Buddhist Thought, Paul Williams & Anthony Tribe

The doctrinal position of the Buddha in context

Preliminiaries

The minimum for becoming a Buddhist is spoken of as three times 'taking the triple refuge.' In its broadest sense, this is taking the Buddha as the final spiritual refuge. He has seen in the most profound way and taught to its utmost extent how things truly are, and has thus liberated himself from the suffering and frustrations which spring from living in a state of confusion and misunderstanding of the true nature of things. It is taking refuge also in the Dharma - how things truly are and the way to incorporate this understanding into one's being. One takes refuge also in the Sangha - the community of those following the Dharma.

The stress is not on belief but on practising the Dharma, following a path, and knowing, directly seeing. Thus one is irrevocably freed from experiences like suffering, unfulfilment and imperfection (Pali: dukkha). Buddhism in therefore a soteriology. The primary orientation is towards the mental transformation of the individual as there are no experiences that are not experiences of individuals and that are not reliant on the mind. This change can only be achieved by one's own active involvement. Buddhism is thus a highly individualistic path of liberation.

Buddhists have no objection to the existence of the Hindu gods, although they completely deny the existence of God as spoken of in e.g. orthodox Christianity - the omnipotent, omniscient, all-good, and primordially existent creator deity. Power does not necessarily entail insight. These gods do not hold the key to final liberation.

There has never existed a pure Buddhism, which has become syncretistically mixed with other religions, even corrupted and degenerate in later forms. Buddhism has always coexisted with other religious beliefs and practices. Its strength lies in its very incompleteness - it has not usually sought to involve itself in every sphere of human ritual activity, since many such things are not conducive to the path.

The Brahmanical doctrinal background

The Dharma consists of the teachings of the Buddha. It is really, really true that:

Most things form part of a causal flow
Physical matter is not in any sense one's true Self (atman)
The state of unenlightenment is dukkha
There is no omnipotent, omniscient, all-good, and primordially existent creator deity, who can be thought of as in some sense a person
The eightfold path will eventually lead to liberation (nirvana)

These are objective truths and are quite independent of the existence of any beings capable of realising those truths.

Looking at the context which produced the Dharma. The Buddha rejected the final religious authority of the social class of brahmins and their scriptures, the Vedas. The centrality of the gods Siva, the ideas of Samkara's Advaita Vedanta, the themes of the Bhagavad Gita, Tantric practices, and so on, developed after the time of the Buddha. The religious practices and beliefs at the time of the Buddha are associated with two radically different categories of practitioners - brahmins and sramins. The religion of the brahmins was pre-eminently that of householders, that of villagers and a set of practices geared to the primacy of harmonious orderered social relationships and prosperity in this world and the next. It evolved from the ideas and practices of the Aryas, migrating speakers of Indo-European languages, who reached India during the second millennium BCE from the grasslands of Southern Russia near the Caspian Sea. The Aryas brought horse-drawn chariots, an early form of Sanskrit, and the earliest scriptures of Indian religion, the Rg Veda. The Vedic religion was based on the offerings of sacrifice. At first the sacrifices were made as offering to the gods in the hope that they would reciprocate but later developed that the gods must reciprocate. The sacrifice is the significant action, the karman i.e. karma.

The esoteric interpretation is a web of magical identifications, the knowing of which bestows power over the identified. That which is the unchanging core of the universe is Brahman (priestly power), the Universal Essence. That which is the unchanging core of oneself is atman, the Personal Essence. atman is actually identical with Brahman. By knowing oneself, by thereby controlling oneself, one knows and controls all.

And after death there will be no more rebirth. The notion of rebirth is not found in the earliest Vedic literature. The idea developed that the ancestors in the world of the fathers needed to be kept alive by further sacrificial offerings on behalf of those who remain behind. With the notion of rebirth comes that of redeath, and the idea of continually dying through all eternity horrified Vedic thinkers. To be born again is not necessarily a problem. But to die again! To perform another sacrifice (karman) simply perpetuated the problem.

This crystallised into an opposition between the householder religious world (associated with the brahmins), and a complete renunciation of the householder state and a search for a practice that would liberate from the abyss of redeath. The Buddha was a renouncer who had "gone forth from home to homelessness," seeking to know the liberating truth. He was a member of the sramanas, the drop outs.

The concept of Dharma is probably the most important concept for understanding Indian religion and classical civilisation. In the Brahmanic perspective is not easy for a modern Westerner to understand as it combines the facets of how things actually are and how things ought to be. It is discovered not created.

If significant ritual and social action (karman) leads to rebirth and redeath, then such actions are suspect, particularly sacrificial ones. Desire gives rise to action that generates results which will involve a heavenly rebirth and hence redeath, forever. Some might try to discipline their body into less and less action, or less and less dependence upon actions, even involuntary ones. They might also try to overcome all desires. Harsh austerities would not be accepted within the Brahmanic world. For some of these renunciates, the means to attaining the liberating truth lay not just in finding someone who would whisper it to them. It also lay in bringing about altered states of consciousness through concentrative and meditative practices such that access to the truth could be gained in a paranormal of supersensory way.

Buddhism is a gnostic soteriology. Crucial to being liberated is knowing something, something the not knowing of which by nearly everyone else explains their state of non-liberation. Contrasting with the centrality of karman among Brahmanic householders is the centrality of knowing (jnana = gnosis) among renunciates. Liberation comes not from actions (it is not as such a matter of "good karma"), but from knowing the salvific truth. Buddhism is a disciplined course of action based upon knowing something so important and in such a fundamental way that it finally and irrevocably liberates the knower from all unpleasant states and experiences, notably that of continued rebirth and redeath.

In declaring the Dharma, the Buddha began his teaching (sasana) by declaring that the Brahmanic Dharma was not objective truth but mere convention. It leads not to final liberation but only to repeated redeath.

How to read the hagiography of the Buddha

The Buddha who founded the present sasana is called Gautama, Sanskrit: Sakyamuni Buddha - the sage (muni) of the Sakya clan. There is a later suggestion that his personal name was Siddhartha, although this is not proven. He was born in southern Nepal, in the Himalayan foothills, and he lived for about eighty years. He wandered around with no hair, simple robes of a dusty colour, very few possessions, and begged and taught for a living. He was a teacher and example rather than a fiery prophet. The Buddha wrote nothing and it is not clear if he was literate.

It is self-evidently appropriate to start the study of a religion with the life story of the founder, only if the life story is a crucial preliminary to understanding what follows. That is, if it were true that we could not understand the Dharma without first understanding the Buddha's life story. If the Buddha did not exist then someone else existed who rediscovered the Dharma. The life story becomes important subsequently to show that the teachings are valid and for illustrating themes of the teachings themselves.

We do not even know when the Buddha lived - the 486 BCE date for his death is in widespread doubt. This uncertainty should also suggest extreme caution regarding the details of Buddha's traditional life.