Philosophy- Lecture Fifteen

The Buddha
- Classical and Ancient India were not good at keeping historical records about important events and to
determine if certain people existed
- The first Buddha was a member of the Shakia tribe somewhere in the North-East India and he was a
prince
- When he was born a prophet came to him and said he’d either be a King or a great spiritual leader
- His father made sure that the Buddha was trapped by nice things to look at and never
surrounded by anything that would have been a problem (so it wouldn’t make him more spiritual)
- He then leaves the palace and sees a man who’s back is crooked and wrinkled and finds out about aging
and death
- He sees this around him and his spiritual self awakens, he then joins teachers and he learns techniques
like sitting and techniques of meditation and then he feels like he isn’t making any breakthrough and after
a few years of this he gives up
- He eats a small bowl of rice under a tree (tree of great awakening) and then he begins to
meditate with the techniques that he had
- He then has his great awakening and awakes from ignorance and free from desire and
attachment and suffering
- A path opened that was open to everyone, there are many types of Buddha’s but the biggest type of
Buddhism that would will find in Sri Lanka and Thailand
Mahayana Buddishm
- Fundamental ideas is that it needs to reach everyone and at the level that they are at
- We must reach people where they are and fit people where they may be
- Sacredism: One religion merges to find values that correspond to the other
- Philosophical principle which means that you need to fit the message the way that they are receiving it
- What you think is true is fixed but the version of the message can be altered
Buddhism: The Four Noble Truths and Doctrine of No-Self
- These are the foundations of Buddhism that is accepted by all types of Buddhism
First Noble Truth: Dukkha
- Life is Dukkha which is about suffering it means something like dissatisfaction and discontent (even
when we are happy we are never truly happy)
- We immediately start being anxious, whatever you get you either get what you want or you have it out
you lose it because it is not enough (something is always bothering us in the background)
- We are accompanied by a bad feeling in the background
Second Noble Truth: Ignorance
- Ignorance leads to suffering which leads to desire
- Our desires are constantly suffering and are constantly frustrated which is the proximate cause
- If you analyze desire you will reach the conclusion that desire causes suffering
- If you truly understood you would be free from desire which to be attached to desire is to become free
- We desire because we are ignorant of the true nature of things
- We think of things as discrete entities which have a stable existence/identity over time
- All things are interconnected and interdependent and we suffer from the illusion that these
independent things are always in flux and changing
- The constant changing of things is a reason why we suffer, because nothing lasts forever
- We should pay attention to ourselves as it is the most difficult issue to overcome as Buddhism takes the
idea of no self above and beyond
- This illusion of self-hood is hard to create, death does not save you from suffering because you
are born again and again
- The only escape is from liberation and the only possibility is the extinguishing the flames of
desire
Nirvana
- Putting out the flames of desire, if we are burning in the flames of desire then we must put out the
flames (if desire is due to ignorance then that is how it must be eliminated)
- Extinguish the flames of desire by overcoming ignorance and you will no longer reincarnate and then
you are free from the cycle of suffering
- There are three kinds of training
- There is training in wisdom, concentration and various practice of meditation to clear your mind that is
making it hard for you to see things how they truly are
- You can get rid of this idea by looking at action, action without desire which is what is meant by taking
the role of gods and goddesses
- It is a complicated phenomenon and you can take what you want and it is fine
- All things are fundamentally interconnected and overcoming the illusion of the self can still be a
valuable insight
Dependent Arising
- There were multiple views about the reality and two of these views are from Heraclitus which are
surrounded by many different things
- That thing is eternal and unchanging and Heraclitus and nothing persists through time which means that
we don’t have the full writings from these people
- You cannot step into the same river twice and each time that you step into the river you are a
different person
- You need to argue why this is the case and thinking of things separately
- You must think of this metaphysically and not ecologically

Notes
- Letting go of the problems/issues leads us to understand the self and eventually leads to liberation
- Detach from yourself to lead to liberation

Karma and the self vs Buddhism

- Karma believes that there is a self and Buddhism doesn’t believe that there is a self
- Buddhism focuses on the present and Karma focuses on the afterlife