About Buddhism

What is Buddhism?

Lama Thubten Yeshe, the founder of FPMT said:
“Buddha says that all you have to know is what you are, how you exist. You don’t have to believe in anything. Just understand how your mind works, how attachment and desire arise, how ignorance arises and where emotions come from. It is sufficient to know the nature of all that; that alone can bring happiness and peace.”

His Holiness the Dalai Lama says of Buddhism: “My religion is kindness.”

Who was the Buddha?

The founder of Buddhism, Siddhartha Gautama, lived from approximately 566 to 480 BCE. The son of an Indian king, Gautama enjoyed all the privileges of his wealthy caste – but it did not bring him contentment. As a young man he searched for meaning in life. After encountering the 4 sights – old age, sickness, death and an ascetic holy man, Gautama understood that suffering underpinned life. He left his wife and son, renounced his princely title and became a monk, exchanging worldly possessions for a spiritual search for truth.

The culmination of his search came while meditating under a tree in Bodhgaya. He finally understood how to be free from suffering and achieve liberation and enlightenment. Following this, Gautama was known as The Buddha, meaning the “Enlightened One.” He spent the next 50 years journeying about India, helping and teaching others.

What is the essence of Buddha’s teaching?

The Four Noble Truths are the essence of Buddha’s teachings. They are:
· the truth of suffering
· the truth of the cause of suffering
· the truth of the end of suffering
· the truth of the path that leads to the end of suffering

Simply put, suffering exists; it has a cause; it has an end; and there is a means to bring about its end. This emphasis on suffering does not mean that Buddhism dwells on a negative world view – it has a pragmatic perspective about the reality of what humanity faces. The concept of pleasure is acknowledged, but is undeerstood to be fleeting and temporary. The pursuit of worldly happiness never results in any permanent satisfaction. Ultimately, only ageing, sickness, and death are certain.

The Second Noble Truth identifies the cause of suffering – desire and ignorance. By desire, Buddhists mean the craving for pleasure, material goods, and the joys of our sense perceptions, all of which are wants that can never be satisfied. As a result, desiring them brings suffering. By ignorance, Buddhists mean the way we don’t understand the world as it actually is. Out of ignorance, we don’t develop our capacity to live at peace in the moment of our existence, so our mind is left undeveloped, unable to grasp the true nature of things. As a result, greed, envy, hatred and anger arise.

The First Noble Truth identifies the pervasiveness of suffering. The Second Noble Truth identifies the causes as mental afflictions and the actions we create under their power. The Third Noble Truth, the truth of the end of suffering, explains that there can be an end to suffering through achieving Enlightenment through following the eightfold path which is a path of good conduct, mind training and the development of wisdom. Enlightenment is a transcendent state free from suffering and from the worldly cycle of birth and rebirth. The Fourth Noble Truth explains the method for attaining the end of suffering which is the Noble Eightfold Path.

How can we end suffering?

Through perfecting the eightfold path which is:
1. Right View
2. Right Thought
3. Right Speech
4. Right Action
5. Right Livelihood
6. Right Effort
7. Right Mindfulness
8. Right Concentration

What is karma?

Karma refers to the result of the actions of body, speech and mind that a person does during their lifetime. Positive actions, such as generosity, kindness, and meditation, bring about happiness in the long run. Negative actions, such as lying, stealing or killing, bring about unhappiness in the long term. The Buddhist interpretation of karma does not refer to preordained fate. There is no one to pass judgement on us. Rather karma is seen as a inherent process of cause and effect.

What is the cycle of rebirth?

The role of karma can be seen in the Buddhist explanation of the cycle of rebirth. Buddhist cosmology suggests that there are six realms into which any being can be reborn – three fortunate realms, and three unfortunate realms.

The inhabitants of the three unfortunate realms – the animal realm, the hungry ghost realm and the hell realm – suffer untold suffering. Those who create favourable, positive karma will take rebirth in one of the fortunate realms: the realm of demigods, the realm of gods, and the realm of humans. Although the demigods and gods enjoy pleasures, they suffer unceasing jealousy and envy.

Despite all the many difficulties involved in being born a human, the human realm is considered the most fortunate realm of rebirth. This is because it is only with a human rebirth that Enlightenment can be achieved. Given the number of living things, to be born human is, to Buddhists, a precious and rare opportunity.

What is Tibetan Buddhism?

Also known as Vajrayana, or Tantric Buddhism, these teachings and methods have been passed directly from teacher to student over many generations of meditation masters. Tibetan Buddhism is part of the Mahayana tradition and it emphasises the importance of skillful means in accelerating and enhancing the spiritual path with increasingly more advanced approaches to understanding the mind and developing the qualities of enlightenment.

Guru devotion is a key component, and practitioners develop an ability to experience their Guru as indifferentiable from the Buddha himself. Vajrayana Buddhism presents a progressive path from meditating on the breath, to contemplating and generating compassion and using mantra and visualisation to invoke and encourage our own Buddha nature. Practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism are encouraged to recognise their own enlightened potential and to commit realising it as quickly as possible in order to be of ultimate benefit to other living beings.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche, the inspiration for the development of the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition has sad “Dedicating your life to achieving lam-rim realizations, with the goal of liberating numberless beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bringing them to enlightenment is what I regard as the most important thing in the world.”