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A post on Desiring God about Buddhism reminded me of a paper I wrote last semester. I think it’s a pretty solid introduction to Buddhism, if I say so myself.

The purpose of the assignment was to explain Buddhism to your “mother” — so the paper is structured as a series of questions and answers, with my “mother” asking the questions and me supplying the answers.

This is not the whole paper, since it is quite long. I posted the sections that I thought would be most helpful.

And please forgive the cheesiness of my lead-in questions.

What do Buddhists believe?

Well, there are a few problems with that question. First, I cannot speak for all Buddhists, just as I cannot speak for all Christians. What is said in a Presbyterian church may be entirely different from what is preached in a Baptist church down the street. On top of the varying views of different denominations, there is no guarantee that the members of one church will all share the same religious views. The same principle can be applied to Buddhism. I will try to answer your question to the best of my knowledge about Buddhism, but it is important to consider that my answers are coming from an academic perspective on Indian Buddhism. A modern practicing Buddhist may present a totally different picture of Buddhism, depending on their particular “beliefs”. Secondly, there are a number of different Buddhist sects that have varying “beliefs”; the main traditions I studied were the Theravada, Māhāyana, and Vajrayāna. Think of the differences between the Theravada and Māhāyana traditions as being similar to the differences between Roman Catholics and Protestants. The views of the Vajrayāna tradition challenge a number of the historically held Buddhist views, so they could be related to a group like the Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons. Lastly and most importantly, Buddhists do not place a large emphasis on correct belief or orthodoxy, whereas Christians do. For many Christians, to go to heaven a person must profess faith in Jesus as his or her savior. A Buddhist, on the other hand, would emphasize the importance of correct practice, or orthopraxis, over correct belief. To achieve salvation a person has to be living the correct way, rather than profess faith in a savior.

Well even if they do not emphasize correct belief, they have to believe in something right?

Yes, Buddhists do hold a particular worldview, but “belief” is not the right world to use. A Buddhist would most likely express his or her views as a matter of understanding the nature in which the world exists. Salvation does not require a leap of faith, but an eye-opening experience. Most Buddhists accept the teachings of the Buddha or dharma, which includes the concepts of dukha, karma, samsāra, and anātman. All Buddhists hold to the four Noble truths and follow the eight-fold path. However, although Buddhists generally agree on these ideas, like Catholics and Protestants, the different schools do not see eye to eye on everything; specifically on where the path leads.

So what do all those terms mean?

Right, I was getting to that. Dharma refers to the nature of the universe, as explained by the Buddha after his enlightenment. The central concept of Buddhism is the idea of dukha or that life is suffering. This means that when someone is doing something pleasurable whether it is from a eating a piece of chocolate cake or watching a sunset, he or she is suffering. For a Buddhist, everything in the universe is impermanent: “feeling is impermanent, perception is impermanent, [and] consciousness is impermanent,” (The Book of Aggregates 940). Desire is viewed as an attachment to an impermanent object or feeling. The problem is that one cannot not hold onto that object or feeling forever, because eventually “sensual pleasures are denied to the person who desires and wishes for them, [and] he will suffer as one pierced with darts” (Ch. of Eights 768). The Four Noble truths are derived from this central concept: life is suffering (duhka), suffering is caused by desire, to eliminate suffering one must eliminate desire, and to eliminate desire one must follow the eight-fold path. The eight-fold path consists of correct views, intentions, speech, actions, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and concentration. The specification of what makes a view or action “correct” are clarified in the various Buddhist spiritual texts or vinayas. In addition, just as Christians and Jews have the Ten Commandments, all Buddhists are expected to follow five moral precepts: to abstain from taking the life of a living being, abstain from stealing, abstain from sexual misconduct, abstain from false speech or lying, and to abstain from drinking intoxicating liquor (Lopez 226). Also, as a Buddhist moves further along the path they must obey more precepts, somewhat similar to how Catholic priests must take a vow of celibacy. One of the important points about Buddhism is that most Buddhists believe that becoming a monk and renouncing the ways of the world is necessary to achieve progress on the path to eliminate suffering. There are things that a layperson can do to move towards enlightenment, but most Buddhists believe they must eventually become a monk.

Buddhists also hold the view that beings, whether they are human, animals, ghosts, or gods, are forever stuck in samsāra or the cycle of reincarnation. The state in which someone will be reborn is determined by past lives and actions or karma. Karma is not only the sum total of all the good and bad actions one has committed; it is the fuel which keeps the cycle of existence going. As Christians, we believe in the idea of an eternal self or the soul. However most Buddhists believe in the concept of anātman: that there is no self. A Buddhist parable describes a man whose body is eaten by two flesh-eating ghosts and is replaced with the body of a corpse. The man having lost his body loses all sense of his identity and seeks an answer from a group of Buddhist monks. The monks tell him that “from its beginning up until the present, [his] body has all along been devoid of a Self,” (The Exp. of Buddhism in S. Asia 108). The story illustrates that there is nothing inherently “Rajiv” about me. For the Buddhists, it is all an illusion. One way of looking at Buddhism is that Buddhists are trying to realize the reality of their non-existence to end their suffering.

You said how even gods are stuck in the cycle of existence. So do Buddhists believe in God?

No, a Buddhist would not buy the idea that there is one almighty eternal God, because to Buddhists, everything that exists in the universe is by nature impermanent. However, there are gods that appear in Buddhist texts and I would say that most Buddhists would attest to the existence of various deities. There are a number of stories where gods interact with the Buddha or intervene on his behalf. In one of the stories about a previous lifetime of the Budda before he became enlightened, he was an extremely generous king named Viśvamtara. In this story, the god Śakra, disguised as a brahmin asked the Buddha for his wife and “without at all losing his composure” (Viśvamtara 72) agreed to the god’s request. Amazed at the generosity of Viśvamtara, the god revealed himself and restored everything the king had given away: his kingdom, his children, and his wife. Stories about the previous lives of the Buddha also reference the existence of a Satan-like figure named Mara, who becomes upset at the success of the Buddha in achieving enlightenment and pointing others towards enlightenment (Tigress 9, Viśvamtara 72).

However, it is also important to note that the relationship between a Buddhist and the Buddha sometimes seems as if a god is being worshipped. I am sure that you have seen pictures of large Buddhist statues in a Buddhist monastery. Some Buddhists might condemn such practices, but for the most part Buddhists would consider venerating a status of the Buddha to be an acceptable spiritual practice. Although the nature of the Buddha is seen in different lights depending on the particular school of Buddhism, most Buddhists would say that the Buddha is not a god.

OK. I had heard of karma and reincarnation before, but is there any eventual goal?

In short, the goal is to achieve liberation from the cycle of existence; however, some traditions want to go even further. For Theravadan Buddhists, the goal of following the eight-fold path is to achieve nirvāna, which literally means being “put out” or “extinguished.” For Māhāyana and Vajrayāna Buddhists the goal is not only to achieve liberation, but to aid others into liberation by becoming a Buddha. The difference between the Māhāyana and Vajrayāna movements is the speed in which liberation and Buddhahood are achieved. For the Theravada it will take an almost incalculable amount of time to achieve nirvāna. There are ways of speeding up the process, the most effective being becoming a monk and devoting oneself to the pursuit of enlightenment, which holds true for the Māhāyana tradition as well. For the Māhāyana tradition, the time it takes to reach liberation and to become a Buddha varies depending on the particular tradition but it can take anywhere from millions of years to a few lifetimes. However, the Vajrayāna tradition claims that one can possibly achieve enlightenment or become a Buddha in the span of one lifetime.