Introducing Buddha: A Graphic Guide (Graphic Guides)

by Borin Van Loon

The first of the Four Noble Truths is the truth of suffering. Suffering is an approximate translation of the Pali word dukkha. Dukkha implies impermanence, imperfection and unsatisfactoriness. The Buddha did not start teaching by talking of his enlightenment, of bliss or openness or clarity; he started by talking about the truth of suffering. Many people believe that the Buddha’s teaching are pessimistic because of the emphasis on suffering. Representations of the Buddha always portray a radiant and serene appearance, and one of the most common observations about practitioners of Buddhism is that they can combine total seriousness of purpose with a real sense of fun and enjoyment. The Dalai Lama is a good example of this.

The peace and equanimity of the Buddha comes from an acceptance of the transitory nature of life.

Normally, we create goals towards which we are travelling. We hope to achieve ultimate everlasting security and this keeps us continually preoccupied. We are constantly swimming towards what we think is the shore, what we think will be the answer to the problem, whether it be a new love affair, the cure for an illness, a way to stay young or the reward of heaven.

The Sanskrit word for this circular chain is samsara. Samsaric existence is endless, so long as we live in ignorance.

Suffering begins from basic bewilderment. From that fundamental bewilderment of not knowing who or what we are, we base our perceptions on an idea of ourselves as a permanent entity. That so-called permanent entity is known as “ego”. When we look for this sense of self, there is nothing concrete or real or solid that we can call “me”. This leads to constant insecurity. Not seeing the truth of impermanence and egolessness, we suffer because we do not know who we are. The more we cling to the belief in a self, the more pain and alienation we feel. All human beings have experienced glimpses of enlightenment. The end of suffering is enlightenment, Nirvana! Enlightenment cannot be described, only experienced. Moments when the self-important “I” does not interfere, moments of total immediacy when the mind is not caught up in memories of the past or in daydreams of the future but is totally involved in the present moment – such moments can happen at any time. These glimpses of nowness are vivid and give a stark contrast to habitual mind and its struggles. All of the Buddha’s teachings are a means to experiencing this for ourselves, not as a theoretical exercise but as direct experience.

Enlightenment is the total sense of freedom that comes from letting go of the concept of being an individual “self”. It is a long journey towards being able to trust that such freedom is possible.

In meditation practice, we learn to let go of the thoughts and fantasies that block the direct intuitive experience of who and what we really are. Our constant mental activity is what maintains the illusion of a separate self, and this effort makes us weary. Most of us are always engaged in some activity, and if we are not active we are talking to ourselves.

We are preoccupied with the past, which has already happened, and we are pre-occupied about the future, which does not yet exist. We worry about what will happen and we think about various things that make us feel anxious, frustrated, passionate, angry, resentful, afraid. While we are so preoccupied, our awareness of the here-and-now slips by and we hardly notice its passing. We eat without tasting, we look without seeing and live without ever perceiving what is real. Meditation practice is not concerned with perfecting concentration, or getting rid of thoughts, or trying to be peaceful. The practice merely provides a space in which we can relate simply with our body, our breath and the environment. Thoughts simply occur within a larger space. In that simple situation, we bring our attention back again and again from fantasy to the simple reality of being in the present moment.

Karma literally means “action” – it is the law of cause and effect. Karma is both the power latent within action and the results our actions bring. Each action, even the smallest, will have consequences. To a Buddhist, therefore, every action, thought or word is important and has consequences.

According to Tibetan tradition, however, the teaching is divided into three distinct yanas or vehicles: the Hinayana, the Mahayana and the Vajrayana. Hinayana literally means “Lesser Vehicle” but it would be more accurate to call it the “Narrow Way”. The Hinayana is narrow in the sense that the strict discipline of meditation narrows down or tames the speed and confusion of mind. It allows simple and direct experience of the mind. As well as the discipline of meditation, the Hinayana also stresses the importance of discipline, of being attentive to conduct.

It is not known whether the Buddha taught all three yanas. What is clear is a continuity of experience running through all the stages, and that they remain remarkably true to the original inspiration of the Buddha’s teaching. Without a proper grounding in Hinayana and Mahayana, it is impossible to step onto the sudden and colourful path of Vajrayana. The relationship of the three stages is depicted in a traditional metaphor. The Hinayana is the foundation of the palace of enlightenment; the Mahayana provides its walls and superstructure; the Vajrayana is its culminating and golden roof – depending on the other yanas for its existence, but providing them with a regal completion. Without a strong foundation in discipline, nothing further can be accomplished.

But we’ve paid for a ticket! The Mahayana, which arose in the 1st century, is called the Greater Vehicle because its approach opened the way of liberation to ordinary people as well as monks. Seeing themselves as the sole preservers of the word of the Buddha, the monastic community had degraded ordinary householders to the status of mere almsgivers. The monks were given an opportunity to lead a relatively privileged life, but instead of helping the lay community, began to isolate themselves. Teachings related to meditation and more psychological subjects were taught only among the monks. The Buddha himself had strongly discouraged this inward tendency and had always encouraged his followers to go out into the world. From one of the Buddha’s discourses: Go forth, monks, and wander for the gain of many, for the welfare of many, out of compassion for the

This encouragement had been forgotten, and the early monastic sangha had sought flight from the world. By avoiding all contact with ordinary life, they thought that they could avoid suffering.

The followers of the Mahayana returned to the original inspiration of the Buddha to develop compassion for all beings. They felt that the only liberation possible was one in which the experience could be used to further the welfare of others. Individual liberation was impossible if other people were suffering. Can there be happiness when all living creatures suffer? Can you be saved and hear the whole world cry? The new ideal became the Bodhisattva whose outstanding quality was compassion and who would infinitely delay his or her own enlightenment until all beings were freed. In this way, the entire world was drawn into the process of liberation. Individual suffering was overcome by a compassion that was so all-embracing that personal sorrow lost its meaning. Paradoxically, if we accept our own suffering and fully relate it with the suffering of others, we transform that pain into a means of liberation. The ideal of the Bodhisattva transformed early Buddhism which had sought escape from the world, and changed it from a collection of schools – all claiming to possess the true interpretation of the Buddha’s teaching - into a world religion in which individual freedom takes second place to a sense of responsibility for the liberation of all beings. Compassion and empathy for one’s fellow beings becomes more important than escape from one’s own suffering. To the followers of the Mahayana, the historical Buddha became less important. During the Buddha’s lifetime he had been a l...

Buddhism in India flourished under the patronage of kings and wealthy lay people. In the 3rd century, Buddhism received a tremendous boost by being taken up by the Emperor Ashoka. I have become sickened by the terrible carnage of warfare. I must find a better way to govern. To establish the path of non-violence as a way of life in his empire, he emphasized the Buddhist way of life, social action and compassionate equal justice for all. His rule was outstandingly humane. He set up hospitals for both humans and animals, had wells dug all over India and supported all the different religious traditions in the country. Ashoka helped to establish Buddhism as a popular religion, where formerly it had been mainly restricted to the educated and privileged classes.

Words are not the highest reality, nor’ what is expressed in words the highest reality. Why? Because the highest reality is an experience which cannot be entered into by means of statements’ regarding it. Poetry and visual symbols come much closer to reality. The mind must be in a state of wisdom to understand wisdom.

The gateway to practising the Mahayana path is known as Maitri or kindness to oneself. When we look around, we see the whole world struggling with that vulnerability and tenderness, trying to build solid protection against being touched. The development of maitri comes about when we start to accept negativity as part of the path. We have to make friends with ourselves and be kind to those aspects of ourselves we like least. Learning to be kind to ourselves brings the discovery that fundamentally we are quite soft. We become hard when we habitually deny our own woundedness and blame others for causing our pain. In admitting our own hurt, we become soft and vulnerable. The Mahayana teachings proclaim that all beings possess tenderness, as well as an intrinsic wakefulness which is called Buddha nature. The discovery of Buddha nature leads to the development of compassion. Compassion is the natural expression of self-existing goodness.

The essence of Mahayana practice is developing compassion by training the mind to reverse ego’s normal logic of self-centredness. Mahayana practice trains us to identify our true enemy as ego-clinging rather than locating enemies in the outside world.

The actions of a Bodhisattva must have vision, must have understanding which transcends that of centralized ego. The Bodhisattva is not trying to be good or kind, he does not mix good intention with confusion. His communication with the world is spontaneously compassionate. This spontaneous compassion comes from having cut through all conceptualizations by the force of discriminating awareness or prajna. Prajna is fully liberated intelligence. It does not depend on the confirmation of ego and is traditionally symbolized by a sharp two-edged sword which cuts through all confusion. Prajna cuts through conceptualized versions of goodness, otherwise our version of compassion could be thoroughly aggressive, forcing our kindness down people’s throats. Without prajna, the goodness of the bodhisattva would be mere piousness. Without conscious effort therefore, the Bodhisattva spontaneously helps others. Shantideva, the great 8th century Mahayana teacher writes in his treatise Entering the Mahayana Path: We should become like a bridge that travellers walk over, like moonlight that cools the heat of passion, like medicine that cures disease, or like the sun which illuminates the darkness of ignorance. True compassion is the result of experiencing sunyata. ‘Sunya’ means empty; and ‘ta’ means ‘ness’. The doctrine of emptiness is the essential teaching of Mahayana. It is the ultimate truth of non-ego. The experience of sunyata occurs as a glimpse of unconditioned mind. There is no dwel...

The Madyamika school was founded by Nagarjuna around the 2nd century AD. In legend, Nagarjuna was taught by the Nagas, water-serpent deities who guard Buddhist scriptures that have been placed in their care because humanity was not ripe for their reception. The important school which Nagarjuna founded put forward no views of its own, but shows in its thousands of texts the self-contradiction inherent in any fixed view about the nature of reality. Wittgenstein and Nagarjuna would have understood one another. Although to scholars the Madyamika appears as a philosophical critique, its main purpose is meditational, being to expose the absurdity of holding all views, thereby allowing the mind to rest free of all dualistic thought formations. This is the realization of sunyata.

This school, established by two brothers, Asanga and Vasubandhu around the 4th century, holds that all things are reducible to mind only or perception only. Things exist only as processes of knowing, not as “objects"; thus outside the knowing process, they have no reality. The external world is thus “purely mind”. According to Yogacara, mind has six kinds of sense consciousness which arise from what is known as the alaya or store-consciousness. Jungian scholars see similarities between this and Jung’s “collective unconscious”. Yogacara was not just a philosophical exercise, however, and is a useful tool in meditation because it emphasizes the immediacy of experience.

The truth is less simple. Elements of Buddhism filtered into China along the Silk Route from around the 1st century. In S.E. Asia, Buddhism had been assimilated into the prevailing cultures with relative ease. China was a different story! It now confronted an unfriendly, ancient and colossal empire, dominated by very clearly defined political and social ideas and customs that had developed over centuries. China felt itself to be superior in every way to neighbouring countries and was not sympathetic to this new barbarian cult with its doctrines of individual liberation.

Confucianism upheld the ideal of a stable, harmonious social order in which everyone knew their place. Correct ritual was all important and every aspect of life was subject to clear rules of behaviour. Confucianism was very much a religion of “this” world and its followers instinctively objected to a religion that seemed to encourage the abandonment of worldly ties for the pursuit of vague spiritual objectives.

Taoism, the other great Chinese faith was very different. The Taoists were very un-Confucian in their dislike to the social world, which they considered artificial and dishonest. They advocated a return to simplicity and harmony with the natural world. Their ideal was ‘wu wei’, non-doing or non-action, which is not intent upon result and is not concerned with deliberate good works or consciously laid plans. They said that if one was in harmony with Tao, the “Cosmic Way”, the answer would make itself clear when action was called for, and then one would not act according to deliberate and pre-conceived ways but according to the divine and spontaneous mode of wu-wei, which is the mode of action of Tao itself. The irreverent flavour of Taoism is exemplified in the following story called Lao Tzu’s Wake, written by Chuang Tzu. There were three friends discussing life. Can men live together and know nothing of it? Work together and produce nothing? Can they fly around in space and [forget to exist, world without end? The three friends looked at each other and burst out laughing. They had no explanation, and thus they were better friends than before. Then one friend died. Confucius sent a disciple to help the other two chant his obsequies. The disciple found that one friend had composed a song, while the other played a lute. Hey, Sung Hui Where’d you go? Hey, Sung Hui Where’d you go? You have gone Where you really were” And we are here - Damn it! We are here! Then the disciple of ...

The school of Buddism which had the most influence on the future was the Chan school, later known as Zen.

Zen points to enlightenment being found in the present moment, and all of its methods are to wake the student up to the understanding. More than any other school, it stresses the prime importance of the enlightenment experience and the uselessness of religious ritual and intellectual analysis for the attainment of liberation.

Traditionally, the Buddha himself was said to be the originator of Zen. When he was teaching at Vulture Peak Mountain, several thousand people arrived to hear him talk. He sat in front of them in silence. Time went past and there was still silence. At last, he held up a flower, Nobody understood the gesture except Mahakashyapa, who smiled, having understood that words were not a substitute for the living flower. He understood the essence of the Buddha’s teaching on the spot, and with this, the first transmission from mind to mind took place. This lineage of transmission which began then is of primary concern in Zen, since the authenticity of the enlightenment experience can only be carried out by an enlightened teacher. This direct transmission from teacher to student has kept Zen vital and alive through the centuries.

Koan study was an entirely new development unique to Zen. A koan is a phrase of the Buddha, a teaching on Zen realization or an episode from the life of a teacher. Each koan points to the nature of ultimate reality. Paradox is essential, as it transcends conceptual or logical thought. The first koan was a phrase of Hui-Neng. A monk asked him: How do I get rid of ignorance? Cease running after things, stop thinking about what is right and wrong but just see, at this very moment, what your original face was like before your mother and father were born. We are conditioned to form conceptual answers to questions and it comes as a shock to find there is no answer which fits the question. Koan study is specifically designed to short-circuit the whole intellectual process and experience reality directly. The answers to koans often seem like witty aphorisms, but to the student absorbed in the koan, the experience is life and death. Some books list the “correct” answers to koans, but without the process of dropping conceptual mind, intellectually knowing the answers is useless. However, the tradition which had been so alive, became ritualized: every detail of the practice became regularized and koan study became a ritualized formal activity. Around the 10th century, Buddhism in China lost its power; the priests were mainly involved in performing weddings and funerals and exorcising evil spirits. By this time, the living spirit of the tradition had transferred to Japan.