No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

by Noah Rasheta

Liberation is the moment you don’t react to being cut off in traffic—because you don’t know what actually happened, so there’s nothing to react to. Liberation is experiencing reality as it is.

When you see a statue of a fat, bald man with a smile, you’re seeing Budai, not Siddhartha Gautama, on whose teachings Buddhism was founded. To distinguish Siddhartha from other Buddhas, Buddhists often refer to him as either Gautama Buddha or Shakyamuni Buddha

enlightenment can’t be explained; it has to be experienced.

Buddhism is a nontheistic tradition, meaning there’s no need to believe in a deity in order to follow or benefit from these teachings.

“Who is the ‘I’ who wants to know who I am?”

Dalai Lama is quoted as saying, “Do not try to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist; use it to be a better whatever-you-already-are.”

So the goal of meditation isn’t to control our thoughts; it’s to observe them and become more familiar with the inner workings of our minds.

The Buddha was a man and a teacher rather than a deity, so, with few exceptions, statues of the Buddha are not idols, nor are they worshipped. When Buddhists bow to a statue of the Buddha, it is merely as a sign of reverence.

Buddhists treat such images as one might treat an image of a loved one who has passed away.

Flowers wither and die, candles extinguish, incense diffuses into the great oneness that surrounds it, and the sound of the bell slowly fades until it becomes one with the silence that was there before the bell was struck.