Buddhism
1. Attained enlightenment after he was free from the three great poisons – delusion,
greed and hate.
2. In different interpretations Siddhartha Gautama was not the first buddha, there have
apparently been some before and some after and the next buddha to turn up in our
current era in our current kalpa ages from now is supposed to be maitraya
3. After 45 years of teachings Buddha passed away in 438bce, 2 millenia later buddhism
has fractured into different schools of thought
One being the Tibetian Buddhism, the spiritual leader of which is the Dalai Lama
4. Dalai Lama aren’t chosen or elected, they are found. When the Dalai lama dies,
monks look for the child through which the deceased dalai lama has reincarnated as.
Then the child is taken to Lhasa to begin the process of learning how to become the
dalai lama again.
FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS
Existing is full of dukkha or dissatisfaction and suffering. To be is to want and to
want is to eventually be dissatisfied. We grasp for things, sometimes which we get
and then we just keep grasping more because of the insatiable needs of every human
being
The cause of suffering is craving and the real problem is that of wanting, claimed the
buddhist. Desire is the problem because it never ends
The end of suffering comes with the end of desire, the end of grasping, the end of
craving. The way out of suffering is to extinguish the flame of desire itself, that how
you attain nirvana which literally means to extinguish
Follow the eight fold part
Anicca or impermanence
Reality is a transient everchanging thing
It is a form of swirling dance from the entropic decaying galaxies to the tide eroded rocks at
the beach, all is flux all is change and eventually you will die
Our general inability to accept anicca, to accept that everything is impermeant is a large
source of dukkha or suffering. Because our unwillingness to accept change we cling to the
illusion of permanance
ANNATA
In life we are assigned roles we have to play ofcource, students teachers employee spouse etc
And it hard to tell when these roles stop and our buddhist personalities begin, the buddhist
answer to this is that it is not just the world that is impermenant but ourselves in it. Our outer
identities are shifting all the time ofcourse but that’s just the external stuff. On the inside of
our minds is just a bunch of thoughts emotions and feelings but in not one of those sensations
or thoughts will one find an I or me. Just as a plane is not its aluminum wings, radar or
exhaust but thes together combine to make an aeroplane, its something similar.
There therefore is no amount of clinging to our names, careers through which we will catch
site of a tangible I or a me and that in a very botched way is the 2nd mark of existsance called
anatta. We are clearly consious but our consciousness does not have a centre, not in time not
in mental space. Our mental selves are constantly in flux, ever in change ever impermenant
‘though one may conquer a thousand times a thousand men in battle yet he indeed is the
noblest victor who conquers himself ’
Mastery of ourselves is therefore the epitome of buddhism.
As an ideology buddhism has been here for almost 2 millenia now because it is able to
answer questions that are just as relevant today as they were 2 millenia ago
questions like how to overcome suffering, why are we always fighting against our own nature
and what actually are we? The answer to all of this that as Buddhism claims rather uniquely
is not up, transcendent but down within ourselves and within the exceptance of the
impermenance of the world and within our very own nature. Liberation or salvation is
waiting withing ourselves. And mastery of ourselves will make us masters of our very own
destiny
HOW IS TH WESTERERN PHILOSOPHY DIFFERENT FROM BUDDHIST
