What is Buddhism ?

Buddhism is a religion to about 300 millions people around the world. The word comes from 'budhi', 'to awaken'. It has its origins about 2,500 years ago when Siddhartha Gotama, known as the Buddha, was himself awakened (enlightened) at the age of 35.

Siddhartha Gotama was born in a kingdom between India and Nepal. His father was the ruller of this Kingdom.

Before his birth, his mother, the queen had a dream. A beautiful white elephant offered to the queen a lotus flower and then enter in his body.

The sages who interpreted the dream said the queen will have a son who will become a great ruller or a holy man.

10 months later a boy was born and 7 days later, the queen died.

During his life, his father tired to protect him from the outside world and suffering by keeping him at home and provide him all he was needed.

But one day Siddharta left to discover the world and face suffering by meeting an old man, a sick man and a dead man in the way.

He realized that even his wellness he will never be safe from death or sickness.

He left his home, wife and child to become an holy man and oriented his quest to ending suffering.

Mara, the main figure in Buddhism who tried to entrave Siddartha quest since he decide to left his home is represented by a dark figure.

It represent the shadow-side we all have inside ourselves.

Siddartha had to deal/fight with Mara.

If we compare with a western point of view, Mara is what psychologists call inconscious who fight with our mind to free us.

Siddartha didn’t want a personality cult. He asked to focus on what he thaught and not who he was. This is why we always see more than one Buddha figure in temples.

The Buddhas legend as we know it in the Pali scripts (North indian dialect used in the most important collection of Buddhist scriptures) relate what happend to Siddartha before and after his enleigthment as stories that cannot be literally true. They teach important human lessons about human behaviors.

Like other major worldwilde religion, Buddhism is teaching how to transcend the world and its suffering. All of them were trying to awake human to be more conscious of themselves and their full potential.

But Buddhis mis not a promess to the end of suffering. He will not transform anyone in a superman or women. Everyone get old, sick and die and will experiment pain along his life path. It offered to lead you to a real peace of mind. Once a person know how to access to this peace, he is not longer driven by desires, craving, fears. He is able to face pain with equanimity.

« It is frightening to leave our old selves behind, because they are the only way we know how to live. Even if the familiar is unsatisfactory, we tend to cling to it because we are afraid of the unknown. »

During my time in Thailand, before and after the meditation retreat I read an amazing book really clear for western people to understand Buddhism culture and Siddhartha life.

Of course learning Buddhism has to be indisociate to a mindfulness (meditation) practice, but this book is a deep, concise and clear introduction to all who want to know more abouth this major philosophy. « Buddha » Karen Armstrong.

All the quotes I share with you in this blog post came from his book and I reccomend you to read it if you wanna know more about Buddhism.

To truly understand the Buddhism teaching, practice of mindfulness have to be done. They are both working together and practice serves to aspirant to realized it.

The Dhamma (the fundamental law of existence, base of Buddhism teaching) has to be teached with a practice of mindfulness in the same time.

In Buddhism greed, anger and ignorance are poison for the body and the mind and leads to illness.

The purpose of this both teaching is to connect better body and mind and succed after day to day training to transform negatives thought (related to greed, anger and ignorance) in compassion, generosity and wisdom.

When the mind is trained to think positively to seek the good of others, showing compassion and generosity, one day it will become habitual in the unconscious.

« The Buddha was trying to find a new way of being human. In the West, we prize individualism and self-expression, but this can easily degenerate into mere self-promotion »

Because of the inconstance of everything in life, a person is temporary too. We have to see people as process of change rather than unchangeable entities.

The personality is not fix but a constant flux : everyone is a succession of states of existence.

Here comes the importance of Kamma (Karma) : more than our actions, in Buddhism it is our intentions that influence our Kamma and indeed our lifes.

Reincarnation is a part of the Buddhism religion in India. In South-East Asia reincarnation is less important in the teaching.

In South-East Asia, the Dhamma (the teaching of truly nature of life) is Kamma oriented but more about what we realize in this life.

« The ego is voracious and we continually wants to gobble up other things and people. We almost never see things as they are in themselves, but our vision is colored by whether we want them or not, how we can get them, or how they can bring us profit. Our View of the world is, therefore, distorted by our greed, and this often leads to ill and enmity, when our desires clash with the craving of others. (…) When we say « I want », we often find ourselves filled with envy, jealousy and rage if other people block our desires or succeed where we have failed. Such states of mind are « unskillful » because they make us more selfish than ever. Desire and hatred its concoitant, are thus the joint cause of much of the misery and evil in the world.(…) As Gotama observed the way one craving after another took posession of his mind and heart, he noticed how human beings were ceaselessly yearning to become something else, go somewere else, and acquire something they do not have. It is as though they were continually seeking a form of rebirth, a new kind of existence.(…) These petty craving assail us hour by hour, minute by minute, so that we know no rest. We are consumed and distracted by the compulsion to become something different. « The world, whose very nature is to change, is constantly determied to become something else », Gotama concluded. « It is at the mercy of change, but this love of change contains a mesure of fear, and this fear itself is Dukkha » »