Buddhist Self-Reliance and Devotion

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Pablo_Antuna]Pablo Antuna

Its long and complex history has made the Buddhist tradition extraordinarily diverse.

Buddhism is commonly known for its very austere tradition of self-reliance, found in the early Buddhist monastic community. Relying simply on yourself in order to achieve the experience of nirvana that the Buddha himself achieved. One example of this is the monastic practice in Theravada Buddhist countries of South East Asia, particularly Sri Lanka, where the center of Buddhist activity lies largely in the monastery among a group of yellow-robed monks. They go out in the morning in a very austere and simple way with their begging balls walking from house to house, holding out their balls, taking off the lead, and inviting members of the community providing them with the aids that will sustain them for that day.

One of the classical rules in traditional Buddhism is that monks can’t carry food from one day to the next. Every morning those monks have to go out in their robes with their balls to beg their food. That austere simple tradition is a tradition that really grows right out of the experience of the Buddha, from the earliest stages in the growth of the Buddhist tradition.

You find the same kind of self-reliance in the Zen tradition in Japan. I was just visiting in Japan a couple of weeks ago as part of a conference when I went down to Kyoto, the great imperial capital of Japan, and visited with a Zen master, who was the head of one of the monasteries in one of the monastic compounds, a monastery called Daitoku-ji. I was talking to him and taking photographs. As I focused my camera on him, I told him how important it was going to be for my students to be able to show them a picture of a Zen master, who was clearly so accomplished, and who clearly embodied in a powerful way that tradition. He looked me straight in the eye and said: “I want you to tell them when you speak to them about this tradition: to be courageous, to stand up straight and to rely on themselves”. Like many people in my business have a little bit of a scholars stoop, I found myself just standing a little straighter.

There is also another important aspect of the tradition that insists that is not possible, and perhaps not even desirable, to achieve salvation purely on your own merit, purely relying on your own power. But instead to rely on the power of some deity, some figure that is infinitely greater than you.

One example of this we’ll study in more detail in other articles is the worship of the Amida Buddha by Pure Land Buddhists in Japan. Pure Land Buddhism has come to North America like many other varieties of Buddhism and in some of its manifestations in this country in particular it looks often a lot like Christian devotion.

I was visiting not so long ago one of the Pure Land temples in Hawaii and being the curious scholar that I am, I opened a little hymnal in the back of the temple and looked at it. It had words that seemed mysteriously familiar to me. It began: “Buddha loves me, this I know for the Sutras tell me so”.

Another example of Buddhist devotion with which we’ll occupy some of our attention is Chinese Buddhist devotion to the bodhisattva or Future Buddha, not a Buddha per say, but a deity that will become a Buddha in a future life. The bodhisattva Guan Yin.

Guan Yin is often pictured as a beautiful standing female figure holding a baby. In Chinese civilization, Guan Yin is viewed as being the emodiment of compassion, but of compassion particularly associated with the development of a healthy and happy family and the gift of children.

When I was visiting a Chinese Buddhist pilgrimage site in Shangai, I ran into a group of Chinese Buddhists, ethnic Chinese Buddhists who came from the Philipines and Indonesia. I asked why they had made the long and rather arduous, and rather expensive trip to pay homage to the deity Guan Yin, and they said that it was for the wealth of their family, and particularly for the hope to have children.

This is an aspect of Buddhism that for many people might seem unfamiliar but it too is deeply rooted in the practice of the Indian tradition and we’ll need to occupy some of our attention in Tibet. One of the most important aspects of religious devotion is focused not necessarily on these great celestial figures but on the human beings who embody their power. The Dalai Lama in particular is one of these. People think of the Dalai Lama sometimes as being a living Buddha, technically that’s not correct, he is a living manifestation of the compassion of the same bodhisattva who is manifested as Guan Yin in China. But he too has an extraordinary ability to make the power of compassion present for people. I’ll occupy some articles on the important figure of the Dalai Lama.

Devotion is an important aspect of the Buddhist tradition, not just relying on yourself but in a sense opening yourself to the power that comes from a figure much greater than you.

More about Self-reliance and devotion in Buddhism on my blog.
More about Buddhism Beliefs

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Suffering in Buddhism

The traditional summary of the Buddha’s teaching is given in four categories, the so called Four Noble Truths.

* The Truth of Suffering (Dukkha)

* The Arising of Suffering (Samudaya)

* The Cessation of Suffering (Nirodha)

* The Truth of the Way (Marga) that leads to the cessation of suffering.

Some say that if you understand the Truth of Suffering you understand all of the Four Noble Truths by implication.

The truth of suffering is expressed in the simple claim that All is Suffering. This phrase, the first doctrinal assumption that we will discuss posses a problem for us. It’s not easy to interpret.

If you know Buddhist people, if you are a Buddhist person, you know that the Buddhist tradition is not filled with sadness. It’s not a depressive downbeat tradition. In many respects, it has a kind of lightness.

Buddhism is light, is buoyant, is easy. It almost floats as a religious tradition through the complexity of this world. The basic assertion in the Four Noble Truths, the assertion that all is suffering poses an interpretative dilemma for us.

How do you get from this claim, the claim that all is suffering, to the buoyancy and lightness of Buddhist experience?

The first way to start to answer this question is to note that the ancient tradition of Buddhist teaching interprets the phrase “all is suffering” in three separate ways. Everything is suffering in one or more of three ways.

The Three Kinds of Suffering

The first of these types of suffering is called Dukkha-dukkha. Suffering-suffering. The obvious suffering in situations where things cause you physical or mental pain.

The second kind of suffering is called Viparinama-dukkha. Suffering due to transformation or change. This means that even the most pleasurable things can cause you suffering when they begin to change and pass away.

The third kind of suffering is Sankhara-dukkha. Suffering due to conditioned states. This category of dukkha is associated with pleasurable things that can cause pain even in the midst of the pleasure, if that pleasure is based in an illusion about the nature of the object, or even about the nature of the self.

When I’m speaking about these three kinds of suffering, I try to illustrate them by constructing a parable that may sound contemporary, but I think is related to Buddhist examples that are often used to explain the nature of suffering.

This is a parable about an automobile. I try to imagine scenarios in which the car might cause some kind of suffering. First of all, you got a guy in the automobile driving down the street, he sees his girlfriend on the sidewalk, he waves to her and runs into the back of a bus.

There is a huge crash and what he feels is Dukkha-dukkha. The palpable physical suffering of an automobile accident. That’s easy to understand.

The second kind of suffering comes if you are attached to that car. Many people relate to this, they have automobiles that they love. They don’t have a very good time during the winter. The winter is cruel. There is a lot of ice. People vandalize automobiles. Rust creeps into parts of the vehicle, the front end becomes unbalanced.

As you see, the car begins to disintegrate. It causes you suffering in relation to the pleasure, to the attachment that you have invested in that object, as it begins to slip away from you.

That also is pretty clear. Viparinama-dukkha, the suffering that comes from change is a pretty easy concept to grasp.

The third concept is a bit more difficult. And I’m not so sure much of the time that I’m really able to convey it with this example. The way I do it is to imagine person in the car, fully invested, with all of his ego in this powerful object. Roaring up and down the avenue, feeling the pleasure and energy from being in this powerful embodiment of his manhood.

And ask yourself wether at that moment he is really happy. If you ask him if he is happy, of course he is going to say yes. The pleasure of that experience is extremely satisfying. That can’t be denied. That’s a physical and emotional sensation that grants reality in his own right. But is it real happiness?

I think we know enough about situations like that in our world to begin to question wether that’s the place where satisfaction really comes from. In part because it is based on a certain kind of illusion about the nature of the object, and an illusion about the nature of the self, and how your own ego can become invested in a physical object like that, that will arise and pass away.

Sometimes in some situations, perhaps in many situations, we are suffering in ways that we are not aware of, because of illusions that we have about the nature of our self or about the nature of the objects that populate our world.

That seems to me to be what lies behind this third concept, this third type of suffering, the suffering that is due to conditioned states. To study more deeply this concept you can visit my blog through the links below.
Buddhism Through Buddhist Eyes: My blog about Buddhism where I explain in more detail all the doctrines and also the history of Buddhism.

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