Buddhism: 330 Million gods, Yet None!

Siddhartha Gautama was born in India at a time of religious ferment in the 5^th century BC.  On the one hand, people were living in extreme indulgence, figuring they had plenty of future lives to focus upon spiritual matters.  On the other hand, there were popular extreme forms of asceticism.  People renounced everything—personal possessions and all ties to society in order to live a life of solitude dedicated to spiritual meditation in order to reach Brahmin and be released from the eternal wheel of reincarnation.

 

Gautama tasted both extremes: one as the prince of his clan in the luxuries of his palace, and the other when he left home at the age of 29 to live the life of a wandering ascetic under the leadership of a couple Hindu priests.  He was particularly interested in finding the cause of human suffering and release from it.  He did not find the answer in either extreme.  After a lengthy period of meditation toward the end of his time as an ascetic, he experienced an enlightenment, which provided him with the knowledge he sought.  From this time on he became known as “The Buddha,” which means “awakened one” or “enlightened one.” 

 

He spent the rest of his life advocating a “middle way,” a path of moderation to end suffering.  He organized his teaching, the content of his enlightenment, into four basic truths: first, to live is to suffer.  Second, suffering is caused by desires.  Third, end desires and suffering will cease.  Fourth, a person can end desires by following an eightfold path, which is a list of proper thoughts, actions and instructions for obtaining wisdom.  The first truth explores the depths of suffering.  From birth to death, life is full of pain; not only tragedies, but the end of everything good.  Buddha taught that absolutely nothing is permanent.  He rejects the notion of a personal permanent soul and any notion of a supreme absolute being or God, like Brahmin or the God of the Bible.  Everything in the phenomenal world is part of a causal chain of events.  There is no first cause.  The second truth relates suffering to insatiable desires for possessions, power, people and permanence.  Suffering is caused by wanting what cannot be obtained, at least not for long.  The most difficult desire to abandon is the idea of a self.  People, for Buddha, are like an onion.  Peel back all the layers and there is nothing at the core.  Or, consider a car.  “Car” is simply a conventional term we use to reference a machine made of many parts.  Is there some kind of “car” essence at the center? No.  People are similar for Buddha.  They are made up of parts that come together, but there is nothing permanent at the center of an individual.  Third, by ending these desires, suffering stops.  While the idea of a self may be the most difficult desire to give up, it is also the cause of the greatest suffering and often responsible for keeping a person in the endless wheel of reincarnation.  The last truth gives the steps necessary to begin to extinguish desires.  When all desires are extinguished through numerous lives nirvana is reached, which includes a deep abiding inner peace and escape from rebirth upon one’s death.

 

While the path to Nirvana is supposed to be a modest path between extreme indulgence and extreme self-denial, it is no easy pursuit.  Within a few centuries of Buddha’s death, several schools emerge with radically different applications of the four basic Buddhist truths.  These range from an emphasis upon a solo monastic life to a very complicated reliance upon heavenly beings to assist with the journey toward enlightenment and Nirvana.  As with Hinduism, Buddhism places a strong emphasis upon the practice of meditation.