budrelig

VIP免费

2024-12-18 0 0 120.5KB 29 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

E-mail: bdea@buddhanet.net

Web site: www.buddhanet.net

Buddha Dharma Education Association Inc.

Ven. Dr K. Sri Dhammanada

Buddhism as a Religion

Publication of the

Sasana Abhiwurdhi Wardhana Society

Buddhist Maha Vihara,

123 Jalan Berhala,

50470 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

1994 by the author

Malaysian First Edition 1994

Published for Free Distribution

Cover design by

Chong Hong Choo

Typeset by

Infortrans Sdn. Bhd. P. J., Malaysia.

Printed by

Syarikat Percetakan & Perniagaan Acme,

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

ISBN 983-99523-2-3

An Appreciation

In conjunction with the Centenary Celebration of the Sasana Abhiwurdhi

Wardhana Society the Management Committee feels honoured to be able to

publish this book which is based on a Dhamma talk entitled “What is

Buddhism?”, delivered at the Buddhist Maha Vihara by the Most

Venerable Dr. K. Sri Dhammananda Nayake Thera as part of a ten week

course on World Religions.

In brief the contents of this publication are a simple exposition of

Buddhism as a modern way of life by this highly qualified scholar who has

a special gift to interpret the Dhamma to people from every walk of life.

The Sasana Abhiwurdhi Wardhana Society most humbly expresses its

gratitude and pays tribute to the most Venerable for his indefatigable

services in his exposition of the Dhamma and for rendering invaluable

services to the cause of Buddhism for more than 42 years in this country as

well as worldwide.

We are indeed proud to have been associated with someone of his calibre.

In conclusion, the Society wishes to express its sincere thanks to the Chief

Venerable, Mr Vijaya Samarawickrama for the editor) al work and to Mr

Ooi Chooi Seng for transcribing the talk from tape. Grateful thanks are also

due to Ms Chong Hong Choo, Messrs. Jimmy C. S Lim, Alex Perera, Quah

Swee Kheng, Eddy Yu Chen Lim and Bobby Sai for the invaluable services

rendered in the publication of this book.

May they be well and happy!

Manoris H. Albert

President

Sasana Abhiwurdhi Wardhana Society

Buddhist Maha Vihara Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

25th August 1994

Since there are already so many religions in

this world, why is it necessary for us to have

another religion called Buddhism? Is there any

extraordinary characteristic or contribution or

significant feature that Buddhism has which other

religions do not have? There is a school of thought

which says that all religions are essentially the

same. There are no significant differences. The only

difference is in the interpretation and practice. After

all, in the final analysis, all of us end in one place,

either heaven or hell. That is the common belief of

most religions. Does Buddhism share this

viewpoint? To answer this question we have to

examine what is meant by religion.

Definition

In the academic study of religion as a

phenomenon in history the term ‘religion’ can be

considered in its different aspects: as an inner

experience, as theology, or intellectual formulation

of doctrine, as a basis or source of ethics and as an

element in culture.

Different scholars have given different views

and opinions of its nature and meaning. According

to Aldous Huxley, religion is, among other things, a

system of education, by means of which human

beings may train themselves, first to make desirable

changes in their own personalities and in society,

and second, to heighten consciousness and so estab-

lish more adequate relations between themselves

and the universe of which they are parts. Modern

Indian philosophers like Dr. Radhakrishnan, have

expounded the theme that religion is not a set of

doctrines but that it is experience. And religious

experience is based on the realisation of the

‘presence of the divine in man . ‘H.G. Wells says

‘religion is the central part of our education that

determines our moral conduct’. The German

philosopher, Kant, stated that ‘religion is the

recognition of our moral principles as laws that

must not be transgressed.’

The Buddha’s message as a religious way of

life: “Keeping away from all evil deeds, cultivation

of life by doing good deeds and purification of mind

from mental impurities.” For our purposes, religion

may be defined in a very broad sense as a body of

moral and philosophical teachings and the

acceptance with confidence of such teachings. In

this sense, Buddhism is a religion.

Buddhism however does not neatly fit into

the general categories outlined earlier because it

does not share common features with other existing

religions in many ways. To consider this matter

further let us first of all briefly examine how

religion could have come into being.

Beginnings

Why did religion originate? You might have

heard that the origins of religion lie in man’s fear,

suspicion and insecurity. In the days before

organised religions began, people did not have

adequate knowledge and they could not understand

the real nature of this life and what would happen to

them after their deaths. They could not understand

even the causes of natural phenomena or natural

occurrences. According to their ‘limited

understanding, they suspected there must be certain

unknown forces which created all these pleasant or

unpleasant things. Eventually, they began to notice

that there is an energy behind the forces of nature

which they called ‘shakti’. They experienced an

inexplicable sense of awe and dread towards these

powers which they felt could harm them in some

way. They therefore felt that these powers must be

placated and used to protect or at least to leave them

alone. Not trusting their ability to “talk” to these

forces in ordinary language, they thought it would

be more effective to mime their messages. Finally

the actions to enlist the favour of these forces

became ritualized into forms of worship. Some

people were identified as having special powers to

communicate with these forces and they enjoyed

great power in the group.

After worshipping and praying, early men

thought they could control the undesirable

occurrences and at the same time ensure a degree of

protection as reward from these unseen forces or

energies. To help them better visualize what they

were trying to communicate with, they gave each

force a name and a form — either conceiving it in

human or in grotesque non-human form, but always

evoking a sense of awe and fear. As time went by,

they forgot the original significance of these

representations and took them for real and

eventually accepted them as deities.

Different cultures translated ideas and

concepts into physical form and developed

particular rituals to honour and worship these

images as gods. Later as early urban settlements

began and social control became necessary certain

practices were used as the bases to develop moral

behaviour and to guide citizens in the correct path

to ensure the well being of the community. Thus

developed concepts such as humanism, human

responsibilities and human values such as honesty,

kindness, compassion, patience, tolerance, devotion,

unity and harmony. To ensure that these qualities

would be further enhanced, the leaders instilled fear

in the believers, threatening them with punishment

by the gods in the life hereafter if they did not

behave in an accepted manner. Religion was the

result of the fusion of moral behaviour and belief in

the supernatural. We will discuss Morality in

greater detail later.

Concept of God

This is how imagination and humanism

eventually fused together to become religion. Some

people say that it is difficult to believe that any god

created religion. Perhaps we could say that man

created religion and later introduced the concept of

a god into religion. An American philosopher, Prof.

Whitehead, once stated that originally man created

god and later god created man. What he meant was

that the concept of god was created by man and

later this concept was transformed into divinity. On

the other hand, a French philosopher, Anatole

France said that if the concept of god did not exist,

some how or other, man would have created one

because it is very important for his psyche. A divine

power is necessary to allay our innate fear,

suspicion, worries, disturbances, anxiety, craving.

To avoid problems we depend on an external force

to give us solace. Knowing the nature of the human

mind, therefore, Anatole France said that if a god

did not exist we would have to create one.

In this sense we are just like children. When

a small baby is crying and the mother is too busy to

carry it, what she does is to put a teat in its mouth to

comfort it. That will stop the baby from crying. The

concept of god helps many people in this manner,

To stop their worries and dry their tears they

develop various pacifiers in the form of religious

beliefs and practices.

The Buddha

It was in a religious climate such as this that

the Buddha appeared. As a prince living in the lap

of luxury he started to think very deeply on why

living beings suffer in this world. What is the cause

of this suffering? he asked. One day while he was

sitting under a tree as a young boy, he saw a snake

suddenly appear and catch a frog. As the snake and

the frog were struggling, an eagle swooped down

from the sky and took away the snake with the frog

still in its mouth. That incident was the turning

point for the young prince to renounce the worldly

life. He began to think about how living beings on

the earth and in the water survive by preying on

each other. One life form tries to grab and the other

tries to escape and this eternal battle will continue

as long as the world exists. This never-ending

process of hunting, and self preservation is the basis

of our unhappiness. It is the source of all suffering.

The Prince decided that he would discover the

means to end this suffering.

Renunciation

He studied under various religious teachers

and learnt everything they had to teach but was

unable to discover how to end suffering. He spent

many years pondering this question. Finally at the

age of 29 he seriously contemplated on old age,

sickness, death and freedom through renunciation,

and decided that without giving up his worldly

preoccupations and his responsibilities and

pleasures it would be impossible for him to find the

answer. That is why he had to leave the palace in

what is known as “The Great Renunciation”.

After struggling for six years, which represented the

culmination of endless life cycles of cultivation and

struggle for spiritual development, he finally gained

enlightenment and understood the secret of our

suffering. This was the beginning of another

‘religious system’. But it was a religion like nothing

anyone had known in the past. In fact many people

today do not even like to call Buddhism a religion,

because the word ‘religion’ evokes a great many

negative emotions in their minds.

Beliefs and Practices in Ancient India

There was no reason at all for the Buddha to

introduce another religion because at that time 2600

years ago there were already 62 religious cults in India

alone. Since the existing religions during his time

could not provide the answers to his questions he

decided not to use the ingredients or concepts of these

religions to introduce what he himself had realised.

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

eBUDDHANET'SBOOKLIBRARYE-mail:bdea@buddhanet.netWebsite:www.buddhanet.netBuddhaDharmaEducationAssociationInc.Ven.DrK.SriDhammanadaBuddhismasaReligionBuddhismasaReligion1PublicationoftheSasanaAbhiwurdhiWardhanaSocietyBuddhistMahaVihara,123JalanBerhala,50470KualaLumpur,Malaysia.1994bytheauthorAllright...

展开>> 收起<<

budrelig.pdf

共29页,预览6页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

budrelig

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: