What is buddha

Courtesy of Freer Sackler. There are multitudes of buddhas, especially in Mahayana and Vajrayana scriptures and art. They represent aspects of enlightenment, and they also represent our own deepest natures. The way the buddhas are posed also convey particular meanings.

A small sculpture of Hotei, the laughing monk commonly misidentified as the historical Buddha. The bald, chubby, laughing fellow many Westerners think of as Buddha is a character from tenth-century Chinese folklore.

His name is Budai in China, or Hotei in Japan. He represents happiness and abundance, and he is a protector of children and the sick and weak.

In some stories he is explained as an emanation of Maitreya, the future Buddha. Photo by David Gabriel Fischer. The Buddha was not a god, and the many iconic figures of Buddhist art are not meant to represent godlike beings who will do you favors if you worship them. The Buddha was said to be critical of worship, in fact.

In one scripture Sigalovada Sutta, Digha Nikaya 31 he encountered a young man engaged in a Vedic worship practice. Gilt bronze. So, instead of teaching people what to believe, he taught them to realize enlightenment for themselves. The foundational teaching of Buddhism is the Four Noble Truths. The Second Truth tells us dukkha has a cause. The immediate cause is craving, and the craving comes from not understanding reality and not knowing ourselves.

Because we misunderstand ourselves we are riddled with anxiety and frustration. We experience life in a narrow, self-centered way, going through life craving things we think will make us happy. But we find satisfaction only briefly, and then the anxiety and craving start again. The Third Truth tells us we can know the cause of dukkha and be liberated from the hamster wheel of stress and craving. Merely adopting Buddhist beliefs will not accomplish this, however.

Head of Buddha. The basic tenets of Buddhist teaching are straightforward and practical: nothing is fixed or permanent; actions have consequences; change is possible. So Buddhism addresses itself to all people irrespective of race, nationality, caste, sexuality, or gender. It teaches practical methods which enable people to realise and use its teachings in order to transform their experience, to be fully responsible for their lives.

There are around million Buddhists and a growing number of them are Westerners. Thus in the chain of interdependent causation all phenomenal existence is constantly changing. The elements combine and recombine with no underlying substance, or soul, to give them permanence. This is the Wheel of Life. The main cause of the restlessness, the suffering, which is the lot of beings turning on the Wheel of Life, is craving or selfish desire for existence, and it is this desire which sets the life force in motion.

Desire is manifested in action. This action is in reality volition or will power, which is responsible for the creation of being. It is called karma in Sanskrit, but in the Pali language, which the Buddha spoke and in which all the Buddhist scriptures were written, it is softened to kamma. In this universe in which nothing is permanent all change is governed by kamma or the kammic force. Kamma means action. In its general sense, kamma means all good and bad actions. Kamma refers to all kinds of intentional actions whether mental, verbal, or physical, that is, all thoughts, words, and deeds.

In its ultimate sense kamma means all moral and immoral volition. Kamma, though it activates the chain of cause and effect, is not determinism, nor is it an excuse for fatalism. The past influences the present, but does not dominate it.

The past is the background against which life goes on from moment to moment; the past and the present influence the future. Only the present moment exists, and the responsibility for using the present moment for good or ill lies with each individual.

Every action produces an effect; it is cause first and effect afterward. The effects of our actions come back to us, and as long as our actions are done with evil intent, the waves of effect will come back to us as evil. But if we are kind and keep ourselves peaceful, the returning waves of trouble will grow weaker until they die down and our good kamma will come back to us in blessing.

In the world around us there are many inequalities in the lot of man—some are rich, others are poor, some live full lives, others die young, etc. According to Buddhism, the inequalities which exist are due, to some extent, to environment—which is itself shaped by cause and effect—and to a greater extent to causes, that is kamma, which are in the present, the immediate past, and the remote past.

Man himself is responsible for his own happiness and misery. Thus kamma is not fate nor destiny nor blind determinism. Man has a certain amount of free will; he can modify his actions and affect his future. Each act, whether mental or physical, tends to produce its like. If a man does a good deed or thinks a good thought, the effect upon him is to increase the tendencies to goodness in him.

The understanding of kamma gives us power. The more we make the doctrine of kamma a part of our lives, the more power we gain, not only to direct our future, but also to help our fellow beings more effectively.

The practice of good kamma, when fully developed, will enable us to overcome evil and even to overcome kamma itself, thus bringing us to our goal, Nirvana. The principle of dependent origination and the law of kamma provide the background for understanding the nature of rebirth.

According to Buddhism, death is "the temporary end of a temporary phenomenon. Our physical forms are only the outward manifestations of the invisible kammic force. When the present form perishes, another form takes its place according to a good or bad volitional impulse—the kamma that was the most powerful—at the moment before death. At death the kammic force remains entirely undisturbed by the disintegration of the physical body, and the passing away of the present consciousness creates the conditions for the coming into being of a fresh body in another birth.

The stream of consciousness flows on like a river which is built up by its tributaries and dispenses its water to the countryside through which it passes.

The continuity of flux at death is unbroken in point of time; there is no breach in the stream of consciousness, and therefore there is no room whatever for an intermediate stage between this life and the next. Rebirth takes place immediately. The present being, present existence, is conditioned by the way one faced circumstances in the last and in all past existences.

One's present character and circumstances are the result of all that one has been up to the present, but what one will be in the future depends on what one does now in the present. The true Buddhist regards death as a momentary incident between one life and its successor and views its approach with calmness. His only concern is that his future should be such that the condition of that life may provide him with better opportunities for perfecting himself.

Buddhism teaches that with the practice of meditation and concentration the memory can be trained. By meditation and mind culture one can acquire the power to see one's rebirth as a link, or a succession of links, in a chain of births; one can also acquire the power of looking back into one's previous lives. Not only this, but Buddhism also teaches that with the attainment of Nirvana in this life itself, through enlightenment and true wisdom, one can reach the end of this chain of rebirths.

Nirvana, the state to which all Buddhists aspire, is the cessation of desire and hence the end of suffering. Nirvana in Sanskrit means "the blowing out.

Among Westerners Nirvana is often thought of as a negative state, a kind of "nothingness. Nirvana is freedom, but not freedom from circumstance; it is freedom from the bonds with which we have bound ourselves to circumstance.

That man is free who is strong enough to say, "Whatever comes I accept as best. Nirvana is the dying of the kammic force.