Outline Lecture Four—Recognizing the Roots of Suffering: Siddhartha Gautama

I) “The Monastery Within”

a) “Dharma Brothers” of Donaldson Penitentiary in Alabama

i) Unlike Job’s case, intense suffering of the inward kind
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zA8XFEyeMi8 (trailer) 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6Ufgg-HOtA (interviews)
b) Freedom through Vipassana Meditation
i) “Vipassana” means “gaining insight into the true nature of existence” – Main
emphasis of this form of Buddhism
The mind controls what we experience
ii) Using insight meditation to look intently into one’s own mind
Can’t learn to see or understand until one can control one’s own mind
Getting trapped in one’s own mind
Begins with putting a ‘mirror to our own mind’

II) The Sakyamuni Buddha: Siddhartha Gautama (6th-5th centuries B.C.)

Can’t overcome suffering unless we face our own mind

a) Common Misconceptions about this historical Buddha

He was not a god or deity, he never presented himself as having any divine nature
 Not a mortal man
 He was not singular: Buddhism acknowledges that there are an infinite number of
Buddhas and levels of existence – he is simply ‘our Buddha’
 He was not fat or vegetarian

b) “An Insuperable Quest for Truth”

Sets him aside from other Buddhas
i) Compare his quest to other quests for wisdom we have seen so far
Reconciling our faith with out conscious with Job
ii) Cultivating wisdom to overcome universal suffering
Main goal of the Buddha
Wisdom motivated by compassion for all sentient beings
Becomes associated with the luminaries of the Axial Age, paradigmatic figures

What a human individual could and should be – something we look at in class

c) Bodhisattva in Tushita Heaven – Who the Buddha was before this world
Bodhisattva is said to stay behind to help those on Earth ‘differing enlightenment out of
compassion’
Bodhisattva: on the path to enlightenment
i) Instructing 100,000 other bodhisattvas
He was and instructor
ii) Life-span is 4000 years in Tushita heaven time
This is the average life span of the bodhisattvas – the Buddha
iii) “Heavenly campus of enlightenment” vs. “earthly ghetto of suffering”?
Buddha does this because his vow has always been to find the answer to suffering for all
human beings
Gautama has to go through earthly suffering in order to fulfill his vow
iv) Helping others escape ignorance by going through the tunnel of human suffering
d) Life in Kapilavatsu
i) Reborn in kingdom of the Sakyas in foothills of the Himalyas
Because of this he is called the Shakyamuni Buddha (his honorific title)
Siddhartha: one who accomplishes
ii) The Miraculous Birth of Queen Maya
The birth of the Buddha
The Buddha was born from her armpit
 Reflects the patriarchal attitude of many of these cultures
o Disgust with a woman’s womb and natural processes
o Opposition to pain through a natural birth
Moment of birth he was fully aware and conscious of his existence
Announced that this was to be his Last Rebirth
iii) The prediction of the seer Asita
‘He will either be a great worldly sovereign or he will be a universal Buddha’
Asita begins to cry: ‘I cry because I know I will not live long enough to hear his teachings’
iv) The Veil of Ephemeral Pleasures
The King surrounds Siddhartha with physical entrapments to shield him from the reality of
the world
Siddhartha was a dashing young prince, the greatest warrior, wrestler, fighter etc
(1) Sensual entrapments
Rotating women
(2) Arranged marriage with Yasodhara at age 16
Vow to find answer to suffering vs what he is doing…. Why?
Perhaps he was entrapped in this ignorance
Perhaps his devotion to his father
His mother died because of him – dying four days after giving birth to him
He deprived his father of a loving wife
(3) Sense of duty to father
Mahatpajapahti: the mother-figure to Siddhartha
v) Four Encounters
Siddhartha tells his man to take them on a detour, off the path his father proscribed for him
This is the catalyst to the rest of his life
No previous exposure to old age, suffering etc.
(1) Aging, Sickness, Death, a Mendicant
Mendicant: wandering monk – sees the suffering and pain, and finally the countenance of
total bliss in this monk even though he has nothing
(2) Piercing the veil of “beauty”— first key lesson in impermanence
vi) The Pain of Renunciation—29 years old
(1) Last look at Yasodhara and Rahula
(a) Pain of letting go
 Can’t even face Yasodhara and Rahula, can’t pick up Rahula (means burden, fetters)
He renounces his family, wealth, household, father, princehood
Burden of love and earthly attachments
(b) “Remembers” his choice to be reborn
Chandra is the only one who knows
Urge to look back at the life he is leaving behind and does not

e) Preparation for Enlightenment

i) Study with teachers (Upanishads)
Finds the most revered and best teachers
Faces dilemma: he surpasses his teacher in no time so now what does he do?
ii) Extreme Asceticism (Jainism)
Shedding of all worldly indulgence
Extreme fasting
Hotha Yoga (Hot yoga) yoga of effort
Goes deep into the wilderness to face his worst fears
Tries eating his own excrement
Abuses his body in the most extreme ways in the hopes of annihilating the awareness of
his own body
(1) Self-centeredness of this approach
What he found was that the more he did this the more his body clamored for his attention
The extreme way he was using maybe he could reach nirvana for himself but it would not
help anyone else to achieve his goal
Self-centered on his own body and his own suffering
Abandons this method because this extreme form will lead nowhere
iii) The Middle-Path
In Buddhism this is an important concept
Old man says to the younger man on the raft on the river, holding an instrument, ‘if the
strings are too tight they will break and not produce music, if the strings are too loose there
will also be no music’

The answer to universal suffering must work with human nature not against it
Tap into our ‘innate Buddha nature’
We are all born with the capacity of wisdom and compassion

(1) The allegory of the over-tight string

(2) Recollection of meditating under the rose-apple tree as a child
This revelation is reinforced by his recollection of an event during his childhood during a
ritualistic tilling of the field
Everyone is involved, sacred, serious
Siddhartha recalls that something told him to assume the yogic pose of the lotus
and he begins to meditate on the compassion and suffering of the bugs and critters getting
killed in their religious ritual
The compassion he feels in this moment brings him some joy
This memory is something of a confirmation of his innate Buddha nature
This is also that everyone can reach this
 iv) To awaken the “disinterested impulse of compassion” within all of us
Puts him on the path of enlightenment of meditation

III) The Dharma of the Buddha

a) The Realizations—Age 34
When he struck upon this great revolution and reaches enlightenment
i) Meditation for seven weeks under the Bodhi Tree in Bodhgaya
The original died in a fire but before that a princess from eastern Asia took a branch and grew it
into a new tree
ii) How to end the suffering that comes from the cycle of rebirth – main goal is to end
the cycle of rebirth
(1) Four Noble Truths (Kohn 17)
Realizes the four noble truth
Existence leads to suffering: suffering emanates from desire: the way to end suffering is
to put an end to desire: to end desire is to follow the eight-fold noble path
Right view etc
(2) Law of Dependent Origination (Kohn 16)
The deeper part of the Buddha’s discovery
Like all things, suffering is contingent on some cause, some suffering, some
origin
(a) Like all things, suffering contingent on an origin, a cause, a condition
(b) Assumption of a “self” from ignorance
Aging, sickness, old age: all roots of suffering
Common condition: we all face it so… REBIRTH
Just being born into this world means we will suffer

What contributes to rebirth? Craving, the insatiable craving we felt in our previous
life, even just life itself
The attachment becomes Karma for your rebirth: the aggregate of seed

What leads to this?

Sensual contact, sense contact, illusion of self

This was the enlightenment: seeing the connection between all things

(c) Psychoanalytical excavation of the roots of suffering

The enlightenment was solely a profound psychological revelation

b) The Aftermath of Enlightenment

i) Why slowness of his transition to teaching?
He had to figure out how to bring what he discovered to the rest of the world
He had a lot of doubt
ii) The Allegory of the Lotus Flowers (Indra)
‘Here is why you have to go teach’
‘You must teach because you must open up the flowers who need help’
c) The Dharma for All Sentient Beings
 i) Teaching the Dharma to all who wanted to listen for 45 years
Same daily routine
(1) His daily routine: up before dawn to meditate, then collect his meal for the day
through begging, ‘always go to a different area to avoid growing attached and
having craving and desire’, the point of begging is that you have nothing,
instruction for lay people, instruction for his bikhus and bikhunis, then a cat-nap –
half asleep, more teaching to lay people and discussions with monks and nuns,
only slept on his right side because there is no pressure on the heart, (slept for
three hours)
ii) Egalitarian Impulse—challenged the caste system
(1) Taught all people regardless of caste, age, past deeds, or gender
(2) The acceptance of Sunita the untouchable into the sangha
(3) No matter who you are, “everyone’s tears are salty”
(a) “Our way is the way of equality. We do not recognize caste. Though we may
encounter difficulties over Sunita’s ordination now, we will have opened a
door for the first time in history that future generations will thank us for. We
must therefore have courage.”