[ebook.nsO] [buddhism] Fundamentals of Buddhism - Alf Inge Fredriksen.pdf

VIP免费

2024-12-24 0 0 257.88KB 136 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

E-mail: bdea@buddhanet.net

Web site: www.buddhanet.net

Buddha Dharma Education Association Inc.

Dr Peter D. Santina

Fundamentals

of Buddhism

Fundamentals

of Buddhism

CONTENTS

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

XI.

XII.

FOREWORD

BUDDHISM — A MODERN PERSPECTIVE

THE PREBUDDHIST BACKGROUND

LIFE OF THE BUDDHA

THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS PART I

THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS PART II

MORALITY

MENTAL DEVELOPMENT

WISDOM

KARMA

REBIRTH

DEPENDENT ORIGINATION

THE THREE UNIVERSAL CHARACTERISTICS

THE FIVE AGGREGATES

CONCLUSION

103

113

125

133

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

THE GIFT OF TRUTH EXCELS ALL GIFTS.

BY THE MERIT OF THIS VIRTUE,

MAY ALL THE SPONSORS BE WELL AND HAPPY,

AND ATTAIN THE BLISS OF NIRVANA.

FOREWORD

Buddhism has long been an important part of the

cultural heritage of South East Asia. The monuments of

Angkor Wat in Cambodia and Borobudur in Indonesia are

just two of countless testimonies to the former greatness

of Buddhism in this region. In Singapore too Buddhism is

an important element in the cultural heritage of the people.

The fact that a large section of the Chinese Community as

well as the small but influential Srilankan Community

acknowledge Buddhism as the primary force shaping their

religious ideals and moral values is more than proof of

this. Nonetheless, it is certain that if Buddhism is to

continue to exercise a positive influence upon present and

future generations, it cannot remain content with the

achievements of the past. The religious ideals and moral

values of Buddhism which have proved so useful to past

generations must be transmitted to men and women living

in a changing world. In order that this can be accomp-

lished, it is important that the teachings of the Buddha be

made available to the largest number of people.

With this objective in mind, the Srilankaramaya

Buddhist Temple invited Dr Santina to deliver a series

of public lectures. The lectures outlined the funda-

mentals of Buddhism and were well delivered. As a

result, it was decided to produce transcriptions of the

lectures and publish them in the form of a book to be

made freely available. It is also hoped that the

publication will contribute in a small degree to the

understanding of the genuine teachings of the Buddha.

Sincerest thanks are extended to all those who lent

their invaluable support and contribution to this project

and especially to Dr Santina for imparting to us his deep

understanding of the Buddha Dharma.

N Sumana Thera

Resident Monk

SRILANKARAMAYA

BUDDHIST TEMPLE

SINGAPORE

VESAK 1984

BUDDHISM: A MODERN PERSPECTIVE

We are going to cover what we might call basic

Buddhist teachings over a series of twelve lectures. We

are going to cover the life of the Buddha, the Four

Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, Karma, rebirth,

dependent origination, the three universal characteristics

and the five aggregates. But before I begin the series of

lectures, I would like to deal today with the notion of

Buddhism in perspective. There are many ways in

which different people in different cultures view

Buddhism and particularly, I think we can contrast the

western or modern attitude towards Buddhism with the

traditional attitude. The reason why this kind of per-

spective study is useful is because when we understand

how people of different cultures view a certain thing, we

can then begin to see some of the limitation or one-

sidedness of our own view.

In the west, Buddhism has aroused extensive

interest and sympathy. There are many persons of

considerable standing in western societies who are either

Buddhists or who are sympathetic towards Buddhism.

This is most clearly exemplified by the remark made by

Albert Einstein in his autobiography, the remark that he

was not a religious man, but if he were one, he would be

a Buddhist. This is quite surprising, and off-hand we

would not expect such a remark to be made by the

Father of Modern Science. Yet if we look at contem-

porary western societies, we will find an astrophysicist

who is a Buddhist in France, we will find an outstanding

psychologist who is a Buddhist at the University of

Rome, and until recently a judge from England who is a

Buddhist. We will look into the reasons for this interest

in Buddhism in the west in a moment. But before we do

that I would like to compare this situation with the

situation that we find in this part of the world.

In Europe generally, the attitude towards Buddhism

is that it is very advanced, very rational and very

sophisticated. It was therefore quite a shock to me when I

came to Singapore and found that a lot of people here

view Buddhism as old fashioned, irrational and too much

tied up with superstitions. This is one of the two attitudes

that work against the appreciation of Buddhism here. The

other is that Buddhism is so deep and so abstract that no

one can ever understand it. It is a complete turnabout. This

is what I mean by perspective, because in the western

perspective Buddhism has a certain image, while in the

traditional perspective we have another image. This

negative image that people have about Buddhism has to

be changed before they can really come to appreciate the

Buddha’s teachings, before they can get a kind of

balanced perspective regarding Buddhism.

One of the first things that a westerner appreciates abo

Buddhism is that it is not culture bound, not bound to

any particular society, race or ethnic group. There are

certain religions that are culture-bound, Judaism is one

example. Buddhism is not. That is why historically we

have Indian Buddhists, Thai Buddhists, Chinese

Buddhists, Srilankan Buddhists, Burmese Buddhists and

so forth, and we are going to have in the near future

English Buddhists, American Buddhists, French

Buddhists and so forth. This is because Buddhism is not

culture-bound. It moves very easily from one culture to

another because the emphasis in Buddhism is on

internal practice rather than on external practice. Its

emphasis is on the way you develop your mind rather

than the way you dress, the kind of food you take, the

way you wear your hair and so forth.

The second point that I would like to make regards

the pragmatism or the practicality of Buddhism. Instead of

taking an interest in metaphysics and academic theories,

the Buddha deals with problems per se and approaches

them in a concrete way. This is again something which is

very much in agreement with western ideas about

utilitarianism. That is, if something works, use it. It is very

much a part of western political, economic and scientific

philosophy. This attitude of pragmatism is clearly

expressed in the Culama-lunkya Sutra where the Buddha

made use of the example of the wounded man. The man

wounded by an arrow wishes to know who shoots the

arrow, from which direction it comes, whether the arrow

head is made of bone or iron, whether the shaft is of this

kind of wood or another before he will have the arrow

removed. This man is likened to those who would like to

know about the origin of the Universe, whether the world

is eternal or not, finite or not before they will undertake to

practise a religion. Just as the man in the parable will die

before he has all the answers he wants regarding the origin

and nature of the arrow, such people will die before they

will ever have the answers to all their irrelevant questions.

This exemplifies what we call the Buddha’s practical

attitude. It has a lot to say about the whole question of

priorities and problem solving. We would not make much

progress developing wisdom if we ask the wrong

question. It is essentially a question of priority. The first

priority for all of us is the problem of suffering. The

Buddha recognized this and said it is of no use for us to

speculate whether the world is eternal or not because we

all have got an arrow in our chest, the arrow of suffering.

We have to ask questions that will lead to the removal of

this arrow. One can express this in a very simple way. We

can see that in our daily life, we constantly make choices

based on priority. If, for instance, we happen to be

cooking something on the stove and we decide that while

the beans are boiling we will dust the house, and as we

dust the house we smell something burning. We have to

make the choice, whether to carry on with our dusting or

whether to go to turn down the flame on the stove to save

the beans. In the same way, if we want to make progress

towards wisdom we have to recognize our priorities and

this point is made very clearly in the parable of the

wounded man.

The third point that I would like to refer to is the

Buddha’s teaching on the importance of verification

through experience. This point is made clearly in His

advice to the Kalamas contained in the Kesaputtiya

Sutra. The Kalamas were a people very much like us in

our modern day when we are exposed to so many

different teachings. They went to the Buddha and

enquired that as there were so many different teachers

and as all of them claimed that their doctrine was true,

how were they to know who was telling the truth. The

Buddha told them not to accept anything out of

authority, not to accept anything because it happens to

be written down; not to accept anything out of reverence

for their teacher; or out of hearsay; or because it sounds

reasonable. But to verify, test what they have heard in

the light of their own experience. When they know for

themselves that certain things are harmful then they

should abandon them. When they know for themselves

that certain things are beneficial, that they lead to

happiness and calm, then they should follow them. The

Buddha gives this advice that one has to verify what

one hears in the light of one’s experience. In the context

of the Buddha’s advice to the Kalamas, I think what the

Buddha is saying is to use your own mind as a test tube.

You can see for yourself that when greed and anger are

present, they lead to suffering, pain and disturbance.

And you can see for yourself that when greed and anger

are absent from your mind, it leads to calm, to

happiness. It is a very simple experiment which we all

can do for ourselves. This is a very important point

because what the Buddha has taught will only be

effective, will only really change our life if we can carry

out this kind of experiment in our life, if we can realize

the truth of the Buddha’s teachings through our own

experience and verify it through our own experience.

Only then can we really say that we are making progress

on the path towards enlightenment.

We can see a striking parallel between the

Buddha’s own approach and the approach of science to

the problem of knowledge. The Buddha stresses the

importance of objective observation. Observation is in a

sense the key to the Buddha’s method of knowledge. It

is observation that yields the first of the Four Noble

Truths, the truth of suffering. Again at the final stage of

the Buddha’s path, it is observation that characterizes

the realization of the total end of suffering. So at the

beginning, in the middle and at the end of the Buddha’s

path, observation plays an extremely important role.

This is similar to the role that objective observation

plays in the scientific tradition which teaches that when

we observe a problem we must first formulate a general

theory followed by a specific hypothesis. We find the

same thing happening in the teaching of the Four Noble

Truths and here the general theory is that all things have

a cause, and the specific hypothesis is that the causes of

suffering are craving and ignorance. This truth that the

causes of suffering are craving and ignorance can be

verified by the experimental method. In the context of

the Four Noble Truths, the experimental method is the

path. Through the path, the truth of the Second Noble

Truth (the truth of the cause of suffering), and the Third

Noble Truth (the truth of the cessation of suffering) are

verified because through this cultivation of the path one

eliminates craving and ignorance. And through the elim-

ination of craving and ignorance one eliminates suffering.

This experiment is repeatable just as in science because

not only did the Buddha attain the end of suffering, but so

too did all those who followed His path.

So if we look closely at the Buddha’s approach to

the problem of knowledge, we find that His approach is

very similar to the scientific approach and this too has

aroused a tremendous amount of interest in the west.

We can now begin to see why it is that Einstein could

make a remark like the one that he did. We will see

more clearly why this is not as surprising as it seems

initially because I would like to talk about the Buddhist

method of analysis and we can begin to see it operating

very clearly when we look at the Buddhist approach to

experience.

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.DrPeterD.SantinaFundamentalsofBuddhismFundamentalsofBuddhismCONTENTS1FOREWORDBuddhismhaslongbeenanimportantpartoftheculturalheritageofSouthEastAsia.ThemonumentsofAngkorWatinCambodiaandBorobud...

展开>> 收起<<

[ebook.nsO] [buddhism] Fundamentals of Buddhism - Alf Inge Fredriksen.pdf.pdf

共136页,预览28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！

[ebook.nsO] [buddhism] Fundamentals of Buddhism - Alf Inge Fredriksen.pdf

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: