Buddhism is often
thought of as peaceful, and the Dalai Lama often thought of as an example of a
great person, but this is not completely so – e.g., some Buddhist monks have
been involved in illegal activities in Thailand, and violence in Sri Lanka; the
Dalai Lama has caused a bit of controversy over ‘excommunicating’ one
particular sect … and I’ve come across some very non-inclusive views about
sexuality in Buddhism. Nevertheless, I consider this religion better than many
other religions, some of which have a particularly blood-soaked history.
I no longer consider
myself a Buddhist, and I never attained any great level of scholarship when I
was a Buddhist (my emphasis was more on
living the philosophy, rather than being able to quote books and texts and commentaries),
but I will have a go at giving a brief overview of the religion (or is it more of a philosophy?).
Anyway, it all dates
back to the time of Siddhartha Gautama, who was considered to have been born in
India around 500 years before the Christians’ Jesus (and hence places such as Thailand have a system of numbering years
which is about 500 years ahead of that used in Western cultures). Gautama
was claimed to have been born into a privileged family, with a father who knew
of a prophecy that his son would leave the family and therefore tried
everything he could to prevent his son learning of the ‘real world’ and its
suffering. That failed, so Gautama took off, and tried to attain enlightenment
by austerity (by ‘mortifying the body’), but that didn’t work, so he
meditated, and after having started with an
extremely hedonistic life, and then experiencing an
extremely austere life, came up with what is today called ‘the Middle Way’.
Now, I am summarising more than I should here, but the Middle Way is generally
considered to be encapsulated in ‘Four Noble Truths’, which are:
1.
that all life involves suffering;
2.
that ‘desire’ is the cause of suffering;
3.
that ending desire will end suffering; and
4.
that the Eightfold Path is the way to send
desire.
(Desire is not quite what people in the west would normally classify as
desire: I would tend to describe it as being more about materialism than
hedonism … but that is not quite right, either. Oh well, if you’re interested,
you can look it up :) )
The Eightfold Path
comprises:
1. Right views
2. Right thought
3. Right speech
4. Right behaviour
5. Right livelihood
6. Right effort
7. Right mindfulness
8. Right concentration
Interpreting what
constitutes ‘right thinking’ is where all the texts come in that I mentioned I
didn’t take any notice of …
Still, I have heard
people mention the ‘amazing auras’ of Buddhists, and comment on the
cheerfulness of some adherents – and I get quite a bit from the Tibetan
Buddhist practise of tonglen
(oh, Buddhism tends to take on a
different flavour in each country it goes to, which means it will be
interesting to see what comes of Buddhism’s journey to the West …), but
some Western people who take to Buddhism are absolute pains. One, in fact, when
I was helping to organise the Victorian Queer Spirituality Conference in 2005
was so clearly not practising the principles of Buddhism in everyday life that
I considered the person the equivalent of the ‘Sunday Christians’, and decided
to stop including Buddhism in my religious identification.
Rather a pity,
actually, as the essence of Buddhism is, in many ways, compassion, which is
akin to the Christian essence of unconditional love …
As of the time this
definition was written, I’ve touched on this idea in the following posts:
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