Buddhism

Part 1

Tipitaka, budhist scripture was written in the 6th century BCE.

Buddhism is a way to live rather than some assertions to be believed.

It’s not what you say but what you do that defines you.
Buddha gives advices, is up to you if you will follow them or not.
Buddha understanding was not conceived primarily as metaphysical and
cosmological knowledge, but as a knowledge into the arising and cessation of
suffering in human experience.
In the Kalama sutta the Buddha tells a group of confused villagers that the only
proper reason for one's beliefs is verification in one’s own personal experience
(and the experience of the wise) and denies any verification which stems from
personal authority, sacred tradition (anussava) or any kind of rationalism which
constructs metaphysical theories (takka).

The Buddha states the pragmatic maxim by saying that a belief should only be
accepted if it leads to wholesome consequences.
This tendency of the Buddha to see what is true as what was useful or 'what works'
has been called by scholars such as Mrs Rhys Davids and Vallée-Poussin a form of
Pragmatism.
You must think at the efficacy, at the practical utility (pragmatism).
"Consider the practical effects of the objects of your conception.
Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the
object", which was later called the pragmatic maxim. Buddha thought different
things to different peoples, he said things to motivates them.

Impermanence or Change (anicca):

Everything in the world is impermanent!
Nothing lasts, everything is in constant state of change.
Nothing last for forever.
All things pass, even bad ones.

When something is created the stuff that is already there is rearranged.

Karma: Causation Law or Cause and Effect:
Karma literally means action.
Any effect has a cause.
Any cause (deed) has its effect (fruit). Any action has consequences.
Every action has repercussions.
You reap what you sow.
What goes around ... comes around.
What you do comes back to you on a way or another.
Karma is not a cosmic system of justice and retribution.
Karma is as impersonal as gravity.
Karma is not the only force that causes things to happen in the world, terrible
things happen due to natural disasters.
Unfortunate events can happen to anybody, even the most righteous.
Sometimes shit happens regardless of your actions.
You should abstain from the negative actions which bring forth negative results.
The intention/volition with which an action is performed is important.

Dukkha (Pali word) is an important Buddhist concept, translated as "suffering",

"pain" or "unsatisfactoriness".
The Buddha said, “I teach one thing and one thing only: suffering and the end of
suffering.”, which is the ultimate goal of Buddhism.
Causes of sufferance:
1. The most important cause of sufferance is desire! (Thirst)
2. Sufferance caused by change! (Impermanence)
3. Misunderstanding the nature of reality! (Ignorance)

Desires come because you think something is lacking in you.

We burn with desire.
You satisfy one desire, and it just agitates another desire.
You will have desire after desire without being happy.

Solution to get rid of sufferance:

Stop clinging! No craving!
Be detached (non-attachment)!
Let it go! Surrender!
Have no expectations!
There are two kinds of suffering:
the kind that leads to more suffering and the kind that brings an end to suffering.

Pain is inevitable but sufferance is evitable.

Your most lasting possessions are your actions.

We decide between "good" and "bad" on every day.
Evil actions are those which are based on a narrow selfishness.
Evil is something we create, not something we are or some outside force that
infects us.

There are two kind of actions:

actions which brings sufferance and actions which brings happiness.

If you wanna change the world change yourself. Start with within.
The power to change yourself is within you.
Instead of focusing on "finding ourselves" we ought to focus on creating the self
we wish to be at every moment.
Others can show you the direction, but you will have to walk in the path yourself.

Be moderate in all things. Avoid the two extremes and cultivate the middle way.
Don't hurt any person. There isn't any justification for doing harm to any person.
The Golden Rule was to not hurt others with what hurts you.
or
The Golden Rule was to treat others the way you would want to be treated.

All peoples make mistakes! Nothing is perfect. Don't judge!

The three poisons are:

- Ignorance
- Greed
- Anger

Life doesn't necessarily have a purpose, you must find your purpose in life!

Mind is a powerful thing. Discipline your mind.

Happiness is peace of mind.
Things don't just happen, if you want something go for it!
Don't spend your time answering futile questions!

Rebirth:
When you die you will rebirth on another form.
Actions remain from life to life, there is a karmic connection.
If you have multiple lives, not everything is lost.
If you had a hard life, things may get better in next life.
There isn't an infinite recompression for what you did in your life.
The problem is that you won't remember your previous lives and you will forget
everything you learned.

Part 2:

Siddhartha Gautama was a prince who left his palace and lavish lifestyle to seek
enlightenment.

Though he is not the only Buddha in existence, he is the historical founder of

Buddhism.
Buddha was a very wise teacher with keen insights into human nature.

Three marks of existence: Dukkha (suffering), Anicca (impermanence), and

non-self.
The term anatta (Pali) or anatman (Sanskrit) refers to the doctrine of "non-self",
that there is no unchanging, permanent soul in living beings.
What you call you is impermanent, on continue change.
Anatta (no-self, without soul, no essence) is the nature of living beings.
There ultimately is no such thing as a self in any being or any essence in any thing.
The self is always changing.

There is suffering, but there is also a lot of happiness in life!

Buddhism's ultimate purpose is to get ride of sufferance.
Buddha: I Teach Suffering and the End of Suffering.
There is a way to bring the end of suffering.
The main cause of sufferance is desire. You may suffer for not getting what you
want.
You may have desire after desire (on infinite), without being happy.
Pursuing pleasure is not important.
You don't need desires (fulfillment of desires) to be happy!
Your happiness do not depends on materials things!
Don't be attached, is understandable for materials things,
but how to not get attached of beings???
In the Buddha's first discourse he identifies craving (tanha) as the cause of
suffering (dukkha).
He then identifies three objects of craving: the craving for existence;
the craving for non-existence and the craving for sense pleasures (kama).
Besides desire the other causes of sufferance are ignorance and impermanence.
Ignorance means misunderstanding the nature of reality, not knowing.

Get ride of...

No thirst.
No addictions.
Release your fear and be free.
Renounce the ego.

Buddhists don't wanna change the world, wanna change inside!

The world is not perfect, but humans can be perfect by their actions.
“Neither fire nor wind, birth nor death can erase our good deeds."
The morality is important, no one saves us but ourselves.
You are responsible for your own actions!!!
Being unrestrained is a bad thing.
Five Precepts are to not kill, not steal, not commit sexual misconduct,
refrain from false speech, and not consume intoxicants.
Do your best to not kill any living creature, be honest,
not consume intoxicants (drugs, alcohol),
do not steal, and do not commit sexual misconduct. If you break the precepts,
simply repent, and do your best to keep upholding them.
If you made something bad you can compensate that by doing good things.
You are not punished for eating meat you are punished for killing animals.
Avoiding sexual misconduct means avoidance of having sex with a minor, rape,
abduction and adultery.
According to Buddha you are punished for thoughts, for thinking to make bad
actions, even if in the end you didn't make these bad actions.
Buddha believed in the power of thoughts:
you can cure diseases by thinking that you are cured.
Do not insult, but don't blandish neither.
You can't predict which will be the effect of an action, but you can say that bad
actions will have bad effects.
Your goal is the one you made yourself.
What you should do: anything you have to do in order to reach your goal!
Buddha was pragmatic: do what it works! A proposition is true if it is useful.

Anantarika-karma
Anantarika-karma is a heinous crime that through karmic process brings immediate
disaster.
They are called ‘anantarika’ because they are ‘an’ (without) ‘antara’ (interval),
in other words the results immediately come to fruition in the next life,
i.e. the participant goes straight to hell.
These are the only actions which can produce a definite result.
These are considered so heinous that Buddhists and non-Buddhists must avoid
them.
The five crimes are:
- Intentionally murdering one's father
- Intentionally murdering one's mother
- Killing an Arhat (enlightened being)
- Shedding the blood of a Buddha
- Creating a schism within the Sangha, the community of Buddhist monks and
nuns who try to attain enlightenment.

Dalai Lama:
Our prime purpose in this life is to help others.
And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them.

Mind monkey or monkey mind is a Buddhist term meaning "unsettled;

restless; capricious; whimsical; fanciful; inconstant; confused; indecisive;
uncontrollable".
The monkey mind (kapicitta) is a term sometimes used by the Buddha to describe
the agitated, easily distracted and incessantly moving behavior of ordinary human
consciousness.
Our minds are in constant motion.
Calm your monkey mind.
Having control is important.

Emptiness:
Emptiness is a mode of perception, a way of looking at experience.
You look at events in the mind and the senses with no thought of whether
there’s anything lying behind them.

This mode is called emptiness because it is empty of the presuppositions we

usually add to experience in order to make sense of it:
the stories and worldviews we fashion to explain who we are and the world we live
in.
You should be impartial.
If you adopt the emptiness mode—by not acting on or reacting to the anger but
simply watching it as a series of events, in and of themselves—you can see that
you are not the anger and you don't poses the anger.
You don't identify with emotions, you are not your emotions.
You are not your parts, you are the whole.
Loose all attachments to views, stories, and assumptions, leaving the mind empty
of all the greed, anger; and delusion, and thus empty of suffering and stress.
Let it go!
When you meditate you have no thoughts, and no thinking.

The universe is cyclic

Just as human beings are said to die and be reborn, so too the universe goes
through periods of evolution (creation) and involution (destruction).

My (out) thoughts:
Let say there is no self, no world, and everything is an illusion:
I am still trapped in this world.
The question you should ask is what should I do to make things better,
how I could improve my life. You should see what has to be done.

Our actions speak for themselves!

You have the duty to action!
Don't hurt any living being.
Make yourself useful.
You should struggle.
Be moderate in all things.
Do not go to extremes.

Part 3

Four Noble Truths

1. Existence is sorrow
“Now this, monks, is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, aging is
suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering, union with what is displeasing is
suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one wants
is suffering; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering.”

2. The cause of sorrow is desire.

“Now this, monks, is the noble truths of the origin of suffering: it is this craving
that leads to renewed existence, accompanied by delight and lust, seeking delight
here and there; that is, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for existence, craving
for extermination.”

3. The cessation of desire is the cessation of sorrow.

“Now this, monks, is the noble truth of the cessation of suffering: it is the
remainderless fading away and cessation of that same craving, the giving up and
relinquishing of it, freedom from it, nonattachment.”

4. There is a way (the Noble Eightfold Path)... of releasing the Third Truth.
“Now this, monks, is the noble truth of the way leading to the cessation of
suffering: it is this noble eightfold path; that is, right view, right intention, right
speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right
concentration.

Karma
Karma (Sanskrit, also karman, Pali: kamma) is a Sanskrit term that literally means
"action" or "doing".
In the Buddhist tradition, karma refers to action driven by intention (cetana) which
leads to future consequences.
Karma = a deed done deliberately through body, speech or mind, which leads to
future consequences. Intention alone has a moral character: good, bad or neutral.
Karma means cause and effect.

Karma is not about punishment/reward;

karma is a law of the Universe; is a natural law.
Karmic results are not a "judgment" imposed by a God or other all-powerful
being, but rather the results of a natural process.
What you do has consequences!
If you think of doing bad things it affects your mind.
Not by birth is one a brahmin or an outcaste, but by deeds (kamma).
Karma leads to future consequences, karma-phala, "fruit of action".
Not all present conditions can be ascribed to karma.
There is no set linear relationship between a particular action and its results.
The karmic effect of a deed is not determined solely by the deed itself,
but also by the nature of the person who commits the deed, and by the
circumstances in which it is committed.
The real importance of the doctrine of karma and its fruits lies in the recognition
of the urgency to put a stop to the whole process.
In Buddhism, actions are merely termed as unskillful or unwholesome, not as
sinful.
Nothing like the idea of collective kamma is found in or even hinted at in the
Buddha’s teachings. There is no Pali or Sanskrit words for collective kamma in the
traditional lexicons.

Not Self
Some also call this egolessness, but there is actually more to it than ego.
Skandhas (Sanskrit) or khandhas (Paḷi) means "heaps, aggregates, collections,
groupings". In Buddhism, it refers to the five aggregates concept that asserts five
elements constitute and completely explain a sentient being’s mental and physical
existence. The five aggregates or heaps are: form (or matter or body) (rupa),
sensations (or feelings, received from form) (vedana), perceptions (samjna), mental
activity or formations (sankhara), and consciousness (vijnana).
The "Self" is not identical with one of the components of a human being,
such as the head, the soul, or the arms.
You can speak of a person's "Self", but only if you don't mean anything substantial
by that term. Buddha never said you don’t have a self.
We don't have a fix self, everything is subject to change! You aren’t a solid,
unchanging self, but a impermanent, dynamic person.
Everything about you is in constant change from the trillions of cells that make up
your body, to the multitude of processes that create thoughts, emotions, reactions,
opinions, and beliefs.
You aren’t a static object, but a work in progress, full of processes.
Identifying either the body or the mind as the self is dismissed as a mistaken view
by the Buddha; in the Anatta-lakkhana Sutta, it is clearly stated that none of the
five skandha should be regarded as the self. No part of the stream is the self.
Where, exactly, is your self? Of what components and properties does your self
consist? Since no answer to these questions suffices, the self must be in some sense
illusory.
The self can't be defined in strictly reductionist terms. The self can't be grasped.
If you pluck all the memes out of a mind, you will have nothing left.
How much you could cut from a person and it would still stay the same person?
The Buddhist tradition regards the body and the mind as being mutually dependent.
The body or physical form (called rupa) is considered as one of the five skandha,
the five interdependent components that constitute an individual.
Nothing that exists, including you, exists in and of itself, without dependencies,
and as a single, permanent thing. Everything is actually a collection that we have
labeled as a certain thing, and you may tend to think of yourself as “this is who I
am.” The problem with that is that it’s not true.
The whole point is loosing your clinging to thoughts, ideas, emotions, and the idea
of a “real you”.

Sufferance
We shouldn't concern ourselves so much with life after death. Buddhism is about
cessation/end of suffering.
Buddha is considered pessimist since it states that life is sufferance.
We suffer when we don't get what we want. Also you are never satisfied.
You must accept that things won't always happen the way you want. The Universe
doesn't care about what you want.
As you don't wanna suffer, others don't wanna suffer neither.
The evil of something is measured by how much it produces suffering.

Speculative views do not lead to liberation from suffering, hence Buddha put them
away. There is no myth of creation in Buddhism.
Buddha places heavy emphasis on self-reliance, self discipline and individual
striving. Not self-indulgence, not seeking for pleasure.

Buddha criticized the materialistic annihilationism view that denied rebirth and
karma, states Damien Keown. Such beliefs are inappropriate and dangerous, stated
Buddha, because they encourage moral irresponsibility and material hedonism.
Karmic moral responsibility is a must. In the Buddha's framework of karma, right
view and right actions are necessary for liberation.

Are rebirth for real?

There is no scientific proof of rebirth (yet). There are rational explanations, but
they all rest on unprovable assumptions. One way to approach the question of
rebirth is suggested by Thanissaro Bhikkhu, who says, "You don't have to believe
in rebirth, you just have to take it as a working hypothesis." Other teachers, such as
Ajahn Summedho, have a similar view, that since we can never know what will
happen after death, it makes sense to practice Dharma (Pali: Dhamma) and live this
life in the best way possible.
Some well-known monks, Ajahn Brahm and P.A. Payutto among them, say that
when meditators reach the third or fourth jhana (level of absorbtion) they are able
to "read their past lives" as the Buddha did and experience the truth of rebirth. But
this ability is by no means universal, even among meditation masters.
In "Dharma talk" what the Buddha meant was that each life was the arising of the
ego in the mind. So we experience "death" and "rebirth" (of the ego) many times
each day.

Emptiness
Emptiness means interdependent existence, everything that exist is in dependence.
Everything is empty of intrinsic existence. This should not be confused with
nihilistic thinking that things are hollow or not-existent - they do appear but they
are interdependent and have no lasting properties.
In Pali Canon, Buddha takes caution to his students against taking his metaphors
literally.

Middle Way
There are these two extremes that are not to be indulged in by one who has gone
forth. Which two? That which is devoted to sensual pleasure with reference to
sensual objects: base, vulgar, common, ignoble, unprofitable; and that which is
devoted to self-affliction: painful, ignoble, unprofitable. Avoiding both of these
extremes, the Middle Way (…) leads to calm, to direct knowledge, to
self-awakening, to Unbinding.”

from Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta

(“Setting the Wheel of Dhamma in Motion”)
Based on translation by Thanissaro Bhiku from Pali.

Buddha is against self-mortification but also against indulgence in pleasure!

Budhist sects
Two major sects: Theravada and Mahayana.
Theravada means school of the older monks.
Mahayana means great vehicle.
Common: Samsara: cycle of birth and rebirth; your goal is to escape Dukka and
obtains Nirvana.

Theravada: personal; getting Nirvana is the ultimate goal. Original Buddha's

teachings only.

Mahayana: you may get help for getting Nirvana (like celestial being);
get close to Nirvana but help others to get Nirvana.

Theravada Buddhism defines arhat (Sanskrit) or arahant (Pali) as "one who is

worthy" or as a "perfected person" having attained Nirvana.
Buddha was born as a royal prince in 624 BC in a place called Lumbini, which was
originally in northern India but is now part of Nepal. But now in India people are
not Buddhists, Hinduism is the religion of India, one reason may be that Buddhism
was so close to Hinduism and was reabsorbed/reassimilated as part of diversity in
traditions, in fact many Hindus see Buddha as reincarnation of Vishnu.