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

by Noah Rasheta

The Buddha was known for adapting his teachings to the specific person or audience he was addressing,

It wasn’t until several hundred years after the Buddha’s death that the teachings were finally collected and written down.

He eventually realized that the path to peace was to be found through mental discipline.

Buddha

the wisdom he sought was to be found within himself rather than outside himself,

Buddha, from the Pali and Sanskrit word for “awakened.”

But the idea that the other driver is a selfish, mean person who cut us off intentionally is a fictional narrative we created in our own mind.

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.

Your judgement of the situation is how you view the situation.

Buddha is a word that means “awakened one”

Buddhism teaches that there’s reality as it is, and then there’s reality as we humans perceive or understand it.

Our perception of reality is influenced by how our minds are conditioned; in other words, our ideas, cultural beliefs, concepts, and opinions all directly affect how we see reality.

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A Buddha is someone who is completely liberated from the mistaken perceptions of reality to which we are all so susceptible, thus experiencing nirvana

So anyone who has reached enlightenment can be a Buddha

Because Buddha is a title meaning “awakened one,” there have been many Buddhas throughout history.

One such person was a Chinese Buddhist monk called Budai, also known as the Laughing Buddha or the Fat Buddha.

Should you find a wise critic to point out your faults, follow him as you would a guide to hidden treasure.

in order to really understand enlightenment, a person has to experience certain aspects of it directly.

It cannot be explained

Instead of determining whether these teachings are true or not, we are encouraged to verify if they work or not.

In other words, do these teachings really lead to the reduction, and ultimately the cessation, of suffering?

“the secret of Buddhism is to remove all ideas, all concepts, in order for the truth to have a chance to penetrate, to reveal itself.”

The Buddha’s teachings help us alter that perspective and learn that the unnecessary suffering we experience has more to do with how we see things than with what we see.

It’s an internal change, not an external one, that will bring about the joy and contentment we seek.

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Buddhist teachings are not something you’re meant to believe; they’re something you do—you put them into practice.

The two major branches of Buddhism are Theravada and Mahayana.

Mahayana has several subsets that you may have heard of, like Zen, Tibetan, and Pure Land Buddhism.

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In Theravada Buddhism, it’s to become an arhat,

a practitioner who follows the Buddha’s path and realizes enlightenment.

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In Mahayana Buddhism, the goal is to become...

one who vows not only to become awakened but also to awake...

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Enlightenment is the ultimate goal of all Buddhist teachings and practices,

To be enlightened is to be liberated from our habitual reactivity, freed from our perceptions and ideas in order to see reality as it is without wanting it to be different.

you can enter this state of awakening only through a gateless gate.

As long as you think there is a gate, you will not be able to enter the awakened state.

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you become awakened the moment you realize you don’t need to become awakened—everything you need to know is already present within you.

From the Buddhist perspective, calling ignorance a poison is specifically referring to a lack of understanding about the nature of reality.

We start that process by looking at the things we desire and asking ourselves, “Why?”

Asking this question can help us eliminate the desiree

Clinging to hatred is simply an unwise action because it creates unnecessary suffering

We wouldn’t be able to trade paper money for goods, like bread and milk, unless we collectively believed that a piece of paper or metal had real value.

The Buddha taught that there are three universal characteristics of life, also known as the three marks of existence:

dukkha (suffering), anicca (impermanence), and anattā (nonself). These three concepts form the core of what could be considered the truth in Buddhism.

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all things are constantly changing, and therefore all things are impermanent.

Buddhism teaches that there are three different types of suffering. The first is called “the suffering of suffering.”

pain

The second type of suffering is called “the suffering of loss.”

The third type of suffering is called “the all-pervasive suffering,”

self inflicted

pervasive suffering is self-inflicted, and it generally arises out of an ignorant or delusional understanding of reality.

It tends to have very little to do with our actual circumstances and a lot to do with how we perceive and interpret those circumstances.

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things are because of, and in relation to, other things, but things do not exist by themselves as permanent or separate entities.

Everything is interdependent.

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The Buddhist teaching of nonself says that there is no permanent or fixed you—there’s only a complex web of inseparable, impermanent causes and effects.

A car is the sum of all its parts.

We are a sum of all the processes that make us

There is only the momentary me that is continually changing and being changed by everything around me.

attachment is what we experience when we’re living inside the illusion of a permanent, separate self.