that combined with other historical factors, ultimately becomes far
more culturally significant in China, Japan, Tibet, Burma and the like than today it
remains in India, the land of its birth. In fact, Buddhism has virtually disappeared
from India, where it originated.
One of the odd effects of this is that when non-Buddhists think of images of the
Buddha, the visual image often portrayed is that of a Chinese or a Japanese
individual rather than that of an Indian, which would have been the historical
reality.
And of course, there are Buddhists of every race across the planet, including
Caucasian Buddhists in Europe and America.
And yet, wherever practiced and whatever the ethnicity of the practitioner,
Buddhism is considered an Eastern religion because it brings with it cultural
presuppositions that are Eastern in origin.
Most significant is that Buddhism, just as Hinduism and all Eastern religions -which in terms of our study also includes Taoism, Confucianism and Shinto -share a worldview that is distinctively different than say, the Western religions of
Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Again, Western religions also originated in Asia, although the Middle East, to be
precise.
But if we take the largest of these, namely Christianity, Jesus of Nazareth only
preached in small rural villages in Galilee with the exception of Jerusalem, where
he was killed.
It was followers of Jesus, particularly Paul of Tarsus, who brought the message
of Jesus from rural Galilee to urban Greco-Roman centers which ultimately made
it possible by the early Fourth Century C.E. for the Roman emperor Constantine
to become a Christian and shortly after, the entire Roman Empire with him.
Like the Buddha, the cultural effect of this is that Jesus is usually not visually
portrayed as a First Century Palestinian Jew, i.e., like the indigenous natives of
that region still look today, but as a light-skinned European since Europe is
where Christianity would ultimately have its greatest cultural impact.
And like Buddhism, Christianity would not only spread to other places, in this
case, primarily another continent in the West, but would become a tiny minority in
the Middle East of its origin.
The West: A Linear View of Time
The handout deals with the religious implications of a linear view of time and
space as found in the West vs. the religious implications of a cyclical view of the
universe as found in the East, so that will not be repeated here.
What I would like to spotlight here is that these views are cultural and are
accepted presuppositions even by the non-religious in these cultures.
Think of the theoretical physicist who stereotypically could be an atheist, who
accepts the notion of the Big Bang Model of the universe.
There was a time, scarcely some fifty years ago, when the Big Bang Theory, as it
was then called, competed with the Steady State Theory of the universe.
The Big Bang Theory speculated that the universe as we know it all came into
being as the result of a sub-atomic explosion and that this matter has been
expanding ever since and will keep expanding until things either move so far
away from everything else that they fade away, or that they will collapse back
and restart the process all over again.
Either way, we are billions of years from either occurrence, and yet in 1965, the
cosmic background radiation left behind by the Big Bang was discovered by radio
telescopes. With such compelling evidence, the Big Bang moved from theory to
model.
The Steady State Theory, which had speculated that things have basically
always been as they are and will remain as such, fell into general disuse.
The interesting point for us is that the Big Bang Model holds to a view of time and
space that has a clear beginning and a clear end.
If you call point one “beginning” and point two “end,” it would be plotted as a line
from one point to the other.
Hence, why we call this a linear view.
This linear view is a cultural presupposition in the West even by those who are
not religious.
How does such a linear view affect our view of life and death?
In the West, we see birth and death as the start and end of a line: birth is the
start of life, or point one, and death is the end of life, or point two.
We do not, generally speaking, view our lives as existing either before birth or
after death, leaving aside religious views of afterlife that might extend that end
point of that line ad infinitum (see the handout for more on this).
The East: A Cyclical View of Time
By contrast, the Eastern cultural view of time is not one of beginnings and ends,
but one of constant cycles: like the Sun and Earth which revolve in a circular
(well, elliptical, to be technical) orbit, everything has cycles, everything waxes,
everything wanes.
Think of the Moon changing shape every month, think of the cyclical repetition of
seasons morphing from winter to spring to summer back to fall to repeat the
process all over again on a yearly basis.
Instead of this being viewed as a one-time beginning and end, as is seen in the
West, such waxing and waning repeat endlessly in the Eastern cyclical view of
things.
Thus, the world did not have a beginning, it has always been. And by the same
token, it will always exist, in some form or another.
The same is thought to be true of you and I in the East : we have always been,
and we always will be.
We have no beginning, we have no end.
Of course, we know that is not true physically, this body was born, this body will
die.
But the soul, which is viewed as eternal in most Eastern traditions, has no
beginning and has no end.
The notion of soul is a common one even in the West, but it is viewed mainly as
that part of us which exists after death by Western religions such as Christianity
and Islam that teach an afterlife.
To talk about one’s soul after death is not uncommon, but If you ask someone in
the West where was their soul before they were born, that would be an odd
question as souls are often considered to be created in the West, i.e., have a
point of origin or a beginning, even though they are generally not thought to have
an end.
By contrast, in the East, where a soul existed before birth is a natural question.
Just as the soul exists after death, of course it existed before birth.
Hence, why Eastern religions have some variation of transmigration where a soul
has and will continue to transmigrate into various physical forms.
God: Ultimate Reality in the West
When considering the notion of Ultimate Reality in the West, the three major
traditions of the West, namely, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, all have the same
Ultimate Reality: namely God.
All three traditions are monotheistic (mono means one, theos is Greek for God),
which means they believe in one God.
In Judaism, it is considered disrespectful to refer to God directly by name.
As such, God’s given name of YHWH is not said, even in prayer, but instead
indirect Hebrew words such as Elohim (god) or Adonai (lord) are used to address
God.
Even writing in English, it is not uncommon for pious Jews to write “G-d” to not
complete the word out of respect for it.
Compare that to Islam, where God is directly and frequently addressed. The
Arabic word for God is al-Lah, the emphasis on the second syllable, which
means literally, “the God.”
In Christianity, Roman Catholics traditionally addressed God as Deum, the Latin
word for God, whereas Eastern Orthodoxy addressed God by the Greek word for
God, Theos. Protestantism has tended to use the vernacular.
Eastern Views of Ultimate Reality
Some Eastern religions are called polytheistic (literally, many gods), but that only
tells part of the story.
Not all Eastern religions have gods as their Ultimate Reality and if they do,
adherents may be followers of only one of those gods.
This is particularly true of Hinduism, where some followers devote themselves to
a single god such as Visnu, Siva or Kali. If you worship one, you would not
generally worship another, so in that sense, there is a similarity to monotheism.
But the Ultimate Reality of Hinduism is actually Brahman, which is usually seen
as Cosmic Soul or Supreme Spirit, as we shall see, that may or may not be
associated with a god. In some cases, it is deified, but in at least one major case,
the Non-Dualism school, it is not personified at all and is actually a form of
atheism (no god or gods).
Buddhism, as we have noted, has no god or gods in its traditional form. As such,
its Ultimate Reality is actually Enlightenment, an internal experience which
becomes Nirvana at one’s death.
Taoism and Confucianism have gods, but they are not terribly significant.
The Ultimate Reality of Chinese Religion, the term scholars give to the traditional
phenomenon of religion in China that includes Taoism, Confucianism and
Buddhism as three aspects of the same religion, is the Tao, which is the supreme
power, but it is not personalized.
Likewise, Japanese Religion, which includes Shinto and Buddhism as two
aspects of the phenomenon of religion in Japan, has gods, but they are of minor
significance.
The Ultimate Reality of Japanese Religion is kami, something strange or
supernatural that gives rise to awe or dread.
Approaches to Studying Religion
You may recall in the syllabus that we nuanced a number of academic
approaches to studying religion under “Academic Methods” which I am going to
repeat briefly here:
Because religion is such an all-encompassing phenomenon, a variety of methodologies have
been proposed to understand it.
Among these are the following, which may be used either for examining a particular religious
tradition, or for examining a comparative theme across multiple traditions:
1.
Historical – attempting to discern the development of a tradition through the written sources of its
past: where has it come from and where is it going? Are there patterns that can be observed in a
tradition’s history? Are there patterns or overlaps observable in the various histories of religious
traditions?
2.
Anthropological – attempting to discern the interaction of religious and cultural symbols and human
responses to them, and what meaning such symbols have for the adherents of a tradition or culture
and why. Are there global prototypes or patterns to such symbols, and are their effects observable
across various traditions?
3.
Sociological – focus on religion from a group perspective. What draws people of a particular
tradition or traditions together, and what can be said about them observed as a group?
4.
Psychological – focus on what happens within the mind of an individual adherent of a tradition as
he/she is actually going through a religious experience. Although the particulars are different from
person to person – and obviously from tradition to tradition – are there observable aspects of the
experience itself that are basically the same?
As should be obvious, each of these methodologies gives us valuable, but limited information.
There has therefore been a drive towards a more inclusive model that attempts to go beyond
these various aspects to the root religious experience itself.
Obviously, such a method must incorporate the others to some degree. Such a methodology has
been proposed and is in wide use across various disciplines, but particularly in the academic
study of religion and philosophy:
5.
Phenomenological – at attempt to seek (literally from the Greek) “that which appears.”
Phenomenology attempts first to identify and name the phenomena and show them as they appear
on the surface, and then to explain them, analyze their structure, place them in a wider context and
finally, to draw conclusions which can stand as evidence.
For the purposes of this course, we will be primarily concerned with method 1., history, and
method 5, phenomenology. Although the importance of history is obvious (how can we know
where Christianity is and where it is going if we don’t know where it has been?), the importance of
5., phenomenology, is to remind us that the true essence of Christianity and Christian theology
does not consist merely of dogmas, creeds, Scriptures and sacraments, but in the core religious
experience of its adherents that are reflected in its dogmas, creeds, Scriptures and sacraments.
We must keep in mind that simply because manifestations of the sacred or Divine occur totally
outside of our own religious experience or outside of the specific boundaries of our own particular
religious tradition in ways that may on the surface seem strange or foreign to us (or outside of our
experience entirely, as the case may be), does not mean that such manifestations do not occur
nor that they are somehow “less” religious than our own.
I wanted to say something about history as it relates to religion and to the course.
What is history?
History is a reconstruction of the past through written sources.
If we don’t have written sources, it is not history.
If we have archeological remains but no writing, that is archeology, but it is not
history.
Think of a glorious civilization of the past such as ancient Egypt.
The pyramids of Giza have been standing for some five millennia, as have many
monuments, temples and tombs.
This was all pre-historical in that we had only archeology to go on in
reconstructing Egypt’s past. This meant what we knew of that past was often
highly speculative, at best.
In 1799, however, when Napoleon and his troops were in Egypt, an extraordinary
discovery was made: a stelae that had the same decree in Egyptian hieroglyphs
alongside the same decree in Demotic script and Greek.
This stelae, which came to be known as the Rosetta Stone, provided the key to
translating ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.
This meant that at long last, we could actually read for ourselves what the
Egyptians’ own thoughts were.
We no longer needed to speculate what the purpose of pyramids, for instance,
were, we could actually read the Book of the Dead for ourselves.
Ancient Egypt became history.
Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that history is objective, but even the
word itself should tell us otherwise: his – story. When the past is remembered,
why it is remembered? By whom and for what purpose?
There’s a anecdote concerning Winston Churchill, the prime minister of Great
Britain who served during World War II, that illustrates the point.
Churchill was inspecting damage that had been inflected on the British fleet by
German air raids during the war when one of his admirals turned to him and said,
“History will not remember this moment very favorably, will it, sir?”
Churchill, in his inimitable way quickly shot back, “Oh, I think it will.”
When the admiral looked puzzled, Churchill said, “I plan on writing the history.”
And that of course, is exactly what happened: victors get to tell the story their
way and Churchill wrote a series of books about the Second World War which
have become the template for how successive generations have thought about
the war. Even the names of battles that have become standard such as Battle of
the Bulge, were Churchill-isms.
Never mind that Churchill was an active primary participant in that war and that
had the Axis Powers won rather than the Allies, that history and the world would
be very different!
All of this should be kept in mind, particularly as we read excerpts from primary
texts of religions in the Smart anthology.
These are not literal texts, nor were most religious texts ever intended to be.
Copyright Dennis Polkow
Written Lecture 9
The Buddha’s Teachings
You may have noticed that thus far, we have traced a basic outline of the
Buddha’s life story and the beginnings of Buddhism, but have said very little
about the actual teachings of the Buddha.
A central theme is impermanence, i.e., there is nothing that is permanent.
Let’s consider the opposite notion of permanence, or that which is eternal, as it
relates to Hinduism, to give the Buddhist denial of permanence and the notion of
impermanence some context.
Recall that Hinduism teaches that you and I have a soul, and that soul is eternal,
i.e., souls have no beginning and no end.
But if everything is impermanent, as the Buddha teaches, what does this do to
the notion of the soul being eternal or permanent?
There is no soul, either in a cosmic sense (Brahman) or a personal sense
(Atman).
There is nothing eternal, in fact.
There is no soul.
In fact, there is nothing permanent.
Not even God, or gods?
There is no God, nor gods, either in a personal or impersonal sense: such a
being or beings represent a hope for something eternal, something permanent.
But there is nothing permanent, as everything is impermanent.
Everything is temporary, everything is in flux, even us. The nature of human life
is its impermanence.
You are under an illusion if you think you exist: you don’t.
The human person is a combination of physical, physiological and psychological
processes. You are a mental and physical entity.
Our minds are a continuous stream of consciousness but there is nothing
connecting this stream.
Think of that stream as waves that are in continual motion but ultimately, there is
nothing connecting the waves.
We talk about the past, present and future as if these are real things, but
ultimately, these are illusionary.
How so?
Right now, you are reading this sentence.
But that sentence, is now the past.
The sentence you are about to read is the future.
Now, that sentence, too, is the past.
Where, in that process, is the “now?” It remains illusive, a word to fixate
something that in actuality, is never there.
Any given minute is dependent on the preceding minute. Each second, I am the
same, yet different.
Are any of us the same person now that we were as a child?
Yes and no.
This, over time, we now know – even if the Buddha could not – is even literally
true, since every molecule in our bodies completely replenish over a seven-year
period.
Therefore, seven years from now, there would literally not be one physical part of
you or I here that would have been here seven years ago, seven years from now.
You are a product of what preceded you and life is a series of such moments.
But there is no “soul” connecting these moments.
That stream is endless, and is sustained by karma, which in Buddhism is a
negative, as it is in Hinduism.
But karma in Buddhism is more literal: recall the original meaning of karma was
action, and that is the sense that Buddhists use the term karma, as action.
So, I don’t exist: I am a mental and physical entity bound by karma who thinks
that I exist.
The realization that you do not exist – and the resulting state of nonexistence that results from that realization – is the goal of the Buddha’s
teachings.
There is no liberation, because there is nothing to be liberated from.
There is no salvation, because there is nothing to be saved from.
There is no God or soul, so there is no one to pray to, and there is no “you,” so
there is no one to do the praying.
Everything you are is dependent on what you do. What you are in this life
depends on what you did in your past lives.
You will stop existing if you stop desiring.
Because you keep desiring, you keep acting.
Each action produces karma, which keeps “you” coming back to Earth.
The Buddha taught that life is a series of “wants.” When you can shed these
wants, you shed karma and stop the cycle of birth-death-rebirth.
This isn’t transmigration as such, as we saw in Hinduism, because there is
nothing consistent (i.e., soul) that remains the same to transmigrate.
The Four Noble Truths and the Eight-Fold Path
The basis of the Buddha’s teachings are encapsulated in the Four Noble Truths
and the Eight-Fold Path.
These go from problem to cure, from diagnosis to prognosis.
The first, and perhaps the most confusing of the Four Noble Truths for nonBuddhists is:
(1) Life is suffering;
What does it mean to say that “Life is suffering?”
At first glance, it sounds extremely bleak and pessimistic, as if Buddhists are
defining or equating life with suffering.
Perhaps a better translation to get across the intention might be, “Life involves
suffering.”
That is to say, there is no stage of life or part of life that does not, in one way or
another, involve suffering: birth, sickness, old age, death, etc.
This is true even before we are born. Think about the gestation period all of us
experience in our mother’s womb: everything is provided for, everything seems
ideal.
And then, quite suddenly and violently, we are evicted from that safe
environment and are suddenly being pulled into an unknown and strange new
world.
Given that the safe world of the womb has thus far been the only world we have
known, it must seem like the end of the world as it is happening: like a death, not
a birth.
One thing is for sure: being born is usually so traumatizing that you can see the
look of confusion on the face of most newborns in those first moments of life;
psychologists tell us that much of the constant sleeping of newborns is an
attempt to compensate for the trauma of transition.
Of course, we haven’t even mentioned the suffering of the mother during the
process, but the mother at least has some sense that there is light at the end of
the tunnel, so to speak. How can a baby know this?
If you think about life, every stage of life, there are constant transitions that
involve suffering.
Think of a baby going through normal stages of early development as its world
continues to expand as it becomes aware of its environment.
A baby looking at the movement of a rattle, for instance, has no ability to
differentiate itself from the rattle, nor from its parents or anything else. That will
come, in stages: the full-blown effect of this is known as “the terrible twos.”
That is the age when a child has made the discovery that he/she is a different
being from Mom and Dad, which can easily be reinforced by defying Mom and
Dad. “Eat your dinner, Mary, go to bed, Johnny.” “NO!” comes the response,
often terrifying when first experienced by the parents.
And yet, such conflict, we are told, is normal and indicative of healthy
development.
Think of various stages of life and the sub-stages even within those: in childhood,
from the terrible twos to becoming a toddler.
And just as a child has figured out to navigate its world, i.e., he/she can talk,
walk, is bathroom-independent, knows its immediate neighborhood, how to
contact family members, et al, suddenly that child is thrown into the world of
school, albeit pre-school, or perhaps daycare even before school starts.
I don’t know if my own experience is typical, but my child’s world prior to school
was ideal. I had been warned, “You know, you’re going to have to go to school
soon.”
“Oh, yes, I know all about school,” so I thought and claimed: I had seen my older
siblings go to school.
Well, when the day came, much fanfare was made of it, and I went. And came
home. “Well, I went to school,” I said proudly when I arrived home.
There has never been a greater disappointment in my life when I was told that I
would be going back to school the following day, and the day after that, and so
on, for the rest of the year. And years.
Further, that would be the first of a series of schools to attend until I grew up. I
was horrified at the prospect: how would I find all the time that I needed to do all
of the things that I needed to do if I was constantly in “school?”
No sooner has pre-school and kindergarten been figured out and then
elementary school begins an entirely new world. Often new schools, new
classmates, new teachers. And when that world is comfortable, then begins
Middle School, what we used to call junior high. From there, comes high school,
when the process starts all over again, and again, with college and if we go to
graduate school, there as well.
Graduation may seem like a point of arrival, but in fact, it is a point of departure
into an entirely new and more difficult world of making a career and making a
living.
We could go on and on about the suffering involved with each stage of life,
culminating in its final stages of old age, should we be lucky enough to love that
long, and of course, the process of dying.
The point for Buddhists is that every part of life involves suffering.
This leads to the second of the Four Noble Truths:
(2) The origin of suffering is desire (craving, want)
This sounds so simple: it is a statement about the cause of suffering, the reason
that it happens.
Suffering occurs because we want something; we desire something, we crave
something.
There are two reasons, as the Buddha sees it, that we suffer when we want,
desire or crave something.
The first is obvious: we don’t get what it is that we want, desire or crave, and we
therefore suffer as the result of our not obtaining that very something we wish to
obtain.
The second is less obvious: we get exactly what it is that we want, desire or
crave, and, it turns out to be not enough!
Granted, far more people suffer as a result of the first problem than the second,
but it is a profound truth that is central to Buddhism.
Should I be fortunate enough to be able to satiate all of my wants, desires and
cravings – as pre-Buddha Siddhartha Gautama certainly was able to do – does
that mean I do not suffer?
One need only look at examples of people who are very well off in our society to
understand that there is little correlation between happiness and wealth.
On the other hand, those with few means are capable of extraordinary
happiness. If “having” equated to happiness, and “not having” with suffering, this
could not be so.
Think of those who set unimaginable goals for themselves. Not achieving them
causes suffering, but achieving them also causes suffering, as the achievement
is never itself a point of arrival, but a point of departure: there is always another
hurdle.
This leads to the third of the Four Noble Truths:
(3) The stopping of desire leads to Nirvana (release from birth-death-rebirth)
The ending of desire ends suffering and leads to Nirvana (more on that shortly)
and is connected to the fourth of the Four Noble Truths:
(4) The way to Nirvana is the Eight-Fold Path:
(1) Right knowledge — or right views, such as understanding the Four
Noble Truths.
(2) Right aspiration — wanting the right things, such as detachment from
life.
(3) Right speech — not telling lies, bearing false witness, gossiping, et al.
(4) Right action — or conduct; control of desires, abstention from
intoxicants and from extreme ways of life.
(5) Right way of livelihood — or right vocation; no bloodshed of people or
animals, no slaves, misuse of women, etc.
(6) Right effort — to become one who has no desires; suppressing harmful
thoughts, etc.
(7) Right mindfulness — to be mindful of everything you do and of
everything around you. If you’re walking, know that you’re walking.
(8) Right contemplation — or concentration; overcoming hindrances such
as sloth, restlessness, worry, doubts, etc.
Enlightenment and Nirvana
Enlightenment is an experience that all Buddhists seek to have, as is Nirvana.
But one cannot achieve one without the other. Think of Enlightenment as predeath Nirvana and Nirvana as post-death Enlightenment.
There are three ways to become enlightened:
(1) To become a Buddha – you find the truth for yourself, on your own, as
the Buddha himself did;
(2) To become a private Buddha — one who finds Enlightenment on his/her
own, but keeps it to himself/herself and does not share this knowledge;
(3) To become an arhant, or a wise person who follows the teachings of the
Buddha.
Notice that “Buddha” is not a title reserved exclusively for Siddhartha Gautama;
theoretically, anyone could become a Buddha.
Arhants follow Buddhas whereas Buddhas become enlightened on their own.
The Way of the Arhant
Becoming an arhant involves Four Stages:
(1) Taking refuge, as in Indian chivalry, in
(1) The Buddha;
(2) The Dharma (his teachings) and
(3) The Sangha (his monastic community);
(2) Destroying the Three Obstacles or Hindrances:
(1) The false perception that you exist;
(2) Any trust in “reality” and
(3) Any remaining doubts about the Buddha’s teachings.
(3) Overcoming two more obstacles:
(1) Any desires for life, or cravings.
(2) Any ill-feeling toward other human beings; and lastly,
(4) Arhantahood — when one has stopped the cycle of birth-death-rebirth and
will achieve Nirvana directly upon the destruction of the physical body.
The literal meaning of Nirvana is “to blow out,” like a candle.
So if you ask, where does someone go who has reached Nirvana, what could
you say? Where does a candle flame go when it goes out? Yet, Nirvana is not
annihilation, a common Western criticism.
Nirvana is not liberation, because there is no soul to be liberated.
It is not salvation, because there is nothing to be saved from.
In Buddhism, there is nothing permanent, except the state of Nirvana.
Not even the Buddha is permanent, so there is no one to “pray” to, no one to help
you.
One reaches Nirvana on his/her own, without a helping hand. There is no “faith”
that will save you, you must work for it yourself.
Buddha does not exist and there is no soul, no God, no gods, no you.
Nirvana is beyond all understanding and cannot be described; it is the ultimate
goal and is the opposite of life and death and when it is reached, there is no
more birth-death-rebirth.
Nirvana is a permanent Transcendent state and the concept is above our
understanding and there is nothing in life to explain the concept.
Imagine, for instance, a tadpole that has never been outside the water, asking a
parent frog what dry land is like. Everything is negatively expressed and in
opposites: “Is dry land like water?” “No.” “Is it wet?” “No.” “Are there fish there?”
“No.”
It all sounds negative because it is so completely outside of the tadpole’s
experience.
The striving for Nirvana is what compels Buddhism and thus, for scholars of
comparative religion, the question has often come up: is Nirvana equivalent to, or
another name for, God?
Just remember that for a Buddhist looking at monotheistic Western traditions
such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the same question in reverse would be:
is God equivalent to, or another name for Nirvana?
Copyright Dennis Polkow
Written Lecture 8
Introduction to Buddhism
Age of the Sages
Buddhism began in India circa the Sixth Century B.C.E., although the exact dates
of the Buddha himself are unknown.
This was a time of great religious upheaval as well as a time of great religious
figures such as Confucius and Lao Tzu in China and Zoroaster (Zarathustra)
in Persia.
In Greece, this was also the Golden Age of philosophy with such monumental
figures as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.
In India, there was a protest against the authority of the Vedas during this time
where some within Hinduism reject their authority.
One of these was Siddhatha Gautama, the given name of the Buddha, which is
a title, not a proper name. He was born into the ruling/warrior caste of Hinduism.
Siddhartha Gautama
When the Buddha was born, Buddhist tradition says that a holy man prophesied
that he would either be the greatest leader of the material world that the world
had ever seen, i.e., a conqueror, or the greatest leader of the spiritual world that
the world had ever seen, i.e., a religious leader.
As such, his father – curiously, the Buddha’s mother is never mentioned, she
may have already passed away – does everything in his power to make sure that
young Siddhartha is brought up as would befit an offspring of the ruler/warrior
caste and sheltered his son to cultivate him exclusively for this purpose.
The father wanted to “tip” the prophecy to the material world by overemphasizing
the physical, military skills, martial arts and hedonistic pleasures, neglecting the
spiritual side of Siddhartha’s development so that side of the prophecy could not
occur.
This unknown period of the Buddha’s life is, much as the so-called “lost” years of
Jesus of Nazareth, rife with speculation that has become a virtual cottage
industry.
In Western culture, Hermann Hesse’s novel “Siddhartha” is a fictionalized
attempt to fill in these years, as is the film “Little Buddha” where Keanu Reeves
played young Siddhartha.
The Four Sights
One day, while Siddhartha was riding along in a chariot, he saw what have come
to be called the Four Sights.
(1) a sick person, representing sickness;
(2) an old person, representing old age;
(3) a corpse, representing death; and
(4) a wandering monk, representing asceticism or monasticism.
The usual way the story of the Four Sights is told is that each of these were seen
in sequence over time, and each left an indelible and disturbing impression on
Siddhartha.
What does each mean?
The First Sight, a sick person may seem odd: what is so significant about
seeing a sick person?
If you’re very young – and Siddhartha is said to be about 19 when he
experienced the Four Sights – could you imagine growing up without knowing
sickness?
If a child is very sick very young, chances are that this may not be remembered
by the child. Many of us may have to stop and think and perhaps ask our
mothers or older relatives about what childhood “diseases” we may have had.
Thus, could one grow up not consciously having come across illness? What does
the first experience of seeing a sick person symbolize to someone who has never
seen a sick person before?
Something frightening, something unknown.
Clearly, this is a person, like us: thus, does this mean that we could – and that
we will – get sick?
Likewise, for the Second Sight, an old person, which again, might seem odd to
us.
Most millennial college-age students are likely to know their grandparents,
perhaps in some cases, even great-grandparents, or even beyond.
But if you stop and consider that as little as a century ago, life expectancy was 52
years old, it was not uncommon for former generations to be lucky to know a
single grandparent, if any at all.
(As a “December” babe, i.e., born when my parents were middle age, all my
grandparents had passed long before I was born).
Thus, over two-and-a-half millennia ago, we need to imagine a young Siddhartha
seeing an old person for the first time.
If you had never seen an old person before, imagine the curiosity, imagine the
shock.
We tend to think when we’re young that old people have always been, well, old.
Even if we see pictures of them theoretically young, the clothes, hairstyles, their
vastly different appearance today – even the primitive technology of the
photograph itself – can make imagining an old person to have actually been our
age, a stretch.
I recall my nephew’s fourth birthday, he was so proud that he could count to his
age, and hold up the corresponding four fingers.
In a priceless moment of childlike curiosity, he said, “Grandma, how many fingers
old are you?” Without missing a beat, my mother told him, “Seventy-four.”
Long pause as the kid contemplated the futility of attempting to do the math of
that advanced number on his fingers; he gave up in exasperation and asked with
a really concerned look, “Did you start from one?”
In earlier times, older people often looked much older than they do now; wrinkles,
gray hair, if any hair, stooped posture, slower movements, et al.
By and large, there has become less and less physical discernment between
generations than there once was.
But again, try to imagine seeing an old person, what we would call a really old
person, never having come across an old person.
What does the first experience of seeing an old person symbolize to someone
who has never seen an old person?
Something frightening, something unknown.
Clearly, this is a person, like us: thus, does this mean that we could – and that
we will – get old?
The Third Sight, a corpse, i.e., a dead body, is something that means something
quite different in Eastern cultures than Western cultures.
How many of us have seen a dead body?
The experience of going to a wake or visitation where a corpse has been
embalmed, made-up, dressed up and laid out in a casket in a funeral home is
more likely the experience most of us have had if we have seen a dead body.
The best compliment that can be paid to a funeral director is to say, “He/she
looks so lifelike.”
A corpse that has not been embalmed (fluids and blood removed and replaced
with preservative chemicals) nor that has had its skin-visible portions made up
with skin-tone greasepaint topped off by cosmetic powder, will by and large have
the color and appearance of a bruise: black, blue, purple, et al, but all over the
body.
That is the kind of corpse that is cremated, for instance, in Hinduism, and that is
the kind of corpse that Siddhartha would have seen as the third of the Four
Sights.
Eastern cultures do not, by and large, attempt to hide over or cover up the reality
of death.
What does Siddhartha’s first experience of seeing a corpse symbolize to
someone who has never seen a corpse?
Something frightening, something unknown.
Clearly, this is a person, like us: thus, does this mean that we could – and that
we will – die?
Lastly, the Fourth Sight, a wandering monk, a person at the last stage of life
who is completely dependent on society, is a sight that perhaps in some ways, is
as beyond our comfort zone as seeing a corpse.
Yet at the same time, the idea of someone preparing for liberation as their
physical world becomes less significant, also offers hope and inspiration.
However vibrant and useful we may seem now as what Hindus would call
students and householders, could we imagine arriving at a point – should we be
lucky enough to live that long – where we are at the final stage of our lives where
there is nothing else left for us within society except to be dependent on it and
look to our liberation?
For a Hindu, which Siddhartha was, what does the first experience of a
wandering monk symbolize to someone who has never seen a wandering monk?
Something frightening, something unknown: even if tinged with optimism.
Clearly, this is a person, like us: thus, does this mean that we could – and that
we will – become a wandering monk?
Siddhartha returned home quite struck by the fleetingness – or impermanence,
a favorite word of Buddhists – of life, realizing that all human beings will go
through what these Four Sights represented sooner or later.
He found that he could no longer tolerate pleasure, which now left him feeling
empty and meaningless.
Siddhartha therefore leaves his family, including a wife and son. (Religion is often
not very family friendly: think of Jesus taking all of his disciples away from their
wives, kids and homes as well.)
Siddhartha basically leaves behind all human pleasures and concerns and sets
forth on a quest for the ultimate meaning of life, a transformative moment which
is known in Buddhism as the Great Going Forth.
The Great Going Forth
The Great Going Forth is not only a central event in the life of the Buddha, but
also an important theme of Buddhism.
The Great Going Forth even becomes a sacrament that emulates the Buddha’s
experience in the Theravada Buddhism of southeastern Asian countries such as
Sri Lanka (Ceylon), Myanmar (Burma), Thailand (Siam), et al.
It remains common for boys to have their own ritualized Great Going Forth where
they leave home and enter into a monastery, a community of monks.
(Some of these cultures also have Buddhist convents, communities of nuns, but
these are rare compared to monasteries and given the patriarchal nature of these
cultures, girls are not required to, nor expected to, have a Great Going Forth
ceremony.)
You may have noticed that Wilfred Cantwell Smith uses the Great Going Forth
ritual as his choice as the defining symbol of what Buddhism is all about in one of
our course books, Patterns of Faith Around the World.
We will also see a Great Going Forth in a film we will see later in the course
called Footprint of the Buddha.
When a boy makes a Great Going Forth, he is given a party and a parade by his
family and neighbors; he dresses up like a royal figure (in some stories of the
Buddha, he is presented as a prince in his early years, although there is no
historical evidence of this.)
The boy then has his head shaven in the manner of a monk and is given the
saffron robes of a monk.
The boy then lives as part of the monastic community for as long as he wants: for
some boys, the austere lifestyle is such that they only stay a short time, perhaps
only a week or two. In that scenario, it is almost like Catholics going on a retreat.
Others may stay for years; others actually join the community and remain for a
lifetime.
How long any particular boy may stay is an unknown when families are left
behind, so that aspect of the Great Going Forth can be very emotional for all
involved.
The Enlightenment
As for the Great Going Forth of Siddhartha himself, this began a process of
seeking enlightenment, another central theme of Buddhism where one has a
specific experience of a greater awareness.
At first, Siddhartha goes to all of the great gurus and teachers of the day all
around India, going to various ashrams and looking for all of the answers that the
Vedas and his Hindu tradition can offer him.
None of this is ultimately satisfactory, however, for solving the issue that
Siddhartha is looking to get to the heart of: why do we suffer, become ill, get old,
helpless, dependent on society and ultimately die? Only for the unproven hope of
liberation?
There is no consensus on how long Siddhartha continued on his Great Going
Forth, but there are stories of him starving himself for six years in order to gain
enlightenment.
One day, Siddhartha went and sat underneath a bodhi tree – that type of tree
and the word itself will become significant in Buddhism – and resolved not to
move until he became enlightened.
Depending of which version of the story you wish to accept, there are versions
that have Siddhartha sitting there meditating cross-legged under that bodhi tree,
not moving nor eating and drinking a thing, for as long as forty years.
Then early one morning, Siddhartha’s mind saw the riddle of life become solved
in his mind and he became “The Enlightened One,” The Buddha; the literal
meaning of the Sanskrit word Buddha is “The One Who Woke Up.”
Though the Buddha was originally a Hindu, he rejected the authority of the Vedas
and the caste system and developed what would become a completely different
religion, although it is by no means clear if that was his intention.
It could well be that what the Buddha taught, did and said was perceived to be so
radically different from his original Hinduism that it was as much its rejection by
other Hindus that made it become its own, separate tradition.
It is unclear whether this happened within the Buddha’s own lifetime or after his
death; the Buddha could very well have been considered a Hindu throughout his
life, albeit a radical Hindu.
(In this sense, we have a similar issue with Jesus of Nazareth, a Jew who set out
to reform his own Judaism, but his followers end up being considered a separate
religion in no small part because of being ostracized by the mother religion after
Jesus. For that matter, Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism, died thinking
he was a Roman Catholic despite his having been excommunicated from that
church.)
The philosophy and theology of Hinduism and Buddhism are different, as we
shall see, although some of the cultural aspects are the same and there are
points of intersection.
For some 45 years, the Buddha never left India and walked around preaching
from village to village – except during the rainy season – until he accidentally ate
some poison fruit at the age of 80 and died, having left behind an elaborate
design for what would become its own religion.
The Three Baskets
Soon after his death, the Buddha’s followers came together and held a great
council – which became known as the First Buddhist Council – where they
attempt to put together and write down the basic teachings of the Buddha.
This was done in Pali, the Buddha’s own spoken language and the language of
the people, not Sanskrit, the official sacred language of Hinduism and its
Scriptures and sacred writings.
This is significant as employing the vernacular of the people rather than the
language of the highest priestly caste reflects a further deliberate split from
Hinduism, which had begun when the Buddha himself had denied the authority of
the Vedas and the class structures.
The result of this council was the Buddhist scriptures known as The Three
Baskets, although it is also sometimes referred to as the Pali Canon.
The notion of a “basket” is that of a collection, in this case, three:
(1) Basket of Monasteries — conversations from the council about the rules to
govern monastic life; this was the most important “basket” of the three;
(2) Basket of Discourses – discourses or teachings of the Buddha, arranged
into five parts by length; and
(3) Basket of Metaphysics and Psychology — later than the other two baskets,
dates from Fourth – First Century B.C.E. in its completed form.
Copyright Dennis Polkow
Written Lecture 8
Introduction to Buddhism
Age of the Sages
Buddhism began in India circa the Sixth Century B.C.E., although the exact dates
of the Buddha himself are unknown.
This was a time of great religious upheaval as well as a time of great religious
figures such as Confucius and Lao Tzu in China and Zoroaster (Zarathustra)
in Persia.
In Greece, this was also the Golden Age of philosophy with such monumental
figures as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.
In India, there was a protest against the authority of the Vedas during this time
where some within Hinduism reject their authority.
One of these was Siddhatha Gautama, the given name of the Buddha, which is
a title, not a proper name. He was born into the ruling/warrior caste of Hinduism.
Siddhartha Gautama
When the Buddha was born, Buddhist tradition says that a holy man prophesied
that he would either be the greatest leader of the material world that the world
had ever seen, i.e., a conqueror, or the greatest leader of the spiritual world that
the world had ever seen, i.e., a religious leader.
As such, his father – curiously, the Buddha’s mother is never mentioned, she
may have already passed away – does everything in his power to make sure that
young Siddhartha is brought up as would befit an offspring of the ruler/warrior
caste and sheltered his son to cultivate him exclusively for this purpose.
The father wanted to “tip” the prophecy to the material world by overemphasizing
the physical, military skills, martial arts and hedonistic pleasures, neglecting the
spiritual side of Siddhartha’s development so that side of the prophecy could not
occur.
This unknown period of the Buddha’s life is, much as the so-called “lost” years of
Jesus of Nazareth, rife with speculation that has become a virtual cottage
industry.
In Western culture, Hermann Hesse’s novel “Siddhartha” is a fictionalized
attempt to fill in these years, as is the film “Little Buddha” where Keanu Reeves
played young Siddhartha.
The Four Sights
One day, while Siddhartha was riding along in a chariot, he saw what have come
to be called the Four Sights.
(1) a sick person, representing sickness;
(2) an old person, representing old age;
(3) a corpse, representing death; and
(4) a wandering monk, representing asceticism or monasticism.
The usual way the story of the Four Sights is told is that each of these were seen
in sequence over time, and each left an indelible and disturbing impression on
Siddhartha.
What does each mean?
The First Sight, a sick person may seem odd: what is so significant about
seeing a sick person?
If you’re very young – and Siddhartha is said to be about 19 when he
experienced the Four Sights – could you imagine growing up without knowing
sickness?
If a child is very sick very young, chances are that this may not be remembered
by the child. Many of us may have to stop and think and perhaps ask our
mothers or older relatives about what childhood “diseases” we may have had.
Thus, could one grow up not consciously having come across illness? What does
the first experience of seeing a sick person symbolize to someone who has never
seen a sick person before?
Something frightening, something unknown.
Clearly, this is a person, like us: thus, does this mean that we could – and that
we will – get sick?
Likewise, for the Second Sight, an old person, which again, might seem odd to
us.
Most millennial college-age students are likely to know their grandparents,
perhaps in some cases, even great-grandparents, or even beyond.
But if you stop and consider that as little as a century ago, life expectancy was 52
years old, it was not uncommon for former generations to be lucky to know a
single grandparent, if any at all.
(As a “December” babe, i.e., born when my parents were middle age, all my
grandparents had passed long before I was born).
Thus, over two-and-a-half millennia ago, we need to imagine a young Siddhartha
seeing an old person for the first time.
If you had never seen an old person before, imagine the curiosity, imagine the
shock.
We tend to think when we’re young that old people have always been, well, old.
Even if we see pictures of them theoretically young, the clothes, hairstyles, their
vastly different appearance today – even the primitive technology of the
photograph itself – can make imagining an old person to have actually been our
age, a stretch.
I recall my nephew’s fourth birthday, he was so proud that he could count to his
age, and hold up the corresponding four fingers.
In a priceless moment of childlike curiosity, he said, “Grandma, how many fingers
old are you?” Without missing a beat, my mother told him, “Seventy-four.”
Long pause as the kid contemplated the futility of attempting to do the math of
that advanced number on his fingers; he gave up in exasperation and asked with
a really concerned look, “Did you start from one?”
In earlier times, older people often looked much older than they do now; wrinkles,
gray hair, if any hair, stooped posture, slower movements, et al.
By and large, there has become less and less physical discernment between
generations than there once was.
But again, try to imagine seeing an old person, what we would call a really old
person, never having come across an old person.
What does the first experience of seeing an old person symbolize to someone
who has never seen an old person?
Something frightening, something unknown.
Clearly, this is a person, like us: thus, does this mean that we could – and that
we will – get old?
The Third Sight, a corpse, i.e., a dead body, is something that means something
quite different in Eastern cultures than Western cultures.
How many of us have seen a dead body?
The experience of going to a wake or visitation where a corpse has been
embalmed, made-up, dressed up and laid out in a casket in a funeral home is
more likely the experience most of us have had if we have seen a dead body.
The best compliment that can be paid to a funeral director is to say, “He/she
looks so lifelike.”
A corpse that has not been embalmed (fluids and blood removed and replaced
with preservative chemicals) nor that has had its skin-visible portions made up
with skin-tone greasepaint topped off by cosmetic powder, will by and large have
the color and appearance of a bruise: black, blue, purple, et al, but all over the
body.
That is the kind of corpse that is cremated, for instance, in Hinduism, and that is
the kind of corpse that Siddhartha would have seen as the third of the Four
Sights.
Eastern cultures do not, by and large, attempt to hide over or cover up the reality
of death.
What does Siddhartha’s first experience of seeing a corpse symbolize to
someone who has never seen a corpse?
Something frightening, something unknown.
Clearly, this is a person, like us: thus, does this mean that we could – and that
we will – die?
Lastly, the Fourth Sight, a wandering monk, a person at the last stage of life
who is completely dependent on society, is a sight that perhaps in some ways, is
as beyond our comfort zone as seeing a corpse.
Yet at the same time, the idea of someone preparing for liberation as their
physical world becomes less significant, also offers hope and inspiration.
However vibrant and useful we may seem now as what Hindus would call
students and householders, could we imagine arriving at a point – should we be
lucky enough to live that long – where we are at the final stage of our lives where
there is nothing else left for us within society except to be dependent on it and
look to our liberation?
For a Hindu, which Siddhartha was, what does the first experience of a
wandering monk symbolize to someone who has never seen a wandering monk?
Something frightening, something unknown: even if tinged with optimism.
Clearly, this is a person, like us: thus, does this mean that we could – and that
we will – become a wandering monk?
Siddhartha returned home quite struck by the fleetingness – or impermanence,
a favorite word of Buddhists – of life, realizing that all human beings will go
through what these Four Sights represented sooner or later.
He found that he could no longer tolerate pleasure, which now left him feeling
empty and meaningless.
Siddhartha therefore leaves his family, including a wife and son. (Religion is often
not very family friendly: think of Jesus taking all of his disciples away from their
wives, kids and homes as well.)
Siddhartha basically leaves behind all human pleasures and concerns and sets
forth on a quest for the ultimate meaning of life, a transformative moment which
is known in Buddhism as the Great Going Forth.
The Great Going Forth
The Great Going Forth is not only a central event in the life of the Buddha, but
also an important theme of Buddhism.
The Great Going Forth even becomes a sacrament that emulates the Buddha’s
experience in the Theravada Buddhism of southeastern Asian countries such as
Sri Lanka (Ceylon), Myanmar (Burma), Thailand (Siam), et al.
It remains common for boys to have their own ritualized Great Going Forth where
they leave home and enter into a monastery, a community of monks.
(Some of these cultures also have Buddhist convents, communities of nuns, but
these are rare compared to monasteries and given the patriarchal nature of these
cultures, girls are not required to, nor expected to, have a Great Going Forth
ceremony.)
You may have noticed that Wilfred Cantwell Smith uses the Great Going Forth
ritual as his choice as the defining symbol of what Buddhism is all about in one of
our course books, Patterns of Faith Around the World.
We will also see a Great Going Forth in a film we will see later in the course
called Footprint of the Buddha.
When a boy makes a Great Going Forth, he is given a party and a parade by his
family and neighbors; he dresses up like a royal figure (in some stories of the
Buddha, he is presented as a prince in his early years, although there is no
historical evidence of this.)
The boy then has his head shaven in the manner of a monk and is given the
saffron robes of a monk.
The boy then lives as part of the monastic community for as long as he wants: for
some boys, the austere lifestyle is such that they only stay a short time, perhaps
only a week or two. In that scenario, it is almost like Catholics going on a retreat.
Others may stay for years; others actually join the community and remain for a
lifetime.
How long any particular boy may stay is an unknown when families are left
behind, so that aspect of the Great Going Forth can be very emotional for all
involved.
The Enlightenment
As for the Great Going Forth of Siddhartha himself, this began a process of
seeking enlightenment, another central theme of Buddhism where one has a
specific experience of a greater awareness.
At first, Siddhartha goes to all of the great gurus and teachers of the day all
around India, going to various ashrams and looking for all of the answers that the
Vedas and his Hindu tradition can offer him.
None of this is ultimately satisfactory, however, for solving the issue that
Siddhartha is looking to get to the heart of: why do we suffer, become ill, get old,
helpless, dependent on society and ultimately die? Only for the unproven hope of
liberation?
There is no consensus on how long Siddhartha continued on his Great Going
Forth, but there are stories of him starving himself for six years in order to gain
enlightenment.
One day, Siddhartha went and sat underneath a bodhi tree – that type of tree
and the word itself will become significant in Buddhism – and resolved not to
move until he became enlightened.
Depending of which version of the story you wish to accept, there are versions
that have Siddhartha sitting there meditating cross-legged under that bodhi tree,
not moving nor eating and drinking a thing, for as long as forty years.
Then early one morning, Siddhartha’s mind saw the riddle of life become solved
in his mind and he became “The Enlightened One,” The Buddha; the literal
meaning of the Sanskrit word Buddha is “The One Who Woke Up.”
Though the Buddha was originally a Hindu, he rejected the authority of the Vedas
and the caste system and developed what would become a completely different
religion, although it is by no means clear if that was his intention.
It could well be that what the Buddha taught, did and said was perceived to be so
radically different from his original Hinduism that it was as much its rejection by
other Hindus that made it become its own, separate tradition.
It is unclear whether this happened within the Buddha’s own lifetime or after his
death; the Buddha could very well have been considered a Hindu throughout his
life, albeit a radical Hindu.
(In this sense, we have a similar issue with Jesus of Nazareth, a Jew who set out
to reform his own Judaism, but his followers end up being considered a separate
religion in no small part because of being ostracized by the mother religion after
Jesus. For that matter, Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism, died thinking
he was a Roman Catholic despite his having been excommunicated from that
church.)
The philosophy and theology of Hinduism and Buddhism are different, as we
shall see, although some of the cultural aspects are the same and there are
points of intersection.
For some 45 years, the Buddha never left India and walked around preaching
from village to village – except during the rainy season – until he accidentally ate
some poison fruit at the age of 80 and died, having left behind an elaborate
design for what would become its own religion.
The Three Baskets
Soon after his death, the Buddha’s followers came together and held a great
council – which became known as the First Buddhist Council – where they
attempt to put together and write down the basic teachings of the Buddha.
This was done in Pali, the Buddha’s own spoken language and the language of
the people, not Sanskrit, the official sacred language of Hinduism and its
Scriptures and sacred writings.
This is significant as employing the vernacular of the people rather than the
language of the highest priestly caste reflects a further deliberate split from
Hinduism, which had begun when the Buddha himself had denied the authority of
the Vedas and the class structures.
The result of this council was the Buddhist scriptures known as The Three
Baskets, although it is also sometimes referred to as the Pali Canon.
The notion of a “basket” is that of a collection, in this case, three:
(1) Basket of Monasteries — conversations from the council about the rules to
govern monastic life; this was the most important “basket” of the three;
(2) Basket of Discourses – discourses or teachings of the Buddha, arranged
into five parts by length; and
(3) Basket of Metaphysics and Psychology — later than the other two baskets,
dates from Fourth – First Century B.C.E. in its completed form.
Copyright Dennis Polkow
Written Lecture 8
Introduction to Buddhism
Age of the Sages
Buddhism began in India circa the Sixth Century B.C.E., although the exact dates
of the Buddha himself are unknown.
This was a time of great religious upheaval as well as a time of great religious
figures such as Confucius and Lao Tzu in China and Zoroaster (Zarathustra)
in Persia.
In Greece, this was also the Golden Age of philosophy with such monumental
figures as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.
In India, there was a protest against the authority of the Vedas during this time
where some within Hinduism reject their authority.
One of these was Siddhatha Gautama, the given name of the Buddha, which is
a title, not a proper name. He was born into the ruling/warrior caste of Hinduism.
Siddhartha Gautama
When the Buddha was born, Buddhist tradition says that a holy man prophesied
that he would either be the greatest leader of the material world that the world
had ever seen, i.e., a conqueror, or the greatest leader of the spiritual world that
the world had ever seen, i.e., a religious leader.
As such, his father – curiously, the Buddha’s mother is never mentioned, she
may have already passed away – does everything in his power to make sure that
young Siddhartha is brought up as would befit an offspring of the ruler/warrior
caste and sheltered his son to cultivate him exclusively for this purpose.
The father wanted to “tip” the prophecy to the material world by overemphasizing
the physical, military skills, martial arts and hedonistic pleasures, neglecting the
spiritual side of Siddhartha’s development so that side of the prophecy could not
occur.
This unknown period of the Buddha’s life is, much as the so-called “lost” years of
Jesus of Nazareth, rife with speculation that has become a virtual cottage
industry.
In Western culture, Hermann Hesse’s novel “Siddhartha” is a fictionalized
attempt to fill in these years, as is the film “Little Buddha” where Keanu Reeves
played young Siddhartha.
The Four Sights
One day, while Siddhartha was riding along in a chariot, he saw what have come
to be called the Four Sights.
(1) a sick person, representing sickness;
(2) an old person, representing old age;
(3) a corpse, representing death; and
(4) a wandering monk, representing asceticism or monasticism.
The usual way the story of the Four Sights is told is that each of these were seen
in sequence over time, and each left an indelible and disturbing impression on
Siddhartha.
What does each mean?
The First Sight, a sick person may seem odd: what is so significant about
seeing a sick person?
If you’re very young – and Siddhartha is said to be about 19 when he
experienced the Four Sights – could you imagine growing up without knowing
sickness?
If a child is very sick very young, chances are that this may not be remembered
by the child. Many of us may have to stop and think and perhaps ask our
mothers or older relatives about what childhood “diseases” we may have had.
Thus, could one grow up not consciously having come across illness? What does
the first experience of seeing a sick person symbolize to someone who has never
seen a sick person before?
Something frightening, something unknown.
Clearly, this is a person, like us: thus, does this mean that we could – and that
we will – get sick?
Likewise, for the Second Sight, an old person, which again, might seem odd to
us.
Most millennial college-age students are likely to know their grandparents,
perhaps in some cases, even great-grandparents, or even beyond.
But if you stop and consider that as little as a century ago, life expectancy was 52
years old, it was not uncommon for former generations to be lucky to know a
single grandparent, if any at all.
(As a “December” babe, i.e., born when my parents were middle age, all my
grandparents had passed long before I was born).
Thus, over two-and-a-half millennia ago, we need to imagine a young Siddhartha
seeing an old person for the first time.
If you had never seen an old person before, imagine the curiosity, imagine the
shock.
We tend to think when we’re young that old people have always been, well, old.
Even if we see pictures of them theoretically young, the clothes, hairstyles, their
vastly different appearance today – even the primitive technology of the
photograph itself – can make imagining an old person to have actually been our
age, a stretch.
I recall my nephew’s fourth birthday, he was so proud that he could count to his
age, and hold up the corresponding four fingers.
In a priceless moment of childlike curiosity, he said, “Grandma, how many fingers
old are you?” Without missing a beat, my mother told him, “Seventy-four.”
Long pause as the kid contemplated the futility of attempting to do the math of
that advanced number on his fingers; he gave up in exasperation and asked with
a really concerned look, “Did you start from one?”
In earlier times, older people often looked much older than they do now; wrinkles,
gray hair, if any hair, stooped posture, slower movements, et al.
By and large, there has become less and less physical discernment between
generations than there once was.
But again, try to imagine seeing an old person, what we would call a really old
person, never having come across an old person.
What does the first experience of seeing an old person symbolize to someone
who has never seen an old person?
Something frightening, something unknown.
Clearly, this is a person, like us: thus, does this mean that we could – and that
we will – get old?
The Third Sight, a corpse, i.e., a dead body, is something that means something
quite different in Eastern cultures than Western cultures.
How many of us have seen a dead body?
The experience of going to a wake or visitation where a corpse has been
embalmed, made-up, dressed up and laid out in a casket in a funeral home is
more likely the experience most of us have had if we have seen a dead body.
The best compliment that can be paid to a funeral director is to say, “He/she
looks so lifelike.”
A corpse that has not been embalmed (fluids and blood removed and replaced
with preservative chemicals) nor that has had its skin-visible portions made up
with skin-tone greasepaint topped off by cosmetic powder, will by and large have
the color and appearance of a bruise: black, blue, purple, et al, but all over the
body.
That is the kind of corpse that is cremated, for instance, in Hinduism, and that is
the kind of corpse that Siddhartha would have seen as the third of the Four
Sights.
Eastern cultures do not, by and large, attempt to hide over or cover up the reality
of death.
What does Siddhartha’s first experience of seeing a corpse symbolize to
someone who has never seen a corpse?
Something frightening, something unknown.
Clearly, this is a person, like us: thus, does this mean that we could – and that
we will – die?
Lastly, the Fourth Sight, a wandering monk, a person at the last stage of life
who is completely dependent on society, is a sight that perhaps in some ways, is
as beyond our comfort zone as seeing a corpse.
Yet at the same time, the idea of someone preparing for liberation as their
physical world becomes less significant, also offers hope and inspiration.
However vibrant and useful we may seem now as what Hindus would call
students and householders, could we imagine arriving at a point – should we be
lucky enough to live that long – where we are at the final stage of our lives where
there is nothing else left for us within society except to be dependent on it and
look to our liberation?
For a Hindu, which Siddhartha was, what does the first experience of a
wandering monk symbolize to someone who has never seen a wandering monk?
Something frightening, something unknown: even if tinged with optimism.
Clearly, this is a person, like us: thus, does this mean that we could – and that
we will – become a wandering monk?
Siddhartha returned home quite struck by the fleetingness – or impermanence,
a favorite word of Buddhists – of life, realizing that all human beings will go
through what these Four Sights represented sooner or later.
He found that he could no longer tolerate pleasure, which now left him feeling
empty and meaningless.
Siddhartha therefore leaves his family, including a wife and son. (Religion is often
not very family friendly: think of Jesus taking all of his disciples away from their
wives, kids and homes as well.)
Siddhartha basically leaves behind all human pleasures and concerns and sets
forth on a quest for the ultimate meaning of life, a transformative moment which
is known in Buddhism as the Great Going Forth.
The Great Going Forth
The Great Going Forth is not only a central event in the life of the Buddha, but
also an important theme of Buddhism.
The Great Going Forth even becomes a sacrament that emulates the Buddha’s
experience in the Theravada Buddhism of southeastern Asian countries such as
Sri Lanka (Ceylon), Myanmar (Burma), Thailand (Siam), et al.
It remains common for boys to have their own ritualized Great Going Forth where
they leave home and enter into a monastery, a community of monks.
(Some of these cultures also have Buddhist convents, communities of nuns, but
these are rare compared to monasteries and given the patriarchal nature of these
cultures, girls are not required to, nor expected to, have a Great Going Forth
ceremony.)
You may have noticed that Wilfred Cantwell Smith uses the Great Going Forth
ritual as his choice as the defining symbol of what Buddhism is all about in one of
our course books, Patterns of Faith Around the World.
We will also see a Great Going Forth in a film we will see later in the course
called Footprint of the Buddha.
When a boy makes a Great Going Forth, he is given a party and a parade by his
family and neighbors; he dresses up like a royal figure (in some stories of the
Buddha, he is presented as a prince in his early years, although there is no
historical evidence of this.)
The boy then has his head shaven in the manner of a monk and is given the
saffron robes of a monk.
The boy then lives as part of the monastic community for as long as he wants: for
some boys, the austere lifestyle is such that they only stay a short time, perhaps
only a week or two. In that scenario, it is almost like Catholics going on a retreat.
Others may stay for years; others actually join the community and remain for a
lifetime.
How long any particular boy may stay is an unknown when families are left
behind, so that aspect of the Great Going Forth can be very emotional for all
involved.
The Enlightenment
As for the Great Going Forth of Siddhartha himself, this began a process of
seeking enlightenment, another central theme of Buddhism where one has a
specific experience of a greater awareness.
At first, Siddhartha goes to all of the great gurus and teachers of the day all
around India, going to various ashrams and looking for all of the answers that the
Vedas and his Hindu tradition can offer him.
None of this is ultimately satisfactory, however, for solving the issue that
Siddhartha is looking to get to the heart of: why do we suffer, become ill, get old,
helpless, dependent on society and ultimately die? Only for the unproven hope of
liberation?
There is no consensus on how long Siddhartha continued on his Great Going
Forth, but there are stories of him starving himself for six years in order to gain
enlightenment.
One day, Siddhartha went and sat underneath a bodhi tree – that type of tree
and the word itself will become significant in Buddhism – and resolved not to
move until he became enlightened.
Depending of which version of the story you wish to accept, there are versions
that have Siddhartha sitting there meditating cross-legged under that bodhi tree,
not moving nor eating and drinking a thing, for as long as forty years.
Then early one morning, Siddhartha’s mind saw the riddle of life become solved
in his mind and he became “The Enlightened One,” The Buddha; the literal
meaning of the Sanskrit word Buddha is “The One Who Woke Up.”
Though the Buddha was originally a Hindu, he rejected the authority of the Vedas
and the caste system and developed what would become a completely different
religion, although it is by no means clear if that was his intention.
It could well be that what the Buddha taught, did and said was perceived to be so
radically different from his original Hinduism that it w…
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