There are many different forms of Buddhism, as it has flourished in so many different countries. Sometimes, however, it can be hard to know what Buddhism actually is since we hear of it mixed with certain customs, cultural nuances and habits of the people who follow it. Therefore it is very important to be able to check what is real Buddhism and what is not. How can we do this? Today my job is to try and answer this question and also to compare some of the different Buddhist traditions in the world today.
Sometimes people are confused as there are many different countries where Buddhism is practiced, and may think certain traditions are better or more authentic than others. Thus I think it is crucial to introduce Buddhism correctly. No matter how many traditions there are - in China, Sri Lanka, Thailand, India, Tibet, Japan and so forth – they always must fall into two categories: Theravada and Mahayana. Of these, Mahayana is predominant in Tibet. Sometimes we speak of Vajrayana or the tantric school of Tibetan Buddhism; however, this really falls under the category of Mahayana, as the view is exactly the same, with Vajrayana using many skillful methods to allow practitioners to quickly progress along the path.
It is extremely important that we do not see Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism as being in any way contradictory. Tibetan Buddhism, though mainly Mahayana, also includes the Theravada teachings. Monasteries still emphasize comprehensive study of the Vinaya, the teachings that talk about monastic discipline, which is common in Theravada Buddhism. In fact you cannot practice Buddhism without a thorough grounding in Theravada, even if you follow Mahayana.
It is also important to know how Buddhism is different from other religions, as well as the common ground shared with other religions. What does it mean to say you are Buddhist? It doesn’t mean someone who is vegetarian, believes in karma and reincarnation or wears particular robes. It doesn’t mean someone who visits temples or has taken certain vows. These things do not necessarily make you Buddhist. This does not mean Buddhists do not take vows and so forth – but anyone can wear robes or take vows. You may live in a temple and wear a robe, but still not be Buddhist if your view and conduct are not correct.
Simply put, if you have the view of Buddhism and try to follow the Buddha’s teachings, then you are Buddhist. What is the Buddhist view? To understand this, you must know four things known as the four seals of the dharma. These four also tell us what makes Buddhism different from other religions or belief systems.
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The first seal: Impermanence
Firstly, all compounded phenomena are impermanent. This building we are in now may not be here 10 years later. Perhaps tomorrow it may be burnt down. You used to be 10 years younger. You once were 20, now you are 30; you may even have some wrinkles. These examples of gross impermanence everybody knows. But Buddhism goes deeper. Any phenomenon that is compounded, which means it is dependent on many causes and conditions, is said to change in a very small period of time. In the Mahayana teachings we hear that there are 160 moments in the time it takes to click your fingers. This means everything we perceive is changing all the time. If it didn’t change in a tiny interval, then how could it change in a second, minute, hour, or whole year? That’s why everything becomes old and decays.But unfortunately we can’t tell that objects like this chair are different today compared to yesterday. Why not? Because at the moment we can only perceive gross things. If we go to a river, it changes the moment you see it. But we have a habit of thinking that it is the same river that we saw last year. We think we have the same chair, the same parents, the same everything, but really it’s always changing. Scientists have a similar view to this now when they observe things on a very small scale. Arya beings (who have achieved some realization on the Buddhist path) are actually able to see directly that phenomena which seem solid like a chair are changing from moment to moment.
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The second seal: Suffering
The second element of the Buddhist view is that all compounded phenomena are by their nature suffering. This may not be very attractive, but Buddhist logic tells us this is how things are so we have to accept it. This doesn’t mean gross suffering – that all the time we are in pain, depressed or unhappy. Rather, suffering is the nature of how things are. For example, if we think of all sentient beings from their birth to their death, what are they working for there whole lives? Happiness. Why do we study at university, own houses, have families or buy kinky underwear? For happiness. I came to Australia and left all my culture behind, all my family and friends. It looks like suffering but I did this for happiness. Some countries wage wars thinking that this will make the world a better place – for our happiness. Whatever we do, our ultimate purpose is happiness.However, no matter what we do when we look outside ourselves for happiness, no one is completely satisfied or is able to find a stable, lasting happiness. Buddhism tells us that this suffering is the nature of things. How can we find water in fire? How can we find fire in the ocean? Everything we do is motivated by wanting happiness – working hard, sleeping, sitting down to relax… We sometimes find a little happiness, but Buddhists are ruthless – they still call this suffering. Why? Because it doesn’t matter if you have an expensive house, close relationship or anything; these things which we think are so reliable will always change or decay, so you can’t find a guarantee that they will make you happy. As Buddha said when he first taught, ‘monks, life is suffering’.
However, the good news is that Buddha didn’t say everything is suffering and then go away. Yes, the nature of everything is suffering but can we get rid of it? Is it fixable or not? Buddha said yes, it is fixable, it is abandonable. There is a tremendous possibility that we can do something about it. Why can we abandon it? Because suffering comes from causes and conditions, it is not eternal. Can we find anything that does not arise from causes and conditions? I don’t think so. Then if we abandon the causes and conditions that create suffering, we have the cessation of suffering. Roughly speaking, this is what we mean by enlightenment.
But Buddha didn’t only leave it at that. He taught 84,000 methods to show others how to eliminate suffering. Really, the number of methods the Buddha taught is limitless, just as the variety of capacities and skills of different sentient beings are limitless. However, we must remember that although Buddha showed us how to reach enlightenment by eliminating the root of suffering, he stressed that we have to listen, study and practice for ourselves. Unfortunately for people like me, he cannot make our defilements go away and put us in Nirvana. We have to do this ourselves.
In Buddhism we often speak of four noble truths – the truth of suffering, the truth of the cause of suffering, the truth of cessation and the truth of the path. Now we are talking about the truth of the path. What is the path? It doesn’t mean a road. It is to do with transforming our minds – letting go of our mental afflictions and cultivating a positive mind. Why is this necessary? If we are honest with ourselves, we don’t have that much freedom to choose to be happy, and Buddhists say this is because we are under the control of karma. Karma means previous action – action of body, speech or mind. You didn’t choose to be born in Australia; you created the karma yourself and you had no real choice. If you plant a flower you cannot expect rice. If you plant chili you cannot expect sweet fruit. Similarly, you are born here because of your previous actions. You didn’t choose to be a man or a woman. But what about karma itself, what controls this? We Buddhists say karma is controlled by mental afflictions such as desire, aversion, pride, jealousy or stinginess, which sometimes can be so subtle we might not be able to admit to them!
Again we are forced to be very honest with ourselves. However we act, it is always directed by our thoughts and emotions, however subtle they are, and we usually do what they tell us to do. Thus, previous actions of our body, speech and mind plant seeds and our personality, our perceptions, our circumstances and our whole experience of life arise from these seeds. And these actions are generally controlled by feelings – desire, aversion and so forth. This is how suffering comes about.
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The third seal: Emptiness
But the teachings of Buddha go even deeper. They look at the question of why we are under the control of all these emotions like desire, pride and aversion. At the same time they also look at why, if all compounded phenomena are impermanent and the nature of life is suffering, we still can’t see this. Buddha taught that we live under the cloud of an original ignorance. Because of failing to recognize the true nature of reality, we cannot see subtle things, but rather only gross impermanence and gross suffering.This true nature of reality is what Buddhists call emptiness, meaning that all phenomena do not inherently exist and also there is no inherently existing self. But this does not mean there is nothing. Everything (including ourselves) appears in dependence on causes and conditions, through a process of cause and effect that we participate in.
Firstly, according to Buddhism, objects of our perceptions don’t inherently exist. Secondly, the subject ‘I’ also doesn’t exist. For example, you do not exist, I do not exist, this chair does not exist. As long as we have this original ignorance we think these things do exist solidly. For example, we could look at this chair. If you search every piece – the legs, the frame, the cover, even the smallest components, you will not find a chair. We just combine phenomena together and call it a chair. It is something to sit on for us, but other beings, like a cockroach crawling around on the floor, may find something completely different. Though most human beings label it as a chair, we won’t be able to find an independent thing called a chair. Similarly, we can look at the question ‘who am I?’ Am ‘I’ my body, my brain, my thoughts and emotions, my arm or my finger?
We cannot find anything single, independent or permanent, but rather constantly changing aggregates of physical and mental appearances.
If we eliminate this original ignorance we will not be afraid of an enemy as we have confidence that they don’t really exist, so there is no object of anger or fear. If we know the stereo system we’ve always wanted doesn’t really exist, there is no attachment. If we know that even our thoughts have no solid reality, there is no reason to be depressed or anxious. Though based on logical reasoning, this is a profound teaching and therefore not so easy to understand. However, when you realize selflessness and emptiness then everything just appears as a dream and merely the projections of mind, rather than the nature of mind itself. In a dream it doesn’t matter how much you suffer because when you wake up you realize it was all an illusion.
If we truly understand emptiness, we are no longer under the control of emotions and we
do not create negative karma. And when we don’t create karma, we are no longer stuck in the cycle of having to live through the consequences of previous actions again and again without end. We will have cut through the root of the suffering of cyclic existence, called samsara in Sanskrit.
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The fourth seal: Nirvana
The fourth position unique to Buddhism is that nirvana is beyond extremes, which we have probably covered by talking about emptiness. In some religions, the final goal is something that truly exists, that you can hold on to. Nirvana is not something you can hold on to. Rather it is the natural, unfabricated state that we find when we remove everything that is artificial or obscuring. When we remove the clouds of original ignorance, the skylike nature of mind is revealed, which is the same as the nature of reality. This is nirvana.| back to top |
Different types of Buddhism
So these are the four seals of the Buddhist teachings. To say we are Buddhist we need to understand or at least appreciate these four points – that everything is impermanent, comes from causes and conditions and has the nature of suffering. Suffering comes from a cause, and therefore it is possible to get rid of it by abandoning the cause by realizing emptiness and selflessness. It doesn’t matter if one follows Theravada, Zen, or Tibetan Buddhism, if you understand these four seals you are Buddhist. Otherwise, even if you are vegetarian, wear a special robe or live in a monastery, you are not practicing Buddhism if you don’t have this view.Then why do we make a distinction between Mahayana and Theravada? In Mahayana, you genuinely wish all other beings to become enlightened, which we call the altruistic mind of bodhicitta. You are not just satisfied that only you are able to get rid of ignorance, the root cause of suffering. Whether you wish to become enlightened first and then bring about the enlightenment of others or strive for the liberation of others before yourself, you are prepared to remain in samsara for as long as it takes to achieve this. In Theravada, one wishes to be free from samsara for oneself, yet this is not to say they do not practice love and compassion. In fact Buddha taught love and compassion towards all sentient beings in Theravada texts, only the emphasis is more on individual liberation.
Now what is Tibetan Buddhism? Sometimes people see all the rituals, deities and other objects of worship and get the impression that it is something esoteric or different from Mahayana Buddhism, but this is a misunderstanding. It can sometimes be hard to separate cultural practices from rituals which follow authentic Buddhist teachings, though we can clearly see from the history of the different lineages in Tibet that most of the rituals are actually skillful methods to cultivate bodhicitta, the altruistic mind which is the core of Mahayana. We must know that deities and ritual instruments in Vajrayana Buddhism have profound meaning, and that we are not worshipping anything external. Rather, these objects represent aspects of our own enlightened nature and help us connect with this. Unfortunately, however, Vajrayana Buddhism has become a little mixed with Tibetan culture, and although there are many authentic practitioners, some Tibetans have lost sight of its true purpose.
Finally, within Buddhism there are also many paths for those who are not able to understand emptiness and cut the root of ignorance directly. This involves transforming negative states of mind in a positive way – practicing love and compassion instead of anger, rejoicing in other people’s wellbeing instead of being jealous and being humble instead of proud. Still you make karma, but this is good karma and will ripen into a good result. For example, wealth is a consequence of practicing generosity, while poverty is the result of being selfish and stingy. Beauty is said to be a consequence of practicing patience and forgiveness while long life is the result of discipline – not being distracted by things like drugs or movies and wasting time. These results may take time, but the law of karma means that no action does not have a consequence and eventually the result will come.
Therefore even if you are not able to realize Buddha’s profound teachings on emptiness, you may still understand the process of cause and effect and therefore try to transform negative states of mind and develop good mental qualities. As long as they have some trust in the Buddhist view, I think we can call these people Buddhist as well.END=OM MANI PADME HUM.( 3 TIMES ).RESEARCH BUDDHIST DHARMA BY BIKKHUNI GESHE TESERING TASHI.VIETNAMESE FREEDOM SIDE.29/1/2012.
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