What Gautam Buddha originally teaches?
Very little is known about Gautam Buddha, but in fact a lot of
modern buddhism dogma and stories are made up by his followers.
Everything that we heard about the biography of Gautam Buddha is
hear-say through ancient scriptures which were written after
details related to him were passed by generations orally. It is
stated that Gautama Siddartha was a North Indian Prince who lived
between 563 and 479 BC and later on came to be known as Buddha or
Enlightened One. It is stated that Queen Maya died seven days after
giving birth to Gautama and Prince Siddhartha is said to have gone
to Trayastrimsa Heaven and stayed there for three months to preach
supreme knowledge to his mother. Astrologers had stated that Prince
Siddhartha would become a great sage on growing up if he came to
know of the sufferings of mankind and in order to prevent this from
happening his father King Suddhodana tried to prevent access of the
outside world to Prince Siddartha and offered him all the worldly
pleasures so that he could turn out to be a worthwhile king but its
stated that nothing can change destiny but a visit to the kingdom
changed all where he saw the sufferings of mankind and he left his
kingdom to go on to become an ascetic. Lord Buddha tried self
mortification for six years but failed and traveled to Gaya and sat
under a fig tree to gain enlightenment. Here he achieved what he
wanted and became Buddha, a person who was released from
consciousness of suffering.
Gautam Buddha, like Jesus, is a great teacher of good and
compassionate. Both actually did not form a dogma, neither did they
claim to be enlightened or being God at all. They both formed their
idea of good under the background they are in. The ultimaum that
they concluded is that good is right way, they did not claim they
grasp the universe of the truths. It is their followers being
superstitous and fabulous made up the dogma, fables and tales, and
made them to be God, and made their religions authoritative of the
truths they say. And so said the dogmas of the religions, that are
not originally taught by Buddha or Jesus.
Gautam Buddha was so shock when he first saw the sufferings of
the people. He could never ever imagine this before, because it
truly was so very pleasurable in his palace. He had a wife and a
son. He was so shock that he could not accept it, that he abandoned
his family and his responsiblity as a prince to find the truth to
relieve his turmoil. He seeked out the Hindu religion and followed
many teachers and practice mediatations to achieve nirvana. But
however when each stage of mediatation level of peace he reached,
he still found it not satisfied and very lacking. And thus went to
seek other teachers and went thru several stages of mediatations.
And he practised strict ascetism no food under mediation. In the
end, although he gained greater peace for each stage, he found them
to be lacking and peace is never eternal in fact. Finally under fig
tree, he changed his thinking. He asked for food and he partaked
food while mediatation, although a lot of practitioners scorned at
him for doing so. Then he realised that modernation is the way, not
the strict ascetism. What the modernation is the middle way. Then
he realised what stupidity he was to abandon what he had to do. And
there is no true enlightenment just by mediating all day long with
strict ascetism. So he stopped the self mortifictation practise,
instead he returned back and practised compassion to the people. He
knew that man needs to understand his situation and therefore think
postively in each situation to move forward. He now saw the social
injustice caused by indian caste system, and he seeked to remove
it. The end of sufferings is when one practise compassion above all
and by practising compassion, we achieve towards stage of nirvana.
He taught that we should rely on ourselves, not on scriptures, not
on your caste, not on your riches, not on others, or not even on
your inward nature. We achieve nirvana by what we do, not how good
our inward nature is. Although he still accepted Hindu scriptures
teaching on rebirth and karma as truth, he no longer emphasize them
and use them as the excuse for sufferings.
People loved Gautam Buddha. He was a good great prince, who did
everything for the people. But he was never a god or he thought
himself to be enlightened or not. After he died, people made up
dogmas from worshipping him to holy respecting him above gods. As
basically Buddha did not teach any dogma, as compared to Hinduism
with strong dogmas and scriptures backing. There is a gradual
decline of Buddhism. In 13th century, Buddhism is completely
vanished from land of its birth. What remains is at Tibet and those
who brought out Buddhism out of India reinvented Buddhism in their
country like China. Many say buddhism disappearance from India is
the greatest supreme irony that good religion fails, but it is not.
It is expected.
So choose now you want to be Idol worshippers or Buddha-nature
followers,
alternatively Churchtainity or True Christianity. If Buddha will
come alive today, he will be pai-se and say plz dooon’t carve the
whole earth planet to be my buddha head lah.
Your post contains some truths and some misunderstandings.
Here are a few points:
1) The first paragraph is accurate. Second paragraph onwards
there are errors. For example, you said Buddha did not claim to be
enlightened, which is false. The Buddha had on *many* occasions
claim complete awakening. However, he does not claim to be God,
because in Buddhism there is no God (creator).
And I quote from Buddha regarding his awakening:
"Monks, the Tathagata (Thus Come One/Buddha) — the worthy
one, the rightly self-awakened one, who from disenchantment with
form, from dispassion, from cessation, from lack of clinging
(for form) is released — is termed 'rightly
self-awakened.'"
2) Both Buddha and Jesus teach compassion, however, compassion
is not the main thing the Buddha taught. As dharma teacher Loppon
Namdrol points out:
Whoever is attached to a result for this life, is not a Dharma
person.
The purpose of Dharma is liberation, not feeling better in this
life. The purpose of Dharma is not the cultivation of mundane
compassion, and so on.
The purpose of Dharma is to control afflictions, then overcome
them, and finally, to attain a state of total omniscience and
freedom.
3) Likewise, just being good is not the main purpose of Buddha's
teachings. Buddha's teachings aim to end suffering, and even though
'being good, avoiding evil' is part of the path, that by itself
does not lead to enlightenment or the end of suffering/nirvana. It
only leads to good karma and rebirth in heaven, which are
temporary.
4) You rightly pointed out that Buddha sought the end of
suffering and first seeked the instructions of teachers who taught
him how to enter meditative absorptions (jhanas), in particular the
7th and 8th formless jhanic state (the jhana of nothingness and the
jhana of neither perception nor non-perception). Such high
meditative states of absorption however did not bring the insight
that leads to the end of suffering. It does not lead to
enlightenment. You are also right that ascetism and bodily
mortification does not lead to enlightenment, and moderation
(a.k.a. 'the middle way') is what leads to enlightenment.
That said, what happened immediately after he renounced those
ascetic practices is not 'So he stopped the self mortifictation
practise, instead he returned back and practised compassion to the
people.'
Practicing mundane compassion alone will not lead to
enlightenment. What leads to enlightenment is insight practice, the
contemplation into the nature of dharmas, the nature of anicca
(impermanence), dukkha (unsatisfactoriness), and anatta (non-self)
- the three dharma seals, as well as the contemplation into the
truth of Dependent Origination. Through contemplating Dependent
Origination, the Buddha attained the final release.
At first, he did not want to teach because he thought nobody
will understand him. However after the request by brahma sahampati
to spread the dharma, he followed thus and taught the dharma to
sentient beings.
5) You are right about the fact the Buddha rejected the caste
system. However, compassion isn't the cause of insight - however
compassion is a skillful mental quality, and furthermore if you do
not wish to stop at the level of personal liberation (arhantship)
and wishes to further your practice into Buddhahood, then the
aspiration to practice the Bodhisattva path which includes
generation of great compassion (the compassion to lead other
sentient beings to liberation), is important. However
compassion alone does not lead to wisdom, and compassion without
wisdom only leads to rebirth in higher samsaric
realms.
6) Regarding 'We achieve nirvana by what we do, not how good our
inward nature is.', no, Nirvana is achieved not by moral deeds, but
by contemplating the nature of reality (as described above). In
other words, do vipassana meditation (in contrast to samatha
meditation which leads to concentrative absorptions but not insight
- such practices does not in itself lead to enlightenment but may
serve as a stable foundation for insight practice)... if that is
what you mean by 'what we do' then I agree. Simply being moral
alone does not lead to liberation - lots of people are morally
upright and religion is not the sole arbiter of morality, as I
always say: morality is not the monopoly of religions,
religion cannot claim to be the authority of morality. Morality is
something even non-religious people should know.
