THE ESSENTIALS OF BUDDHISM

All schools of Buddhism accept the Four Noble Truths, the Precepts, and the Three Refuges as central to the Buddha Dharma.

The Four Noble Truths:

1. Life as we know it, that is, ordinary or conditioned existence, involves inevitable unsatisfactoriness ranging from low-level anxiety, unease, and angst to anguish and great suffering. The term in the early Pali scriptures for this constellation of sorrows is "dukkha", whose etymological roots lie in the Pali word for sundered or broken apart. The core of these problems is a puzzling inability to feel complete or whole. What does the Buddha's teaching say about why life comes to be like this?

2. Actual existence is impermanent, our lives are lacking of any genuine identity or self--the self is a process, not a thing-- and, failing to grasp the implications of these facts, we construct and elaborate a life-system where dukkha is central. We try to bridge or heal our felt separation--the product of a mistaken construction of a self-- by trying to grasp or latch onto that which we are separated from. This leads paradoxically to a more painful consciousness of that separation-- because we cannot overcome separation and achieve wholeness in this way. All of our wants, opinions, & conceits lead to and intensify dukkha. The process whereby this comes about is called conditioned arising or dependent origination.

This is presented in several forms in the early Buddhist scriptures, and involves a difficult chain of reasoning, but briefly summarized, is somewhat like this: Spiritual ignorance--primarily mistaken self-identity-- preconditions our habits or tendencies, which affect our discriminative consciousness, which conditions mind/body (such that we construe these bundles as our everyday self), which in turn colors the readiness or receptiveness of the senses, which mediates sensory contact, which colors or conditions feeling, which leads to a tendency toward wanting or not wanting, which leads to grasping/rejecting, which leads to a renewed self-concept coming into being, which conditions future comings-into-being, all of which might be summed up as making death sorrow & despair inevitable. (The normal contemporary Theravada interpretation of this is in terms of a sequence through 3 rebirths. This is not very logical, nor is it--for what it is worth--clear that the Buddha himself accepted this.)

3. There is a means to arrive at unconditioned reality, the fullness or completeness of the world when dukkha ceases, or nirvana. Nirvana means extinction, not of life, but of dukkha. The Buddha extinguished dukkha, and then lived a full and joyful life for 45 years, and taught others to do the same. The Buddha was reluctant to describe Nirvana in positive terms, lest it become another Want. The most positive terms are awakening, enlightenment, or Buddha Nature, but often, especially in Mahayana, it is described as emptiness, or absence of all those things that dukkha consists in.

4. The means to arrive at unconditioned reality is the Eight-fold Way of complete, integrated, or perfected vision, aspiration, speech, action, etc., divided into three divisions of wisdom, morality, & meditation--i.e., becoming one with wisdom, morality, & meditation.

Wisdom	Integrity of vision=glimpsing wholeness, seeing the truth of dukkha, its cause, and how to end it
	Integrity of purpose=resolving to move toward wholeness, good will, non grasping, non harming
Morality	Integrity of words=speaking as the precepts direct
	Integrity of action=acting as the precepts direct
	Integrity of livelihood=making a living guided by the precepts
Meditation	Undivided energy=directing effort towards wholeness, and the overcoming of greed hatred & delusion
	Complete awareness (mindfulness, remembering, lucidity, alertness)
	Complete focus (concentration, calm, tranquility, reconciliation)

(in Pali, samma ditthi, samma sankappo, samma vaca, samma kammanta, samma aajiva, samma vayamo, samma sati, samma samadhi )

Note on the translation of "samma". The root word in Pali & Sanskrit is related to words for "same" or "single" or "one" in other Indo-European languages; whole , in other words. It implies a connection that makes something one, whole, integrated, or single. "Integrity of" or "becoming one with" is a better translation than "right."

The Precepts (which we should understand both in a straightforward and an extended and metaphorical sense), are to try sincerely not to: (1) kill, (2) steal, (3) wrongly pursue desires, (4) lie or mislead, (5) poison the mind, [plus, in the Mahayana] (6) speak harshly of others, (7) engage in blame or self-justification, (8) be withholding, (9) succumb to anger, or (10) defile the sacred. [depending on the Mahayana school, there are slight variants of the 10 Precepts.]

The Three Refuges , common to all schools of Buddhism, are to take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, & Sangha (called the Three Treasures). "Buddha" refers to the condition of awakening, as well as the great historical teacher Gotama. "Dharma" means the teaching and path of awakening, & the "Sangha" is the community of compassionate spiritual friends. The Sangha of Refuge in Theravada Buddhism consists of those who have entered the stream, i.e., received at least some opening toward awakening. In Mahayana the term is used less strictly, and the term as used in the Refuge Vows tends to mean either the monastic community (in Mahayanist Asia), or the entire practice community one belongs to (in American Mahayana Buddhisms).

All varieties of traditional Buddhism, especially Theravada, have been organized around the monastic community. This is becoming less true, especially in the West.

A note about rebirth: The Buddha himself quite certainly shared the almost universal Indic belief in rebirth. Such a belief, however, is not only inessential to the Buddha Dharma, but is hard, perhaps impossible, to logically reconcile with the fundamental Buddhist understanding of the self. Despite the logical problem, rebirth is an important part of Theravada and Tibetan Buddhism today. It is less important in East Asian Buddhism, and many western Buddhists do not accept it at all.

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