The Path of Awakening
Summary: In the 5th century BCE, Siddhartha Gautama became Buddha (“the Awakened One”); his teachings would spread throughout Asia and the world. The two main contemporary streams of Buddhism are the Theravada and Mahayana traditions, with Vajrayana, a subset of Mahayana, sometimes recognized as a third stream.
In the 5th century BCE, a prince of India named Siddhartha Gautama is said to have given up his throne, left behind his family and his palace, and set out into the forest to seek answers to the haunting questions of suffering, disease, old age, and death. Through this ardent search and his deep meditation, he gained great insight. He became known as the Buddha, an honorific title meaning the “Enlightened One” or the “Awakened One.”
Within his own lifetime, the Buddha attracted a considerable following in India with his understanding of the suffering of living beings and his teachings about overcoming suffering through moral living, meditation, and insight into reality. Some followed him in the path of renunciation and became monks and nuns. Others remained as laity, learning from the Buddha’s teachings, honoring the Buddha, and supporting the monastic community. While Buddhism has its roots in India, reverence for the Buddha and adherence to his teachings first spread throughout Asia, and today has reached the entire world. Buddhism can thus be considered a universal religion in that it is not specifically tied to a particular people or land.
There are currently two major streams of the Buddhist tradition: the Theravada tradition of South and Southeast Asia, including Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos; and the Mahayana tradition of China, Vietnam, Korea, and Japan. The Vajrayana tradition of the greater Himalayas, a subset of Mahayana, is large enough that it is sometimes recognized as a third major stream. While these streams are distinct, they are not entirely separate and have continually interacted in Asia. Today, in the early 21st century, all are flowing and mingling in America.
Prince Siddhartha: Renouncing the World
Summary: Living in luxury, the young Prince Siddhartha traveled outside his palace and encountered the Four Sights: an old person, a sick person, a dead person, and a wandering ascetic. He left his royal life to live in the forest, and he began his training in meditation and asceticism in hopes of discovering the root of human suffering. Rejecting the luxury of the palace and the self-denial of the forest-dwelling ascetics, he chose to pursue a “middle way” between the two extremes.
What we know about the life of the historical Buddha can be sketched from legends. One of the most beautiful literary renderings of the story is told by Ashvaghosha in the 1st century CE. Prince Siddhartha Gautama is said to have been born in the royal Shakya family in a place called Lumbini, which is located in present-day Nepal, at the foothills of the Himalayas. There is some debate over the date of his birth, with some citing it at taking place in 563 BCE and others citing 480 BCE. At the time of his birth, seers foretold that he would either become a great king or an enlightened teacher. If the prince were to see the “four passing sights”—old age, sickness, death, and a wandering ascetic—he would renounce his royal life and seek enlightenment.
His father, the king, was determined that his son become a great ruler and tried to shield Prince Siddhartha from these four realities of life. However, at age 29, Siddhartha, with his charioteer, went out of the protected palace grounds and, for the first time, encountered suffering, which he understood to be an inevitable part of life. He saw four sights: a man bent with old age, a person afflicted with sickness, a corpse, and a wandering ascetic. It was the fourth sight, that of a wandering ascetic, that filled Siddhartha with a sense of urgency to find out what lay at the root of human suffering.
Siddhartha left the luxury of the palace. He studied and lived an austere life in the forest with the foremost teachers and ascetics of his time. Yet, he found that their teachings and severe bodily austerities did not enable him to answer the question of suffering or provide insight into how to be released from it. Having experienced the life of self-indulgence in the palace and then the life of self-denial in the forest, he finally settled on a “middle way,” a balance between these two extremes. Accepting food from a village girl, he recovered his bodily strength and began a journey inward through the practice of meditation.
Becoming the “Buddha”: The Way of Meditation
Summary: Under the Bodhi Tree, Siddhartha defeated the demon Mara. Siddhartha attained nirvana, the “blowing out” of the flames of desire. In that moment Siddhartha became the Buddha (“the Awakened One”), and he is now called Shakyamuni Buddha, the “Sage of the Shakya Clan.”
According to tradition, Siddhartha seated himself at the foot of a tree, which has since been called the Bodhi Tree, the tree of enlightenment. He vowed to sit beneath that tree until he had attained deep insight into suffering. As he sat through the night, a profound stillness settled upon his mind, like that of a lake on a windless day. This stillness enabled him to see ever more deeply and clearly into the cycle of grasping, clinging, and egotism found at the root of suffering.
The demon Mara rose to tempt him and to attack him with arrows of passion. Desire, fear, pride, and thirst rose to challenge his clear concentration of mind. But Siddhartha placed his hand on the earth, calling earth itself to witness his firm resolve. When the morning star appeared, Siddhartha Gautama became the Buddha, literally the “Awakened One.” He had woken up to the nature of the changing world and the causes of suffering. This state of awakening was also called nirvana, literally the “blowing out” of the fires of ego-centered attachment which are the source of suffering.
Siddhartha is called Shakyamuni Buddha, the “Sage of the Shakya clan,” to make clear that this awakening is not uniquely his. Over time, there have been other individuals who have awakened to the truth and gained enlightenment, thereby becoming Buddhas. Among the most well known and widely venerated are Amitabha (Amida) Buddha, Vairochana Buddha, and Bhaishajya-guru (better known as the Medicine Buddha). Indeed, sometimes Buddhas are depicted by the thousands, for the “Buddha nature” is the true awakened nature of all beings.
It is said that, out of great compassion, the newly enlightened Shakyamuni Buddha set out to show others the path he had followed so they might set foot on that path as well. After his awakening, the Buddha taught in the cities and villages of the northern Indian subcontinent for some forty-five years.
The Dharma: The Teachings of the Buddha
Summary: After achieving enlightenment, the Buddha gave his first sermon, teaching his disciples about suffering and the way to escape it. This teaching includes the Middle Way, the Four Noble Truths, and the Eightfold Noble Path. The truths that the Buddha revealed are called Dharma.
The Buddha’s sermons and teachings pointed toward the true nature of the universe, what is known within Buddhism as the Dharma. He gave his first sermon on the outskirts of the city of Varanasi at a deer park called Sarnath. This first sermon presents an overview of suffering and the way out of suffering. It is called the “Four Noble Truths.” The Buddha is often described as a physician who first diagnoses an illness and then suggests a medicine to cure the illness. The “Four Noble Truths” follow this pattern:
1. Life involves suffering, duhkha.
The “illness” that the Buddha diagnosed as the human condition is duhkha, a term often rendered in English as “suffering” or “unsatisfactoriness.” The Buddha spoke of three types of duhkha. First, there is the ordinary suffering of mental and physical pain. Second, there is the suffering produced by change, the simple fact that all things—including happy feelings and blissful states—are impermanent, as is life itself. Third, there is suffering produced by the failure to recognize that no “I” stands alone, but everything and everyone, including what we call our “self,” is conditioned and interdependent.
2. Suffering is caused by desire and grasping.
The Buddha saw that the impulse to crave, desire, or grasp something one doesn’t have is the principal cause of suffering. Because of the impermanence and continuous change of all that we call “reality,” the attempt to hold on to it is as doomed to frustration as the attempt to stake out a piece of a river.
3. There is a way out of suffering.
This is the good news of the Dharma. It is possible to put an end to ego-centered desire, to put an end to duhkha and thus attain freedom from the perpetual sense of “unsatisfactoriness.”
4. The way is the “Noble Eightfold Path.”
To develop this freedom one must practice habits of ethical conduct, thought, and meditation that enable one to move along the path. These eight habits include:
- Right understanding: Truly and deeply knowing, for example, that unwholesome acts and thoughts have consequences, as do wholesome acts and thoughts.
- Right intention: Recognizing that actions are shaped by habits of anger and self-centeredness, or by habits of compassion, understanding, and love.
- Right speech: Recognizing the moral implications of speech; truthfulness.
- Right action: Observing the five precepts at the foundation of all morality: not killing, not stealing, not engaging in sexual misconduct, not lying, and not clouding the mind with intoxicants.
- Right livelihood: Earning a living in ways that are consonant with the basic precepts.
- Right effort: Cultivating this way of living with the attention, the patience, and the perseverance that it takes to cultivate a field.
- Right mindfulness: Developing “presence of mind” through the moment-to-moment awareness of meditation practice, including mindfulness of breathing, mindfulness of walking, and mindfulness of bodily sensations.
- Right concentration: Developing the ability to bring the dispersed and distracted mind and heart to a center, a focus, and to see clearly through that focused mind and heart.
The Sangha: The Buddhist Community
Summary: The Buddha established the Sangha— originally a community of celibate monks and nuns who follow strict discipline and teach the Dharma to fellow Buddhists. Some consider the Sangha to include both monastics and Buddhist laypeople.
Those who followed the Buddha came to be called the Sangha—the community of monks (bhikkhus) and nuns (bhikkhunis). Those who became monks and nuns underwent an ordination ceremony of shaving their heads and donning robes to symbolize world-renunciation. They entered into the homeless life of wandering monastics who settled down in monasteries only during the months of the rainy season.
For some, the Sangha is the whole community of the Buddha’s followers. From the beginning, the Buddha’s disciples included laypeople who followed the Buddha’s teachings but remained householders.
Both the ordained and the laity followed the five precepts of basic ethics that are the foundation of religious life. In addition, a more extensive code of monastic rules, the Pratimoksha, eventually developed to govern the conduct of ordained persons.
The monastic and lay communities are interdependent. Even today, the laity receive teachings and guidance from monastics, while the monastics receive food, clothing, shelter, and in some cases all of their material requirements from the laity. Providing food and supplies to the monks is considered by many lay Buddhists to be an act of “merit-making,” earning good karma for oneself or loved ones.
The Three Treasures
Summary: All Buddhists “take refuge” in the Three Treasures—Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha—but interpretations of these Three Treasures differ widely across Buddhist traditions.
The “Three Treasures” of the Buddhist tradition are the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. Throughout the Buddhist world, Buddhists have these Three Treasures in common. To be a Buddhist means taking refuge in the Three Treasures. Buddhists see the Buddha as central to their lives, as well as enlightenment in general, the teachings of those who are enlightened, and the community that follows these teachings.
In the ancient Pali language the words of “taking refuge” are these:
- Buddham saranam gacchami. “I take refuge in the Buddha.”
- Dhammam saranam gacchami. “I take refuge in the Dharma.”
- Sangham saranam gacchami. “I take refuge in the Sangha.”
The Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha continue to provide inspiration to Buddhists, but they are not understood in exactly the same way everywhere. A Sri Lankan Theravada Buddhist might insist that the Buddha was a human pathfinder, nothing more. A Chinese Pure Land Buddhist might chant the name of Amitabha Buddha, seen as the eternal Buddha of Infinite Light, with a prayer to be reborn in the Pure Land after death. A Japanese Zen master might shock one with the words, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!” in recognition that grasping for the security of the Buddha creates as much suffering as any other desire.
The Expansion of Buddhism
Summary: As Buddhism spread through Asia, it formed distinct streams of thought and practice: the Theravada (“The Way of the Elders” in South and Southeast Asia), the Mahayana (the “Great Vehicle” in East Asia), and the Vajrayana (the “Diamond Vehicle” in Tibet), a distinctive and vibrant form of Mahayana Buddhism that now has a substantial following.
In India, Buddhism began to wane in the 6th and 7th centuries CE when devotional Hinduism replaced Buddhism in the south and Hephthalite Huns invaded and sacked monasteries in the north. By the 13th century, repeated invasions by the Turks ensured that Buddhism had virtually disappeared. By this time, however, Buddhism was flourishing in many other parts of Asia. As early as the 3rd century BCE the Indian emperor Ashoka, a convert to Buddhism, is said to have established the tradition on the island of Ceylon, or Sri Lanka. By the 5th century CE, Buddhism had spread throughout what are now Myanmar and Thailand. By the 13th century CE, one of the early Buddhist schools, called the Theravada, “the way of the elders,” had become the dominant tradition of South and Southeast Asia.
As early as the 1st century CE, Buddhist monks made their way over the “Silk Road” through Central Asia to China. By the 7th century CE, Buddhism had made a significant impact in China, interacting with Confucian and Daoist cultures and ideas. By this time the tradition was also firmly established in Korea. In the 6th century CE, the Buddhist tradition was also introduced into Japan, where it developed in a milieu shaped by both Shintō and other indigenous traditions. This form of Buddhism that first developed in India and later flourished in East Asia is known as the Mahayana, or “Great Vehicle.”
In the 8th century, Buddhism, shaped by the Tantric traditions of northeast India, spread to the high mountain plateau of Tibet. There, in interaction with the indigenous Bon religion, and with forms of Buddhism that had traveled to Tibet from East Asia, a distinctive and vibrant form of Mahayana Buddhism emerged known as Vajrayana, the “Diamond Vehicle.”
These streams of Buddhism are differentiated to some extent by their interpretations of the Buddha and the Buddha’s teachings, the scriptures they hold in special reverence, and the variety of cultural expressions they lend to Buddhist life and practice. It would be a mistake, however, to identify these streams of tradition too rigidly with either specific ideas or specific geographical areas.
Theravada: The Way of the Elders
Summary: The Theravada school of Buddhism took root in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. Its major characteristics include the importance of Pali Canon of scripture and commentary; the veneration of the historical Shakyamuni Buddha; and the spiritual model of the arahat, or “worthy ones” who have attained nirvana.
The Theravada, literally “The Way of the Elders,” is the school of Buddhism most prominent today in the countries of Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka. As the name suggests, it regards itself as the school most faithful to the teachings that have been passed down through the generations. In the United States, Theravada Buddhism has had its greatest growth since the 1960s when Euro-Americans started practicing vipassana, or “insight meditation.” At the same time, large numbers of immigrants from Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, and other traditional Theravadin countries have come to the United States. The major characteristics of the Theravada can be summarized as follows:
1. The Pali Canon, comprised of scriptures and commentaries written in the ancient Pali language, is regarded as the most accurate source of the teachings of the historical Buddha. While other schools have various other recensions of the canon or a broader interpretation of what the canon includes, Theravadins believe that the Pali Canon is definitive.
2. The human and historical Buddha, the spiritual pathfinder who lived 2,500 years ago in India is emphasized. While other schools of Buddhism might focus on the teachings of another Buddha or venerate multiple Buddhas, the Theravadins see Shakyamuni Buddha as central.
3. The ideal spiritual model of Theravada Buddhism is the arahant ( in Pali) or the arhat (in Sanskrit). Arahants, literally “worthy ones,” are Buddhist practitioners who attain nirvana and have perfected their discipline such that defilements and desires are extinguished.
Mahayana: The Great Vehicle
Summary: Emerging in the early centuries CE and flourishing in East Asia, the Mahayana tradition allows for the flexibility of the scriptural canon and forms of practice and considers itself open to a broader group of people than other streams of Buddhism. It encourages its followers to become bodhisattvas, dedicated to the salvation of all sentient beings.
By around 200 CE, the beginnings of a new stream of the Buddhist tradition were visible within Indian Buddhism. This stream can be called the Mahayana, literally the “Great Vehicle.” In general, this movement of monks, nuns, and laity can be characterized as follows:
1. As the name implies, the Mahayana came to think of itself as “great” both in its interpretations of the Buddha’s teaching and in its openness to a broader group of people, especially lay people. The word yana means vehicle or raft, which evokes the image of Buddhist teaching as a raft or vehicle that can help one cross over the river of suffering to the “other shore.” The Mahayana is, thus, the “Great Vehicle.”
2. The Mahayana tradition is more flexible about the orthodoxy of scriptures, regarding many new scriptures composed in the early centuries CE as authentic teachings. A number of new scriptures—the Lotus Sutra, the Avatamsaka Sutra, the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, and the Pure Land sutras—focus on teachings such as the emptiness of all phenomena (shunyata), the importance of compassion (karuna), and the universality of Buddha Nature.
3. The ideal religious figure in the Mahayana tradition is the bodhisattva, an enlightened being engaged in helping others become free from suffering. The bodhisattva is motivated entirely by compassion (karuna) and informed by deep wisdom (prajna). The bodhisattva ideal is often contrasted with the monastic arahant (arhat in Sanskrit) ideal, characterized by some Mahayana schools as being directed toward self-liberation and thus as too egotistical.
Mahayana Buddhism was the first major stream of Buddhism in the United States, brought by the Chinese and Japanese immigrants who arrived in the 19th century. Today, the two main expressions of the Mahayana tradition, Zen and Pure Land Buddhism, have both Asian-American and non-Asian-American practitioners. In addition, Korean and Vietnamese immigrants introduced their cultures’ expressions of Mahayana Buddhism in late 20th century America and have steadily gained their own followings.
Vajrayana: The Diamond Vehicle
Summary: The major stream of Buddhism in Tibet, the Vajrayana emerged in the 7th century out of the Mahayana tradition. This form of Buddhism, sometimes called “Tantric Buddhism,” asserts that distinctive ritual practices and objects such as mantras, mandalas, and mudras allow one to attain awakening more quickly.
In the 7th century, a major movement within Mahayana Buddhism arose. This stream of Buddhism, called the Vajrayana, is most prominent in Tibet and its surrounding regions, although forms of it are found in China and Japan. The Vajrayana, literally the “Diamond Vehicle” or the “Thunderbolt Vehicle,” understands itself to be an esoteric form of Mahayana Buddhism with an accelerated path to enlightenment.
This Tibetan tradition sees itself as embodying both the teaching and meditation practice of the Theravada monks, as well as the teaching of the “emptiness” of all conditioned things that is distinctive to Mahayana philosophy. Vajrayana is also called Tantrayana, because it is based on the tantras, the systems of practice which emphasize the indivisibility of wisdom and compassion, symbolized as the union of male and female.
Three terms characterize the practice of Vajrayana, each one of which has overt ritual meanings, inner psychophysical meanings, and secret transcendent meanings:
- Mantra—a syllable or phrase for chanting or meditation, containing within it the sacred power and cosmic energies of a Buddha or bodhisattva. The mantra literally “protects the mind” from negative mental states by invoking these divine energies within oneself.
- Mandala—a “circle” or cosmic diagram for ritual or interior visualization, representing various realms of Buddhas and bodhisattvas and their cosmic energies in two- or three-dimensional forms.
- Mudra—a “symbol” or “ritual gesture,” made by the position of the hands or body, and signifying the qualities and presence of various Buddhas and bodhisattvas in Vajrayana ritual.
Since the Tibetan uprising in 1959, more than 100,000 Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhists have become refugees in India and around the world. The current Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is head of one of the four major lineages of Tibetan monks and leads a Tibetan government in exile in north India. Other Tibetan teachers, called lamas, tulkus, or rinpoches, settled in the United States during the 1960s and 70s, where they attracted a largely Euro-American following. Only in the 1990s did substantial numbers of Tibetan lay Buddhists arrive in the United States. As a result, America is now a place where a centuries-old Vajrayana tradition encounters a decades-old American convert Vajrayana practice.
Source: “Introduction to Buddhism”, The Pluralism Project, Harvard University
